Evergreen Everleigh - The Wattys 2020

Chapter Eighteen - A Letter Home

Chapter Eighteen

A Letter Home

It takes me until the next week to take Wister's advice and write home to my mother. When Sweet Pea first showed me the recreation room upstairs, I was shocked to find every kind of stationery I might ever need.

The room is large and airy with high stained-glass windows that bleed colour onto the floor. I hope between the colourful shadows, letting the wooden floor warmed my feet through my socks.

Sweet Pea showed me that the work stations around the room represent everything from knitting and sewing to calligraphy and architecture. Despite this choice, however, I chose a plain white, lined page, knowing how my mother feels about the uneven slant of my writing. I spent some time perched in the room by the window, where the sunlight falls over the paper, simply decorating a simple chain of daisies over the page in watercolour.

When I first picked my inky pen, I see that my hand is shaking, but I persist. I have to complete this one small task. If not for her, for me.

Dear Mother,

It has been exactly twenty-six days since I last saw you outside Freesia Fields, and since then, I haven't heard from you. I didn't occur to me as odd though because of no one else hear seems to hear from their families. That is, until I heard that no one else here has families. Perhaps I don't anymore, either and that's why you put me here. I could live with that (this place is far from perfect, but not as bad as the last hospital I was in) but I do want/need to know if the twins are okay. I'm not sure how they will be feeling since they saw me in the bathroom like that. Has Harmony completed her piano exam? Has Henry been sleeping in his own bed again? I hope his nightmares are not still plaguing him.

Things here are strange because every person I've encountered since coming here has been colourful in a way that I don't think 'outside' people are. Did Lady Lavender explain the names here? Everyone is named after a flower. I don't have my flower name, though, because you only get it when someone else moves in after you, and you're no longer new. I've made friends. Or at least I hope they see me that way. Sweet Pea is kind and Yarrow makes awful jokes. Teasel and Aster are little boys who remind me so much of the twins that my chest feels heavy every night when I tell them a bedtime story. They have a cat here, Mr. Flurry, who is utterly annoying and considers himself a king. I've been reading a lot since I came here. Well, mainly just the one poetry book over and over again. It's from this writer, Jayne Ellis. It was left behind by another girl who stayed in the house, which gives me hope that someday I'll leave.

I know I should write and tell you of how I'm miraculously improving my health. I could and maybe would lie if I didn't think Lady Lavender and Wister were not already speaking to you. Maybe I should waste paper with boring details of how my scars itch me horribly when I get too warm at night or how there are children here who I think might hate me because we are the same. I guess, what I can tell you is that I am not as bad as before I came here. I am not as sad, I think. Not as sad as the bathroom floor, or in the orchard or even all of the years before. Though if you saw me I don't doubt that you'd assume I am not even trying. I promise that I am.

If you can, will you tell the twins that I love them?  I wish I could tell them that I would see them soon, but we both don't know if that's true. Wister told me to be honest with you, but I don't know how to be. So, I'll leave you with a quote from Jayne Ellis' poetry collection, All That Ripples;

"The sun set in straight lines that day,
Like a painting from a child and I watched it
With you,
Waiting for a night to swallow us both where we could be
Incredibly, miraculously,
Different."

Your daughter,

Everleigh

I drop my pen and breathe out a deep breath that I seemed to have been holding the whole time. I scan the page one last time. I sound like a robot more than a daughter,  but for now, it's the best I can do. As I found the paper over and snag an envelope from the counter, I brace myself with the knowledge that my mother will never tell the twin's what I said. Any reply I get will not include any mention of them and I know it. When I lick the envelope shut, I hear the ring of the food bell meaning that dinner must be ready. I tuck the letter under my arm and head downstairs, and try to push any awareness of my family from my mind.