Gentle, my co-writer and I relied on Google for most of our time-period knowledge. Would love to know what you guys think!
June, 1861
The air is milky, heavy with the kind of humidity that makes it difficult to breathe. Heat that stifles, consumes. Surrounding the Mitchell Estate Manor, the grass- as green as it may be- was beginning to grow wild, overgrown. With the exception of Mrs. Abernathy, and Beca Mitchell, the stately manor was all but abandoned, and it was beginning to show. Vegetation growing sparsely; the vines were beginning to creep upwards into the coloumns, the garden edibles were being attended to, but the flowers had begun to compete with weeds.
"Your father," Mrs. Abernathy would say, mussing with Beca's dress- too long on her tiny body, there were already several pins valiantly trying to keep it in place- inside of the kitchen. Sometimes it gets lonely with just the two of them. "is out there fightin' the Yankees. Now you just be appreciative that we have all that food out there," She juts her chin in the direction of the bay windows; outlooking the garden and back portion of the wraparound porch. "to ourselves."
Beca frowns. Unhappy with the dress more than anything. "But if the troops come, aren't we supposed to share?"
Something dangerous flashes behind Mrs. Abernathy's eyes. Reserved, and maybe distinctly frightened, but she regains her composure quickly. Straightening herself with one last, firm pat to Beca's shoulders. "Of course we do what we can for our troops. But we hope they have no reason to be coming this way." Beca concedes to this with a slight tilt of her head. The older woman then turns, snatching up the wicker basket from the tabletop behind her and all but shoving it into Beca's ill-equipped hands. She nearly drops it. "Now, go grab what you can out there and I'll show you how to make soup later."
Her frown deepens. But she stomps her way over to the back door and slides outside; the heat was even more suffocating without the buffer of walls. She inhales deeply through her mouth; trying to get a lungful of half-decent oxygen. Far, far off- just very faintly heard- there is gunfire. Booming. They seem to be moving back this way.
The war had been happening for, from what Beca can understand, maybe two months. Her father had immediately deployed; relieving his staff, with his one exception. And leaving Beca.
She always liked the garden. It was a place veiled in magic by a child's eyes. Fairies may hide in the hydrangeas and the plants breathed their own kind of world. Secret, wordless. The kind Beca liked. Words just only ever seemed to complicate things.
It was here, in the garden- while she pulled carrots and turnips from the earth, plucked blackberries from their bushes- that upon Beca's humming, begrudgingly obedient conquest, that she noticed something strange behind said blackberry bush.
She'd taken the grace to pop more than a few into her mouth; her fingertips already caked with dirt and stained. But they dried up on her tongue at the first shock of it. With her knees tucked to her chest, wild red hair strewn about her face, Beca found startling blue orbs staring up at her. Her next initial reaction flares up in her chest at the intrusion.
"Excuse me," She bites out, thickly swallowing the blackberries. "what are you doing in my garden?"
The girl blinks at her a few times; doe-eyes that are flighty, at best. They dart around. "Hiding." She says, after a moment.
Beca knows that there is a fenceline that surrounds the whole magnitude of the Mitchell property. Overgrowing meadows and woodland; an impressive acreage. She knows that there is by no way an accident that this girl stumbled into it, somewhere, that she must have known she was crossing into private property. But she is suddenly much more curious than offended. "From the Yanks?"
The girl shrugs. "From the war."
It sings of a bad idea. Beca can feel it. In the way the humidity is causing the loose strands of her hair to glue to the back of her neck, her temple. Make her sticky. In the enroaching silence that stretches out between them- it feels predatory. Like something settling back on it's haunches, ready to pounce. Beca eyes the house; she knows Mrs. Abernathy will be mad. She is set on her toes just by the idea of seeing the woman moving behind windows, but she takes a few steps backwards, anyway. To make some room if this girl wanted to stand. But she doesn't. She sits for a few moments longer.
"Is your dad in the war?" The girl asks, and Beca glances back at the house. Expecting to see Mrs. Abernathy standing there on the back steps, scowling. She's not there though, so she nods, slowly. "Mine too."
She scuffs her feet through the soil. "What's your name?"
"Chloe. What's yours?"
"I'm Beca." Awkwardly, she gestures towards the manor; the hand not holding the basket. "Would you like to come inside?"
Peculiar things happen when she lets Chloe inside.
