“Well…”
Father began as he crossed the rough ground andUnion: Chapter 13
"Love is the greatest of dreams, yet the worst of nightmares."
—Anon
Soon after Vincent stormed away, Catherine left the group too. She couldn’t be with the stunned elders any longer. She wanted no pity. Her baby was all that kept her alive for six months, fatal possibilities or no. She wanted no reassurance; they couldn’t see the future any more than she, and she had no reassurance to give them. With the fewest words they would allow without needing to follow her, she fled them to make her way back to Vincent’s chamber, alone.
Almost immediately she encountered Olivia, Kanin, and Luke walking ahead of her, glowing with their reunited happiness. How did they return to each other so quickly, easily, after his imprisonment? Olivia had forgiven Catherine her part in their separation, if Olivia’s kind words and promised gifts were any indication, so they must be content. The logic brought harsh and unfair envy to the place behind Catherine’s eyes. She knew it was unjust, the couple before her had experienced their own share of heartache, but she couldn’t block it.
She might have stopped and let them go, but they were slow, swinging Luke between them, and Catherine could not slow. The frenzied anxiety coursing through her would not allow it. She couldn’t speak to them, nor listen to any well wishes, not without Vincent with her.
In Olivia and Kanin’s blissful game, Catherine heard the unconscious mocking of all the fits and starts, wishes and anguish she and Vincent endured, and called it “Love.” It was love between them, she knew as she knew the feel of her skin under her hand, the earth under her feet, something unquestioned, but misery and worry had stolen the type of quiet comfort and delight she saw between this husband and wife, leaving her and Vincent only the aching bindings. This familial joy seemed so far from anything they might ever grasp. “Love” was simply too universal a word to encompass all of it, it was hummingbirds to ravens.
Catherine tried to slip past the little family, but she wasn’t easily slipping past anyone currently - her only defense to completely ignore them and hurry as fast as her over-taxed legs could carry her to Vincent’s chamber.
Out of breath on her arrival, she was confronted by his dark and empty room.
I want you here! Why aren’t you here!
She wanted to scream, but feared what an outburst would bring if she allowed herself the freedom. Catherine tried desperately to slow her breathing, to ease her frantic heart. She took the long-burning candle from the front of the chamber and began lighting the room. It took less than a minute, and then...there was nothing to do. She was too unsettled to read, filled with disquiet, and it wasn’t just her own. Vincent and she were feeding off one other; the agitation couldn’t leave them.
She started picking up objects, exploring the room they now shared. Of course, everything within the chamber was his, with just a few practical items given over to her use, therefore it was really only his chamber still.
She picked up and examined him, his things, his treasures. He had so many, even after the rampages during his illness: a tiny elephant, a scrimshaw, monuments in miniature, so many little mementos. How did she not know all their stories? Had they spent so little time together? He was the other half of her, yet still a mystery.
She explored the room following a clockwise path, trailing her fingers across a statue’s cast gown, reading the names of the records in his small vintage jukebox, opening boxes and trunks, anything to try to find him in objects if she couldn’t in flesh. She discovered the wind-up carousel, the beautiful, heart-breaking impetus of Devin’s disappearance, in a scraped and dented trunk in the corner. She listened to its soft and fragile music and wondered if all Vincent’s things were paid for with bittersweet memories.
When she finally started to feel tired - calm was too much to wish for - she sat down on the bed, but sleep wouldn’t come until she knew. She felt almost guilty, invading his privacy, but she craved reassurance, any she could get. With her new-found ability she touched the Bond, followed the pull of connection within her heart, and found him almost immediately. He wasn’t a great distance off. He would stay close enough if she absolutely needed him, she felt that, but also sensed that he still wished to be alone. He was disturbed, angry, and a word came to her through their shared awareness: culpable. Above all, he did not wish to see anyone now, even her.
The furious envy from behind her eyes returned, and suffused all her changed blood, spread to all thought, and she hoped he got a good dose of it. He could escape everyone’s attentions, everyone’s eyes, and she could not; not accustomed with the myriad paths in the Tunnels, she would have felt uncomfortable, unsafe, trying to escape on her own. The privacy of his chamber, what little privacy it afforded, was all she could hope for.
They had been tossed upon waves of union and separation, this day more than any other. Their second lovemaking at the warm spring had been everything she had ever wanted, and made her crave him all the more. He had surrounded her and she had encompassed him. They had flown so high, bound so tight, so strong, a rope plaited in a thousand strands, one being. They had been accepted by the community and, for the briefest time, they were together, they had future days, but the rope had already begun to fray, even then. Second thoughts stole her rage at him, uncertainty taking its place. He wasn’t the only one culpable. She had started the cutting. Wasn’t it her insistence they break off of their connection, because of fear for him? And now, because of his demons, his fears for her, he wouldn’t come near.
She was wrung out in both spirit and body, and she was beginning to feel sorry for herself. She hated feeling sorry for herself. They would have to find some way to fix it, but tomorrow.
Before Catherine had left Father’s chamber, Mary had warned her labor could begin at any hour and she needed rest. It was time to take the midwife’s advice. She took out a large nightgown from their now shared wardrobe. “So much for size 6,” she told only the candles and the room, and then got ready for bed.
It must have been late when she woke. The clink and clank of the pipes were nearly silent, and the pillar next to her had burnt low. She was uncomfortable, but then, this far into her pregnancy, she was never really comfortable. A heaviness had taken up residence at the bottom of her belly, her hip ached, and she probably needed to go to the bathroom...again. She slowly, carefully, turned from the wall and looked into the now-darkened room.
Opposite her, high above and perched on a rock, she saw him.
“Hello, Catherine,” he called.
“Vincent?” But her heart faltered, and she knew it wasn’t him. She strained to sit up against the pillows of the large bed and placed a protective hand on her belly.
He jumped down easily from the great height and strolled towards her. She was certain now, this wasn’t Vincent. Vincent didn’t move this way, so casually self-assured.
She hadn’t seen this one in a long time.
Please, not here. Why couldn’t he have stayed in the tower along with the other monsters?
“Did you miss me, Catherine? Did you feel me in the water? I was there. I’m always with him, and now, I am always with you,” his voice soft, belying his true intentions.
She had clashed with him in the tower, the first and worst of all of her shadows. She had glimpsed him at times before that, in the warehouse, after the drugs - Vincent...but not Vincent. She had wondered if it was the injections that created him. He mocked her in every way. She wanted Vincent to be near, but this one came instead.
