The Silenced Tale, стр. 123
We part ways with Martin and Mei Fan at the airport—they’re taking their car back to Victoria—and the rest of us hire a van service after they’ve handed off Alis’s car seat. The drive from the Vancouver airport to our home is three hours, but it is better than taking a second plane to Victoria, I think. Kintyre is starting to look a little gray around the edges, and being sat in one place without having to do the shuffle through the airport is good for him. Additionally, the van drops us all directly at our own doorstep, which is convenient. My ribs twinge as I help the driver unload our admittedly few bags, and then Bevel and I steady Kintyre as he steps out into my driveway for the first time.
He looks up at the house with a critical eye, his gaze sweeping across the windows of the upper story, the lush landscaping that Pip lovingly tends and which has been left to grow out of all control in the weeks we’ve been absent, the cheery front door Pip insisted we paint Turn-russet.
“’Small,” Kintyre sniffs, and Bevel pinches his arm.
“Yow!” Kintyre protests, and then laughs, his mock-disapproval melting away. “Looks nice, actually. A place that’s all your own.”
“Exactly,” I say. “And soon enough, you will have one for yourself, as well. For now, let us get you settled on the sofa, hm? Give you one of those lovely little yellow pills.”
“Yes, please,” Kintyre sighs. He’s rarely so polite as when he’s in pain and someone else is in control of his potions. I steer him toward the door, and Bevel drops back to let me unlock it, then I take Kintyre’s hand and help him across the threshold.
“Well come to my home,” I say, and squeeze Kintyre’s fingers. “And well met.”
“Temporarily,” Pip says, coming in behind us.
There is a bit of a squeeze as we all drop our bags on the bottom of the stairs and kick off our shoes. Pip sets Alis down on the floor. Our toddler is squirmingly full of energy after being forced to sit on airplanes and in vans all day. She has nearly mastered walking without needing to cling to something, and she is off like a crossbow bolt toward her reading chair.
“This is cozy,” Bevel says, as I help Kintyre get comfortable in the corner of our sofa. He runs his hands appreciatively along the backs of our reading chairs, the edge of the book shelf, the dusty mantelpiece. “Kinda Turnish, but not too grand.”
He stops and looks up with wide eyes at the large painting of Turn Hall that hangs above the sofa. Elgar had commissioned it from one of the fellows who did the artistic design on the Lord of the Rings films as a gift to mark Alis’s birth.
“Oh,” he breathes, and Kintyre cranes his head up and around to get a good view of the painting as well.
“Huh,” he says. “Good likeness.”
“Indeed,” I agree. “I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first, but I must say it’s become my favorite wall hanging in the house. It reminds me of home, but it does not try to replicate it.”
“The Turn family tapestries wouldn’t fit in here,” Kintyre says gamely.
“And I wouldn’t want that horrific tapestry of the Bloody Battle of Bigonner, anyway,” I point out.
Bevel chuckles. “Yeah, I hated that damned thing, too. Who in the hells wants to stare at that sort of thing over dinner?”
Exchanging a knowing look, Kintyre and I both smile, and at the exact same time, say: “Father.”
“Right,” Bevel says. “Well, I need coffee. Anyone else?”
He’s become a bit of an espresso fanatic since Pip introduced him to it. He loves the efficiency and variety. Kintyre hates the noise of it all, the grinding and the beeping and the whirring.
We can see into the kitchen from the living room, and I chuckle when Bevel slaps his palm on the countertop in a fit of pique. “This hells-damned contraption is different in every place I’ve been. Show me how to make it sing.”
Alis demands to be lifted “up up up, ’Lis up, Bev!” and my brother-in-law complies, hoisting my daughter onto his hip so she can smack the counter in imitation.
“Oh, lord,” Pip groans, but she is smiling.
I find that I am smiling, too, a great wide stretch of a thing, probably foolish and dopey-looking, but it feels so good that I cannot begin to imagine ceasing. The tight knot of grief in my chest unfurls and softens and warms, just a bit.
It doesn’t dissipate completely.
I don’t know if it ever will, though I hear that, eventually, one stops thinking about a beloved friend’s death, that you think of them first every moment, then only once an hour, then once or twice a day, then once a week . . . but never lose the deep, bone-weary ache of their absence entirely. The knot doesn’t dissolve like potions ingredients in a cauldron, but rather unclenches, just a bit, just a little, slowly and over a lifetime.
Pip laughs, and kisses Alis’s cheek, and pulls the quality coffee beans out of the freezer. “I can’t believe I’m introducing Kintyre Turn and Bevel Dom to the pleasures of domestic appliances in the twenty-first century. Jesus. Ha. Just think of the fan fiction.”
Epilogue
Six Months Later
Pip sets her new, ever-present leather satchel down on the floor of Turn Hall’s foyer. The sconces are unlit, the elaborately woven silk wallpaper lacking it’s usual jewel-like gleam in the false gloaming. The house is silent, hushed, holding its breath. Waiting for its inhabitants to arrive.
She stares upward at the grid of steel pipes, cables, and massive shuttered lights, and I follow her gaze. It is very odd to be stepping into my own home, only