Mrs. Abernathy had predictably been quite livid. She reprimanded that Beca ought not to let just anyone into the house, on chance that they could be a Yankee spy, or criminal. But it soon became clear that Chloe was neither of these things, other than a small girl whom had curiously been hiding in the blackberry bushes. Mrs. Abernathy was, of all things, a motherly woman at heart. Though she occasionally had the severity that suggested otherwise.
Her next pressing set of questions had been in the form of wondering where Chloe had come from. She claimed not be from the town a few miles down, and after she'd gotten a bowl of warm, watery soup in her, she confessed to both of her parents being in the war. Mrs. Abernathy was at a loss. She'd set Chloe to bed in one of the many spare bedrooms of the manor, surreptitiously locking the door, and all of the doors in the house, for that matter- and then visited Beca in her own bedroom. The excitement of their unexpected visitor had kept her nerves tittering in her belly, even after her soup, and bedtime tea.
"I can only assume she must be some runaway child," Mrs. Abernathy had sighed, perched against the foot of Beca's bed. Her nightgown long and flowing, lantern in hand. "I'm not sure what to make of it."
"Why doesn't she stay here-?"
"Beca, she is not a stray animal for the keeping."
"Well, if she's telling the truth-"
"And if she's not?" Mrs. Abernathy challenges, eyes glittering in the lowlight. "Then there is a family missing their daughter." Beca, scolded and confused, tucks her knees to her chest in a similar manner to the way Chloe had when she'd found her. The woman had a point. But she believed what Chloe said. Though she must have come from somewhere. "It's a long ride to town," Mrs. Abernathy continues, shaking her head. "and without a stableboy... Your father has sold but all the horses to the war, but I suppose we'll have to make a trip..."
"And?" Beca presses, heart skittering in her chest. Anxious. Anticipated.
Mrs. Abernathy widens her eyes, as though the answer is obvious. "And see if anyone is missing their child."
They spent the next morning and early afternoon traveling into town where, as Beca could have foretold, Chloe belonged to no person- or no person that they could locate, anyway. It had been a long and quiet trip; with Chloe understanding and respecting the necessity of it, all the while being too polite to say what Beca knew she was thinking; that they were wasting their time. Which was true, Beca knew it even before they had set off.
Mrs. Abernathy was in a particularly cranky mood as well. She had to get up likely just before the crack of dawn to move Winnie- the only Clydesdale and horse left on the estate- and get her hooked up to the wagon all on her own. It was a single wagon so it was quite cramped with the three of them on there, and Winnie's pace had been quite slow. Father used to have a larger one that could room four or five people, but he had sold it along with the other Clydesdale and horses to the war. He claimed that they could always buy more when he returned, but for now it was safer to have the money without the fuss. Beca was dismayed because he had also sold her Sunshine, much without her permission, of course. "She's such a kind tempered and brave girl," He'd assured her while she bawled, with snot dripping into her mouth, watching as the army man lead her away. "Don't you want a soldier to rely on her?"
He was never one for comfort.
And so they'd came and went, with the same mystery child they had when the sun rose that day. Mrs. Abernathy had taken her opportunities; she'd bought some more yarn, and soap, and stopped at the Allen's- their neighbourly estate- for a good deal on some game. The two children assisted in her removal of horse from cart, Beca pleasantly happy with guiding the animal back to it's corral.
Inside, Mrs. Abernathy had hummed and hawed, standing in the foyer with her brow furrowed, observing the two children she now appeared to have under her care. At the end, she'd decided it was the 'Christian thing to do' to keep Chloe in her care until further notice. It was the war, after all. An orphanage didn't need another child.
"You are to assist in chores, you hear me? And no mischief," One wagging finger flicking between the figure of both children. "You will be held under the same account as Beca."
Chloe nods fervantly, her lips pressed together in a thin line to keep her excitement from breaking her cheeks. Big blue eyes probe for Beca's, and she finds them; Beca not bothering to hide her grin. It would be awfully great to have some company that wasn't Mrs. Abernathy.
They eat the smoked rabbit Mrs. Abernathy had gotten from the Allen's for supper, alongside a berry salad from the bushes. And then they boil several pots of water for the tub, while Beca cleans up the dishware. It's dark enough to need a lantern by the time it's finished, but she wanders up to her bedroom in the black, knowing full-well that Mrs. Abernathy would want her to get ready for sleep. She can't imagine that the woman would want this excitement interrupting their day-to-day lives for too long.