There were other ghosts who haunted her during her captivity - her most basic certainties stolen, along with her freedom, and replaced with a grey world of the dead and demons. Her stalker was one of them, the one who came so close to delivering her watery death. He would settle next to her bed, just underneath the camera, crouched down, crooked-necked and bloody, gashed from where Vincent must have struck him dead. He could be there, silent, his head barely attached to his body, just staring at her for hours until her mother’s desperate pleading to look away finally reached her. Paracelsus would come, his evisceration by Vincent’s hand obscenely evident. Her mother couldn’t rescue Catherine then; John Pater’s spirit was too malevolent for even a mother to fight. The old, sour man’s words were cuts, jagged and as unspeakable as his wounds. Kristopher visited too. “Everything’s going to be okay, Cathy,” he would try to reassure her, but if she knew anything about Kristopher, he was a liar. Even Ellie came, mute and unreadable - to cause or ease suffering, Catherine could not tell, but none of the others compared to the one before her. Her fears and weakness lay without protection in front of his biting gaze. He had all the advantage.
The first time he spoke wasn’t long after the Man had begun asking her questions, insisting she tell him about Vincent. Her mind started slipping that day, and Vincent’s vicious opposite was her first concrete proof.
“No!” Catherine half-screamed at him.
He disregarded her.
“Please, go...” she pleaded, ending in a whisper.
“But I can’t, you know that! I’m in you.” The vision slinked up to her. She could smell sweat and blood all over him, bitter and copper tanged.
“Did it thrill you, Catherine,” he whispered to her, crouching in front of the bed, “to mix your blood with mine? To know it’s reshaped you.”
She held her belly even tighter.
“You’re changed. I told you, I changed you.” He stood, his hand sweeping the space. “Now it’s clear to everyone, everything I already knew,” he said proudly. Pointing to her, he added, “You’ve evolved since you let me inside you. You were a bird, fluttering and helpless, but I have reformed you in my image, and what are you now?” He turned his head, trying to gain new perspective into her.
She shut her eyes tight to him, hoping that he would disappear. It had been her only defense against him.
I was nothing, I was no one, but I am Catherine. She tried to hold on. I am Vincent’s Catherine. I am my child’s mother. She pushed her perception towards the baby inside her, her touchstone. Her son was always content as only a soul with every need met could be, warm and untroubled. He was her ground when Vincent wasn’t there. If she didn’t have her son, she worried that her spirit might simply float away.
“You cannot fight who you are. You cannot hide. It will hobble you, Catherine, just like it did him. It will shatter you. Maybe…it already has.”
She opened her eyes, tears beginning, and he smiled as if he found a bright new toy.
“Maybe that’s why Vincent left you in that room for so long,” he stood up, towering over her shrinking form, “so long...in the dark….” He punctuated each phrase. He wasn’t leaving. The creature paced about the room as his twin sometimes did.
“He knew you were brittle before, but did he finally figure out…just how broken you really are?”
He stopped and crouched beside her to look her in the eye. “You’re damaged goods,” he proclaimed. “We knew from the moment we found you in the Park. You’ve been good at hiding the scars.” He nodded, almost in respect, shaking his dark mane, “but they’re still there....”
“No!” she screamed at him.
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “You’re still bleeding, aren’t you?” And lower still, a malevolent whisper, “You’re still drowning, aren’t you?”
Her deeper thoughts agreed with him. You never really stopped, no matter how much you tried, no matter how tough you were. You’re still wounded.
He sat next to her on the bed. It dipped at his weight. “It’s fine to play at love with a splintered mind, but you don’t set up house.” He sounded so convincing.
She tried to stay with the baby, but the creature’s closeness was defeating her. Vincent’s absence and the agitation she felt from her son were overwhelming a fragile spirit. The baby, rather than being content, grew troubled inside her. She was losing. The child was uneasy; the child was frightened.
“Get out,” she whispered, desperately trying to calm the baby within her, and to be calmed by him.
The creature beside her was a hunter, a predator of no conscience. She had nowhere to run. The kill was inevitable.
“Don’t worry,” he mockingly soothed. “You may die giving birth, but your child, my child, will survive. Father and Peter will see to that. Vincent will care for him and, in time, Vincent will find someone else to...love....” He leered at her.
He was good at this: taking her hopes, her convictions, and turning them into weapons.
Anger, hatred, again, even here....
He loomed over her. “He’ll replace you, and keep your memory up on a pedestal somewhere, while really, you’ll just be stuck,” he slunk closer, “...in the dark,” closer, “...with me.”
She was slipping into the raging sea. It drew…
…and as he had promised, the drowning, the shattering…
Insanity
“Get Out!” she screamed and kicked at him with all her terror and fury.
And then, she awoke.
This time she was alone. The pipes were quiet. It was late into the night, the long-burning pillar was out, and Vincent had not returned, nor would he return that night, she was certain.
If Vincent could see her dreams, he knew who haunted her.
Union: Chapter 14
(PG-13 for some sexual references)
"Now,
look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a
four-letter word.”
― Dorothy Parker
Buffeted by empathetic storms, Vincent surged through the underground of New York trying to break the
cage it was. For Catherine, for himself, there was no shelter. Everything between them - love, hope,
remorse… culpability… - magnified by their circumstance. He could not ease their shared fears, and he
could not stop time - his only protection, to keep moving.
Miles passed as he touched her in his heart. He saw his twin, the demon that haunted her dreams.
You’re changed….
Splintered mind...
...in the dark with me...
Get out!
He felt her crying out for him, her spirit’s demand for his presence, but also her terror of him, not of tooth or
claw, those less than nothing to her now it seemed, compared to an unforgiving, hateful heart and the rending
damage it could inflict.
Half a dozen times he turned back, locked between love and guilt. How could she want him close if he was
the one she most feared? But, the answer had been gifted to him long before the question could even be
asked. This was the other side of love that she had spoken of, the vulnerability, the need, the fear of
rejection. He had felt it. He had inflicted it. His sins were many, and the changes in her blood another in his
long list of wages.
His love always felt more like a sin than a blessing to her, but he prayed it would not always be so. How can
you repent a sin you cannot stop the commission of? He had plucked her out of the human race to be cursed,
infected with his singularity. His nature haunted them as much as her ghosts.
I am her true demon. She is cursed with a demon…a demon who loves her.
For so long, countless nights upon nights, he felt the pull of her, his needs and hers wrapping their fates,
twining them as one, but he had held himself away - an embrace, a hand held, a touch, all he would allow
them. She would be protected, he swore, he prayed, more times than he could count. He would keep her safe,
even from his desire, but he had failed her even in that, spectacularly failed.
