He smiled at her gently. “You were not that. You were so small and afraid, Claire. You looked like you thought I had come to put a boot on your back.”
“I wasnotsmall,” she protested with a sniff. “I was so very pregnant.”
He nodded. “Yes, and somehow that made you look all the smaller. I cannot explain it. All I could think was that you were harmed. That my brother had harmed you. That you were injured and hurting and so, so fragile.”
“I was fragile,” she confirmed, hugging her arms close to her ribs. “That is true.”
He nodded, blinking away the image of it that hovered in his mind. “You were at the wedding. You had Oliver. You stayed in London for almost a year after that, and you still seemed to me like a woman who was limping, spiritually. You seemed … notbroken. That is a harsh word. But hobbled in a way that could not be entirely hidden.”
“That sounds very lovely and dignified, Silas, thank you,” she replied dryly.
He paused, tossing her a sheepish look of apology and shaking his head. “I only mean that it seems hard for me to reconcile that girl with the one I’m talking to right now. I only mean that you arenotthe same. If I had met you back then at one eventand then again today, I would not believe that you were not two, entirely separate women. I would believe they were related, certainly, but cousins at most.”
“I do not look that different,” she said, squeezing herself tighter. “Even without the pregnant belly.”
“No,” he agreed. “Your features are almost entirely unchanged. It is everything else that has grown.”
She wanted to believe him. She wanted so very badly for this to be true. It just didn’t sound correct to her. She had never woken up in a morning, looked in the mirror, and found herself improved.
Silas continued, as though he weren’t dismantling her understanding of reality. “If that girl, the fragile, harmed one, had taken Freddy back, then yes, Dot might be cross with her. But this one? This woman who stands upright and knows who she is and acts only with intent? That is a different matter entirely.”
“I am not that upright, Silas,” she protested, feeling a little weak, like she just wanted to run back to bed now and forget that she’d ever attempted this. “I have faltered many times just in the last many weeks.”
“Well, yes, we all do that,” he said impatiently. “The question is if you can imagine the last version of yourself that knew Freddy making the same choices, saying the same things, and following the same routes that the you of today has. You ought to really try to imagine it, Claire. I think you will find the flaw in your belief.”
She frowned. She tried to do just that, quickly, so as not to strain his patience.
“I suppose,” she said after a second, “that the me of five years ago would have begun crying at many junctures in recent days. I cried quite a lot back then. It was an effective way to shut people up.”
“Was it?” he asked, with half a smile. “I suppose crying women do often make me abandon course.”
“Yes, it is extremely effective, Silas. A good barrister ought to know that,” she snapped back, making him chuckle. “I suppose that is true, though. I do not cry so often anymore. I do not cry much at all.”
“Hm,” he said. “What do you do instead?”
She blinked at him, an odd sort of tingly warmth starting in her belly and inching out toward her extremities, calling to her fingertips and toes. “I don’t know,” she said sincerely. “I suppose I must be doing quite a lot of different things, depending on the situation at hand.”
“Yes,” he agreed, stepping to the side and holding his hand out, as though to invite her deeper into the house. As though to invite her to the pretense of the task that had brought her here in the first place. “That’s exactly it, Claire Hightower. You are doing quite a lot of different things.”
She felt something bubbling in her, on the edges of that warmth. Relief? Pride? Joy?
She wasn’t sure.
She only knew it wasn’t the urge to cry anymore.
“Thank you, Silas,” she said as she accepted his invitation and stepped further into the cottage. “Thank you so much.”
“You are welcome,” he said with a relieved little sigh, half fondness, half exhaustion. “You are my sister now, after all.”
CHAPTER 27
It was three days before they could begin the journey back to Crooked Nook. A day and a half of spotty, warm rain passed, and then another day and a half for the roads to dry. It was, Claire came to find out, very common for the time of year around the games.
In the time that they had left in the little cottages, Freddy was given the opportunity to demonstrate his prowess in the kitchen. He made Oliver the beef with cherry sauce he had promised back on the event of their first meeting, and he made his famous white fish and hollandaise, at Claire’s request.
She still couldn’t quite believe how good both dishes had been.
He had also taught Oliver how to fry an egg. Oliver, of course, was not allowed to handle the pan or the stovetop or the eggs, but he observed, and he listened as best as a child at that age can.