She knows the home as surely as the back of her hand. Every arc and curve of the staircase- though she keeps one hand on the railing, feeling the smooth wood under her palm. She travels across the upper landing, knows which doorknob on the left enters into her room. It's only once she's in there does she light a lantern before she changes into her nightgown. She's actually about to exit again, lantern in one hand, when her bedroom door swings open and nearly hits her in the face.
"Oh, Beca dear, I'm so sorry." The older blonde woman has her own lantern, and leaves no time bustling into her bedroom to tear through her drawers and grab another outfit of sleepwear. "I suppose you and Chloe will need to share now."
They had to share a great many things now, this was true. Food, clothing, responsibility. Beca didn't mind. She was fascinated by the fire-haired girl, who had appeared seemingly from thin air, into her fairytale garden. Though Mrs. Abernathy was willing to be accomodating, she was still wary. She continued to lock Chloe's door, just in case. To which Beca felt bad about, though she wasn't sure if Chloe was aware- she just knew that she would hate to wake up and feel like a prisoner trapped in a room. Especially if she had to use the water closet at all during the night.
Chloe easily sifted into their life, however. She picked fruits and vegetables from the garden when asked, the two of them pumped water from the well, and assisted as well as they could with helping Mrs. Abernathy keep the estate clean. They swept the porch, dusted the house, and on the occasions that they were allowed to play, they would romp in the meadows making crowns and bracelets of flowers, or giggle behind closed doors.
The manor, which Mrs. Abernathy had once described as having 'a disgusting amount of space', had always been sufficient enough to feel as Beca's castle. One she knew all of the best hiding spots in. That's why she always won hide-and-seek. There was one rainy afternoon; the gunfire couldn't be heard and the drizzle had remained all day; Mrs. Abernathy had showed them how to make stew earlier, and Beca had her music class already- the woman had fallen asleep on the loveseat.
It was Beca's turn to hide. She'd left Chloe upstairs to count to sixty, and Beca had galloped down the stairs, towards the back hallway, planning to hide in the study. Stifling her laughter, she'd wrapped herself up behind the curtains, and stood there, listening to the rain and her own breathing for a few minutes. But among listening to those things, she decides that this isn't a well-enough hiding spot; she should have instead hidden in the broom closet in the music room at the back of the house.
Willing herself to stay silent, Beca creeps out from behind the curtain and across the study, letting only the grey light of the room wash over her. With her breath in her throat, she unlatches the study door and carefully peeks out of the sliver, looking for any sign of Chloe, but there's none. Pressing the back of her hand against her mouth she steps out into the hallway- out of the curtains of the study. She blinks. The grey light, and the rain. She supposes maybe she'd only imagined it to a great degree, only thought about doing it. She creeps forwards some more, a little faster, worried now that she'd killed some time lost in her thoughts. She opens the door a crack, checks both ends of the hallway for Chloe, and steps out when she knows the coast is clear.
Out of the curtains of the study.
Her heart stutters and flips in her chest. She is less likely to believe she'd only fashioned this in her mind a second time. Crossing the room in quite a haste this time, Beca much less carefully opens the door. Both sides are clear. She steps out.
Into the study. There's a clamminess on her palms and she's not certain if she's running hot. She throws open the door this time, and Chloe's there on the other side, one tentative hand slightly in the air where the knob should be. She's startled. Her mouth a small 'o' as her eyes dart up to meet Beca. "Found you?"
"Do I have a fever?" Beca demands, snatching up Chloe's hovering hand and planting it firmly against her forehead. She looks at Beca as if she'd sprouted a second head.
Long lashes blink over her eyes rapidly, her wild red hair tangled down her back. But she considers Beca's skin under hers for a inarguable moment, before saying. "No." She sounds frightened and confused, which Beca is immediately sorry for. She hadn't meant to panic her. "Though you are a bit sweaty, I'll admit." Her heart was finally starting to slow down in her chest, regain it's pace. She lets Chloe's hand go, running her tongue over her lips and uncertainly raising the back of her own hand to pat around her forehead. It's no use, though. She herself feels as if she's on fire. "What happened?"
"Nothing." Explaining it will sound like a silly lie. Chloe shakes her head, eyes wide.
