A Vicarage Reunion

by Kate Hewitt

  “Yes,” she said. “I will.”

  Back in the vicarage, Esther walked slowly through the rooms, savouring their familiarity as well as the quiet. Yet already things were changing; her parents had given away some furniture, and a few days ago Simon had walked through the house, tellingly with Anna, and picked the pieces he wanted to have stay. Esther had been strangely glad of that; she liked the thought that the vicarage wouldn’t be completely different, with some stranger inhabiting its rooms. Simon was practically family, and perhaps soon he would be, judging by the happiness Esther had witnessed between him and Anna.

  “Esther?” Ruth came in the dining room where Esther had been standing, gazing sightlessly at the rose-coloured walls with its eclectic collection of art—most of the paintings were done by hobbyist parishioners. “Is everything all right?” Ruth asked.

  “Yes, everything is fine. Good, actually.” Esther took a deep breath and then smiled. “I’ve moving back home. To Will’s, I mean.”

  “That is home,” Ruth replied with a beaming smile. “Oh Esther, I’m so pleased.” She gave her daughter a hug, and Esther squeezed her mother tight, so grateful for her understanding and patience.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain these last few months,” she whispered against her shoulder.

  “You’re never a pain. And we can’t always choose when we feel up or down.”

  “Yet you said happiness was a choice.”

  “And one that’s not always easy or even possible to make.” Ruth eased back with a sigh. “As well I know. I’ve had some dark days of my own, Esther. And I know that sometimes the only way to get through them is by trudging one step at a time.”

  “Counselling has helped, actually,” Esther admitted, and Ruth’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “You went?”

  “Yes, I took your hint of the card stuck on the fridge.” Ruth laughed and didn’t deny it. “I never thought I wanted to talk about my feelings, and truth be told, I still don’t, but it was okay. It made me realize some things.”

  “Such as?”

  Esther sighed. “That I’m a control freak and a perfectionist and when things don’t go my way I pretty much fold.” She smiled wryly. “Stuff you and Dad probably already knew.”

  “We might have had our suspicions,” Ruth answered. “But the important thing isn’t how or where you’ve been, but how you are now, and where you’re going. And it sounds like you are definitely moving in the right direction, my darling.”

  It felt strange to pack up her things that evening, and even stranger to put them in her car the next morning, after church. She said goodbye to her parents, feeling like a teenager off to uni, and they both hugged her and insisted she and Will come over for Sunday lunch the following week.

  Esther felt both nervous and excited as she made the short drive to the farm, pulling into the yard as rain spattered the windscreen and mist shrouded the fells. Smoke hung in grey wisps above the chimney, the long, low house of white stone huddled against the bottom of the fells. Home.

  Esther climbed out, leaving her bags in the car, and walked across the muddy yard to the kitchen door. She opened it slowly, gazing in surprise at the pristine kitchen; the table was cleared of papers and post, and there were no dirty dishes stacked by the sink. It smelled of lemon polish and wood smoke, and it made her smile.

  “Will?”

  He came clattering down the stairs, sheets bundled in his arms, looking both harassed and hopeful. “Sorry, I was just changing the sheets.”

  “You didn’t have to do all this.”

  “I wanted to. Welcome home, Esther.” She smiled and came towards him, and as his arms closed around her she breathed in the familiar scent of him, sheep and leather and wood smoke. After a few seconds Will eased away. “Someone wants to meet you.”

  “Someone? What do you mean?”

  “Hold on a sec.” He disappeared outside while Esther waited, baffled and bemused. A few moments later Will came back in, and Esther’s breath caught in her throat. A black lab puppy was squirming in his arms, a pink bow around her neck.

  “Oh, Will.”

  “She’s twelve weeks old and has had all her shots. Ready to be my next sheep dog.”

  “Do labs make good sheep dogs?”

  “Good enough.” He crouched down and placed the puppy on the floor; she skittered across the tile towards Esther, sniffing and licking her hands as she bent down to caress her silky ears.

