Lost Among the Living(17)
From the very first, I knew which monument I was meant to see.
It was a long block of shiny marble, raised and gleaming, overshadowing all of the graves around it—humble stones from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, planted by the good people of Anningley. Frances Forsyth’s grave was slick and shiny, almost obscene. As I approached I could see the lettering—FRANCES FORSYTH, B. 1902–D. 1917—and an angel etched, weeping, into the marble above it. Beneath the dates was a single sentiment: ANGEL ON EARTH.
I stared at the grave. It made my throat thick, made my heart beat slowly and sickly in my chest. This was Dottie’s work, there was no doubt of it—Robert had had nothing to do with this monstrosity. She must have faced some objection to having Frances buried in the churchyard at all, as a suicide and a suspected murderer. She had not only prevailed, but she had raised her daughter’s monument above the rest. It was a mother’s act of love, of defiant and loyal belief.
But as David Wilde had intimated, I knew something of what it was like, caring for the mad. I knew how it drained you, how it ate at you, how your love for the mad person both fed you and consumed you. How you felt it was all your fault, or all theirs. I knew of the unspoken moments as you worried in the dark—as your own life sat frozen and forgotten—when you hated the mad person with all your heart, when the black part of you wished they would simply go away, that they would simply die. And I knew of the hideous wash of relief that overcame you when the burden of caring for that person was finally lifted.
Frances Forsyth’s monument was an act of love. But I could see what it also was—an act of guilt, the kind that bows a person and alters them forever. This was what Dottie lived with, what no one could understand. No one but me, who had lived with Mother.
The last place she ever wanted to go was through that terrible door, to be with the things on the other side. Some mad people wished for death, but others clung to life, even when that life was filled with pain. Yet Frances had, finally, decided to go through that door she so dreaded. Or had she? Was it possible her mother had helped her? That the final result was this monument to Dottie’s own guilt?
I turned away and walked back to the motorcar in silence.
When I arrived in the front hall at Wych Elm House, all was quiet. I removed my hat and stood for a moment. I heard the ticking of the grandfather clock in the next room. I smelled furniture polish and dust. I looked at the sunlight coming interrupted through the glass door from the sitting room, sliced by the lines of a tree branch. At the quiet corridor, its floor gleaming.
This house shouldn’t be sold; it should be burned.
A murmur of voices came from one of the rooms down the hall, and reluctantly I walked toward the sound. I found Dottie and Robert in the small parlor where I had seen the girl yesterday, sitting in the chairs in an awkward arrangement. A tray of tea sat on a spindle-legged table, the steam no longer rising from the pot. Dottie’s color was high, her posture straight, a teacup all but forgotten in her lap. Robert sat uncomfortably, looking pained. So Dottie had won some part of their argument after all, then.
A third person rose from his chair to greet me.
He was, unmistakably, the boy from the photograph Dottie carried in her book. I could see Dottie in the narrow, clean shape of his jaw, the shoulders that were not wide yet firm of line. I could see Robert in the set of his dark eyes, his long lashes, and the charming ease of his smile, which he flashed me on sight. But there the resemblance to either of his parents, and the photograph of years ago, ended. The man who stood before me had the painful thinness of the long-term patient: his cheeks hollowed, his tidy shirt and jacket hanging as if from a clothes hanger in a shop. He was in his early twenties, but the creases on his forehead and the lines bracketing his mouth aged him past thirty, and the soft shadows under his eyes hinted that the travel he’d just undergone had taken more out of him than he cared to let on.
“Manders.” Dottie’s voice was tight with excitement, her gaze trained on the man as he turned to me. “This is my son, Martin.”
“Cousin!” Martin said, smiling at me. Despite the gauntness of his features, there was something compelling about the forced brightness in his eyes. “Cousin Jo! What a delight to finally meet you. Alex told me everything about you.”
I blinked at him, surprised. I glanced briefly at Dottie, remembering her injunction not to talk of Alex with her frail son. “Oh,” I said stupidly.
“Martin,” Dottie said, changing the subject on cue. “You must eat something. I imagine you are famished.”
“Don’t harass the boy, Dottie,” Robert said.
Martin ignored them both and took one of my gloved hands in his. I still held my packages in the other. Dottie’s comment hung in the air; Martin looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. His gaze was fixed on me, and I returned the look, trying to read his expression. I had interrupted a family conversation on some serious topic—I inferred it from the color in Dottie’s cheeks and the way Robert’s gaze roved around the room, as if he was waiting for the first chance to escape.
“You are lovely,” Martin said to me. His voice was not seductive, or even particularly inviting; the words were spoken more as a message, as if he were telling me something in code. He squeezed my hand once, briefly, reinforcing the feeling. “Just as I heard. I am so glad I came home.”
I stared back at him. I should know what he meant; I should know. And yet I racked my brain and came up with nothing. “Thank you,” I managed.