Fifty Words for Rain(106)

I will do my best for her. Though I doubt it will be enough.

But she has her father. He loves her, and he loves me, and he is the best of men. I don’t have the same need for this diary as I once did. I have no need to keep secrets from him. Ours may not be a marriage in name, but it is a marriage of souls, and I am the luckiest woman in the world to have him.

Perhaps it will all come right after all.



* * *





January 28th, 1941

It did not come right.

He is dead.

James is dead.

He stopped breathing in his sleep, without disturbing me, without waking our daughter, who sleeps in the bassinet by our bed.

He died here, far away from his home, far away from his family.

The doctor says that his lung collapsed. There was nothing anyone could have done. There is no cure for the wasting disease he suffered from. Some live, some die, and nobody knows why.

But I know why. This is the price for my sin. This is the curse on my family doing its fatal work.

I bury the love of my life quietly, with only a priest in attendance.

It is so much less than he deserves. He was not a prince, he was not heir to any dynasty, but he was a remarkable man. He was kind. He was patient. He was better than I will ever be.

And now he is dead.

It is strange. I still love him. I think I will always love him, though he is dead and no longer here to love me back.

I could go back to my son. It is a horrible thought, but I could do it. He is too young to hate me yet.

I don’t know if my husband would have me, but my mother might insist. She might be desperate to save face. She might command him, as she commands everyone, and everything might be as it was before I fell in love.

I could go back.

If it weren’t for Nori.

James’s daughter, our daughter, the only thing I have left of him. The last child I will ever have, the child who will always remind me of her brother, the son who is lost to me.

I look into her face and I think she looks so much like me.

But I am determined that she will be nothing like me. I fought against my destiny, I fought against my place in the world, and now I am destroyed.

This girl, this poor girl, will know better.

I will teach her to obey.

I will keep her safe.

And, if I can, I will try to love her.

This will be my penance. Spending a life in obscurity with this child. I, who have been brought so low after being born so very high.

God forgive me. God pardon me for my sin.

For I never will.

So long as I live, I will never forgive myself.



* * *





Nori pressed the diary against her heart.

It was dark in the garden now, and the crickets were chirping. She sobbed quietly, letting the tears flow freely.

She had wanted her mother to be a monster.

It was easy to hate monsters.

And hatred was easy to feel.

This, all of this, was so much harder.

Wordlessly, Noah came to sit beside her. He wrapped her up in his arms, and she allowed herself to lean into his warmth.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

Finally, Noah broke the silence.

“Do you feel like you know her now?” he asked quietly. “Your mother?”

Nori shut her eyes. “Yes.”

“And do you hate her?”

At once, she was back in the attic, asking Akira this very same thing. She clutched the fabric of Noah’s shirt to pull her from the memory.

“No,” she said honestly. “I don’t hate her.”

“Do you forgive her?” Noah asked, very softly.

Nori tried to speak, but her voice broke. All that came out was a gasping sob.

Noah was learning, for he did not ask her again.



* * *





After a few days, Nori started to return to her state of easy joy. The weather was fair, and it was impossible not to smile. She played games with Alice and the children; she spent the nights wrapped up in Noah’s arms, laughing until she cried.

A great weight had been lifted from her shoulders, one she had grown so accustomed to, she’d forgotten she was carrying it.

The past was written.

The future was just starting, and for the first time in years, it looked merciful.

She wandered around the garden, basking in the sunlight and breathing in the scent of freshly bloomed honeysuckle. Noah was back in Cornwall for the week, trying to track down his brothers.

“I won’t be gone long, my love,” he’d promised. He’d winked at her. “And I’ll bring you back that engagement ring.”

“I don’t need a ring, sweetheart.”

“Nonsense. It was my mother’s and I want you to have it. There is no other woman in the world who should. I’ll be home soon.”

Nori did not doubt him. The fear that had lapped at her heels for all these years was finally beaten.

It was a strange feeling, to be so wondrously free.

Bess found her sunning underneath a great oak.

“My lady,” she said, in her lilting country accent, “there’s a letter for you.”

Nori leaned up on her elbows. Nobody wrote letters to her.

“Thank you, Bess.”

Bess nodded and went back into the house. Nori could hear her shouting at Charlotte to get off the table.