Becoming Mrs. Lewis(78)

I grasped Davy’s hand. “Look. I’ll take Davy back, and you two follow along when you’re ready.”

Davy and I began to walk back, skirting fallen branches and patches of ice. Far off a loud crash sounded. Davy looked skyward. “There’s not really giants here, are there?”

“Only if you want there to be,” I said.

“I don’t want there to be.” He drew closer, and his head banged against my ribs. “Mommy?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“There’s a really awful noise in the wall where me and Douglas sleep. What if the giant is in there instead of out here?”

“The giant, if there is one, is not in the walls.”

“Well, there was a terrible banging.”

“Maybe the sun bangs for you before it wakes.” I tried to joke with my son, to lighten his somber mood.

“No, Mommy. That can’t be true or I would have heard it before.”

“I’m being silly, sweetie.” I squeezed his hand. “I heard the same noise when I stayed in there. It’s the water in the pipes. It’s an old house, and they haven’t done much to fix it.”

“And it’s very cold,” Davy said. “Except by the fire.”

“You don’t like it here?” I asked.

“I do like it.” Davy stopped before the green door and lifted his thumb to obey the sign PRESS.

“We can just go in,” I said and opened the door.

Mrs. Miller must have heard us approaching because there she was, kerfuffling around us, taking our coats and brushing ice off Davy’s cap. “I have tea for you,” she said.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Miller. I know that three extra guests right before the holidays is not something you much looked forward to. And two little boys to boot.”

“It’s lovely,” she said in her thick brogue. “Absolutely luvvly-jubbly. The house seems to wake when you arrive, Mrs. Gresham.”

I took this admission and let it warm all the cold doubt about my place in this new world.




That night, as Warnie taught Davy chess as promised, and Jack and I read by the fire, Douglas came bursting through the door carrying an armload of wood.

“I cut all of this with Paxford,” he called out and dumped it on the hearth. “Mommy, there are real kilns. That is why this house is called ‘the Kilns.’ There is even an air raid shelter by the pond.”

“I’ve seen it, Douglas. Isn’t it marvelous? Except if you’d had to go there during the war, of course.”

“Except that,” he said and fell, covered in wood chippings, into a chair. It was only moments later that he fell asleep, all that energy expended, his mouth slack. He was as spent as were we. I imagined Jack and Warnie had not had this much activity since the war itself.

“Boys,” I said, “it’s time to hustle off to bed.”

Davy groaned. “But I’m almost done winning.”

“And that he is,” Warnie said. “But you have saved me from the disaster of losing to a ten-year-old who has never played before. So off to bed with you.”

I gently shook Douglas. “Bedtime, son.”

He roused himself, and both boys stumbled to the back bedroom where they’d been sleeping with the framed steamships above their heads. They settled into their little room off the kitchen, warm water bottles tucked into the beds to stave off the cold. Piles of blankets covered their little bodies as I tucked them in.

“Nothing here is the same as home,” Davy said as I kissed his cheek. “I don’t like it like I thought I would.”

“I’m here, and so is your brother. All will be well. It takes time, my love.”

“I like it,” Douglas said from the next bed. “But I wish we could just stay here at the Kilns with the pond and the big forest and the guest cottage full of little creatures and the garden and Paxford . . .”

I knelt at the bedside for nighttime prayer, closed my eyes, and told the truth. “Me too, son. Me too.”

Four days passed too quickly. Paxford and Mrs. Miller took to the boys as if they’d known them all along. Warnie rang a gong for lunch (only he was allowed to ring the small treasure from his time in Hong Kong during World War I), and Mrs. Miller cooked for us. Paxford showed the boys all through the property, giving them jobs and teaching them about the land. While Davy looked to the stars and wanted to know every constellation, Douglas touched each plant and wanted to know its name. In their individual ways, they were both trying to find their place in the world.

On the last night I approached Jack in the common room. “I have a gift for you,” I said.

“Oh, you do? Is it a ham?”

“The ham! I sent that all those years ago.” I laughed and found myself in a coughing fit—the cold settling in my chest. I shook my head. “No, not a ham.” I held up my finger. “Wait here, it’s in my room.”

I returned quickly with the long box I’d carried from London. “You can save it for Christmas under the tree or—”

“Open it now,” he interrupted and ripped the top off the box.

And there it was—an antique Persian sword I’d found in a flea market in London the week before. He pulled it from its sheath, and it shimmered in the light of the fire.