Anyone know where the last month went? Anyway, I'm back, hopefully more regularly, but no promises. I'd much rather write for you than clients, but alas, money is the root of all evil...

1938

Rilla

The hospital had all the charm of a raw herring. The combination of vinyl chairs, weak tea, and inedible food did nothing to shift her opinion. So, it was natural that watching Ken with Sissy through the partition glass, she felt uneasy. Ill, even. Sissy was dying, possibly, and she couldn't let on to the other cherubs, and all anyone could do about it was read her little girl some story by an unknown author about some dwarves and the friend they went adventuring with.

'All right?' said Ken, rejoining Rilla on her side of the glass.

'Mm,' said Rilla, because words were beyond her. It was possibly not the most catastrophic situation she had ever found herself in, visiting her polio-raddled child in hospital at the height of a pandemic, but it was surely high up the list.

'I feel useless,' she said, 'and hospital ditto doesn't agree with me.'

Ken hummed in his turn and thumbed circles against her hand. 'I know,' he said.

Ken

Contrary the belief of assorted Blythe brothers, Kenneth Ford was not an idiot. He would never have got so high up the hierarchy of The Toronto Star had this been demonstrably true.

Take, for instance, the curious case of Cassandra Hargreave. In a truly probability-defying stunt she had persuaded the cherubs to go with her for a canteen lunch this last half hour, and Sissy's doctor, observing them, had remarked, 'Your sister is very good with her nephews. You must be glad to have her here.'

'Very glad,' said Ken mechanically, not thinking, not really, because Sissy was sick and her iron lung rattling and clattering away.

'They look like her, don't they?' said the doctor, jolting Ken to attentiveness.

'The little ones, I mean,' said the doctor, mistaking Ken's surprise for confusion. 'Your older boy now, he looks more like your wife's sister, don't you think? All that gold hair.'

For a fraction of a second, and it was only a second, Ken couldn't place who the doctor meant. But then it came home to him that this alien doctor, who knew nothing about their family except that they had a sick child, had looked at Cass with the cherubs and Persis with Jims and had put two and two together to make five. It took another fraction of a second to decide that five in this instance was the convenient answer to the vexed question of two plus two.

'You'd be surprised how often we get that,' said Ken with his most practiced smile, because whatever his opinions on the subject of Miss Hargreave, the fact was that she had persuaded his children to eat, was presently minding them so he need not, and said children adored her. And frankly, unpacking the whole sorry lot here to this idiot of a doctor amidst the vinyl chairs, weak tea, and inedible ditto was the greater of assorted evils.

No, Ken Ford was not an idiot, and he knew by now to a nicety what early pregnancy looked like on his wife. So he did not believe her when she passed the latest of so many symptoms off as tiredness, but rubbed circles into the back of her hand. The hospital, with Sissy in her lung close by, wasn't the place to unpack that, either.

Sissy

'We wanted you to know first,' said Mum as she tucked Sissy into bed. This ritual was, in Sissy's private opinion, more inane than it had previously been by virtue of the fact that she had not left the bed for any reason beyond sheer necessity since her return to Ingleside.

Now, snug under Great-Grandmother Blythe's piecework, Sissy squinted up at Mum and said, 'Gertrude Grant said I nearly killed you.' She bit her lip too hard and tasted the sharp copper tang of blood. Behind Mum, Dad scowled.

He sat down on the bed, and stroking Sissy's hair said, 'No one's going to die, seraph-mine. Or even,' with a look at Mum, 'nearly die. Far too much of that going around lately.'

'Promise?' said Sissy.

'I promise if you promise,' said Mum. 'I couldn't face that again, darling.'

Promises all round. Sissy snuggled under the blanket. It smelled faintly of lavender and old women. It did not mix well with the bloody tang of Sissy's mouth.

Mum said, 'And you're still my favourite daughter.'

'I'm your only daughter,' said Sissy.

'No danger there,' said Dad. 'Fords almost never land daughters. You weren't half hard-won.'

Rilla

Ken said, 'I meant it about not dying. I couldn't stand that again.'

'I know,' said Rilla. 'And I'm sorry. Travelling must have thrown something off; I thought we were safe.'

She climbed under the covers in the haven of what had once been her Ingleside room and asked, almost idly, 'Can we afford another baby?'