  “Oh, Will, she’s perfect. I love her.” A new puppy could never replace Toby in either of their hearts, but it was fitting to have a new start. A new chapter, just as Roger had said before.

  “She’ll be a lot of work, of course. Puppies are.”

  “I’ve got time.” The community garden was virtually up and running, with people applying for the veg plots and the first work day scheduled for the following weekend. As for a proper job… Esther wasn’t in any rush, but she hoped a new career prospect would reveal itself eventually, in its proper time. She was learning to trust the process, whatever it turned out to be. Finding out was part of the journey, the pleasure.

  After a lunch of soup and bread, Will went back outside and Esther put her things away and played with their new puppy, trying to think of a name for her. While the puppy slept in her basket by the Aga, Esther wandered around the familiar rooms of her home, touching various pictures and piece of furniture, reacquainting herself with the place.

  Will had grown up here, and most of the furniture, old and shabby as it was, was from his childhood. The pictures on the walls in the sitting room—a school picture when he was six, his parents’ wedding—were so familiar Esther had stopped noticing them. Now she paused in front of an old, eighties-style print of a family gathering, all of them bunched up together in front of the house. Parents and grandparents, cousins and aunts and uncles, it looked like by the number of people, and Esther picked out Will easily, by the shock of hair and the bright blue eyes. Then her gaze fell on a boy she hadn’t noticed before—a boy a few years younger than Will, who looked nearly exactly like him. A cousin?

  She frowned, wondering why Will had never mentioned any family besides his parents. Why she’d never asked. Perhaps because her family had been so overwhelmingly present, had filled up all the gaps. Now she wondered. She wanted to know more about Will, to discover the depths to him as he had with her.

  “Esther?” he called from the kitchen with the familiar stamp of boots. The puppy starting barking.

  “I’m in here.”

  Will came into the sitting room, frowning when he saw her standing in front of the photo on the wall. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I just wondered who this was.” She pointed to the boy. “A cousin? You’ve never mentioned any other relatives before, and I’m ashamed that I never really asked.” She smiled at him, wanting to encourage him to share, but her smile wobbled and then faded when she saw him looking so serious. Serious and trapped.

  “Will?” Esther prompted uncertainly. “What is it?”

  Will sighed and raked a hand through his hair. He nodded towards the photo. “That’s my brother.”

  “Your brother?” It was the last thing she’d expected. How could Will have a brother she’d never known about? How could no one, never mind her own husband, have mentioned it?

  “Yes. David.” He turned away and went back to the kitchen, as if the conversation was already over. Esther’s mind spun.

  “Will…” She followed him into the kitchen, the puppy tangling about her feet. Will stood by the sink with his back to her as he filled up the kettle. “Why have you never mentioned a brother? Did he… did he die in the accident with your parents?”

  “No.”

  “Then…” She shook her head slowly, still trying to process it. It felt like such a big thing not to know. For the last few months they’d been dealing with all of her emotional baggage, and she’d had no idea that Will might have some of his own. A lot of his own. How cou
ld she have been so selfish, so self-absorbed? And how could he have kept something like this from her all along? “Where is he now?”

  Will didn’t answer for a long moment. He looked so weary, his shoulders slumped, his gaze on the farmyard outside the window. “He’s in jail,” he said at last.

  *

  Will heard Esther’s quickly indrawn breath and steeled himself for what came next. He should have told her about David. Hell, he should have told her a long, long time ago, and since he hadn’t managed that, he should have told her more recently, when they’d been doing all this soul-baring. But he hadn’t, because he’d been afraid. Afraid of her reaction to what he’d done, what he’d felt, just as she had been with him. The irony, brutal as it was, did not escape him.

  “In jail?” Esther repeated softly. “Will, what happened? And please turn around and look at me.”

