That smile only began to fade when she thought of what she must do next.
Esther,
Even now, my first instinct is to apologize to you. For not being the daughter you wanted, among other things. I’ve been trying not to do that, apologize so much. People have been telling me I do so extravagantly.
So, I’ve decided I owe you no apology.
I won’t apologize for taking what’s rightfully mine. I won’t even apologize for embarrassing you and ruining the only thing you’ve ever truly cared about: your reputation.
I’ve also decided I do not want an apology from you, either. Though I know I would never receive one, anyway.Your words are as meaningless to me as I have been to you these past eight years.Some people are just not meant to be mothers, or to care for others at all.
Where my memories of Father are now forever tainted by his betrayal, my memories of you are clouded by your neglect. Finding out about your duplicity was not an additional slight, it was an explanation of the way I’ve felt since you abandoned me: that you never deserved to be anyone’s mother.
Please inform your beloved Dr. Seagle that his services are nolonger needed as far as I am concerned, and if he ever attempts to touch me again, I will react with the utmost violence.
Lastly, Della began a letter to her mother. Not Esther, who no longer held that title in her mind, but the woman who had given birth to her. She sat for long moments, waiting for the words to come. But they wouldn’t, because she was writing to someone she’d never known, someone who was more absent in her memory than any stranger.
In the end, she had little to say.
Do not worry, Mother. I will take good care of Kinloss, and your family legacy is safe in my deformed, fevered hands.
Della smiled again. The letter to Esther she threw with the rest in the fire, but she ran her fingers over those few remaining words to her mother, the only thing she truly had left to say to her family.
She carried that piece of paper with her as they prepared to leave, and Della finally took one last lap through the first floor. She ended up in the sitting room, standing in front of that sofa Esther loved so much. She’d always sit there, in that exact spot, whenever she decided to grace the manor with her presence.
Della left the note on the side table. Whether anyone ever saw it, she did not care. She looked over it once more, saying the words aloud as she read.
Do not worry, Mother. I will take good care of Kinloss, and your family legacy is safe in my deformed, fevered hands.
Then, for the last time, she left.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The journey tookevery bit of two weeks, and they were perhaps the single most exhausting fourteen days of Della’s entire life. Her constitution was weak, her bones weary, and her joints unimaginably stiff. Still though, her spirits remained oddly high. She had indeed left all of her melancholy behind at Westfield Manor, and she enjoyed the lively conversations and unpredictable antics of traveling with the household that had become her family.
Somehow, they’d made a game of passing along a single, lonely spoon among them. They’d been just about to leave in their enormous parade of carriages when Mrs. Goldsmith nearly tripped over herself to run back into the house for a forgotten spoon. It was a favorite of hers, apparently, and she had no place to put it since the trunks were all already packed. So, she sat with it in her lap for the first day of their journey. Gwendoline took it, placing it in Harry’s seat when they left the coaching inn the next morning. Harry, of course, passed it on to Clara, who managed to tuck it into the side of one of Silas’s boots. He’d felt the cold metal through his socks and nearly jumped out of his skin. It gave Clara quite the thrill, until Silas convinced Harry to drop the spoon down the back of her gown.
It was all unbelievably silly, but it was something to pass the time. While Della had thought the traveling monotonous and never-ending, she did enjoy how everything seemed soexciting to everyone else. They rotated who rode in each carriage, and no matter who she was with, Della watched as they observed wide open fields of wildflowers and huge, sloping hills. Taller trees than they’d ever seen and wildlife none of them could identify.
Harry had become obsessed with pinpointing the crest on each carriage they passed. Silas had to be retrieved from the stables each morning, as he much preferred spending his time with the horses. Mrs. Goldsmith always seemed to disappear into the kitchens of each coaching inn, whether she’d been invited to or not. Gwendoline spoke fervently about the gowns everyone wore. She wouldn’t go up to people and speak, as many others did in the common rooms at the inns, but she’d whisper about them to Della or Clara like the worst gossip on the traveling road. Though her gossip was usually complimentary. Gwendoline had been so inspired that Della knew she’d have them all dressed in the newest finery within weeks. Where Gwen was shy and wouldn’t approach a soul, Clara spoke to everyone. At the start, Della had counted the people she watched Clara converse with, but she’d abandoned the effort during a particularly crowded dinner just outside of the border of Scotland.
They’d told stories and shared laughs. There were late nights and early mornings, quick stops in the middle of nowhere to roam about and stretch their legs. Della had never considered how an arduous journey like this, especially one that was a source of excitement for so many, could bond them together so deeply. They’d started along this road as a band of misfits, a group of people who were less than favorable in the eyes of society. Each had no other place in the world, and that sense of listlessness was exactly what brought them there. Now, more than ever, they were family. Della felt that deep down in her aching bones.
As they neared Kinloss, the energy in the carriage began to stir into something exhilarating. Della had only felt this sense of impending joy before in anticipation of one of Andrew’s letters. Perhaps that’s whatthis was, then, a sign of desperately wanted correspondence. She didn’t want to get her hopes up, though. While she looked forward to her new life with her new family at Kinloss, she had to imagine it without him. Even doing so, picturing her remaining days, months, and years without him by her side, set her teeth on edge. It wasn’t right. It would never be, but she was certain that would be her reality.
Della heaved out a deep sigh as she looked out the window yet again. It seemed all she’d been able to do for days, lose her sense of time and place as she watched the world pass by.
“What is the matter?” Clara asked. She gently kicked Della’s shin with her bare foot. She’d taken to abandoning her shoes as soon as the carriage was in motion. “I know that sigh. One of your particularly unhappy ones, if I recall.”
It was just them in the carriage at the moment. Silas sat with the coachman and Gwendoline and Mrs. Goldsmith were in the carriage behind them. Harry rode alone in the coach that was overstuffed with their belongings. He’d said he wanted to read, and he couldn’t do so with Clara’s constant speaking. Clara told him reading in a moving carriage would make him ill. Seeing the way they interacted with each other made Della almost sick with jealousy.
Oh well, she thought. She had always been ill anyway.
“I am not unhappy,” Della responded. Her thoughts and feelings were jumbled, and she didn’t think she could identify them. Still, she could confidently say she wasn’t unhappy. That she had no idea what she was instead mattered little. She was sitting on the side of the carriage facing the opposite direction in which they rode. She saw things as they passed them, looking backwards instead of up ahead. Della felt that was apt.
“You could have fooled me,” Clara said. She tucked her feet up underneath her on the carriage bench. “I mean that genuinely. You’ve seemed as pleased as the rest of us, but every so often, you get this faraway look in your eye. As if part of your heart is elsewhere andyou’re trying to find it.”
Della hung her head. She’d resorted to picking at her fingernails again, and her cuticles were in a truly horrible state.
