Godspeed

Chapter 26

The candles flickered, low and lonely, atop the ornate mantle.

Though there were several lamps in the room none of us had the heart to light them. We sat in silence and relative dark as the last of the day was swept away by twilight, into the arms of a night we feared, for one of our own, would never again know morning.

Schuyler paced a path back and forth before me. As I watched the candlelight reflect off of the buckles on his perfectly polished boots, I found it impossible to concentrate on my own thoughts. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was Jib.

Penn was in his usual chair in the corner, but the book in his hands remained closed. Across the room Marielle was quietly weeping; her emotions too much to contain as she vividly saw in her mind the horrors her blind eyes could not perceive.

Lilibet sat with her “typetalk”, as she referred to it in consonants only, in her lap. Fingers unmoving on the keys, clutching it against her as she rocked, to and fro in her spot by the piano.

What would have served as dinner this night, a terrine of soup and loaf of fresh bread, sat untouched on the sideboard. He'd felt that he should at least make an effort to get us to eat, Schuyler had said, hours before, though none of us could even think of touching it.

Those were the last words spoken between us, the only sound that could breach the deafening silence in the room the occasional gasp of Marielle's shattered sobs.

The endless moments dragged on into hours and finally, just as the clocks had all begun to strike eleven, the sound of keys in the door startled us from our trances.

Of course it was Quinn, and of course his eyes said everything that he could not bring his voice to speak.

My eyes were fixed upon him, unable to feel, to know, to live anything in this moment but the agony in his heart. I wanted to assuage it somehow; to carry the burden that he believed, I knew, that he alone could.

Those bluest of eyes that I loved so well were so dark beneath and rimmed with red, and though I thought I would likely never see them spill actual tears, I could feel, within him, his soul crying out.

It was over.

It was all over, and he was blaming himself for all the things he could not do to bring about a different ending to Jib's story.

"Quinn... " Schuyler finally broke the silence.

Marielle jumped from her chair and rushed forward, bumping into furniture and Schuyler himself as she rushed to get to the doctor.

Quinn still said nothing; he merely shook his head once in that way he did when there was no point in speaking.

Schuyler closed his eyes and dropped his head into his hands, whispering one word.

"No."

"No!" Marielle screamed, falling forward toward the doctor, seeking something solid to hold on to. Quinn actually teetered and looked like he may collapse. Schuyler and Penn both moved quickly, Schuyler taking his arm and putting it around Quinn to steady him, Penn surprising us all by gathering Marielle into his arms and locking her into an embrace. The two held each other fiercely as they cried and I, struck completely dumb and frozen where I stood, watched as Quinn found the strength to raise both hands and fiercely push Schuyler away. He rushed from the room, down the hall, and we all heard his steps retreating toward the laboratory. The door slammed a moment later, and in that instant my heart demanded my body respond, at last, with motion.

"Don't," Schuyler warned, catching me by the edge of the sleeve as I made for the door.

"But he—"

"We can't." Schuyler's voice was overwrought, and I looked up to see his eyes reflecting tears in the dim, glowing light. "You want to, I know. But we can't."

"I can't just leave him alone now—"

"That is exactly what you must do," Schuyler whispered, reaching out to brush the tears from my cheek with the back of his outstretched hand. "It's what we must all do."

"No, it's—"

Our argument was suddenly interrupted by another sound in the room — a sound that no one could possibly have expected, and that was impossible to believe.

It was the sound of the key case on the piano squeaking, as it ever did, as someone lifted it.

The first plaintive notes were struck before any of us could fathom what was going on; within moments of the end of the first measure of the haunted melody, I heard steps rapidly approaching from outside the room.

I looked at Quinn, and he at me—tears filled his eyes but never spilled over, as mine did—as we watched, transfixed. Lilibet was seated at the piano, playing a song for the first time for an audience: playing it in honor of the one who would never sit at the instrument again.

No one dared to speak or move, not even Marielle as Penn whispered her sister's name tenderly into her ear to explain the sight she could not see.

When the last note rang out, clear, and held for an eternity beneath the force of her foot upon the sustain pedal, Lilibet rose from the piano, closed the keys, and sank back down to the floor in the corner, where she took up rocking to and fro once more as if nothing at all had changed.

#

The morning of Jib's funeral was much too bright it, seemed; much too sunny and cheerful for such an unacceptable occasion.

It should be pouring buckets of rain from weeping heavens, I thought. Angels standing sentry and only just barely able to contain the whipping of grieving winds. It should be dark. It should be solemn. It should, by rights, be cold enough to snow.

I had pleaded my case long and hard to both Schuyler and Quinn to no avail; I would not be permitted to attend.

No matter how I tried to argue, each of them had separate, distinct, and equally unalterable lists of reasons why I could not go.

In the end, I was forced simply to watch as best I could from the partially obscured lookout of my attic bedroom window.

I saw enough.

I saw the endless line of horse drawn carriages, still favored by the Weatheralls despite the new trends in transportation; the first in the line bore a casket dark as pitch, intricately carved, and drew it down the stone path toward the mausoleum at the center of the cemetery.

It broke my heart, the sight of it; impossible still to believe that a life force as strong as Jib's could merely be extinguished, by any manner of illness.

I watched as they removed the casket from the back of the carriage. Schuyler and Penn served among the pallbearers; Quinn could not, I knew, without too many questions being asked. In fact, I noted that I could not even see him among the mourners, and began to wonder how far a distance he was keeping from the event for the sake of the rest of his brood: for the safety of the rest of us, including me.

As the casket disappeared from view, I finally moved away from the window. I sank into the chair, rocking slowly back and forth, as I imagined Marielle and Lilibet standing graveside, wondering if one would understand exactly what was happening and knowing the other could not bear to watch, even if she had the ability to see.

I cast my eyes up to the skies now, suddenly turned gray, as if the act of putting Jib into the ground had actually extinguished the sun; and in that moment, I realized it had begun to snow.