10: NaNoWriMo Week 1

NaNoWriMo here we go! Feeling like I’m off to a pretty solid start and would love to share a little piece of that with all of you. Below is the first few pages of my book— can you guess the genre? (and you can actually try because I figured out how to add comments!!)

I want to tell you where you came from.  Why they will fear you.  Why you will want them to fear you.  I will take you back.  To my beginning.  Or maybe even before— you may one day come to see for yourself that our beginnings are rarely where we start.  Mine though, was with an ending.

“We gather here today to lay to rest a soul burdened with too great a pain for this world.”  The reverend’s imperious tone grated at me, the ache in my jaw a welcome distraction from his words.  Ada’s mother, Misses Yardley, released a long, cold breath beside me, the spindling white air a ghost of her quiet suffering.

I took her hand in mine, squeezing with all my might.  You are not alone.  I will never let you be alone. 

Heavy droplets of rain broke over our shoulders, our shoes.  Trailed down our faces in place of the tears we refused to shed.  The chill clung to us more tightly than the wet, I could feel Misses Yardley shaking beside me.  Though she had more reason for that than the bite of a winter’s morning.

The reverend prattles on, “To have suffering such as hers come to such a swift end is evidence that God is indeed merciful.”

Not merciful enough to grant her a decent funeral though is he? There was not even a headstone to mark Ada’s grave. Only two flowers, one laid down by me, the other by her mother. A rose I had brought specially for Misses Yardley, knowing what it would mean to have something like that for her daughter. If the reverend had ever really taken the time to come and visit Ada, one of his most devout parishioners, had he seen what she was going through... perhaps he would not have thought God so merciful then.  She had been sick ever since she was a child.  Weak, only in the body.  Her mind, her spirit, was stronger than anyone I had ever known.

But her mother had never had the means to take care of Ada.  Misses Yardley had been a widow since I met her and with only a small apothecary as her source of income, they often went with almost no food or heat through the winter.  

The walk back to the house felt longer than it ever had.  It wasn’t the silence, Ada and I had often made this walk without speaking a word.  Without her, it wasn’t simply quiet, but empty. Her absence not a lack of light, but a shadow, absorbing everything warm and happy around us. It felt no different when we arrived home.  Worse even.

“I’ll make us some tea.” I moved towards the stove, but Misses Yardley stopped me, her hand on my arm.

“I won’t keep you dear.  Truly, I wouldn’t stay here a moment longer than to gather her things, if I had anywhere else to go.”

She was right. It took everything in me to stay in this shell of a house. Somewhere I had thought of as home over my own.  

“You’re my family. Whatever comforts you think I have elsewhere is nothing compared to the ill I’d feel leaving you to suffer this alone.” Misses Yardley’s hand clenched on my arm then, a pressure falling upon me as I took her weight.  

Wrapping an arm around her waist, I brought her to the bed she and Ada had shared, placing her gently on the edge.

“Lie back,” with a hand on her shoulder, I guided her down to her pillow, “just rest a moment. Let me get you that tea.” But as soon as she had brought her feet up into the bed, Misses Yardley’s breath steadied, gone right to sleep.  Relief pushed the air from my lungs, her closed eyes giving me permission to release it.  

She had been awake for days, at Ada’s side as she slipped closer and closer to God.  Even after Ada came to rest, she could not.  She was tormented over the cost of even a burial, let alone a marker for her grave.  

All the while I tried to be a steady pillar for her to lean on, so with her rest so came mine.  As quietly as I could, I opened the small chest that contained everything Ada had once owned.  Inside there was a scarf I had given her when we were children. It was tattered now, worn from Ada’s insistence that it go everywhere she did.  I traced the stains and rips, like a map of our childhood together. Memory after memory. And when the tears finally came flooding from me, I pressed it to my mouth to muffle the sobs that might wake the only true family I felt I had left.