Defeat haunted his headlong escape; the hours of flight, the miles of twisting underground could not erase
the beauty of her body. There was no diversion, no distraction. The smooth wall of a transit tunnel became
her smooth skin under his hands. The rough limestone walls evoked the rough curls at the juncture of her
thighs. Nothing could stop the images, the impression of her embedded into his cells. What he had for over
half a year wished to remember - had to remember, her dream-ghost mother had warned, in order to be one
with Catherine again - now besieged. The feel of her encompassing him, the feel of her breast held in his
hand, could not be outrun. He could not outpace the reality of her, or their child awaiting its imminent and
uncharted birth.
He was used to this fear, like an old and accepted companion. He had always feared for her safety
throughout their years together; her life encircled the full measure of his own, yet he had urged her to
continue her dangerous work. Why?
His darker voice, almost a physical presence pursuing him, shadowing him as it did her, replied, At least then
she needed you. You kept her the only way you knew how.
Bloodshed and rage….
At least in violence he could give of himself and still allow her freedom to live separate from him. Beyond
his terror of hurting her, even deeper than his dread of his uncontrolled burning thirst for her, was his horrific
certainty of his own ravenous spirit.
Vincent knew, almost from the beginning, from the blessed and cursed day he was certain of her love, that if
they were together physically, even once, he could never be without her again. Her freedom, her life would
be memories, the sacrifice to him and their dream.
Worse than what he had inflicted on Lisa, his raking claws would be nothing compared to his desperation, his
rapacious need to keep Catherine with him, forever.
Catherine had tasted his fathomless want twice. She had found beauty and pleasure in it, but she did not
understand, could not comprehend, that this was truly the barest surface of his hunger. Before his illness
they might go days or even weeks without seeing one another, without talking, without touching, but no
more. His body and spirit, having known hers, were greedy things, and it was as he feared, the long-deprived
part of him already prepared a cage for her.
He could laugh. She thought she had chosen this, believed in her ability to choose, but the old word for
childbirth was "confinement," and he had...confined her.
...in the dark with me...
She was trapped by his child, by his craving, his life. He must try to give her freedom, or she might wither as
a wild bird caged, but he simply could not understand how. She was already so bound to him.
Before Peter’s revelations, he knew, although he could not confess it, even to himself. More than her scent,
more than her violence or unstable emotions, ever since he found her again, she moved… differently. It was
a little thing, no one else would see it, but it spoke of changes in her that his intentional mind did not want to
consider. There were times she lost her pregnant gait and walked fluidly. Before her pregnancy she had this
way of throwing her arm out to keep her balance, especially on the stony stairs and dust-covered ground of
the Tunnels, and more than once she’d stumbled. He had gently teased her, after his initial concern, of
course, and after her easy dismissal. Natural lack of grace that no amount of dancing lessons could cure, she
had laughed then, but she was changed.
Another
toll for the road they had chosen, the one they were forced down, but
one he would have to pay.
What other way was there?
This was the fight and the essence of faith, the reshaping of self he would have to endure, for her and their
child.
How long had she begged him to understand that she had changed, because of him, for him. What if he had
accepted then? Would they have lost so much? The memory tore him, and he could rip himself to pieces
with the "what if’s", the "should haves," but that was no way to help her.
There simply was no other option now but to move forward, towards love, "Though his ways are hard and
steep."* What they had, what for the briefest moments they shared, union in body, in spirit, in life, they
could not give up.
For you I…"bleed willingly and joyfully"*
What they forged together, experienced together, despite all the changes, despite the fears, was worth
everything.
Even her life? His doubts whispered.
She would say yes, her life was forfeit, but he prayed that future was not certain. That die wasn’t cast. Peter
and Mary and Father would use all of their combined knowledge to shepherd them through their child’s
birth. Father would do everything he could to keep her safe.
It wasn’t enough for his own son’s mother.
No, but how many since then? Rachel, Olivia, Lena, countless others…with his and Mary’s help, they had all
been guided safely over the rough bridge from womanhood into motherhood.
But YOU are the father of Catherine’s child, the demon sneered. You are not Jacob’s son, not really.
Yes, but she is not who she once was either. Vincent retaliated, and she has fortitude. She had the will.
But she also lives under the burdens weighing on her heart, the creature almost purred in his ear. What are
you prepared to do to ease them? It
demanded.
Vincent, with thoughts consuming all conscious senses, did not see Mouse until he ended his escape running
heedless into the young man, pushing him down. The jolt returned Vincent to the world; his twin shadow
vanished.
"Mouse? Are you hurt?" Vincent shook himself, concerned that his size could easily harm the boy.
"Nope…" Mouse answered coughing, half-prone on broken stones and concrete. "Just not..up."
"I’m sorry, Mouse." Vincent took Mouse’s forearm and pulled him upright. "I was...lost in thought."
"S’ok. Lots to think about," he said, shaking off dust and dirt. Vincent looked at the barrier. How did Mouse
cause a rock-fall by himself, without any visible tools and without hurting himself? He was a wonder, in so
many ways. How lucky the Tunnels were to have him…almost three-quarters of the time.…
"I, actually..." Vincent looked around, slightly embarrassed, "...don’t know where I am."
"Really?" Mouse couldn’t believe it. "You? Hmm…" he looked up. "Under midtown. Where you got
Catherine. Sealed it off here." He looked to his handiwork. "Easy part. Hidden tunnel entrance…" he looked
conspiratorially at his mentor, "hard part."
Vincent couldn’t believe he had roamed that far, back to the place of so much torment. Catherine did not
want him here, begged him not to go anywhere near, but as much as she had lost here, he had lost too, time
with her most of all. Something within had led him back.
"Vincent…" Mouse said, now resigned to his friend’s presence, he paced round in a circle. He was thinking,
deciding. Vincent could see the effort it took as Mouse endeavored to start a new train of thought. "Here,
good...wanted to talk to you anyway."
Vincent attempted to shake off his black thoughts, to concentrate on the young man’s words, but Catherine’s
twisted emotions - her turmoil - still haunted him, still drew him. Could the reasons for it be found here, or
did it begin long before? She still hid from the memories, did not trust that he could endure her pain, and by
leaving her, he was proving her right.
Mouse sidled up to Vincent. "Don’t tell Catherine," he whispered, looking behind him, certain if Vincent was
here she must be close. "Working on new gizmo…present." He smiled, nodding. "Cradle, for baby…rocks by
itself," his voice rising out of the whisper with excitement as a hand gestured in a swaying motion. "Just a
little problem." He showed with his finger and thumb how small a problem. "Tried…with Arthur..." His hand
changed to a straight line flying far over his head. "Wooooooooo…." Then he shrugged his shoulders and
couldn’t help but look a bit sheepish.