"No, tell me."
"You won't believe me." She mumbles, drawing her gaze away from those blue orbs and around the grey room. It felt like they were being watched. Or at least, Beca felt that way. She gets a chill down her spine.
"I will." Chloe grabs both of her hands in hers, her assurance firm and earnest. Clawing at Beca to open up. She sighs.
"It's just the strangest thing, is all. I couldn't leave this room."
"What do you mean?"
"Everytime I tried to leave, I kept coming back." Beca carefully pries one hand out from Chloe to point at the curtains. "Over there." She then thinks of her prayers. "It's like I was in limbo."
A small crease forms between Chloe's brows, the moment before she really lets her eyes roam the room. Maybe she feels it too, Beca thinks. The presence. "Maybe there's something in here you're supposed to find," Chloe offers after a few moments.
"Like what?" She counters, pulling her second hand away. Chloe shrugs.
"I don't know, lets look."
"This is my father's study." Beca points out; he'd always told her no snooping. He'd said it was rude.
Chloe shrugs a second time, dropping her eyes to the floor as if she'd just been scolded. "Okay, then we won't."
But the idea, that maybe there was something in here she was supposed to find. Some otherworldly incident trying to show her something, piques her interest. As Chloe turns her back to leave, Beca asks her quietly to wait. Chloe pauses, turning around with a new, interested spark in her eyes. "Maybe we will look, for a bit." She hedges through the still-present feeling of sin. It's not as if her father is here, and he would never need to know. Although, what it is she may have to be looking for is left more to confusion. But she trusts that if something was keeping her here, that she would just know when she finds what she's ought to. Intuition in the base of her gut. Magic. Some way, she would know once it's found.
Chloe keeps to the door, with Beca's guidance, one ear pressed against the wood. On edge, waiting to hear Mrs. Abernathy stirring somewhere in the house again.
Beca began rifling through bookshelves, uncertainty becoming a beast in Beca's bones. With each shelf she scales, an anger builds, teetering enough to spill over at her. Exhaustion that threatens to flatten her for an unknown reason. Using her whole body, she slams shut a desk drawer with a grunt of irritation. It's enough of a force to cause Chloe to jump where she's perched near the door, glancing back at Beca, concern twisting her features.
Beca's body is taut. Her tiny little hands ball into fists at her side, and as she meets Chloe's worried gaze, her foolishness hits her. But the anger had overtaken her momentarily; the idea that she had simple imagined her inability to leave seems more plausible by the second, and her admittance has less and less value. "Sorry." She murmurs, doing what she remembers her father had told her once; breathing in long and deep through her nose, and letting it out between her teeth.
"I could have been wrong." The weight of guilt is present in the timbre of Chloe's voice.
Beca lets her eyes slip shut, for a moment. "Just listen for Mrs. Abernathy, please."
The red-haired girl does as she told, silently pressing herself back into the door. Beca's father's desk was littered with literature; books and syllabus' for university teaching. Sighing, her fingertips drip down to the topmost drawer, the only one Beca had yet to pry through. Heavily, she drags it open. A dusty, handheld mirror lay inside, among other junk. Beca sifts through it halfheartedly, moving aside the mirror and pausing thoughtfully when her fingers trace the leather binding of a novel. Curiously, it feels warm to the touch. She pulls it out of the drawer and fiddles with the weight in her hands. It's not a novel.
Beca had turned the cover back, seeing the handwritten scrawl and knowing immediately what it was, who's it was.
"My mother's." She explains to Chloe, after they'd vacated the study- where they were supposed to be off-limits- and sitting cross-legged in their dresses atop of Beca's bedspread. "Her diary."
Beca had been given things that were her mother's before. Jewellery, dresses to grow into. But this was intimate; it was her mother's hand, thoughts, her phantom voice. This was a piece of her mother that she'd never gotten a chance to know.
Beca had squirreled away; even chancing a beating with the broom by lighting her lantern once Mrs. Abernathy had gone to bed to sit up and read about her mother's life. She had been happy and in love with her father. She spoke of him romantically, in ways Beca wasn't sure even existed. With light and kindness. She spoke of her childhood growing up in what was now Atlanta, with her family, a part of the church. She wrote of Christmas. She wrote of the love she felt to be carrying a child in her womb.
