Page 56 of The Dravenhearst Brides
18
March 4, 1911 – June 3, 1925
Beloved Son, Dearest Brother—
Child of God who danced in sunbeams
Child of Earth who sleeps amongst clouds
On butterfly wings, be carried in
Be safe, be loved, be found
What we hold in our hearts shall never be lost
And you, dear child, sleep sound
—Tombstone of Elijah Greenbrier
Itwasthekindof loss that fundamentally changes you. Changes the way your eyes see the world, the way your lungs draw air into your body. The way your very heart beats.
It was the kind of loss that rips through your life without warning, without apology, without sense. The kind that tears you apart from the inside out, creating tiny fissures everywhere, fault lines. And that’s where the grief settles, into those thousand tiny cracks throughout your body. Weighing you down. Everything heavy. Everything aching.
Margot’s legs grieved for Elijah with every step she took; sometimes it was easier to just stay in bed. Her mouth grieved for Elijah with every bite she chewed; sometimes it was easier to just skip meals. Her chest grieved for Elijah with every breath; sometimes she wondered if it would be easier if she just stopped breathing altogether.
She slept more.
Ate less.
Breathed less.
Took up less space, less oxygen. Margot let herself fade. For fourteen years, Elijah had been her mirror. She saw herself only through the reflection of his eyes. And when the mirror disappeared, she went with it. Margot was ripped asunder, a soul adrift.
She’d been drowning ever since.
After the confession spilled out into the night air over a horse pasture in the Kaintuck Bluegrass, she looked at the man sitting beside her. Her eyes wavered, brimming with tears. She refused to blink. For so many years, she’d hidden herself away. She hadn’t said the words, hadn’t known how to ask for what she needed…how to tell her own story. But here it was, out in the open. Taking up space in the distance between her and Merrick. Set free.
“For so many years, it was impossibly hard,” she whispered, voice breaking, “to look anyone in the eye. To wonder whether, when they looked at me, they wished forhim.”
And there it was, the crux of the matter. The horrible, dirty secret she’d carried in her heart for years. If she and Elijah were two halves of the same soul, she was undoubtedly the lesser half. She alone had not been enough for her mother to stay well and alive. She alone was not enough for her father to trust with his business empire.
No, she had to be coddled. Married off. Protected.
Because she was weak.
Because a son would always be worth more than a daughter.
But Margot washere.
She was here, and he was gone. She was supposed to be living for both of them now, but she was too terrified to live at all. Not when every step forward was a step away from him.
Merrick shifted his weight in the grass. He was clearly uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say. Margot had been here before. The impulse to shrink herself back to a manageable size, a neater package, was instinctive.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said.
“I want to say something, but no words could ever be adequate.” Understanding was carved into the somber lines of his face, in the arch of his downturned lips, in the frown lines of his forehead. Tremendous empathy resided in the expanse of his face, but it was the look in his eyes that spoiled everything.
Pity.
