1863

Elizabeth

Jasper hadn't been my first born child, but he was the first to live. Robert wasn't even my first husband, if I should stay on the topic of 'firsts'. I had tried marrying in love, only for love, but that husband had died of cancer a few days after our first anniversary. I had been only seventeen at the time when I married him, but I knew that he was the only one that I'd ever love that deeply again. His name had been Ethan. Ethan Tyler Hawthorne. He was tall and thin and didn't have the strength of Robert and couldn't come close to Jasper's physical power as he aged. Ethan had been so kind, though, so gentle. I had loved him passionately, yet foolishly. My heart was his and his alone—sometimes it was hard for me to believe that my heart could beat in my own chest when it belonged with Ethan. It was a fairytale romance with a horrific ending.

Ethan left a part of him behind when he died—a son. I was with child when he died, only in the very beginning weeks of my pregnancy. He was the most handsome, most adorable baby that God had ever created. I named him Michael Ethan in honor of his father. There were two years that I had with little Michael, and those two years were so incredibly bittersweet without Ethan to watch his son grow. But, the winter before his third birthday was too harsh for his small body to endure. Burying not only Ethan, but Michael, shattered my heart in an inexplicable way as to where I thought that I'd never be able to move on.

My mother and father didn't try to pressure me into getting married again at first, but I wanted to be a wife. It was what God wanted me to do, I knew. I never was cut out to be a librarian, a teacher, or a nurse like most of my friends ended up being. There were few things special about me, besides what my parents described as an endless patience that I saw through to the end. It sounds like a perfect trait for a wife and mother, no?

I met Robert Whitlock when I was twenty-three and married him when I was twenty-four. He wasn't that much older than I—he was thirty-one on our wedding day—compared to some of my peers that were marrying men twice their age. I didn't love Robert, but he made good money and came from a nice family. The thing that convinced me to marry him was that he lived in Houston, where I lived, so I could be close to my own family.

Jasper was born when I was twenty-five. He was so much like Michael and Ethan. I like to believe that God made him that way so I could still have Ethan with me at all times. Jasper was a miracle in a very peculiar way—while most children screamed and cried in the middle of the night, I rarely had a reason to complain about Jasper. He was inquisitive, and while Robert found that childish and annoying, I found it endearing. It was easy to love Jasper because Jasper found it so easy to love others. Jasper always had a way with people that made him easy to be around.

Of course, though, he was quite…spirited…in everything he did. Jasper studied with a mind that thrived off of the work he was doing, the knowledge he was taking in. He rode his horse, Lightning, with such a peacefulness about him that I would have let him ride all day if he asked me to. Catherine was always his main priority, though—she had him wrapped around her finger and I still think that she never even realized it. I don't know if Jasper could have had a sister that was a better fit to him than Catherine—while Jasper wasn't as lively as dear Catherine was, they were like two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly. He never thought twice about doing all in his power to make her happy and she never took that for granted, never took advantage of her big brother that loved her dearly and cared about her deeply.

When Catherine lost her sight, it was like Jasper lost something in himself as well. While his guard over her intensified, he was not only her brother, but then became her voice. I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive myself that I let Robert walk all over Jasper and Catherine, letting him treat her like she wasn't worth the same amount just because she couldn't see his face and treating him even worse because he had the gall to call him out on his insensitivity and cruelty. It's that very same reason, the fact that Jasper would do anything for Catherine and Catherine alone, that I won't tell him what happened to her until he comes home.

She was coming home for summer vacation from Dallas. Oh, how Catherine thrived at that school. Like Jasper, she too loved school and learning, and when she was able to learn not only history, arithmetic, and writing, but then how to live a normal life, she started turning from a girl into a lovely young woman with such a solid spirit that I wanted to cry when I saw her face as she went on and on about how much she loved being at school.

There was also a boy she told me about. His name was Matthew. He wasn't blind like she was, but his sister, Elise, didn't have sight as well, and was the same age as Catherine. Elise would invite Catherine over to her home all the time, and over time, Matthew and Catherine became close friends. He was also willing to tell her what he looked like so Catherine could try and match an image to his face. I found that quite odd until Catherine explained that she wasn't trying to be vain about his looks—she just wanted an image that she could match to his voice when she dreamt.

"Deep brown hair," she said the day she came home. "As brown as mahogany wood, but there's also red flecked in it. It only shows in the sun light, though, he says. He's pale, just shorter than Jasper, and very pale skin. Matthew said it was as pale as cream, but I don't believe him. He likes to tease Elise and I a lot like that. Oh, and also, he's got blue eyes. 'Dark, yet icy' were his exact words." I then asked her how she could trust his descriptions of himself. Catherine used to be able to see faint shapes and outlines right after the incident, but even that faded away in time. How could she know he wasn't lying to her? She smiled at me for a moment like the answer was staring me straight in the face.

"I trust him, Mother. He's my friend and companion. Better yet, I am his friend." That was when I was completely convinced that Dallas had been a perfect choice for Catherine. She told me that Elise and Matthew's family had even invited her to stay with them for Christmas. Catherine really was happy there.

She had died a month later. Scarlet fever had been running everywhere, and Catherine had caught it. Somehow, by some cruel act of God, I had lived as well and Catherine had died. Carolina's baby, Sean, had been taken by the fever as well. Burying Catherine had been three, four, five times as hard as watching Michael be lowered into the ground. I had lived thirteen years with Catherine. She had been the perfect daughter, the perfect sister—everything about her from the curls she had gotten from me to her eyes that she'd inherited from Robert to the sweet way she had to make sure everyone around her was smiling, even when she couldn't see the was absolutely perfect. Catherine was an angel in all definitions of the word. She was kind, caring, loved everyone, judged no one, and had a beauty that surpassed her face and clothes.

Then God took her from me just as swiftly as he had taken Michael from my arms. I was left alone in my house in Houston, with only one person that could even begin to sympathize to the sheer torture that I was going through. Catherine wasn't the one risking her life every day, yet she was the one to die young. She wasn't fighting a war, and she had her life sentenced to death decades before where her time should have been. Things surpassed unfair at that point.

Robert sent the two letters that I couldn't bear to send—one to the school for the blind, telling them that Catherine wouldn't return for the new semester, and one to Elise and Matthew, her close friend and the boy that had infatuated her ever-growing heart. They stayed with Robert and I—I wanted them to be close to her family since they were so close to Catherine. Grieving wasn't something you could handle alone. Unfortunately, they had missed her funeral, but I asked Brian to make a dinner for us and their family in honor of Catherine. Alan and Emily had paid their respects, so I saw that it wouldn't be fair if Matthew and Elise couldn't.

They made a small, private service for themselves, myself, their parents, and Robert. There was no minister. All they did was go out to the stables, Catherine's favorite place in the world, and talked about her and how special she was to them.

I feel wrong for not wanting to tell Jasper, but I can't lose a third child. There's no way I'm going to risk him getting killed because he's so distraught over Catherine's death. It's horrible, but I can't go through that again. Never. Again.

God, I hate myself for writing this. Really. I'm not going to explain why I killed off Catherine, though, unless someone asks. But, I was in near tears as I was writing this chapter.

OH: If anyone is seeing any correlation between Esme and Elizabeth, I know there is a lot there, but I created Elizabeth as a character in little one-shots long before I knew Esme's back-story. So. No one gets to yell at me for that.

Reviews, my loves?

Also: if anyone has been counting down, I think you guys can guess what happens in the next chapter... :D