The man came just after breakfast had begun.
The new help, who was positively useless at the moment, had put the pot on the kettle and scurried around us, pacing bowls of porridge before our hungry faces. Her name was Clara or something, I didn’t care. I liked our old maid better, the one who practically raised me, but she had grown too old and such tasks were too strenuous for an old woman. So to retirement she went. Clara stepped on the hem of my dress with her dirty shoes and I hissed a warning to which she blurted out a string of apologies before fleeing to the confines of the kitchens. She had a pug nose and freckles across her nose, but still managed to be quite a lovely thing. I hated her.
I sat by the window today, the seat that my brother had taken everyday for all his years here. I took it now since his departure a year ago. It was comforting and I could pretend that he was just running late and I was having a laugh on him. That he wasn’t in the trenches, fighting a war halfway across the world in place that should only be visited for fashion and the Eiffel Tower. He didn’t write to us nearly as much as he should have. But every letter we received was read over and over until the edges were worn and the text smeared from our fingers tracing over the words. He was alive and they proved it and that was all that mattered.
A small insect had landed on one of the window’s flowers. It’s wings fluttered as its little legs caressed the petals. The fragility of both the plant and the butterfly amazed me and I had watched transfixed. I’d never seen one of that coloring and I knew I wanted it. I had made a move to open the window and take it when my mother scolded me for allowing my meal to go cold. Her sharp tones had not reached the small creature but it flew away all the same as if it had been the one gotten on to and not me.
I didn’t like porridge. Not Clara's, at least. Everything she did was horrible. It was much too thick and would stick to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter. Not at all appetizing, but no one else seemed to agree with me. Mother had been right though, my food had chilled and congealed in the process of me not eating it. Well, it was certain I wouldn’t eat it now. Clara could make another. It wasn’t like she had anything else of importance to do.
The kettle keened a high-pitched noise, almost covering the knock on the front door. I was surprised it hadn’t, but callers at this hour? Strange. I remember the look my parents shared before they both rose to greet the guest. Alarm was one word to describe it. Dread, another. I was left alone at the table, stabbing at the thick mixture with my spoon in a “most unladylike manner”, my mother would have said – I’m sure, had she witnessed it. Clara joined me in the room, wiping at the table and I stood, following my parents. I didn’t want to be left with her. Besides, I was too nosy for my own good – a trait my father said all women of this family had.
The man was dressed neatly in uniform, solemn look to match the tense air around him. He placed the letter into my mother’s hands, an apology on his lips. His hat was off his head and held across his chest. He was being polite, they said later.
I stared at the tiles above the doorway, eyes running along the chipped squares, once so perfect. I didn’t hear them open the letter but the sound of my mother’s wails was enough to tear away my attention from the decorative stonework. I needn’t ask what was the matter. It was obvious.
My beloved brother was dead. Did he cry out? For our mother? For the almighty god above? I could taste the salt on my cheeks. My brother was gone. Now he was just another body on the ruins of a battlefield, among many. We couldn’t bury him. His grave would be without.
I turned away, ready to escape to my room, but arms awaited me. Clara had me trapped in an embrace. But I hated her! Now more than ever! She didn’t know my brother, not like I did. She did not have right to look so sad. But her grip was persistent and I couldn’t rid myself of her. And so my resistance died down as my sobs picked up.
I don’t remember how long we stayed that way.
Or what happened next.