Beca had to stop reading then. It made her cry. She tried skipping ahead, but when the pages turned blank, she only cried harder. She'd fallen asleep clutching the leatherbound journal in one hand, tucked under the pillow.
There had been one evening in the deep of the summer where it had still been so hot that Beca wished she could crawl out of her skin, even with her breeziest nightgown on, it was entirely too much. She had her window open, but the draft of night air did not do much to ease her trouble. The sweat beaded on her forehead and ran down the crook of her spine, and she'd tossed and turned in the dark until she could take no more. It was against the rules, but she stood from her bed and decided upon roaming the house, hoping to find something that could help. The heat had her restless.
Inevitably, among her tiptoing, she crossed the hall where Chloe's room was, and was stunned to find the door slightly ajar. Now, perhaps Mrs. Abernathy simply forgot to lock the door this evening, but she had always been so vexatious about it before. Much like the supernatural tug she felt the first time she'd found Chloe crouched behind the blackberry bushes, she just had an inkling that that wasn't so. It didn't seem likely that Mrs. Abernathy would let up now. Perhaps Chloe had learned to undo the lock with a pin, the way Beca knew was possible, but she herself could never figure out.
Beca had tapped the door lightly with one finger, gently urging it open, half-surprised to find Chloe's bed empty. She was up and roaming the house as she was. Something that Beca feared if Mrs. Abernathy became wise enough to find out would result in Chloe's expulsion from the estate. And that was a dreadful thought, it made Beca's heart stutter and her stomach fall into her knees. But she thinks it would maybe be in their best interest if Beca didn't go looking, if she simply returned to her room, as she was supposed to, and sweat out the night.
The next afternoon, while Mrs. Abernathy had assigned Beca to help Chloe learn how to read sheet music, she'd leaned into the girl's ear when the woman had left momentarily.
"When you're up in the night," She whispers with one hand cupped over her mouth, trying to keep the secret in. "you should shut your door, so that if by chance, Mrs. Abernathy crosses your room, she won't know." Beca sits back, resuming her nonchalant composure. Chloe sits back, blinking, surprised that she'd been caught in the act. Beca doesn't ask if this was the first time she was up and about. She knows it's not. Something that was suddenly so clear, the second she laid her eyes on that gaping door. She also doesn't care to ask how Chloe had gotten out. Beca twists her mouth, checking for any sign of Mrs. Abernathy's return, before whispering. "You could get a switching."
Chloe blushes. Beca doesn't get a chance to say anything else, but she hopes that tonight Chloe will pray for her forgiveness. She thinks it's okay if she doesn't, though; Beca can pray for her.
"When's your birthday, Chloe?" Mrs. Abernathy queries one suppertime, fork hovering over her greens. Chloe's eyes shift from Mrs. Abernathy, to Beca, and back again. She swallows thickly.
"I don't know, really," She admits. "I'm not certain."
The two other women at the table gape at their recent visitor. The dusk was a blue-grey that could use a lantern, but no one had decided to get up to light one yet. That made it difficult to see the expression on Chloe's face, but her words were all the same. "Did you not celebrate your birthday?" Mrs. Abernathy sounds aghast. Beca chimes in at the same moment;
"Didn't your parents-?"
Chloe shrugs. It was her answer to many things.
And whether or not she was lying could always be up for assumption, but one thing was certain; they never got an answer out of her.
As winter began to roll itself over the country, Beca was beginning to wonder if the war would ever end. Mrs. Abernathy had her reading sheet music for Christmas, and she had written several letters to father that had gone unanswered. For all Beca knew, he had been blown to dust by the Yankees.
It was strange to think Chloe had been a part of their life for six months now. There were still times Beca crept up in the night, down the hallway to see if Chloe was in her room. Sometimes the door was closed, a few times, it wasn't. Once, Beca had even gone looking for her; plucking carefully through the manor, room by room; except for the ones near Mrs. Abernathy's abode. She'd gone to the study, the music room; everywhere, every water closet, even- but she hadn't been able to find Chloe. She'd given up and returned to bed.
Sometimes, she also curled up with her mother's diary. Reading and rereading.
"Can you teach me?" Chloe had asked, sliding onto the piano bench next to Beca.
"How are you with your sheet music?"
"Well, better." Chloe frowns. "Not as good as you. But I just want to play."
