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Chapter 2

It was April when I made the journey to the east coast and May by the time my senses fully returned. I was as weak as a newborn kitten. My aunt tended to all of my needs, much to my embarrassment. She fed me buckets of beef tea until I could handle more solid offerings. Gruel, soups, and chowders gave way to eggs on toast and fishcakes. Just after the toast stage I was allowed more hearty fare and that thoroughly improved my disposition. Especially when I was allowed dessert.

Their maid, Charlotte, cleaned the room and help to change the sheets. She chatted merrily as she did. Her visits were a highlight to my otherwise dull day. She wasn't a very pretty girl nor was she intelligent or engaging, but she was sweet and kind. Sometimes I could hear her chirping to herself as she cleaned. She had a romantic understanding with Peter, the man who work in the yard and maintained my uncle's motorcar. He was a nice enough bloke but very short on words. I don't think I've heard more than about a dozen come from him at any given time. I supposed Charlotte speaks his share on top of hers.

My uncle came every night and read, sometimes aloud, the cases he was currently working. Uncle Carlisle had recently taken over the docket of district judge and was very thorough in his research. He was New England born and raised but was educated in Chicago at Loyola as well. The town forgave him for that transgression, leaving to go away to school, after a bit of hard campaigning. He meet my aunt at a tea dance there. It was love at first sight, or so they both said, I never really believed in the phenomena myself. Esme was working as hard as a drudge to be accepted into local society. However she knew, and my uncle would often remind her, she's come from away and always will be. Time was the thing she needed to be accepted by the local women, or at least the ability to produce a damn fine chowder.

Mid-May we received a telegram stating the both my parents had contracted and died of Typhoid fever themselves. I was inconsolable for days after thinking it was my fault. I thought I had brought the sickness into the house and run away from them. I got myself into such a state that my Uncle Carlisle had to slap me to stop me from screaming. After I calmed and he explained the secondary outbreak that plagued Chicago was not my fault, I was better. Not quite myself for I would never be the same man I was before but I pulled myself into a reasonable facsimile. Carlisle took charge of their estate on my behalf. He arranged all the house contents to be shipped and stored here until such time as I had my own home. The house and my father's legal practice were sold and the money transferred to my name. It mattered not a whit to me but I was then a wealthy man. I never wanted to return to Chicago.

Finally, I was able to stand and walk about my room. I had gained back some of the weight I had lost but I had no stamina. From the bed to the chair by the window was more than enough exercise to tire me. I napped often, in the warm sun that streamed through the window. I got to the point where I napped enough to trouble my nightly sleep.

From my sickbed I had a perfect direct sight line over the high stone wall that bordered my uncle's property, to the upper part of the window of the house next door. I didn't know if the house was abandoned or what the ownership was but during the time I spent supine, I never saw light in any of the four upstairs windows. The curtains never parted when I was looking and no one ever opened them to let in air. When I was sitting in the chair at the window, I had a slightly different view of the house. I could see a sliver of the downstairs windows and the tops of scraggly bushes that seemed to be slowly swallowing the house with ravenous ivy in partnership. The white paint on the house seemed dull and in need of a refresh, like it had seen too many winters without replenishment.

The house made me feel sad but I couldn't quite put my finger onto why I would feel that way about a building I had never entered.

On a particularly warm spring day my uncle borrowed a wheelchair from the local hospital. He and Peter helped me down the stairs to the front of the house. He, once I had been sufficiently bundled by my aunt, took me on a tour of the driveway that lead down to the road. I was able to see the house that had now become my home. It was large but not audacious. It was three storeys high. It was painted a cornflower blue with white trim, My room was on the second floor as was my aunt and uncle's room and the guest rooms. Matching square turrets framed the house at opposite corners. Charlotte had her room in one of those turrets whereas Peter lived in town. I had been at their house for five weeks before I got a real glimpse of Blackberry Lane and the last house at the very top.

Thank you for such an overwhelming response. Have you read anything by MeteorOnAMoonlessNight? She has two stories in progress right now that are well worth a lookyloo, as well as her finished works.

For beachcomberlc, IpsitaC77, Lunabev and JulieToo.

I know it takes a heck of a lot to earn the trust of an New Englander and I hope my little joke regarding chowder hasn't offended.

Thank you for reading.