Zander melted into the crowd, finding Fiona, and Raph went into the house,
And then they were alone, as much as they could be on a grassy lawn with revelers so nearby.
His mother’s hair streamed down her back in a long braid, and her flower crown sat at a crooked angle. Atlas straightened it, then she took his hand and pressed the paper into his palm.
“I’ve put the painting—your inheritance—in your bedchamber. I could have left the letter there, too, but… I caught your father writing it, I think, though I did not realize what he wrote at the time.” She closed her eyes and gripped his hands so tightly he thought his bones might break. Something in her seemed to be breaking. “He knew he was dying in the last months of his life, and he spent as much time as he could with me. But on that day, he’d disappeared. I found him in your bedchamber. I’ve no idea where you’d gone to. But he sat at your desk. Writing. I asked him what, and he said a letter to you. I did not think it odd. He was dying. Naturally, he’d write to those he loved. I—” Her voice cracked. “I did not ask him what about. I asked to stay with him instead. As he wrote.” She pressed her lips into a thin line. “He did not want me. He wanted to be ‘with your spirit’ in your space as he wrote. So I left.”
She opened her eyes, and all the grief he’d thought long banished in the year since his father’s death overflowed there. She mourned still. Perhaps always would. Giving his hands one more squeeze, she released them, threaded them tight behind her back.
“I left him that day. And I cried. Not because he was dying. But because… it was the first time I’d seen true regret in his eyes. He knew he’d not done right by his children. But he’d never…brooded on it. But that day, he looked as if every ill decision he’d ever made weighed down on him.
“And that day I felt every one of my ill decisions weigh down on me too.” She swallowed hard. “I have not been a good mother. A hard lesson to learn in the last year. No, I’ve known it longer. The last year has been a test to see if I can admit it. And change.”
“Mother—”
“Let me speak. Let me apologize. For not seeing your pain. For not caring for you as I should have. For not stopping your father’s excesses. For not even trying to.” She bent her head and hid her face for a long, shaky exhale, and when she met his gaze again, it was teary determination in her eyes. “I’ve always said I’ve lived my life beyond the pale… but now the only place I wish to live is in my family’s hearts. Can you ever forgive me?”
He hugged her, crinkling the letter against her back. “Yes. Of course.”
She gave a watery laugh, clinging to him. “Naturally you do.” She pushed out of the hug and playfully smacked his shoulder. “My lovely lad Atlas, my lonely son. You take too much on, give too much of yourself away. But—” Her gaze fluttered over his shoulder, to the dancers. “Perhaps you will have some happiness now. Perhaps you will no longer be lonely.”
“I won’t. I’m not.” Not anymore.
She kissed his cheek and danced away from him, throwing her arms in the air, her grin as bright as the sun itself.
He would follow her. But not yet. Tossing one last glance at the revelers, he retreated to the side of the house where it cast a shadow over the lawn. He leaned against the old stone of his home and took one deep breath before unfolding the paper, before his father’s handwriting leapt off the path and his father’s voice floated through the air.
My dearest Atlas,
I wish I’d never named you that. It has proved unfortunate foreshadowing, as if I sealed your fate when I chose your name. You were destined always to hold the weight of the world on your shoulders. I do not know why you hide your pain, but I wish you would not, my boy. I hope by the time you read this letter, you’ve let someone in, showed them all. I cannot bear the thought of you remaining so lonely all your life.
All my fault. You ran away to war because of my actions. You ran away to save us because I’d put us in peril.
I’ve had it all wrong. But then you know that. For me, it is a new revelation, one that kills me more than this blasted tumor reshaping my body. I’ve spent my life collecting art, owning it, hoarding it like a greedy dragon. But art is not about owning. Art is about seeing. We make it to understand our lives in new ways, and to show others new ways of understanding. The purpose of art is in the making of it, not the buying or the selling of it. If we always hoard and never create, we never truly see. Not as the artist does.
That’s why I wish you and your brothers and sister to create something, anything, to earn your inheritance. My actions have made you hate something vital to life. I hope that you will discover that art is not life, but that it helps us live it better.
That’s another lesson I learned too late. No matter my talent with a brush, I never became a master artist of life, learning to put more beauty into the world than pain.
But I have high hopes my children will prove true proficients in the art of living and loving.
I hope you are happy, my Atlas. I hope you are whole. I hope you know I love you.
No signature. No need for one.
Atlas folded the paper and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket, right next to his heart. He pushed off the wall and stepped out of the shadow cast by Briarcliff and into the sun.
When he reached the outer circle of merriment around the maypole, he waited until Clara danced by. He caught her and swung her off her feet and in a circle. When he let her feet touch the ground once more, he kissed her, soft and thorough and with everything he was or would be. He kissed her with every note of every song he’d ever written and with the shadows of every nightmare he’d suffered. Or thrust into existence on the fields of Waterloo and the like. He kissed her and kissed her until she pulled away, breathless.
She reached up and rubbed her thumb across his cheek. “You’re crying, Atlas.” Her smile melted away. A sin.
He kissed it back into life then said against her lips. “Not for sorrow’s sake. Not entirely.”
“Are you happy? Because if you’re not, I’ll?—”
“I’m happy. I’m in love with the cleverest, most courageous, most”—he smoothed a hand down her back and cupped her arse—“delectable woman in the entire world. I’ve never been happier in my life.”
“Truly?”
