The Ghost of Winn Peterson

11. Winn

8 September

What a miserable two days these have been, waiting and wringing our hands together for not only Mrs. Thomas to regain her health, but for Evie to come back with what we could only hope was a more competent doctor than Dorset could offer. As of now, Evie is returned to us, and her task fulfilled, but the changes over the Thomas household are severe and sufficient enough to require my telling of them in these rare moments of isolation.

The hour was late and very dark. Still coming in a relentless downpour, the rain refused to give in all through the day and night. Lily and Peter held each other and cried for hours in the arms of their mother, while Jack had the sense to control his emotions and help bring food to his mother and siblings. I will say, he did himself and his father a great honour in his conduct, and at such a tender age as nine. Still, he acted every bit a man as those my own age could not have hoped to be.

I myself flitted from staring outside of the windows in the shop at the front of the house to wringing my hands together in front of the fireplace. In one of his acts of chivalry that night, Jack solemnly offered me a chair, to which I graciously accepted. Once his heroic deed was done, he collected his little siblings, gently prised them from their mother, and put them to bed, not coming back down once they had ceased their crying enough to sleep. I would later find him slumped over at their bedside, lightly drooling over a book of fairy tales he had read them into a slumber with. It appears the will of the reader is far from immune from the power of a drowsy word in the rain. Mr. Thomas had collected his wife after the sleeping of his children and bundled her well into their room, leaving me all to myself for the next few hours. Any other circumstances would have made this a most perfect oppourtunity for writing, reminiscing (as I was wont to do when I actually wanted to write), or daydreaming and reflecting, but the current circumstance was quite unallowing for thinking about anything other than Evie.

Nestled into my seat, wrapped in my dress as best as I could be, I worried nearly as hard as I had ever worried in my life. My father being gone at sea for months at a time should have prepared me better, but an emotional heart never loses its ability to fret about every little thing!

I rose from my seat and paced around. It had been two days, and there was neither a stop to the rain, nor news from anyone further in town. A splash of lightning lit up the shop, sending shadowy echoes across the room into the pale hands of the firelight. There were a hundred ways one could get lost in the miserable weather. Teacups rattled from their hiding places in the cabinets. One wrong step could have anyone stranded with no hope for help. "Damn thee!" I hissed, stomping back to the fire. "Shut yourself off for a moment, wouldn't you?" Obstinate in prolonging my misery, my brain and its accompanying thoughts ignored me. Image after image of Evie, drenched and alone, or half-dead in the rocks, or washed up along the base of the cliffs where she had been washed away overnight, plagued me with no end.

Only tea could assuage my pain. I hovered by the kettle, holding my hands over the heat as best as I could without burning myself. Gradually, the smell of oranges and strange ingredients filled my nose, so much more soothing than the burn of coffee I was used to. A cup was filled with sugar, and then the now-gently whistling kettle was emptied into the pile of white granules. I took a sip, wondering when the comforting warmth would fill my soul and comfort me that my friend was still alive, and coming home to help her mother.

A very long few hours passed in this isolation. The fireplace went out before long, and the telling whoosh of the ashes covering whatever was left of the logs left me in an almost total darkness, save for the flickering of the elements.

It was unendingly uncomfortable. As appreciating as I am of my independence, excessive solitude bears heavily on my psyche. In times when I was holed up in our salt-scented house, where the factories and the rivers swirl together in one smoke-filled mess, at hours when everyone was either sleeping or gone off to work for the day, this very same sensation of being the only human left in all of the world possessed me. I, the sole inheritor of the steamships and the mechanical whirring of life in the city, was alone. Would I let the world fall into decay? There was no hope for me, one rather small person, with hardly any directional sense to her name, and even less by way of hands-on knowledge. Every attempt to teach me the ways of things hammered and nailed and welded together were total wastes of every party involved's time. Of course I would lead the world into ruin in such a state! How long would it be, before the factories rusted over as their only warden wept in the prison of her bedroom? My room was never a prison, but in those peculiar hours where one can never tell what has happened to the rest of the world, it felt the strongest prison in all the world.