Three years later, Anne graduates with a degree in architecture and marries Matthew. Their children follow quickly after, Richard in 1950 and Daisy in 1952. Richard cries when Thomas visits, but Anne lifts the child from the cradle and holds him, calming him, while Thomas kisses his forehead. She wants to ask him so many things, but he vanishes before she can do more than tell him how good it is to see him. She wonders why he has been so quiet. When Daisy is born, Matthew has been in Korea for a few months. Anne is lonely. When Thomas appears to greet her daughter, Richard hides behind her legs.
"There's nothing to fear. Thomas is an old friend."
He smiles as he bends low to kiss little Daisy's forehead. She coos and tries to suck on his nose. He laughs.
"She must be hungry."
"Shall I leave so you can feed her?"
"No, you don't need to go." She picks up the little girl and settles into the couch to nurse. Richard hides behind it.
"Oh, Rich...come now..."
"I was not Dexter's favourite apparition, either, was I?"
"No, you weren't." She adjusts the squirming baby, "Where have you been? With Matthew in Korea...I would like your company."
"All you need to do is ask, dear Anne. But I am not all-knowing, not even death has brought that. If you wish me here, you must make that known."
"Have you been watching?"
"Yes. I watch you. I watch Dexter. I watch May. I watch the elder Richard. And I watch your parents, your children, and your grandparents."
"That's a lot of people to watch."
"It is."
"Is something wrong? You seem distant."
Thomas nods, "There are men approaching the house. I can hear their footsteps."
Anne puts Richard down for his nap and nestles Daisy beside him. She goes to the door. Two officers approach the house. Anne knows exactly what this means and she is pale as she opens the door.
"Mrs Drake? I regret to inform you..." She does not hear the rest of what he says, clutching the doorframe for support. She faints; one of the officers catches her.
Thomas softly closes the nursery door. Daisy wakes and begins to whimper. Thomas strokes her back and sings to her, his voice so soft that he bends down only inches from her to make sure she can hear. She settles and sucks on her hand, falling back asleep.
A half hour later, Anne, trembling, enters the nursery to find Thomas still sitting beside the children, "You knew."
"I always do."
"When they happen, or before?"
"Time is...unclear to me. I prefer to stay in the timeline I know. I could move ahead, but I do not want to forget when you are. I know when they happen."
"How long has he been gone?"
"Just a few days before Daisy was born."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you needed your strength to bring her forth."
"But after..."
"Your children needed you. And he was not going to change."
She sits beside him, "Have you been watching them this whole time?"
"Yes."
"Thank you. I should call Mom."
"Perhaps. But if you need this to be only your grief for just a little longer, it will do no harm to wait."
"And the ghost would know about death, wouldn't he?"
"Quite intimately."
"Will he watch them like you watch us?"
"Those with nothing to atone for do not linger."
"What comes next? Will I see him again?"
"I don't know. I haven't felt worthy enough to try. Eliot thought he would see those who had gone before him. He stayed only long enough to speak to me after his death."
"You saw...?"
"Yes. I was on the island."
"Oh god...have you told anyone else?"
"Edith knows I saw, but I have told her nothing else. She does not need to know how he died."
"And what if I want to know what happened to Matthew?"
"They will tell you, in time. But it will be incomplete. A story told for comfort, not for details. Trust me, my darling Anne, what they tell you will be enough. The precise manner of these things...is not something you want to know."
Anne leans on him the same way did when she had received news of Eliot's death, "I hate crying."
"I know." Tears streak her cheeks and she hastily wipes them away, "Don't. You need not worry about appearances. You just received word your beloved husband is dead. Grieve, and grieve deeply."
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, "I'm sorry I told you I didn't want to see you."
"My dear girl, that should be the farthest thing from your mind right now."
"But I don't want to think about..."
"Say it. It will help it be real. And it will help you start to grieve."
"He's dead. Matthew is dead." He is right. The sobs come quickly. She wants to ask him if he saw what happened, but knows that if she does, she will also want to know more. And she trusts when he says she will not want to know those details once she has heard them. So she does not ask.
Thomas, however, cannot erase the scene of her young husband's death from his mind. There was a hill, and orders to take it, and everything went terribly wrong. He did not die quickly, as Eliot had, and in his final moments, Thomas sat with him, held him, and prayed for it to end while Matthew begged for death. The wound would be fatal, one way or another. No surgeons in the world could have stitched together a working body from what was left of his torso. From not far away, there was a crack of gunfire and Matthew fell silent. Looking up, Thomas saw a young soldier. The boy, for he was not much older than one, nodded at Thomas and then jogged away to return to fighting. Both horrified and grateful, Thomas closed Matthew's eyes.
"It's what I told them to do." He turned; Matthew was crouched beside him, "I made it clear that if I wasn't going to make it, I wanted someone to give me a bit of mercy. Learned that watching men die in the last war." He put a hand on Thomas' shoulder, "Take care of Anne, will you? And the children?" Thomas nodded, and he was gone. It felt far too familiar.
Anne's grieving is interrupted by more tragedy when her father is struck by a train at work and dies. They bury him in the family plot before Matthew's body returns home. When he does arrive, there are men in uniform to bear him to his grave. Anne stands beside Maria at the funeral, two military wives widowed far too young. For a few months, May moves into Anne's home to help with the children and take care of the chores. When she leaves, the house is far too quiet. Anne returns to work, dropping the children off with Edith during the days. But she has few options, even with Matthew's military pension.
To Thomas, these deaths are different than when someone dies from age, as Alan does a few years later, or even the deaths of the children years before. Those deaths were tragic, yes, but not so intentional, so brutal, so violent. Thomas carries memories of these deaths with him as he treks to Elmwood with his family once more to fill one more space in the family plot.
Charlotte wonders why she is keeping her own house, now that her mother is living alone in Brush Park. But she is also not ready to leave it. She talks to Anne, who feels the same way about her own home. She both wants to leave to return to the warmth of her grandmother's familiar house and to desperately cling to the home she and Matthew had only just begun to build.
There are more comings and goings in the family in the next few years.
Dixon marries a lovely young clerk from Hudsons named Harriet.
More children arrive when Eliot's son, Richard Cutler, marries, and then his wife and one of the twins die shortly after birth.
Edith feels the fragility of her own life after Alan's death and, in 1962, when May Ellen, her own granddaughter, becomes a grandmother herself, she yearns for the sound of children in the now quiet house in Brush Park. She offers her home to Charlotte, Anne and her family, and May and her daughter and granddaughter. While Charlotte declines, the other two families accept and Anne's son, now twelve, declares himself the man of the house.