I hear his car rattling with desperation up the rain-slick hill of our drive as he rushes to our sister’s bedside. I must leave my room now, must take my place on the stage as the curtain rises and the drama is about to be unleashed
June 24, 1914
My Dearest Charity,
I feel like a blindfold has been lifted from my eyes and finally, for the first time in my life, my path is visible. I won’t dwell on the selfishness of my history except to say that suddenly I see it as a wasteland, full of regret and lost opportunities for grace, and am grateful to the heavens that I have come through it alive and with child. This life within me, still as yet unformed, contains the roots of all meaning for me now. I am as blessed as the Mary herself, and certain every mother feels this same sense of divinity. Father is delirious with joy, Hope fusses over me for once, and everyone moves about the house as if in a dance around the soon to be crowned king, including my dear husband.
The shock of the announcement has worn off and, though he tries to hide it, I can see the excitement in his eyes too. Whatever dark and heavy load it is he carries, it seems to have lightened with the news of his impending fatherhood. He can bear once again to touch me with a gentle hand, caressing my swelling stomach. Sometimes, at night, we stay up late together and talk of the future, almost as it was on those long nights of our innocence before the tragedy of our wedding. Just last night he told me, with all his earnestness, that everything must be done to secure our child’s future in every respect. His devotion is an inspiration. Everything I do from here on to forever, every breath I breathe, will be devoted to nurturing that life to fullness and ensuring its blessed future
August 29, 1914
My Dearest Charity,
Our sister has relapsed into a crushing illness. She has taken once again to her bed and lost all strength. The news from Europe has disturbed everyone but it appears that our dear sister’s sensibilities are finer then the rest of us and it has affected her more, weakening her defenses against whatever beastly curse has been afflicting her all these years. We hired the finest nurse but still I insist on making her broth every morning and spooning it past her quivering jaw. I can feel the power of this life that swells within me flowing into the broth I cook each morning for our sister and in my heart of hearts I feel that power will be the key to her recovery. Her eyes are as ever alive with goodness and strength but there is about her body a feebleness that is frightening. I spend hours with her, reading her the latest novels and some poetry from the collection in your room, I hope you don’t mind, and her spirits are buoyant still, but there is about this spell something deeper and darker then previous bouts. Dr. Cohn patted our shoulders but his eyes were the eyes of worry
September 18, 1914
My Dearest Charity,
As I was making the broth this morning for our dear sister, I felt the life inside me contract. With each stir of the spoon my baby twisted and turned and then the contractions sent me to the red tile floor with a scream. It isn’t time yet, it can’t be yet. The nurse rushed down and seeing what had happened helped me to the parlor couch where I stayed until Dr. Cohn came. He gave me some medicine and prescribed rest and so I have been banished to the bedroom for the time being. When Christian heard he rushed home and clasped my hands and we prayed together for the health of our child. I have never seen him so devoted, never seen him so full of love
October 9, 1914
My Dearest Charity,
Hope was well enough today to sit up in her bed. Due to my condition I cannot spend the time with her I would but Christian is by her side for hours every evening, reading and talking. She is goodness incarnate and it appears the ministrations of dear Christian have delivered to her another measure of strength. Christian is a saint, doting on dear Hope’s every wish. It seems my pregnancy and Hope’s illness have finally turned us into the family I’ve dreamed we could be
November 15, 1914
My Dearest Charity,
While under Christian’s care Hope relapsed into her deep illness and fear has now replaced whatever good cheer had been extant at Veritas. The doctor has allowed me to rise from my bed and I do so with the gravest concern for our dear sister. This morning I was back in the kitchen, chopping the vegetables by hand, butchering the chicken, spooning off the scum from the bones and stirring the sweet, clear broth that I pray will cause the wishes I hold most dear to become realities. I work with all the will passed to me by my father. She barely takes a drop, but it is enough, I pray, to do its work. It is uncanny but with each stroke of the long wooden spoon this morning I again felt my child turn within me, to kick out, and I again felt my stomach contract around my fetus, but still I continued, in silence, wanting nothing or no one to get in the way of my sacred duty. Our father is desolate with worry, Christian wrings his hands with pain and dulls his sense with drink through the long evenings while she sleeps. That tragedy should swipe at us again is unthinkable. If only you were here, dear sister, to encourage us with your loveliness and give us the strength to bear the future’s pains
November 19, 1914
Struck numb with heartbreak, I can barely lift the pen. What have we done to deserve such misery? What? What? Why are we so cursed? It seems that from the moment I first laid eyes on Christian Shaw tragedy has stalked me on clawed paws and I can’t yet figure out why. Why? All I know is that life has become too much to bear alone
November 20, 1914
The cook came into my room as I was still wracked with tears and showed to me a metal canister filled with a soft white powder. She found it, she said, among the tins stored in the great wooden cabinets in our kitchen. It was not hers, she assured me, but the scent was reminiscent of what the gardener has put out in the basement for the rats. I told her to throw it out and to tell no one, ever, of what she found. What mistake could have brought such powder to our kitchen cabinets? I can’t bear to even consider the possibilities of what other tragedy might have befallen us. The gardener will be fired, immediately, I will see to it. To be forced to contend with the daily concerns of this house while my sweet sweet sister lies so peacefully in her coffin is impossible. I pray even that the life inside me stops its ceaseless battering so that I can lose myself in the strong and welcoming arms of this abject grief
December 29, 1914
My Dearest Sisters,
Early this morning, just past the stroke of midnight, my son was born. Whatever pain we have suffered these last few years pales beside his magnificence. He is robust and pink and when he first cried as he gulped the air outside my body it was the sound of life itself asserting its glory against the tragedies of our days gone past. The labor was exquisitely painful, I shouted for hours and bit the nurse’s hand until it bled, but I welcomed the agony too, in a strange part of my soul, as expiation for everything that came before it. My son exists for all of us, dear sisters, and your spirits will be as real a presence for him through his childhood as my own. He was born of violence and tragedy and death but his cry is regal and he will inherit the whole of the Reddman empire and so I have named him Kingsley. Kingsley Reddman Shaw.