Becoming Miss Lee

Chapter 35 - Slowly

To say that I became a shell of my former self was a relative understatement. I could not even bring myself to go into his study after that. The very sight would reduce me to a blubbering tear-stained mess. His grave was never left unattended by me, not for a single day. Robed in black, I would sit in the pouring summer rain beside the grave in a state of perpetual melancholy, soaked through to the bone and cold. I felt so lost. Without him, I did not know what to do with myself. I had no father now, and I felt one step closer to becoming an orphan again. More than that, I had lost one of my closest companions that day. The man that I could depend upon for everything and anything was gone from my life like a candle snuffed out.

Tom and Sarah tried about everything that they could think of to cheer me up: parties, games, trips out of Chantilly and Westmoreland, yet nothing would work. I remained silently inconsolable. My children perhaps suffered the worst from it. They would invite me to play, and sometimes I could do nothing more than stare at them with hooded eyes and slightly parted lips before turning away back to my window while Pelly or Henriette would pull them away and tell them that I needed to be left alone. I would lock myself in my upstairs room, staring dispassionately out of the window from my chair with my mind twenty years in the past. Miss Anne was never far from my side. She would be beside me most of the time, neither of us speaking, just staring off into the distance with our hands clasped together.

"We cannot stay like this forever, Bea..." She murmured one day in early August as we sat on the porch while the children romped in the grass. "One day, we must decide to move on. form this state for the sake of the children." I knew in my heart that she was right. Finding the will to do so, however, would be slightly more difficult. I watched my children as they played from my perch atop the front porch. I knew where I would go to end this maddening melancholy, and that place was Monticello.

I would fly to Monticello for a time and return when I had time to be alone, away, and to think. I was nearing forty, still too young to be so world weary, but I was completely resigned to my fate of being eternally unhappy. I stuck to my plan and departed after sending a letter two days ahead of me to warn Thomas of my arrival, and I was greeted as warmly as always. We sat in the library with nothing but silence between us until I spoke first, "Thomas... Do you know what I felt when Mister Lee died?" He looked up at me from his shoes for the first time since we had sat down and shook his head, watching me in earnest concern. "I was angry. Angry with God. That first night, when I went out for a walk, I screamed up at the sky. No words, just... noise. Then I asked why he continued to take every ounce of happiness from my life, why he desired to leave me orphaned and alone, with just myself and the children, whom I am unable to care for on my own, and why he was so cruel. Have I sinned so horribly that he must wretch every shred of a family life that I could have from my hands, every love that I have ever possessed, just for my repentance?"

"He has not taken your children, Bea. He may have taken the heart for other men, but he has left you the heart for your children. If you must live for anyone, be happy for anyone, be happy and live for them. They adore you, and you cannot tell me that they are not the epicenter of your entire world. Bea, you have lived your life for other people, but now, my dear, it is time that you begin to live for yourself. You gave your happiness and personal time to this nation, to your husband, give it to yourself now." Thomas reached across and laid his hand on my lap, "Take off your black, Bea, and I would very much enjoy it if you would stay here."

The proposal was quite the surprise, but his words seemed to rouse something in the back of my mind and I looked up from his hands and met his hazel eyes. "Did you just offer me residence at Monticello?" I laughed because I thought it was a joke, but when I looked back into his face, I was met with the jarring realization that he was quite serious. "Mister Jefferson, it is unseemly for an unmarried woman to stay with an unmarried man. Your political station would not allow such a, well, scandalous thing to occur."