Beca is uncertain if Mrs. Abernathy would allow her to do it. She hadn't been allowed to touch the piano until she could read every single note on the sheet music without question, without a second thought, until it was as natural to her as the Queen's english. But Chloe's eyes are so imploring, as if they'd been set in her skull with the sole purpose of not allowing any person to ever say no to her. So Beca concedes to taking a chance at punishment, on the account that it was still learning- for the borh of them- more than it was breaking any rules.
So Beca shifts on the piano bench; stiffly watching for the woman of the house, but when she didn't come, she began to show Chloe the use of the piano. How the ivory keys coordinate with the sheet music, slowly playing the first few chords of Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire for her, observing gently as Chloe hit a few wrong keys, struggled with moving her fingers the way they ought to. That was the same way Beca was struggling. Her fingers were too short; hands too small to naturally hit the keys.
If Mrs. Abernathy ever catches on, she does not appear to mind, because she never makes an entrance.
On Christmas morning, there is a frost that kills many of the things in the garden, which is unfortunate. The peaches and most berries had since perished from the cold. Thankfully, Mrs. Abernathy had sent the two of them out there the afternoon before to harvest vegetables for Christmas dinner, so that the stress of doing it would be out of the way.
Though they wouldn't be able to make it to the morning mass in town on time, Mrs. Abernathy still carted up Winnie at the crack of dawn and had the pair of them wear their best Sunday dresses, and file into the wagon. It was incredibly chilly, so Mrs. Abernathy had permitted that they tow along one of the less fine wool blankets from storage for the three of them to huddle under on the trip. By the time they made it to town, mass was over, even if the church was still open. They'd stopped by to let Winnie rest a short amount, and they had said their graces and ate some of the dry buns the church had to offer them, alongside a flavourful soup that Beca thought was quite good. Even if the majority of the current occupants of the church were the homeless, or the desolately poor. Beca felt sorry for them, but their good spirits were as high as anyone's.
They carted off again to visit Mrs. Abernathy's mother; whom lived in a cramped townhouse. Mrs. Abernathy had explained on the cartride that they ought not be afraid of her mother and it would be a short visit, but they were to say their prayers there and have a short, familial service. It was the first time she'd heard anyone call Mrs. Abernathy by her real name- Gail- and they'd met her sister Maryanne as well. She had another sister who wasn't present, and a brother who was, of course, in the war.
Mrs. Abernathy's mother was a God-fearing woman, who did what God-fearing women do; fear God, and His divine judgement. There were depictions of Christ crucified against the cross in every room of the house, and she lived as straight and proper as anyone Beca had ever seen. It made her nervous. She began to worry slouching was a sin, when the elderly woman scowled and asked Gail if she beat her at home when she slouched. Beca had gotten a reproving look and straightened up immediately, while Mrs. Abernathy explained she was trusted not to beat them, or at least not at the slightest infraction.
The elderly woman had gifted Beca with a copy of the Bible- though she already had one- upon their departure from her shabbled little town home. The woman had ignored Chloe completely, for reasons Beca didn't understand. In fact, the other girl had even wandered off while Beca hadn't been paying any notice.
She'd found the girl sitting on the small back patio, sitting a creaky wooden chair, staring at her intertwined fingers of her hands. Chlod had appeared flushed now, clammy, wide eyes that could be harbouring something near fear. Or panic. Or perhaps she was simply overwhelmed; claustrophobic and running a fever, after having spent too much time in the crooked house. Perhaps she was nervous.
Mrs. Abernathy had even acknowledged her mother's neglect of notice for the red-haired girl as they rode back.
"My apologies, Chloe," She'd said, her mouth a thin, conciliatory line as she peeks over her shoulder at the two girls. "My mother is a stern, strange woman." It was left in the air, unspoken but known, that the possible reason for the elder woman's blatant disregard was because Chloe was without name. Mrs. Abernathy was not from an especially prominent family; but they were proud, and respected. Chloe could truly be anyone.
Other than being the 'girl from the garden who stayed with the Mitchell's', Chloe was, in fact, no one. She hadn't even a last name she was willing to share, but not for Mrs. Abernathy's lack of trying.
They return home at dusk, the Allen's due to come over for supper with a cooked wild turkey, or duck, or some other bird one of their sons had hunted for the occasion. And so they'd lit the many candles and lanterns, and Mrs. Abernathy was on her toes watching for their wagon to come hobbling down to the estate. Beca and Chloe had tended to the blackberry pie; it was still warming in the oven when the Allen's knocked on the front door of the manor and Mrs. Abernathy bustled off to greet them.