"Don’t worry yourself, Mouse," Vincent, with earnest truth, reassured his inventive friend, "I won’t tell
Catherine."
Mouse looked puzzled. "Vincent, before, didn’t even hear Mouse, didn’t see Mouse. Looked
scared…looked…sad. Why?"
Vincent sighed. Mouse never kept questions to himself, his curiosity an innocent yet indomitable force, but
this... How could he even begin to interpret this convoluted strife to such a straightforward young man?
"It’s hard to explain."
The boy replied, not satisfied, with another question. "Catherine okay?"
"She is...
Beautiful
Frightening
Hurt
A carrier of life
A bringer of death
Perfect
Flawed
Conflicted
"…she is…'okay.’"
Mouse’s eye went wide with worry. "Baby okay?"
"Yes." Vincent could feel the miracle of his child’s heartbeat deep inside him.
"Vincent okay?" Mouse was clearly puzzled.
"Yes, Mouse," he sighed, not fully able to hide his exasperation at the questions, but still trying to relieve the
young man’s worry. "I’m all right."
"So...Catherine okay...baby okay...Vincent okay," Mouse looked down at his own body, running his hands
down the front of his vest, "and Mouse okay." Mouse’s eyebrows shot up with his open arms. "Then
everything okay today, right?"
"Yes, Mouse, the day was...," a day with Catherine, beautiful, amazing, even within the sadness and the
worry, "...good."
Vincent smiled in spite of everything, in spite of all his doubts. Mouse had a unique way to put life...in
perspective. To Mouse, today and the hopeful possibilities of tomorrow were all the world was made of. He
didn’t analyze to the point of confusion. It was a gift Vincent wished he could borrow.
Mouse smiled. "You and Catherine together now…Neat."
Vincent could only nod at the veracity of his friend’s pronouncement.
Mouse swiped his hands together in a finishing motion. "All done here ‘til others come. Have to get back
now, late."
“Yes, it is very late.”
The scuffed -up young man tugged upon Vincent’s sweater and the large man allowed the small one to begin
to lead him back. "Have to get ready, work on entry, work on cradle. Jamie says baby coming soon."
"Indeed he will, Mouse." It always came back to that.
Mouse nodded and smiled as they walked. "That’s good, Vincent. Catherine’s really big," he said, his arms
circling around in front of his belly to show how big. He shook his head. "Can’t get much bigger."
Mouse’s diagnosis brought a defeated nod and despite all, a small smile to Vincent’s lips.
"Baby comes," Mouse declared seriously, "present, ready!"
"Thank you, Mouse." Vincent stopped his friend’s stride with a hand on his shoulder. "You have already
given me a gift."
Mouse looked back at him, confused.
"Your words." Vincent needed words to unravel their dilemma, and not just the unknowing example from his
young friend. In order to help Catherine, he needed counsel, and he believed he knew whom to ask.
"Huh…my words?" Mouse scratched his head, for a moment perplexed, but then shrugged. "Well, Mouse is
good with words." He nodded proudly. "Mouse will teach baby words." He smiled. "Like Vincent taught
Mouse."
Mouse placed his arm around his friend, and Vincent allowed the boy to guide him home.
___________
*Kahlil
Gibran, The Prophet
Union: Chapter 15
“If
you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you
are?”
― T.S.
Eliot
“Catherine, are you all right? You’re as white as a sheet,” Olivia declared as Catherine shuffled into the
short corridor at the entrance to Vincent’s chamber, returning from her third and latest trip down and back
from the facilities just that morning.
“What’s the matter, Cathy?” Lena asked as she turned, stopping her soothing dance with baby Kate. The
women stood around Vincent’s table, a study in contrasts, a slight and fragile sun and a raven-haired,
grounded moon. On the table lay a pile of tiny clothes and between them a breakfast tray filled with cakes,
cups, a teapot, and a mug with what looked like coffee in it.
Trays of food left in tiny sunlit rooms…
Eat for your baby...Vincent’s baby. Eat for him…
Even when you want to throw up all the time...
Even when you want to throw it in their faces…
Even when you want to fade away...
Olivia walked into the little corridor and took her slightly shaking hand, leading her to the table. “Really,
Catherine, you look like a ghost just walked over your grave.”
Catherine tried to smile, but Olivia’s vivid imagery wasn’t exactly welcome, although little Kate squawked
from her sling in what sounded like agreement. Lena wrapped one arm around the baby and started bouncing
and patting her with the other.
Catherine didn’t know how to bring the color back to her face or what to say, but maybe it was a good thing
Lena and Olivia were here. Maybe they would know. “When I went to the bathroom, there was this...glob….
It was thick and…a little bloody.”
The two women looked at one another and Olivia smiled.
“It’s just your mucous plug, Catherine,” Olivia explained. “I lost mine a couple of days before I went into
labor with Luke.” The older mother was glowing. Kanin’s return truly agreed with her, and although
Catherine wouldn’t ask and the smock Olivia wore would have hidden just about anything, Catherine was
fairly certain Olivia had a new baby growing inside her like a new promise.
Lena laughed in her shy manner, smiling her delicate smile. “I’m pretty sure mine went when Father was
walking me home for the first time. I think I made it down here by the skin of my teeth.”
Olivia added, “It’s good news, Catherine. The baby will be here soon.”
Catherine’s heartbeat sped into an excited rhythm of shock, all-encompassing and loud to her ears.
“Cathy, sit down or I think you’re gonna fall down.” Lena pulled Vincent’s chair out as best she could with
her one free hand while still holding the squirming child in the carrier with the other.
Catherine eased her way down; the velvet heaviness of the chair felt right. It was the first time she felt right
all morning.
Olivia fussed, “William gave me this tray for you. He sent coffee and the cakes he promised. He said you
used to like coffee, but I also brought you some of my tea if you want.”
The rough and fearful night - after Peter’s news, and the dreams, and without Vincent - had passed into
another unsettled day. Catherine felt depleted, vulnerable to everything. For all the waiting she had done,
all those endless days, now everything seemed too fast. Time was hastily converging on one inexorable
point. The baby was coming, soon...
She looked at the tray. The cakes, the ones William had promised her only last night…he must have been up
half the night, she thought with regret for all the fuss they were making over her. It was very thoughtful. The
coffee, however….