Ken said, 'Well, if she doesn't get measles…'

'He,' said Rilla. 'You said it yourself, we just about never have girls. Sissy was an exception. Or polio…'

'Don't.'

'Sorry,' said Rilla. 'But as long as you're doing the Peter Pan bit it was the next obvious place to go. Varicella then. And if we teach him from home, too…'

'Her,' said Ken. 'Definitely her. Sissy won't mind the competition. Bet she thrives on it, even. We'll send her to Elm St with Sissy. She'll have to have Sissy's cast-offs, I suppose, but it's not as if Sissy will miss them…'

'Unless, of course, Miss Reid changes the school uniform again, in which case…'began Rilla.

Ken finished for her. He gave her the devil's own grin and said, 'Your years as a Junior Red will come in useful.'

Rilla reached for and threw an errant cushion at him.

Catching it, Ken said, 'We'll manage, Rilla-my-Rilla. We always do.You're all right with it?'

'Terrified,' said Rilla. 'But that's hardly breaking news.' Then, as she settled against his chest, 'I want to go home. If I have to have this baby in hospital, and I do, I'm not going back into Charlottetown. I've seen enough of that place to last me a lifetime.'

Ken

They went home. Gilbert Blythe was indignant, not to say cross about it, but Rilla wanted home, and Elizabeth wanted normalcy, and there was nothing normal about living on top of the Ingleside Blythes and McNeillys.

Oh, Ken supposed it was agreeable, in its' way, talking newspaper shop with Di, and being back on the Glen patch, hearing all the Glen headlines rolled out, but it wasn't the same.

Anyway, he agreed wholeheartedly with Rilla's assessment of the Charlottetown hospital. Jims did too.

So, they went home, long months of homeschooling unravelling before them, not just of Sissy, but all the children, because school, real flesh-and-blood school with the usual hurricane of children, was terrifying. Still longer months of polio waves and omnipresent black wreaths loomed. But not for them. Not for Maple St. No, Ken would dredge up the long-retired nursery wreath that had announced previous cherubs, and they would pin that to the door instead.

If things took a turn…well, Mother could always take Sissy's learning in hand. As could the aunts. Both the one that Jims was supposed to look like, and the one who was apparently the image of the darker-haired cherubs. Funny how people saw what they wanted to.

Sissy

They came home, for which Sissy's everlasting relief. Privately she resolved never to travel to the Island again. She couldn't completely foreswear trains, though, because in March she and the other cherubs were packed off to Jims in Montreal.

Madrun clucked and grumbled and muttered darkly about how the last thing Miss Elizabeth needed was the kind of nuisance a baby would bring, even as she packed for existing cherubs and sewed for the impending one.

'It's Sissy now, Madrun,' Sissy said, kissing her old, leathery cheek. Then she slipped an unopened puzzle into her case for Jims, because she wasn't going to tackle it any time soon. The fact that Madrun let her was a testament to how much Madrun loved them, Sissy supposed. The Rule of Marun said cases were strictly for essentials, and puzzles didn't qualify.

Madrun, folding underpinnings, opined darkly that Sissy needed the Montreal trip even less than the baby, if possible.

Sissy said, 'it's only for the half-term. Bet you end up wishing we'd stayed longer.'

Madrun harrumphed.

Liam headed the expedition, doing his best impression of Jims, which was not terribly credible. For one thing, he never let Sissy win at Dominoes, which was admittedly a pointless game, but more portable than Lexico and more accessible than backgammon, since Sissy's fingers couldn't manipulate the discs properly.

They arrived late to a darkened station. Jims met them beneath a lamp-post, waving his hat like a flag. Sissy barrelled into him and wrapped her arms round his middle, relieved that this one thing had not been taken away from her.

'Sis!' he said, and swung her up into his arms, her body arcing out and around as he swung her in half-circles. He'd have done it for the other cherubs too, but they said they were too old, and afterwards pretended to look like they meant it.

Jims got them into a taxicab and drove them home, where all the lights were on and a tow-haired youth leaned out the window. His improbable greeting, 'I thought your Cherubs would want dinner. I couldn't remember what the dining car was like or what their emergency money would cover.'