  So he turned around, slowly, wearily, dreading the next few moments yet knowing he needed to be honest… just as Esther had been honest with him. “David was—is—three years younger than me,” he began. “When Mum and Dad died, I had sole care of him.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  Will shrugged. “It was what it was.” Which yes, had been bloody hard. “David was always a bit wild, getting into trouble at school, and that. Neither of us was ever going to be a great student, but he drank. Did some drugs.” He sighed again, the memory of those awful months after his parents’ deaths filling him with a familiar blackness. “It got worse then,” he explained. “After they died. I couldn’t control him, and I tried. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I tried, and he resented it.”

  “That sounds so incredibly difficult…”

  Best to get the worst part over with quickly. “Things went badly between us. We were always fighting, and I was always angry. It came to a head one night when I realized David had stolen some money from me… money I couldn’t spare, because Mum and Dad didn’t have any savings or life insurance, and things were tight. He was angry that I was angry, and it blew up in a right storm.” Will took a quick, steadying him. “And I hit him. I punched my own brother right in the face.”

  “Oh, Will.”

  “And I was glad. I’d been aching to do it for months. He was so furious with me he walked out of the house, said he wasn’t ever coming back. And I told him, ‘go on, then.’ Those were the words I used. Go on, then.” Each one stabbed him. “And he did. I haven’t seen him since.”

  Esther gave a soft, shocked gasp. “Not once—”

  “A couple of weeks after he left, he got into a fight in a pub. He swung a punch at a bloke and he went down hard. He ended up dying of a brain hemorrhage, and David got seven years for it. He came out again, but just a few months later he got into trouble again, this time a robbery. He’s been in jail since.”

  “Oh, Will. I’m so sorry.”

  “So am I.” He had trouble getting the words out. “I know it was my fault.”

  When he could bear to look at her, he saw shock on her face. “Will, why do you say that?”

  “I hit him. I drove him away.” He tried for a smile and failed. “Seems like a knack I’ve got.”

  Esther paled. “Do you mean me…” He couldn’t answer. “Oh, Will.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve been so incredibly selfish, so caught up in my own problems, I never thought you even had any. It wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault.” She strode over to him, wrapping her arms around his middle. “And neither was what happened with your brother. It sounds like it was an incredibly difficult situation, and you were so young…”

  “Excuses.”

  “Now who is the one holding a scorecard?” Esther asked softly, tilting her head up to look at him. “Who’s the one feeling guilty when he needs to let it go?”

  Will put his arms around her, needing to feel her there. “It’s harder than it sounds, I suppose.”

  “I wish you’d told me.”

  “I haven’t told anyone.”

  “But people must know,” Esther persisted. “Thornthwaite is small, and you’ve lived here your whole life. Plenty of people must know about David.”

  “My father’s not the vicar,” Will reminded her. “And in any case, people around here might have long memories, and they can gossip all right, but they also know when to keep their mouths shut.”

  “True enough, I suppose.” A shadow entered Esther’s eyes. “Here I was, feeling like I couldn’t tell you things, and I never considered that you might feel you couldn’t tell me things.”

  “I was ashamed,” Will said quietly.

  “And so was I.” Esther pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “But what is love if it can’t accept the good parts of someone, the weak along with the strong? You’ve been so strong for me, Will, and I’ve relied on you, on that, so much, even when it didn’t seem as if I was. You were always there for me, the rock I took for granted. But now I want to be strong for you. That’s what marriage is, isn’t it? A true partnership, with us leaning on each other?”

  He nodded, his chest tight with emotion, his heart full of love. He’d never needed to hear something more. “I suppose that sounds about right,” he managed in a rasp.

  “I know it does. It’s been hard, so hard, getting to where we are now.” Her voice caught and she pressed on. “So much heartache and grief and sadness, and I feel like so much of it was my problem, my fault—”

  “Hey. Scorecards, remember? We’re not having them. They’re gone.”