“’Used to like’ is the operative statement here.” Catherine smiled a half-hearted smile as she pushed the
coffee mug to the furthest end of the table. “Ugghh.…” Months of bland food, or maybe just the baby
affecting her tastes, but the idea of drinking it made her instantly sick. Just the smell was making her
nauseous.
“I was the same way when I was pregnant with her,” Lena commiserated with Catherine, trying to take the
coffee away as the baby reached for it. She placed it on top of one of the high bookshelves. “Super sensitive
smell - I think I first trusted you at that diner because you didn’t wear too much perfume.”
Catherine’s eyes looked back into another time. “I stopped wearing perfume almost altogether when I
started…seeing Vincent.” Catherine sipped the tea that Olivia offered. It tasted of spearmint, and lemon, and
fresh green things. It was very good.
“Where is Vincent?” Olivia asked, looking around the chamber.
Lena said nothing. She wouldn’t have asked. She had already noticed his things weren’t there. The room
seemed colder than when he occupied it. A million little things told her he had spent the night elsewhere.
She wondered, too, where he was with Catherine being so close to having their baby, but she wasn’t going to
bring it up. Olivia, however, still had the openness of a woman raised with loving, honest people. She didn’t
seem to understand the danger of particular subjects.
Catherine didn’t know what to say. So she too stayed silent. It had been her most effective defense of late.
“Well,” Olivia soothed, “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”
Lena took Catherine’s hand and looked into her friend’s haunted eyes, eyes like those Lena had seen in her
own mirror in the not so distant past. The last year had brought so many changes, so much good she couldn't
have dreamed was possible, and this woman was the reason. Catherine had been the first person in her life
who had loved her without taking, the first person who saw her worth, who trusted. Although the hand that
now squeezed Catherine’s seemed small and fragile-boned, it had been tempered, toughened, strengthened
by the woman whom it now lent its strength back to.
For a flickering moment Catherine took some comfort from the girl. She truly felt happy for this girl who had
never been a child. It had been the right decision to bring her to the Tunnels.
An uneasy silence fell on the party, but thankfully Lena had brought the baby. Babies were always the
perfect distraction when a conversation waned or took an upsetting turn. Who had written that? Catherine
vaguely remembered something...Austen maybe?
Catherine forced the smile, but it didn’t need too much of a push. “Lena, she’s getting so big.” Catherine
tentatively reached for a tiny hand that seemed to be searching for something to manipulate into submission.
“You’re tellin’ me.” Lena smiled. “No walking yet, but she’s crawling everywhere. Sarah brought me this
lovely old quilt to put on the floor so she can play, but she just crawls right off of it and tries to climb the
furniture. I can’t take my eyes off her.”
Catherine worked hard to push everything else away and to laugh at Lena’s simple joy. Lena deserved it.
The young mother gestured at the little outfits. “Here are the clothes. She doesn’t need them, and truthfully,
I’m glad to have the space.”
Catherine extricated herself from the baby’s grip and unfolded a little cream-colored cardigan. It was
gorgeous, and precious, and she couldn’t quite believe that she was going to need it soon.
“So, where should we put them?” Olivia asked, looking around the room. She was clearly dismayed at the
lack of baby preparations.
Catherine too looked around Vincent’s chamber. She yearned to ready for the baby, but nothing felt settled
about them. They hadn’t had the time, and this was still his room. She didn’t feel right rearranging his things
without his approval.
“I have no idea. Just...why don’t you leave them there, but please, have some of these,” motioning to the
cakes on the tray. They were flaky and soft, and still warm, filled with fall apples, cinnamon and nutmeg,
sweet but not achingly so.
They all ate for a few moments, commenting on Olivia’s delicious tea and William’s prodigious culinary
talents, but when the small meal was over and the conversation waned again, Catherine felt too restless to
stay. She needed to move. She needed to get out.
“I think I should go talk to Mary about this momentous turn of events,” Catherine said sardonically as she
worked herself out of the chair and got ready to leave.
Lena hugged Catherine, squeezing the baby between them enough that the little girl protested. “Don’t be
afraid,” Lena advised, letting her go so Olivia could hug her also. “It’s going to be fine. Just don’t fight it,
let it happen.”
“Well…I guess I’m pretty good at just letting things happen,” Catherine replied, sarcasm thick. “This should be a piece of cake.”
Union: Chapter 16
One
need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The
brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
Emily
Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
Shuffling footsteps in the entrance of a barely lit private alcove off the main library, the old doctor lost in a
hundred different concerns, not the least of them an absent son, a heart-worn woman, and a child ready to be
born. Mary’s message this morning - unexpected yet expected, led to a gentle examination of a woman whose
spirit seemed locked away under too many burdens.
A child who comes in strife, can leave in sorrow. An old saying, and a reminder for every birth, but turmoil
wasn’t always easy to avoid.
You can’t love me, Jacob. You have a woman already sleeping in your bed, a ghost, and until she is gone, you
will never love any other woman.
Grace had been right, and the strife remained. That child left in sorrow, well after his bloody and traumatic
birth, but he still left, and his mother, lost.
He nearly pushed another mother-to-be this morning, but the steel was there in her tired eyes. She would not
reveal - perhaps to Vincent, but not to him. She had trusted, in the past, taking on burdens of a beloved’s
illness that she felt were hers, but that was before her time away from them.
Mary must lead in this as she usually did. She would be comfort, optimism.
He had sent the women to lunch, and every careful footstep away from them echoed “change” to his old ears.
Catherine brought them change, tested limits. No matter what the outcome, their lives would be different.
Trepidation was the only sane answer to her.
If the candle near him hadn’t sputtered and glinted off golden hair, he wouldn’t have seen the unnaturally
still figure.
“Oh, good Lord, Vincent, you startled me!”
Father swayed in the doorway of his private chamber, one hand steadying himself against the ragged rock;
the other held his cane over his heart. Vincent sat in the many-times-mended chair, next to the
many-times-mended desk. Even at Father’s distress, he barely moved; only his eyes glanced from folded
hands.
A memory: a silent man, one who would never complain, perhaps for fear of losing his new place, whose
bandages had hid the hot, red lines of infection that lived on well past when a wound from a simple fall
should have healed. The recognition of that concealed hurt, Jacob’s first test, and first triumph in his new -
and what would become forever - home. His previously unknown skill, seeing what was needed, and finding
the resources to fulfill the need, made a place for him. “Asset” they called him then… “leader,” later.
