She released another shaky breath then.
“Philip did always have a habit of being right in the end,” May murmured, the words laced with a lifetime’s worth of disappointment. “But I thought I knew better at the time, and the last words I spoke to him were the worst I’ve ever uttered. I woke the next morning regretting them to my core, but when I went to ask for forgiveness . . . a terrible accident had taken place . . . and he was no longer with us. Something broke inside me then, letting in a well of emptiness that I couldn’t fill.”
Violet remembered the stifling fear that had gripped her when she thought that she and her sisters would be separated, a numbing terror that had kept her from moving forward. And she understood why the woman sitting before her seemed to be living so fervently in the past.
“The lonelier I grew, the more I wished that my brother were still here, and I remembered a hushed conversation where Crowley told him that ghosts aren’t made from anger but love. They remain when the people they’ve left behind can’t seem to let them go,” May continued. “And so I clung on. And through all the disappointments, he’s been beside me.”
“You knew he was there,” Violet said, startled by the revelation. She wasn’t admonishing May, was merely shocked that she’d been able to find a way to keep her brother with her. “You did it on purpose.”
“How could I not?” May sighed. “When I never got the chance to let him go in the first place?”
“But you have it now,” Violet said. “You can set them both free.”
May blinked again, lifting her glove to her cheek and staining the lilywhite fabric with tears.
“How can I do that, knowing I’ll be alone?” May asked, her voice so fragile that Violet could hear it cracking into a thousand tiny pieces.
The rosemary notes grew stronger then, and Violet watched as May reached toward her shoulder, as if someone had placed a comforting hand there.
Violet recognized the wealth of longing in that single gesture and struggled to find the words she needed to convince May to let Philip go. If she were asked to cut the only remaining thread that tethered her to Anne or Beatrix, would she have the will to do it?
But then Violet remembered the intricate tapestry that held them all together, the one that tied May to not only Philip and Mr. Crowley but all those souls who wandered about the city in search of the steady comfort of knowing they were moving closer to where they belonged.
She couldn’t turn back now.
“Things are shifting out of place,” Violet murmured as she stepped in front of May and placed her own hand where the woman had been reaching. “I think you may have sensed it.”
May looked startled when Violet’s hand clutched her own, as if she’d been so used to grasping at a memory that the feel of flesh and blood beneath her fingers was a shock. But then her gaze turned upward, and Violet saw understanding there.
“Yes,” May replied. “I noticed after Crowley returned to us. He’d once told Philip that there are consequences among your people when you leave something important undone, and I suspected that might be the case with him.”
“He refused to move forward so that he could be with Philip,” Violet explained. “But in doing so, he’s caused a disruption, one that can’t be mended unless we help him. We know what needs to be done, but if we take that step and Philip isn’t ready to go along with him, they will be separated again, perhaps forever. They’ve been lingering so long in between that the only way to be certain they’ll find one another on the other side is if we can make it so they leave together.”
An icy chill consumed the room then, so cold that the fragrant notes faded entirely and Violet and May’s breath turned into foggy clouds before their faces.
“Why should I be made to choose?” May gasped, crossing her arms over her chest as if the movement would keep her from shattering. “Is their love so much more important than the one that my brother and I share?”
“Of course not,” Violet answered. “Love isn’t something that can be measured and weighed like coins on a scale. This isn’t about deciding which is more important. It’s about trying to bring peace to the dead so that the living can go on.”
“But what about my peace?” May cried. “How can I go on when this is all that I have left?”
Violet tried to wrap a comforting arm around May, but she pushed her aside.
“Please don’t ask it of me,” May whispered, her gaze turning away from Violet and toward the empty armchair once more.
“But . . . ,” Violet began, only to stop when May cut her off.
“Please,” she said again, her tone as cold and icy as the frost that now clung to the windowpanes.
Violet’s mind instantly began to spin faster than a top, grasping at all the things she could say to try to convince the woman sitting before her that she was making the wrong choice.
But the rigid set of May’s jaw and the way she kept her gaze turned away told Violet that their conversation had come to an abrupt end.
“Won’t you talk with me again?” Violet asked. “Brigit can tell you where to find me.”
But May remained silent, her attention already drifting away from the chill of the present and back toward the familiar comfort of the past.
Violet nodded then and began to move toward the entryway, sensing that she didn’t have a chance of reaching May. Not in that moment.