  “Right.” She gazed up at him, smiling although her eyes were troubled. “I don’t know what the future holds, whether we’ll be brave enough to try for children again…”

  “We can cross that bridge when it comes.”

  “Or whether I’ll ever meet your brother…” He nodded gruffly, unable to manage more, but Esther continued with determination, “But I do know that I want to face it all with you. I want to be strong for you, and you strong for me. But I also want us to be able to be weak, to admit to being weak, to each other.” Her eyes lightened as her smile widened. “Do you think we can do that?”

  “I think we already have.” Will smiled at her, feeling light and happy in the midst of the ache of old, remembered grief. “It’s a long road, Esther, and we’re just taking a few steps down it. But we’re going in the right direction. At last.”

  “Yes,” Esther agreed quietly, a smile blooming across her face like a flower. “At last.”

  “And now I know what step I want to take,” Will said, taking her hand and starting to tug her towards the stairs.

  “What…” Esther looked mystified, and Will grinned. He loved his wife.

  “I want to go upstairs and remind you that we are married,” he said with a deliberately lascivious look. “And get to know you in the biblical sense.”

  Esther laughed and started towards the stairs. Will didn’t know which one of them was more eager to get to the top. They were still laughing as they fell into the big, old bed. Downstairs the puppy barked and Will pulled Esther into his arms. Home at last. Truly home.

  Epilogue

  Three months later

  The garden was full of spring flowers and drowsy bumblebees and laughter as a hobbyist photographer from the parish insisted on taking another full set of snaps. Her parents had been posing for several shots by the trellis, the same place where Esther and Will had taken their wedding pictures.

  Will. Esther glanced over at him sprawled in a chair, smiling at the sight of her parents together, and her heart overflowed with love. The last three months had been wonderful, but they’d also been hard, in a good and healing way, as they’d opened up more and more to each other, learning new things, new weaknesses as well as new strengths. Growing closer in a way Esther had never imagined, not even after ten years together. They’d even attended some counselling sessions together, as well as starting to go to church with her parents. Both experiences had been awkward and good. New chapters. New patterns.

  Now Rachel’s wedding w
as in just a few days; over the last few months her sister had forged ahead with wedding plans, seeming more determined than ever. Esther had tried to talk to her on occasion, but Rachel had rebuffed her attempts, and now it seemed things were going ahead, no matter what.

  Miriam was due back on the train from Manchester Airport any moment, just in time for all the wedding festivities. This garden party was one of a series of farewells for her parents organized by the church; they were leaving in just a few weeks, after the wedding.

  Esther was finally starting to come around to the idea, especially now that the vicarage was packed up, Simon planning to move in as soon as her parents had gone. She’d seen pictures of their small furnished flat in Jinan, and had expressed enthusiasm for her father’s new responsibilities. She still dreaded the thought of them not being here, even as she felt happy for the new opportunities and challenges they were facing.

  “Miriam!” Ruth’s cry rose from the crowd as she separated herself from them and hurried towards the garden gate. Miriam stood there, a rucksack on her back, looking both tanned and exhausted. Rachel, Anna, and Esther all swarmed her, with Roger coming in behind. Everyone was laughing and crying at once; Esther hadn’t seen Miriam in nearly two years.

  “Easy now.” Miriam laughed, sliding the rucksack off her back as she returned all their hugs.

  “I’m just so glad you’re home, darling,” Ruth said, looking tearful, and Miriam smiled.

  “Actually,” she said. “I’m home for good.”

  This was met with another chorus of exclamations of surprise and delight.

  “I thought you were a diehard world traveller,” Will remarked as he came up next to Esther and slid his arm around her waist.

  “Were being the operative word,” Miriam replied. Her voice was cheerful but Esther thought she saw a trace of sadness in her little sister’s eyes, and she wondered if something had happened to make her sister come home for good. If so, Esther thought, Miriam was in the right place to recover and heal—surrounded by family and friends.