The suffering would be too much.
Not the children. Not the children.Panic suffocated her as she stumbled back down the stairs and tried to breathe.
Mr. Oswald waited for her. She could not tell if he understood or if he only cared to unravel more secrets, but the rakish grin no longer played at his lips. “If I can be of assistance, you need but say the word.”
“I must find Simon.” The only thing that made sense.
He would know what to do.
He would find John and Mercy. He would bring them back. He would grapple for the pieces and pull everything together. He had to.
“You remain here and wait for him.” Mr. Oswald pulled on his gloves. “I shall hunt after our elusive Mr. Fancourt myself.”
He had no idea what to do.
The last place he should have come was here, among the silent, where no one had answers for him.
But he creaked open the shiny black gate anyway and strode into the St. Bartholomew graveyard. Father’s granite headstone sat among well-trimmed grass, one of the few graves within the shade of the white-flowered hawthorn. The stale, floral scent drifted with the breeze.
Father.He knelt when he should have been strong enough to stand. If only the dead could speak. He needed all the things he’d long despised.
The desk in Father’s study.
The giant squeaking chair.
The man who knew everything, devised every plan, and never questioned himself because he was too confident in what needed to be done.
“I do not know what to do.” As if speaking the words aloud would make it go away. Simon grasped the headstone and squeezed.Father, help me.
Everything was wrong.
He had not enough evidence to charge Sir Walter, and not enough hatred to end the man himself. The house was gone. He had nowhere to take his children. Mother had forsaken him. Society deemed him savage.
Even Miss Whitmore.
She was true, quiet, a gentleness where everything else was harsh—but he had wrought more pain upon her in returning than he ever had in leaving.
The kindest thing he could do was leave her alone.
Father, I am so lost.Simon bent his forehead against the cool granite, mocked by the voice he used to listen to. His own.
He had longed for purpose.
He had believed in a life comprised of something more. Something he could build with his hands that would make a difference.
Everything he’d ever built had fallen apart.
The only difference he’d made was in destroying lives.
W.Standing to his feet, Simon rubbed both hands down his face. He nearly groaned to find his cheeks wet.W. W. W.If Father had written one letter, perhaps there were more. Evidence maybe, locked away in some box or trunk or—
Something jabbed into his spine. “Move slow.”
Tension coiled Simon’s muscles, as his mind sprang into a hundred thoughts of action.Gun.He registered the barrel digging into his coat.Stranger.The voice was low, gruff, one he’d never heard before.
“Carriage waiting outside the gates. Get in.”
Defiance stiffened him. He had better odds of fighting than climbing into some unknown—