The man’s name was lost in time, but not the lesson. It was something he had learned early, had to learn, for
the community - what Mary called his greatest strength: to recognize when a person was close to their limits,
at the edge of endurance for whatever reason, and find what was required to tie the frayed ends together -
confrontation, redirection, consolation…some or all. Vincent had grown to become Father’s greatest ally in
this, his empathy an invaluable tool in the war to keep the peace, but Vincent could be no help to himself.
The boy was fighting on far too many fronts, and a civil war within.
They were on the edges again, near the limits, and so the question: what did he need? Him or her? Although
“both” seemed the more likely answer, Vincent lingered away from her for a reason, but as with her, he might
not be ready for Father to press the wound. It was never easy to see the clear path with his own. Was it easy
for any parent?
The older man gathered himself for the encounter, rising past the aches and settling that came with years,
limped in, and took the chair opposite. For many moments they sat without speaking.
He waited, hoping Vincent would begin, provide an opening, a welcome inside, but after the silence
lengthened rather than retreated, realized that his son would not start, and probably half-hoped Father would
not either - an impasse that could not last.
“Would you like any tea? It’s almost lunch. William has a special….” But Vincent just shook his head.
Another silence, followed by another necessitated beginning, akin to pulling teeth. “I’m glad you’ve come
back. I was worried,” Father added before he could stop himself.
“…that I would not return?” Vincent’s dangerous voice asked.
“No, of course not. I….” But then he stopped, cognizant of the spurious question. Vincent was being
intentionally obtuse, and that, even on easy days, could be vexing. Frustration would not be conducive to
finding any resolutions or ease.
Of course he came back. She’s here. He would always return to her -a truth, a charge leveled, and not the first
time.
Vincent sighed, placing his hand on the worn wood of the desk as if testing its solidity. “I wasn’t far. Mouse
sent me home.”
“Did he?” I might need some direction from Mouse. Clearly he can reach you, even if I cannot.
Vincent picked up the papers Peter left, studying them, looking for answers that they did not contain. Was
that why he was here? It reminded Father of the fallout from the night previous.
“Peter feels terrible for causing you so much worry.”
Vincent dropped the papers onto the desk, exasperated, but remained silent, and Father had no choice but to
continue. “He thought you would understand…his excitement that Catherine could carry your child, and
against all odds. We didn’t know…we worried for years that…your unique nature would leave you…unable
to father children at all.”
“Or shouldn’t….” Vincent would not meet his eyes.
“Vincent, this is not helpful.” Father responded, the frustration too clear in his voice. He needed to assure
him, not drive him away. He leaned in closer to his son. “Please remember there are myriad ways to control
bleeding after birth. We will do everything in our power to keep Catherine safe.”
The defeated man sighed. “I know,” Vincent assured, the tiniest spatter of faith revealed in simple words.
“I…overreacted,” he offered.
“Well, Peter realized, after you…left, that what he discovered about Catherine, how he…presented it, might
upset you.” Father couldn’t keep from fussing with the papers, his fingers unconsciously curling the edges.
“He was very sorry indeed.”
“For the truth?” The anger within Vincent persisted, shocking the other man’s movement still.
“The truth cannot be denied, Father,” Vincent’s self-reproach evident in his crouched manner, in his biting
voice. “The truth is, I’ve changed her. I know you feared…the likelihood…that I might be her undoing.”
And in being that, destroy myself need not be uttered between the solemn men.
Vincent quieted, again looking down, his feelings too exposed to meet his parent’s gaze it would seem.
Instead, his claw drew up the edges of the printout. “I truly wanted…I simply wished for my love…to offer
her some…peace.”
Father nodded at the idea, but only in affirmation of his son’s good heart. Peace was on the other side of the
raging river. He could coach them, pray for them, but they had to ford it.
“Oh, ‘peace’…I see....” He swiveled in his seat, using his cane to help him around then pointing with the stick
toward the bookshelves. “And tell me, Vincent, in what romance did you find that?”
Father looked back to his son, who finally met his gaze fully.
“I believe,” the older man slowly began, trying to choose words with consideration, “that love between a man
and a woman is not always about peace, or comfort, or need, but it is moving forward through life with each
other…not that I am any sort of expert.”
“Yes, Father,” Vincent agreed straight-faced, the smallest humor leeching through the bitterness, streaking
the blue of his eyes. “Truly, the blind leading the blind.…”
Father almost countered, Failure has its own lessons, but thought the better of it before the words could pass his lips.
“Vincent.” Father rested his hand on his son’s. He had to hear him, had to understand. “From everything
I’ve seen, she is healthy, the child is healthy, and she is safe here with us. We must let go of the past and
all its ‘should have’s’ and fears. We can only move forward now.”
And forward his son moved, out of the chair, nearly leaping, humor spent, distress propelling his powerful
stride. Father had to react swiftly, too quickly for his worn bones, or else he too would be out of his chair, but
not half so gracefully.
“I know this, Father! I have told myself countless times since finding her that we must hope for the future,
live moment to moment together, but she can’t. She tries, desperately, but she is not healthy. She does
not feel the safety.” Vincent’s hands balled to fists as he paced the chamber wall to wall - this gesture,
this plagued movement, too familiar to Father’s eyes. “She cannot sleep. She is haunted by her captivity.
The walls of that room cage her and I cannot release her.”
Ay, there’s the rub…
Vincent’s voice, wretched and rage-filled, cracked to a strained whisper. “Ghosts and demons will not let her
rest, and I don’t....”
The anxiety was shared, passed from son to father, hitting the doctor hard. He hoped his impressions were
wrong, that his daughter in all but name wasn’t as fragile as his instincts told him. If she was fighting herself,
if she could not rest, then Vincent wouldn’t. They were much too close to the birth - the time that they would
need all their physical and emotional endurance. It was unsafe for both of them - all of them, he amended.
Dear Lord, just a little more time to heal, please.
“What do you think will help her?”
Vincent stopped and threw up his hands in defeat. “I don’t know where to begin! There is so much she will
not say, that I know is there, but she will not share with me.”
Yes, not with me either, son.
“But surely your empathic ability….”
“…means nothing if she hides her feelings from me!” Vincent countered, and for a moment there was a
taste of their jagged past together and Father blamed her for his son’s distress, but concern and affection
would not allow the censure to fully live.
A child frightened of what is needed to heal the wound will hide the hurt. Could she, a woman whose strength
of will I have cursed and blessed, been taken back that far? He could only answer himself with the deepest
regret for what she and Vincent would have to face. After months of suffering and silence and living with
death as a constant possibility…how could she not?
“I came to you for your counsel, Father, but I fear there is nothing….”
