North Road {HS}

16. Harry

At home when the rain came it didn't stop. You could feel it in your fingertips and smell it in the air as it approached and you knew. You knew to get home. To find a book or a scrap of paper and a pen and weather the storm in safety.

In the trenches it drizzled. A sickening pattering of incessant showers. And there, I longed for the country storms of my home where I could lock myself indoors as God dropped buckets and the wind ripped the trees as I sat with a cup of tea.

But I had never witnessed a storm like this.

And in a strange, twisted way I was captivated. She was wild and untamed. And no book or cup of tea was going to weather this tempest.

She had not cried since that first moment in my arms. Instead she simply understood that as her family grieved there was work to be done and meals to be made and a big house to be cleaned. She faced her tasks with a silent ferocity and labored on despite the purple under her eyes turning a dark black and the plain grey frock she wore growing looser at her waist.

But like home I felt thestorm coming in my finger tips and the electricity in the air. She could only last so long.

It was the day of the funeral and people were gathering on the Winslow lawn. Kitty was running about making sure that everything was perfect while no one cared if it was even adequate.

I was hiding in the door way to the stables, watching the crowd. Witnessing the impact of a woman I hardly knew as people gathered. Suddenly she brushed past me.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Checking for eggs," she answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Right now?" I pushed feeling the electricity begin to crackle in the winter air.

"Well it needs to be done, so that seems to be an obvious answer."

Sighing I followed her. We stood back to back with only a few inches separating us as we silently hunted for eggs in what seemed to me an in-opportune time.

When we finished she double checked my side before snatching her basket from the floor and pushing her way out of the hen house to Penny, her mother's old goat. She went to yank the milking stool from its leather strap on the rafters but it didn't go the first time. With an angry grunt she tried again.

I went to help.

"I can do it," she snapped.

"Must you do it now?" I asked trying my best to be comforting. But comforting is the very thing I am not.

"Like I said it needs done," she sighed tiredly.

I was awed by the strength, the determination in her voice. Even if it was just obstinance.

"Kitty," I said softly, "People are here. If it needs to be done then I'll do it."

Then she looked at me and the storm in her eyes broke.

"I can do it!" she screamed.

I just stared at her.

"It's what my mother taught me to do. To be responsible. To keep the house and to do the chores and take care of everyone. She took such good care of everyone.... so now I need to. So if you're going to get in the way of that then please leave."

I was surprised when I didn't leave. Leaving would be a Harry thing to do.

Instead I just approached her slowly. Like one might approach a wounded animal as she glared at me. Her breathing going in a pattern that was fast approaching tears.

"Kitty, you've run this house since I've been here. And I'm sure long before. You can take a break for the funeral. You need to rest or you won't be taking care of anyone," I spoke in a tone that could have been called a whisper.

Then she laughed. And that was worse than crying.

"What on earth am I supposed to do out there?! People who haven't come to see my mother in years are here pretending they were her best friends. But they never came by. Because who wants to spend their time with a sick person?" Her laughing was beginning to sound more like crying at this point, "No, I have nothing to say them. I didn't learn any of that. I'll take care of myself and everyone else. It's the only thing I'm good at the only thing I know how to do."

Again I couldn't find words.

"Just go away, Harry, and stop looking at me like I'm pathetic," she added after a moment.

I took one step closer, "No, Kitty, I don't..."

"I don't need you to patronize me," she was seething now. And I didn't know if I was really the cause of this level of anger or just the way the world was treating her.

"Kitty, I-" but what would I say? How would I say that sometimes I think my heart might be beating in time with her footsteps as she busied herself around the house. Or that I thought she might be the best woman I had ever met? That I thought she was so much more than any of things she had said she amounted to?

Words like that were far scarier than any storm I might have to let beat on me.

"Just go, Harry."

So this time I did the typical thing. What I always do. I walked away.
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Sad. 😭