The Ghost of Winn Peterson

27. Winn

December 3

My good fortune with the weather as Evie and I visited Lord Carroway deCourt's magnificent home, unusual as it was for the season and the country, was quickly reduced to something rather ill indeed. I, being largely banished to my own room when not eating, was forced into close proximity with the window, and that damnable window did nothing to keep the cold out. As quickly as the sun had set on our lovely jaunt amidst horse pastures, so soon did the clouds remember their duty and the wind find new purpose in smashing itself about the walls. By the time Atticus was proficient in his vowels, the panes all around the house had fully frosted shut, making any dreams of escaping through one of them impossible.

Along with the cold, my health also suffered. The tightness in my lungs prevented me from walking downstairs for even breakfast most days (much to the annoyance of the near-mute old maid, who turned her thick eyebrows up in such a way as to suggest disappointment, though it was really hard to tell). Almost fully past his alphabet, Atticus would read to me from the newspaper as he brought my breakfast up, sitting in the window as though he could not feel the touch of winter. Though he was still an irritable sort, and mocked me at every available turn, he did seem to appreciate my teaching him, an appreciation I suspected went further than feeding me every day. How mad would I have gone, had I been trapped indoors for my entire life without the boon of being able to read or write! Even with the company of only the news, Atticus appeared much healthier himself. At least he could find some perspective on the world outside the morose walls of the doctor's house. As for myself, the goings-on of the world outside any of my given homes (here, I must wonder how my house on the cliffside is holding up) has never held any interest for me. What reason should I have for caring about the daily news when I am hardly ever able to entertain society? No, I needed to read and write of my own worlds, which were possessed with fanatics and fear and mysteries between every page. 

Having spotted my writing when I shared the letters (which I shall also make mention of - Atticus and I have employed the maid in leaving a letter for Evie to join us in reading these letters, as the newlywed took back to haunting her bedroom after our brief reconciliation), the cook's son made sure to bother me nearly every day about my fiction. I would have been angry about the bother, but the constant talk of it soon reached the doctor's ears, and in keeping with his generous nature, as Atticus often says with a snort, I found a new writing desk in my room after a rare excursion for breakfast. How the desk had snuck its way up a curving and complicated flight of stairs without so much as a thump was beyond me, but after extracting promises that neither of my friends had anything to do with it, there was nothing else to do but believe the doctor was somehow responsible for the presence of the desk. 

It was a handsome thing, built of a dark brown wood I won't pretend to know the name of. It possessed drawers on either side, handled with a little shiny bronze bar. In the centre of the desk was a groove for papers and books, and just in front of that was a sort of sliding surface where even more paper, or perhaps emergency pens, could be stored for quick use. 

It was a far greater gift than such an insolent, stubborn nobody such as myself deserved, but as Atticus pointed out, it most assuredly came with a price. 

"I've only received a gift once or twice myself," he had remarked with a dark look to the looming structure, "and each time found myself tasked with some peculiar chore that came with no explanation, only a severity of demand and time."

"Such as? Were you asked to bury body parts, or dig graves in the night?"

"You're not far off," was the solemn response. Seating himself at the desk, Atticus tapped at each little cubby and hiding place, perhaps looking for a secret in the drawers. "I've never told anyone this - though, mostly out of a lack of interested people to tell - but a few years ago, back when we had a different maid from Spain, I think - "