Oh, Vincent…
Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur.*
They had been at this place before. Soon, in his anger and despair, his son would stop listening, and anything
said would be lost, rain battering against an expedient shelter. Father had never attempted to condense this
knowledge, the texts, the experience of dealing with such afflictions before, but he had this one chance to
help his son, this one chance to reach through and pull them back to the light.
The weight is so heavy, the obligation, the chance of failure too large, but that is what it is to lead, and to be
a parent.
One day, son, you will know.…
“Well…”
Father began as he crossed the rough ground and
placed a veined and aged hand on Vincent’s tensed solid
arm. Perhaps the connection would keep him present, the old
man hoped. “I have found the simplest, most direct route is
to find the point where a person lost their way. You must
discover that place and time.”
Vincent closed his eyes in thought. Did he know where that
might be? When blue met blue again, Father was certain his
son had at least an idea.
“And Vincent,” Father continued, “once you find it, the source, they always fight you.”
That startled Vincent from of his searching thoughts. “But why?”
“Because it is so deep, to explore it…” Father endeavored to explain what had taken him years to learn,
“to cleanse the wound, for lack of a better term, can be akin to...well, the harshest physical pain.”
Vincent nodded, but Father had to elucidate - a labyrinth of hazards exists there. “They are almost always
ashamed…guilty.” Vincent could not understand this aspect, if his knit brow and quizzical stare spoke truly
to Father’s eyes. This man before him had almost infinite capacity to understand and forgive all those he
loved, save himself. How, Vincent asked without speaking, could she believe that she had a hand in this?
“All of them, every one my son, in one way or another has said to me, ‘I should have.…’ ‘I should have
known better. I should have known more. I should have fought harder. I should have done
something, something different…’ even when, especially when, there was nothing they could have done.
Convincing them of this can be the greatest challenge.”
The younger man ingested the words, and for long moments only the midday pipe harmonies and the trains’
egressing rhythms filled the space between them.
“They feel that in some way...” Vincent said slowly, venturing into this territory, visited before but never
mapped, “they caused the damage that’s been inflicted upon them.”
“Yes,” Father agreed, with melancholy satisfaction that Vincent did understand, even with only his
inadequate words as a guide.
The older man gently smiled as he pushed back his son’s wild hair and moved to hold his face in his hands,
just as he had done a thousand times in the boy’s childhood. He marveled how straightforward and
uncomplicated that time seemed by comparison. It surely didn’t feel so then.
“I hope you can help her, and if there is anything you think I can do, please do not hesitate to ask. You say
she is closed off even to you…but…Vincent, press the wound. Only then can you assess the extent of the
damage, only then can you help it heal.”
Father sighed, and with an unexpected joy allowed a new but certain belief fly from him. “You know, no
one is good enough for your own child,” a sad smile creased his worn face, “but she comes very, very close.”
The boy was quiet, so Father, following his natural inclinations, filled the void with advice. “I know,
worrying feels like an occupation right now. Get used to that feeling,” he advised. “It never leaves.”
He stroked his son’s hair and pulled him down to meet him head to head. “I have known such heartache and
joy being your father. I am so grateful that you will have that chance as well.” If he had not been close,
Father may not have seen the tears almost escaping his son’s closed eyes. He quickly wiped them away with
his rough thumb and continued stroking his son’s weighted head. “It is such a gift. It truly is the best of times
and the worst of…” but his words were cut by concern.
A grimace and shudder, like physical pain, consumed Vincent, an attack from another place. The blue of his
troubled eyes met Father’s for the briefest moment, and then he was gone.
______________
* Latin, “Even a god finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time.”
Union: Chapter 17
I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed?
-Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Jim saw it first.
The children saw it too, even if the adults didn’t wish to. They talked among themselves, they worried for
her, but the children stayed away.
William should have seen it - the signs were plain enough. He had been in the Service almost as long as Jim
had, but, in the cook’s defense, it was during a different era, under different circumstances. William was
used to the willful disregard that comes with bossing people around a kitchen. He’d been a head cook long
enough for his own brand of good-natured badgering and ignorance to be ingrained into his character.
The
sickness, easy to spot if you had the experience, carried almost
as many names as symptoms - “Shell Shock” during The Great War,
“Railway Spine,” “War Neurosis.” They were calling it “Battle
Fatigue” by the time Private James Fields had snuck out of a tree
with as much unsteady stealth as a frozen mid-western teenager
could muster after two endless days and nights of German soldiers
passing unknowingly beneath him.
He’d lost more than three toes to that bitter winter in the Ardennes
Forest. Battle had ruined his every endeavor for over ten years by
the time he found this place. He’d been just another lost veteran in
New York with no family and no future when he was accepted. In
the years since, Father helped him learn about his condition, why he
hit the drink trying to calm the panic from sights and smells and
sounds innocent to everyone but him. Just cold could send him into
an angry spiral, shaking, aching, wrapping himself in three times his
normal layers, and wishing they didn’t
lock up the hooch Below.
Although he hadn’t been Up Top for any period of time in over twenty years, he wasn’t drinking himself into
an early grave either, thanks to a community which had always embraced his defects as well as his talents.
Jim - Old Jim now to most of the Tunnel children - had watched Vincent grow up, a boy resigned to darkness
as much as he. Jim didn’t regret his service, despite his own personal movie reel that ran roughshod weekly,
sometimes nightly, over his dreams: the charred bodies, meat and bone left over after the explosions; the
bullets, felt more than seen; the walking skeletons; dead friends; killer friends. He had seen what kind of
world the Nazis aspired to and Vincent had no place in it. Damn Nazis would have had a field day with him,
Jim thought more than once when looking at the unique boy - now man - placed in their safekeeping, and
they in his.
By the time Jim followed Catherine into the dining hall that evening, he had read a dozen books on the
subject of what they were now calling
“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” - lots of words for the same
problem.
The small, pregnant woman followed Mary with about as
much enthusiasm as Jim had for walking in snow.
Watching her trying to fight the “stare” and panic, Jim could only think “Soldier’s Heart.” That’s what the
doctors had called it during the Civil War. It was the best description. It fit the bill.
Jim felt protective. He knew they almost all did, but he had been the one who heard her call on the pipes all
those months ago, before those bastards took her away again. Ever since, he had felt especially responsible.
He had prayed on his aching knees each night for her return, and that prayer had been answered. Now he
prayed for healing, and the healthy baby she and Vincent deserved. He wished they could have found her the
first time, but if wishes were horses, they’d all be knee deep in horse manure by now, his dad used to say.
