“Ever since we arrived this morning, you have been on edge,” she said. “I know you, my darling. I can see that you are troubled. I can guess why, but I think it would be better if you told me.”
He let out his breath gently. Aunt Mary was a force of nature, undeniable when she struck on a subject she intended to pursue. There was no use even trying to refuse her the truth now. In the end, she would get it.
He wrote, “Charlotte.”
She was silent a long moment, and then she nodded. “I have always known how you held her in your heart. When she married, I watched you shrink a little. I wondered why you let her go then.”
He shrugged and wrote, “The same reason why I know I must let her go now.”
Aunt Mary’s lips pursed. “And why is that?” He tilted his head and motioned to his throat. Her eyes narrowed. “Your mutism?”
He nodded.
“That is utterly ridiculous, Ewan, and you know it,” she snapped. “I’ve known Charlotte as long as you have and she, above all others, has never shown any indication that your issue is a problem for her.”
“It isn’t,” he scribbled. “If we could live in a bubble in this house, as we have for the past few days, there would be no issue. But we can’t, can we? I couldn’t do that to her, the social butterfly. She would have to endure exactly what you and Uncle Aldous and Matthew have all these years.”
She read his words and looked at him in confusion. “And what exactly do you think we’ve endured?”
“The whispers,” he scribbled, his normally neat handwriting now jerky with emotion and hard to decipher. “The censure. The questions about my fitness. The battles to have me granted any acceptance whatsoever. Charlotte would face the same.”
“You think that is what we endured?” his aunt whispered. “Dear God, Ewan, we were happy to have you. If your uncle or your cousin or I fought battles on your behalf, that was a pleasure. That was done out of nothing but love for you. You know that in your heart.” She grabbed for his hands and held his stare. “What is itreallythat keeps you from taking the life that you could have with Charlotte?”
Emotion swelled in him like it had when he saw the shards of his uncle’s last yule log. He withdrew his hands from hers and wrote the words he’d signed to Charlotte. He wrote his deepest fear in black and white and shoved it over to her as he got up and paced away.
“‘I’m afraid I’ll pass this to my children,’” she read out loud, and her voice cracked.
He moved to the window, staring out into the inky blackness of the night. Once again, he was haunted by visions of children dancing out in the cold. Charlotte’s hair, his eyes, Charlotte’s smile, his…silence. And he knew the pain those children would endure.
“Your father was my brother,” his aunt said, rising to stand beside him and look out at those ghost children with him. “There had never been another person in our family with your affliction, Ewan. And even since, there have been none. You have two younger brothers who can speak. Matthew was born after you and he can speak. There is nothing in the world that promisesanychild you had would be untouched by illness or disease or deformity. If we all cut off our future to avoid bearing children who would suffer, the world’s population would cease to grow and humanity would end.”
He slid the notepad from her fingers and wrote, “I couldn’t watch them endure what I did.”
She nodded. “I can understand that desire to protect the children in your head. But there is no way your children, whether they could speak or not, wouldeverendure what you did. Because you would be their father. My brother was a miserable lout from the time he was…eight years old!” She threw up her hands. “Look at the way he raised your so-called perfect brothers. He was cruel to them, everyone knows it.”
Ewan drew in a breath. That was true, of course. Even before he was sent away, he’d seen his father speak harshly to his brothers. He’d heard about their treatment after he was gone, too.
“You arenotthat man,” she continued. “Whether your children could speak or not speak, you would love them. And Charlotte is most definitelynotthat wretched woman who calls herself your mother. She is a kind and golden soul, the kind of person who would invent a wildly complicated language just because she wanted to be able to tell you that she loves you.”
He turned his face. “That wasn’t why she did it,” he wrote.
“Of course it is,” Mary said softly. “Ofcourseit is. From the day they were born, your children would be accepted and nurtured not just by you, but by your wife and her family, your aunt, your cousin and a large circle of incredibly powerful friends. His or her life would be markedly different than yours was, especially in those formative years before your uncle and I took you.”
He bent his head. His aunt was giving him more open doors, more pathways to Charlotte. More hope that felt so beautiful and so dangerous all at once.
“I don’t know,” he wrote.
“You don’t have to know today,” she reassured him. “You can think about it, can’t you? And I think you should, for what you are considering isn’t something that should be gone into lightly. But let me say one more thing and then I will encourage you to return to the others and alleviate your mood with Christmas tidings.”
He nodded and motioned for her to continue.
“Your uncle Aldous fought with every fiber in his being, with almost his last breath, to guarantee that you would have the future you deserved.” Mary’s eyes lit with tears. “It would be a terrible shame if you threw away that future out of some misguided attempt to protect a woman who is strong enough to make her own decisions and children you haven’t even met yet.”
He bent his head as her words sank into his skin and his soul. They shamed him, but they also buoyed him. They left him with a great deal to think about.
“Now, come,” she said. “The yule log is lit and that means a bright fire to dance shadow puppets along the wall. I know it used to be your favorite family tradition.”
He nodded, for she was correct, and linked his arm through hers. But as they left his study and headed back to the warmth of his parlor and the company within, Ewan’s mind spun. Soon there would be no choice but to make a decision that would change his life, whether he backed away from Charlotte forever…or opened his arms to her, and his heart to the life he both feared and longed for.
