The English Descendants

27

The restraining order is enough to reassure Eddie for a little while, but a a few months later, he walks through it and attacks her in her dorm room. Thomas has been following Rose, but something tells him he needs to find Eddie- she is pinned to the bed when he arrives. His appearance is enough to scare, but not enough to get her ex-boyfriend to leave. Eddie calls the police once again while Thomas, now the target of his ire, draws him closer to the boiling electric kettle. He lunges and Thomas vanishes, slipping away to stand between him and Eddie. He stumbles onto the kettle and howls as the scalding water splashes on his chest. He staggers towards the bathroom she shares with the room next door. Eddie locks him in. When the police arrive, he is pounding on the door, screaming. They take her statement and arrest him as he blathers about ghosts. Thomas once again stays with her until her room-mate returns.

She is glad to graduate less than a month later so she can officially be done with the university. She returns to her family and her steam engines.

Not long after, family returns to her. A letter addressed to May Ellen McMichael arrives at the house. Maria opens it. Eliot's body has been recovered from a mass grave in Saipan. He will be arriving in the United States shortly and they would like to know where to bring him. Maria knows exactly what to do and in a few weeks, they fill the space that has been waiting for him in Elmwood for 59 years. Young soldiers fold the flag from his coffin and present it to his granddaughter. But the funeral is not only attended by the young. There are old men there, men who remember Eliot Carter Cushing McMichael as a skilled medic with a gentle way of reassuring even the most fatally wounded men that they were in good hands. These stories captivate the little family. None of them met him. None of them know much about him. But now he is a real person remembered by Marines and Midshipmen.

Thomas remembers some of these stories. But it is easy even for a ghost to forget and the words bring back so much from those few days in 1944. Beyond all, though, he remembers their first encounter, the young man visiting Allerdale Hall oh his sister's insistence who asked after that he not speak to his family. Thomas wonders what he would think of the fact that his granddaughter, great granddaughter, and great great granddaughter all have known him since their birth and have asked him to live so openly in their household. He hopes that he would be understanding.

Daisy, Eddie, Maria, Nellie, and Rose invite Richard, Alan, and Theodore to their house on their way home from the funeral, but they decline. Their journey to Traverse City is long and, though a rest might be nice, they want to be home before too late. They do agree to eat together, though, and to one final stop in Brush Park to the vacant lot where Edith and Alan's house once stood. There are a few fragments of brick scattered around the lot and Eddie picks one up to take home.

"You wouldn't remember it, Rose, but you met Edith- Eliot's mother- in this house. She was a lovely woman. Died the year you were born," Nellie tells her daughter.

Rose nods, not entirely interested. But Eddie is, and she tries to imagine what the house might have been like inside as Nellie describes the fireplace beside which Edith sat and read.

Daisy turns to her, "You look like you're thinking."

"Yeah. I never saw this place. Are there pictures?"

"I'm sure there are. All Edith's stuff is in the basement. And a good chunk of Charlotte's things. Some of my mother's stuff, too."

"I keep wondering what it was like to get that telegram."

"She kept a journal. She probably wrote about it."

"Do you think the telegram's there?"

"Might be somewhere- it came to Maria. May would have had it. I remember when the two officers came to the door to tell us that my brother was dead. The letter they brought with them is in Mom's stuff. So's the one they brought when Dad died. It's not the kind of thing you throw away, even if you never want to see it again. There's a reason Mom always said she's smuggle any of us to Canada if there was ever another draft."

"Didn't Eliot enlist?"

"Yeah. He wanted a choice. Dad did, too. But my brother didn't."

"That's a lot of people to lose."

"Mom had a little brother who died when he was just a baby, too. And Eliot's son drowned when he was three."

"Holy shit, has this family had a generation where nobody's died tragically?"

"Not until Nellie, Rose, and you."

"Wow."

Daisy lowers her voice, "Eliot's grandson, Alan, over there, was a twin. Max died when he was just a baby."

"Damn. That explains all the little lambs in the cemetery. Wait, what about Edith? She and Alan lived a long time, didn't they?"

"They did. I don't know how Thomas fits into the picture, but he's family somehow. And he looks like he was stabbed in the face- that would be pretty tragic. He'd be about the same age as them."

"Oh. Right."

"If you're interested in the family stories, we'll make a tree and go through the stuff downstairs. Mom never touched any of Edith or Charlotte's things. They died the same year; she just never felt up to it."

"Would any of Eliot's things be down there? I feel like I need to look into his military service, figure out where he was. I've never even heard of Saipan."

"Rich would have that. Let's ask him while we're here."

"Are you sure? I mean, we just buried his dad."

"It'll be OK." Daisy wanders over to where Richard is waiting, "Hey. Question for you." He raises an eyebrow, "Do you know much about your dad's military service? Eddie was asking me about it. Neither of us know anything about Saipan."

Richard shakes his head, "No, I don't. I knew he was in the Navy, but other than that...today's the first day I heard he was a medic. I was four when he died. There's a lot I don't know."

"Do you have anything that might help her look him up?"

"There's a box in the attic I can mail to you. I don't really care to go through it. I'd rather just keep moving forward. It's not like the dead can talk."

They all say their goodbyes and part ways.

Back in Stockbridge, Daisy brings her mother's boxes up from the basement and sets them out in the living room, "I don't know where you want to start, but this what I can probably help you the most with. There's a lot here. And this is all just my mother's stuff. This doesn't even touch Charlotte and Edith's boxes. I think Alan's papers are mixed in with Edith's."

"Let's start with a family tree. And then we're going to figure out what to do with all this. How to preserve it."

"Do we really have to, Ed? There's so much here... Just think of all the time this is going to take!" Rose protests.

"You're a library person, you're supposed to like organizing stuff."

"Yeah...stuff that somebody else already numbered and made a system for. I'm just the one who tends it's local incarnation. Seriously, though- do you know now many documents you've got just in this one box? There's got to be a few hundred..."

"Then I guess I'd better get started. Let's stack these by the drafting table in my room. I've got a lot of letters to read."

Daisy picks up a box, "I'll help you move these. Then we're drawing a family tree. It's hard enough to keep everybody straight when you do have one, no sense in starting off at a disadvantage wondering who the heck these people are Mom's writing to."