Catherine didn’t look happy, despite the life she carried. “The Thousand Yard Stare” - the eyes that had
beheld so much they weren’t looking at anything anymore - that’s what she had when she didn’t notice
people noticing her, when she didn’t try to
mask it up. He’d seen a lot of that in the War and a lot of it
since.
You could take a person from the Up Top, but, it was hard to take the Up Top from the person. He’d seen it in
Cullen, and in Mary, how she still got so sad sometimes looking after the little girls. He’d even seen it in
some of the children, and that really tore at him, but usually, with enough love and enough kindness, they
healed well enough - Jamie had after years; so had Zach. You didn’t push it though, or at least not without a
lot of thought; that was the Tunnel’s unwritten rule, especially when someone seemed close to the breaking
point. That’s why the children gave her a wide berth.
Catherine couldn’t eat. That was easy to see, at least for Jim, who knew when a person was trying to avoid
food, afraid of throwing up bad memories. She sidestepped William carving some beautiful roasts like they
were snakes ready to strike, even though they hand been sent by Antonio in a glut of generosity spurred by
the good news of her return. It was her party, but she didn’t want to be here. Jim could see she placed just a
few small potatoes and carrots on her plate. He slowly trailed her through the large crowd of feasters. She
sat next to Mary and sipped on a glass of water. The women at the table, Sarah and Rachel, warmly greeted
her, but after getting little from her while she pushed the food around her plate, they fell into an absorbing
conversation with her guardian.
Catherine slipped into an unnoticed niche where she fought for control, her breathing a little rough, biting
her lip at times when she needed grounding. Jim stood against the wall at the end of the long table, watching
her as she fought, but he didn’t interfere. She was close to the cliff, but she might pull back, and maybe she
wouldn’t take kindly to an old man questioning her.
When the tumult of the hall and whatever she fought finally seemed too much, she stood and took her plate to
leave. Mary called to her, but the woman wasn’t listening. Jim hurried after her as much as his shot knees
and crippled feet could to keep up, but she had already slipped into the crowd.
“Catherine, why didn’t you eat?” William asked as she tried to hurry past him at the sideboard. Life in the
Tunnels could be hard at
times, and with so few plates coming back with food left, hers was
noteworthy.
William stopped her with a kind hand. That’s a mistake, Jim felt certain, even if a well-intentioned one.
“…not hungry,” she said quietly, not looking at William, but instead staring at the knife on the carving board
next to a bloody roast. A trigger was here, Jim noted, and if he didn’t do something, everything she had been
fighting was going to burst right through her. Her face had drained to a stark white, and her eyes were
rimmed red, a too-familiar mask. Jim tried to hurry, but the press of lunch goers was hindering him as much
as his worn body.
“Catherine, you know you have to eat,” William counseled with concern, if not perception. “For the baby’s
sake at least,” he continued unheeding, “if not your own.”
The plate shattered and the knife was in her hand before anyone could react. The whole hall erupted in
surprise, but few people moved. Jim got to her side first.
He grabbed her knife-wielding arm. It remained mostly at her side but strained against his hold, almost as if
she was fighting the impulse to attack. In an instant Cullen was with him. Maybe he had been watching too.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Jim tried to soothe, “You’re safe. You’re safe, honey.”
Her arm, and the knife, almost obscenely large in her small hand, pulled against the men’s strength. Cullen
held hardest while Jim maneuvered, trying to a catch her eyes, but they were far away. She didn’t see him.
“You can’t tell me what to do!” she screamed, more pleading than commanding. But her voice dropped to a
whisper. “No more questions…” she begged.
She was defending herself.
“He’ll stop,” Jim promised her, catching his grip as it nearly slipped, her fury stronger than he could have
ever imagined. “Just ease down, honey, and you’ll feel better.”
“He isn’t going to hurt you, Catherine,” Cullen assured her.
It almost worked. She was starting to calm, starting to see William for William, not some personal devil. The
instant hysteria in the room began to dissipate. Catherine was loosening, unraveling herself into their arms…
…until William opened his mouth again.
“Well, of course I’m not going to hurt her. That’s insane!” he yelled, more at Cullen than at her, offense clear
in his words.
The wrong words…
Jim loved William. Jim’s own girth spoke of many happy hours spent together in the kitchens, mostly
listening to the large cook complain, or laugh at his time Above, but sometimes Jim wondered if William
understood anything.
The moment the words left his mouth, Catherine, still wielding the carving knife, somehow, shook off the two
men and threw herself at the cook. It took all of Cullen and Jim’s strength to keep her from him. She had
gone from almost sleeping to wild in half a heartbeat.
People were screaming. They were losing her…
“CATHERINE!” A shout like thunder came from the entrance to the hall. All eyes turned to Vincent,
including Catherine’s.
Thank God the boy is here.
Jim silently praised the Lord for answering the prayer he hadn’t had time to form. Vincent might be the only
thing to keep the Tunnels from losing their cook and a woman who didn’t know how to leave the battle
behind.
Catherine, as if woken from a nightmare, instantly stopped. Jim and Cullen, with gentle consideration, eased
their grip on her shaking frame. She looked at the knife in her grasp as if seeing it for the first time. She
deliberately lowered it away from William and then passed it into Jim’s sweating hand.
Catherine’s eyes slowly tracked from the blade back to the quavering William, clearly more in control of
herself, but still not fully out of the blaze that had claimed her so quickly. She was silent. She turned
towards Vincent and it seemed as if she would just walk away, but then she turned back just enough so she
could see the cook from the corner of her eye, and whispered her requirement, an angry and dangerous
warning.
“Don’t ever tell me what I have to do for my baby…”
She turned fully to the room and, for a moment, was forced to survey a hall of astonished faces. The stare
came back, full on, and with slow, difficult steps she shuffled towards the exit, dazed and far away as
everyone moved aside for her. But as soon as she cleared the crowd, she raced out of the hall, pushed past
Vincent, and stumbled through the door.
The room of people made way for Jim as well. He wanted to be sure Vincent was going to take care of the
lady. The boy might need a push. He could be a little thick; it took him almost three years to get her in the
family way in the first place. But Jim was relieved to see Vincent holding her. She was doubled over in his
arms, vomiting on the floor of the corridor not far from the hall, throwing up the memories that were pushing
her to the edge, pushing her to threaten if, thankfully, not hurt her friends. Vincent held her head, whispering
into her ear, and when she seemed
finished, he looked in Jim’s direction, giving him silent thanks
for help
that the older man was happy to render.
“Take me away from here,” she asked in a flat voice that matched her eyes. “I don’t know the way.”
Vincent placed his arm around Catherine, lifted her up, and guided her out of sight.
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