Sissy liked him immediately. He said grace over the meal, which Madrun would have approved of, and made Jims smile the way only Mum and the aunts, and occasionally Sissy could do. And he kept pressing sweets on Sissy, because, 'Jims said you got awful sick of all that soft stuff, and I figured biscuit things might be easier.'

They were. Sissy seize clumsily on sizable portions of millionaire's shortbread and thought nothing had ever tasted better. She thought, if catastrophe struck and they had to stay forever in this flat, with Jims and his various friends from the university forever that it would not be terrible.

Rilla

Leslie Ford's amaryllises had acquired still more blooms. Rilla took this in absently as they sat in the sunroom where once Jims had asked for cooking lessons and sifted through patterns for baby clothes.

'If I'd known,' said Rilla, as the red of the latest amaryllis bloom winked iridescent in the sunlight, 'I might not have sent all Sissy's old things to Nan. But of course, she had sent all her girls' things to Faith at the first opportunity. Less to move with and all that.'

Leslie smiled the beatific smile of one who could enjoy the indulgence of sewing delicate things with none of the hassle of children or pregnancy to distract her.

'I always did like this part of the process, though,' she said and scrutinized an Eatons pattern. 'What do you think? With some of that leftover spotted blue cotton?'

Rilla hummed. Leslie said, 'Have you thought of names?'

'Names,' said Rilla, 'imply I've got my head around what's happening. I thought we'd done with all this.'

She gestured at the amassed patterns. The amaryllises danced red and cheerful in the sunlight. On reflection, she added, 'Something floral, I think.'

Ken

The doctor ordered Rilla into hospital, 'just to be safe.' After the summer debacle it was all anyone needed, but at least the iron lungs and the ailing children were sequestered elsewhere.

Jims got in touch and offered to keep the children longer; they were camping in what little living room his flat could lay claim to and were apparently charmed by the novelty. Madrun, who had clucked like a mother hen over the hospital verdict, clucked worse than ever at the prospect of Jims running a halfway home for cherubs with ailing mothers a whole province away.

'They'll eat nothing but fried chicken and toasted slice!' she wailed, forgetting, apparently that Jims was an adept cook. Ken would have comforted her, but the pursuant torrent of Welsh barred all conversational inroads.

'Send them home,' Ken said down the line. 'I miss them, and Madrun will have kittens if you don't.'

'I should like to see that,' said Jims.

On Ken's side of the line the Welsh, were it possible, intensified.

'Spoken,' said Ken, 'like someone who has never witnessed a kittening. Hideously messy stuff.'

Jims snorted.

Ken said, 'Anyway, you've got your work, I shouldn't wonder, and Persis is in at St George St, so there's help from that quarter if we need it.'

Sissy

Sissy met her first. Everyone was clamouring to, but Dad got his arm around her and said, 'Our Seraph first. Everyone knows they supersede cherubs in angel hierarchy.'

Anthony and Aunt Cass argued the point gamely, but half-seriously. Anyway, Sissy missed what they said for being marshalled into the room.

She was a funny little thing, nestled in the crook of Mum's exhausted arm. All ruddy and red and sort of misshapen looking, like she had been stretched giraffe-long by some cosmic ordeal. Alien, even, like something out of Jims' science fiction books.

Sissy loved her at once. She stuck out an awkward, twisted finger in greeting, and was shocked by the limpet-like tenacity of the delicate hand that seized on it. It was a hand in miniature, and it was perfect. Which should have hurt, Sissy supposed, but there was this little ruddy face looking up at her, without fear or hesitation or comparison. She had no idea what Sissy had been before, only this incredible look of open wonderment.

Sissy loved her for it. She suspected, as little fingers flexed around her own warped one, she always would.

'Sissy,' said Dad, 'meet Amaryllis.'

'Which, inevitably, the Glen will shorten to Rilla,' said Mum. 'Causing no end of confusion.'

'Unless we beat them to it, of course,' said Dad. He winked at Sissy, now sat on the pilled blue coverlet of the hospital bed, her finger nuzzling Amaryllis doll-sized hand.

'That's easy,' said Sissy. She allowed the baby to be transferred cautiously into her own, recovering arms. She spared a glance for that open, unafraid face with all the memories it had yet to make winking and twinkling behind wide blue eyes and beamed.

'We'll call you Lissy,' she said.