"Bumper is horrible," Beca leans into Chloe's ear while she gets the chance. She hadn't even been aware that her neighbour's would be joining them for Christmas dinner until that very morning, and she hadn't gotten a chance to warn Chloe yet.
Robert- or Bumper- was the youngest of the Allen boys, and still two years Beca's senior. He was a deplorable in Beca's opinion; a lad who always thought he was funny, and important, but wasn't so. The Allen's were all hunters; the eldest boy, Oliver, and their father were both in the war, but Mrs. Ruth Allen, Charlie, and Bumper all file into the manor, stomping their boots. Ruth was a loud woman; in personality and presence.
Short and plump, with a large fish-mouth and a flamboyant, feathered hat. She was certainly her own person.
They brought with them roasted quail, and wine. Beca and Chloe pulled the blackberry pie from the oven when Mrs. Abernathy instructed them, and Beca had sat at the large dining room table- which could fit fifteen, at maximum- with a painted smile on her face as she pretended to listen to the Allen boys speak, which mostly consisted of hunting. Mrs. Abernathy and Mrs. Allen had been speaking animatedly among each other since they had sat down, paying no mind to the children. Chloe had brought her plate into the kitchen, eyeing Mrs. Allen's empty wineglass as she went on her quiet way. Beca had watched her intently; as she slipped away and disappeared from sight, battling the urge to get up and follow. Nowadays, she could feel Chloe's absence as a tangible being inside of her chest; gnawing, unpleasant, and occasionally saddening. It's the same reason why she can see Chloe's silhouette take form as she returns to Beca's line of sight, under the archway to the kitchen. There's something in her hand. Beca can see the whites of her eyes glowing against the dark, not quite part of the soft lamplight yet.
Gently, she comes up behind Mrs. Allen; a softly furrowed brow that mirrors the tone of her voice. "More wine?" She offers innocently, raising the hand holding the bottleneck slightly. Mrs. Allen yelps; effectively silencing the table as one hand shoots up to sit atop a bodacious breast, where deep down, a heart must have skipped a beat. Even Beca- who'd watched the exchange take place- jumps in her seat. Chloe remains cool, composed, perhaps only a little bit concerned that she'd caused a fuss.
"Oh, my dear," Mrs. Allen chuckles to herself. "You're as fleet-footed as a feline. Yes, please." She raises her glass and Chloe obediently pours, before offering the bottle to Mrs. Abernathy. "A new servant girl? She's lovely."
Mrs. Abernathy titters nervously, taking a long sip from her glass before answering. Beca thinks it's an odd reaction. "No," She appears embarrassed to not have mentioned it earlier, to not have mentioned Chloe. "It is actually a very peculiar story." Chloe sets the bottle down between the two women and whisks off politely. Beca can imagine she may be uncomfortable being the center of attention, or with being mistaken for a servant. Mrs. Abernathy rehashes the story, and their trip to town, as well as the subsequent confusion. "So I suppose we are keeping her here. I wouldn't wish it upon any child to be sent into an orphanage."
"How queer," Mrs. Allen muses- and then that is that, and afterwards, they begin talk of the war.
A letter reaches the Mitchell estate manor not long after Christmas, and it's a relief to Beca to have word that her father is out there somewhere, safe. It's the first letter she'd gotten since not long after the war had began; since Chloe had come to them. To her glee, he even permits Chloe express permission to stay with them. Mrs. Abernathy claims that she had expected as much- and she no longer feels the need to lock Chloe's bedroom door at night anymore.
Beca still believes she wanders the house after dark. She knows she does. There had been an evening in which Beca laid awake, and when she crept to Chloe's bedroom, and braved pushing the door open, she even saw that the bed was empty again. Beca had lurked through the manor in the night, trying to find Chloe, to see where it was that she had gotten to at such an hour. But she couldn't find her. And so, she had given up, returning to her bedroom. She trusted Chloe would be there in the morning; and she was.
"Where do you go in the night?" Beca queries silently, swiping the broom back and forth aimlessly across the front porch. Chloe was following her trail.
"I don't go anywhere."
Beca knows it for truth, and that's good enough for her.
