Michael Sullivan - The Crown Tower

“We saved each other,” Gwen insisted.

“I don’t think so.”

“Sure we did. We’re like a family, and families take care of each other, support one another and-”

“Like a family?” Rose almost laughed, but it really wasn’t that funny-not funny at all when she thought about it. “That’s not how families work-trust me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just saying that’s not how families work.”

“That’s how it was with me and my mother,” Gwen said.

Rose shifted, turning away. She didn’t like disagreeing with Gwen.

“How was it with you?”

“It’s not important,” Rose replied. “It feels like centuries ago. I was … Well, that’s too long ago to remember.”

“I know the others’ stories,” Gwen said gently. “I know Jollin’s and Mae’s and Etta’s. You never told me yours.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Was it awful?”

Rose thought a moment, then shook her head. That was the worst part; it wasn’t terrible. She hadn’t been beaten or locked in a closet. Her family hadn’t sold her into slavery, and they weren’t murdered by highwaymen. Nothing so vile as that had driven her into the gutter. “No,” she said at last. “Just sad.”

“Tell me.”

Rose felt awkward now. Foolish that the conversation had taken the turn it had. She shrugged as if doing so would assure Gwen that what she was about to say meant little to her. “My parents worked a bit of land just outside Cold Hollow-that’s a couple miles east, between the King’s Road and Westfield. Lots of rocks and briers but little else. I guess my father tried, but maybe he didn’t know what he was doing, or maybe the land was bad-it looked bad. Maybe the seeds were no good or the weather too cold. My mother made excuses for him. Never knew why, as the only thing I know he ever gave her was blame. Then one day he was gone. He just left and never came back. My mother said it was because we were all starving and he couldn’t take seeing us die. I guess she saw it as his way of saying he loved us. I saw it as just one more excuse-the last one at least.”

Rose felt Gwen’s hand rubbing her arm under the blanket, those dark, almond-shaped eyes looking so soft and kind. Gwen was being so sympathetic. She expected a horrible tale, and Rose felt bad she had nothing awful to give-nothing but the harvest stupidity brings.

“We had nothing after that,” she went on. “My father, who loved us so much, took the mule and the last of the copper. We survived on roots and nuts that winter. My mother liked to joke that we lived like squirrels, but by then I had forgotten how to laugh. She wouldn’t beg and refused to ask for help. She would say things like, ‘He’ll be back. You’ll see. Your father will find work and come back to us with bags of flour, pigs, chickens, and maybe even a goat for milk-you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ I was chewing bark for my dinner when she said this.

Gwen squeezed her hand, and Rose felt even more embarrassed that she was showing her so much concern. Rose also didn’t know why she had started to cry. She didn’t like crying in front of Gwen. She wanted to be just as strong, and crying over something so small and foolish was just weakness, and she hated weakness.

“My mother loved me,” Rose explained. “She was stupid, but she loved me. She gave me what food we found and lied about having eaten. The following winter when we couldn’t find any more nuts or roots, we ate pine needles.

“My mother died from a fever. By then she was not much more than a skeleton.” Speaking about it brought back her face, the sunken cheeks, lips drawn back showing her gums. “It wasn’t the fever that killed her. It wasn’t starvation either. My mother died of pride-stupid, foolish, asinine pride. She actually died of it. Too proud to ask anyone for help. Too proud to admit her husband was a lousy, miserable bastard. Too proud to eat her share of the…”

She lost her voice. It stalled in her throat, which had closed without warning, as if the taste of what was coming up was far too bitter to suffer on her tongue. She took a breath that shuddered its way in and wiped the stripes of tears flowing down her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “She was too proud to eat her share of what little food we had. She told me she had. She swore she did. But every time I complained about being so hungry it hurt, she always offered me a nut or a partially rotted turnip, claiming she had just found two and already ate hers.”

Rose sniffled and wiped her eyes again.

“After she was gone, I left my pride in that little hut and begged my way to Medford. I’d do anything. Once you’ve spent an afternoon chasing a fly around your house for dinner, once you’ve eaten spiders whole and drooled over worms found while burying your mother with your bare hands, there’s nothing beneath you. All I wanted was to live-I’d forgotten everything else. A clod of dirt doesn’t have dreams. A bit of broken stone doesn’t understand hope. Each morning, all I wanted was to see the next dawn. But you changed that.”

Gwen struggled to sip her tea, as she, too, had wet streaks on her cheeks.

“You aren’t like my mother,” Rose told her. “And you aren’t like me. You stand up for yourself and for others. You make the world be the way you need it to. I can’t do that. Jollin can’t. No one can-no one but you.”

“I’m nothing special, Rose.”

“You are. You’re a hero and you can see the future.” They sat for a time listening to the rain drum overhead. The shower had turned into a full-on pour and the runoff a curtain of water. Somewhere a metal pail was making a muffled set of pings, and the road was filling with water as puddles joined together to form rivers and ponds.

“Why don’t we talk about Dixon instead?” Rose offered a sly smile.

Gwen peered at her over the beautiful new cup with a suspicious squint. “What about him?”

“Rumor has it he proposed.”

Gwen looked shocked. “He did not.”

“Etta says Dixon offered to make ‘a proper woman out of you.’”

“Oh … that.”

“So he did!”

Gwen shrugged.

“What did you say?”

“I told him we would be good friends, always. He’s a very good man, but…”

“But what?”

“He’s not … him .”

“Him? Who’s him?”

Gwen looked embarrassed and shuffled her feet under the blanket. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

She shook her head, then covered her face with the blanket. “Maybe he doesn’t even exist. Maybe he’s something I’ve invented, pieced together over the years. Maybe I’m just trying to convince myself he’s real and isn’t just my hope of what is possible.”

“You’re turning away a good-living, hardworking, breathing man for the idea of an imaginary one?”

She peeked out from the folds. “Foolish, huh? Some hero.”

“Well … it’s very romantic, I guess, but…”

“You can say it- stupid . That’s what I’m being.”

“What if this white knight doesn’t ever show up?”

“He’s not a knight. I’m not sure what or who he is, but he’s definitely not a knight. And if he’s not just a figment of my imagination, then he’s coming.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I sent Dixon to bring him.”

“What? How did you-”

“I read Dixon’s palm and saw that he would be the one to bring him here.”

“Wait. I thought this man, this not-a-knight, was just a dream, a fantasy of yours.”

“He might still be.” Gwen paused and looked as if she might stop there, but Rose was not about to let her quit now, not after being forced to vomit up her whole life story.