“Yes, there is genuine risk—a risk I dearly wish you didn’t have to take. It’s not right or fair that you must face such a decision.” She leaned forward in her chair, as if the movement might drive home her next words. “But Mr. Peckwood is the first doctor to offer you hope. Is living in hiding, shut away from everyone and everything, really living at all?”
Touché.
He sank onto the sofa opposite her and plowed both hands through his hair. “It is all I know.” Blowing out a long breath, he looked her straight in the eye. “Especially since you left. I was thirteen, Amelia. Thirteen! Not a boy and not yet a man. You were my only buffer against Father, and I…”Too many emotions stuck in his craw. Too many years of seeing the disappointment in his father’s eyes with no one to cheer him or lend a kind word.
After a gruff clearing, he tried again. “I was at such a loss when you went away. I don’t think you realize how much I depended upon you.”
“Oh, Colin—” Her voice caught, his name as broken and jagged as his face. “You know I couldn’t stay. Father would have made me a prisoner every bit as much as you.”
True. And for that he could not—would not—begrudge her. Still…
“I know, Sister. I really do know. Yet that does not account for your sporadic and, as of late, absent correspondence.” He shook his head, fighting against a rush of bitterness. She had no idea how the lack of her letters bludgeoned, repeatedly, when he asked daily for the post, only to be told there was nothing for him.
“I lived for those letters,” he murmured. “You were my only tether to the outside world.”
She looked away. “I had no idea.”
“Maybe not on the surface, but deep down, I think you did.”
The accusation snapped her gaze back to him.“What do you mean?”
For so long he’d pondered the why of her erratic communication, but dare he tell her the results? As his dearest—his only—confidant, she deserved to know.
But he doubted very much she would like it.
Rising, he paced the rug, from hearth to tea table, then back. “I suspect you drifted away from me not on purpose but from a necessity, of sorts. More than likely, your work engrossed you, and rightly so. Traveling about all day. Writing of your journeys at night. It is hard enough for a man to make it on his own, but a woman?” Wryness twisted his lips. “You have drive, Sister. More motivation and backbone than anyone I know, and you are a constant role model to me for the days when I wish nothing more than to cover my head with the counterpane and let the world go by. Your preoccupation with your career is completely understandable, for without it, you would not be the success you are today. But there is more to it than that.”
She cocked her head. “How so?”
The question greeted him like an old friend. He’d had seven long years shut away in isolation to ponder that very thing, suffering a vicious circle of emotions from rage to hurt and shame, then back again to start the malicious cycle all over. Eventually, he’d landed on a highly probable motivation for why his sister hadn’t written, and he’d made a fragile peace with it…but was he right?
He faced her. “I can only suppose that by busying your mind with work, it became easier to think less of home. To think less of Father, and as a result, less of me. To ignore the uncomfortable portion of your life that is less than perfect, the part you are helpless to make flawless. I am a constant reminder of all the ugly and defective things in your life, am I not?”
“Colin, no!” She clawed the arms of the chair. “Never think such a thing. I love you, no matter how you look. The outside of you does not define the intelligent, compassionate heart that I know beats inside your chest.”
He drank in her words like a vagabond too long on the road, parched for a single drip of water. Father cared for him, providing for his every need, but never once had he given any soft words of affection.
Casting aside his restlessness, he knelt at her side and collected her small fingers between his two monstrous hands. “I care for you, Sister, with equal fervor, yet that is not what I am talking about. Look at you. Sitting here with ruined toes, acting as if you are whole even when the doctor poked and prodded. This need of yours to appear perfect will be your destruction. We all have monsters within. Is it not time you slay this particular dragon?”
Her eyes glistened, and she reached up to tenderly caress his cheek. “How did my little brother become so wise?”
Kind of her, but a load of claptrap. Were he actually wise, he’d have risked striking out on his own and left his father behind years ago just as she had, even if it meant facing the contempt and derision of mankind. He pulled away and stood. “I have observed much from the shadows in which I live.”
“But that’s just it. You don’t have to live in shadows anymore. The sooner you sign that paper the doctor left behind, the sooner Mr. Peckwood can begin to make you whole.”
A bitter laugh bubbled up from deep in his chest. “You speak as if I am but a fragment, a collection of splinters to be glued together and crafted into a new creation.”
“Your outside will change, yes, but inside you will still be the same man—a man the world will not scorn. Do you not wish to live happily amongst humanity?”
“Why does everyone think I am not happy?” He flapped out his arms, mindless of their ungainly length, and upset a vase. Glass crashed. Water splashed. Bloodred roses lay dead on the carpet.
Scowling, he wheeled about, turning his back to the mess, and speared his sister with a sharp stare. “I am sick to death of others’ definitions of what happiness must look like. Of whatImust look like. Yet I am content, Sister. No matter my outward appearance, I am happy with the man who lives inside me”—he stabbed his thumb into his chest—“which was never good enough for Father. Can you honestly say that it is good enough for you? Why so eager to change me?”
Her backbone stiffened. “Never question my constancy for you. There is no man I love more in all the world. My desire is for you to have a good life—nothing more, nothing less—which is what Mr. Peckwood offers.”
“And you seriously think this surgery will accomplish that? What proof do we have?” The question he’d poked at for so long finally flew past his lips. Oh, how he wanted to hope, to believe the surgery would make him a new man…but would it? Dare he imagine life without deformity?
A great sigh deflated her chest. “All I know is that Father wished for the procedure and tasked me with carrying it out. And as you well know, Father was never one to be denied. But I have done my part in coming here and meeting with the surgeon. What happens from here on out is up to you.”
