Content warning for period-typical prejudices and homophobia. As ever, I didn't want to put anyone in the position of having to educate me, so have done my best. That said, if I've gone wrong and you can or want to correct me, I'm listening.

1938

When it happened, they were at dinner. Not a Casting Asparagus dinner either, because there hadn't been one of those to Cassandra Hargreave's memory in years. No, it was a proper dinner party of the kind Rilla Ford was famous for hosting; good food, compelling company, silver polished and refracting the light of the equally polished chandelier off its surface. It was the kind of dinner where everyone had something to say and was saying it over six other people. To wit, Liam was detailing the latest Ford-Grant hockey tournament in exquisite detail to Ken, who was talking newspaper politics with Catherine Forster – Kitty to Rilla's Kingsport family – who was in turn talking politics with Ken's colleague, Mr. Boris Nermin, Foreign Correspondent for The Toronto Star. On Cass's left, Anthony was waxing wild about how thoroughly sick he was of singing the Merbecke mass setting, and on her right Rilla Ford was trying simultaneously to feed her youngest daughter, eat her own food, and please God cut the political wrangle between Persis and the journalists off before someone said something regrettable. As it fell out, she needn't have bothered.

Opposite Cass, because the numbers were awkward, Persis was trying to cut Sissy's food without appearing to cut it for her, while praising Madrun's cooking between political parries. Cass, meanwhile, had one ear for Anthony and was simultaneously trying to reassure Sissy that she was right to see the latest school-induced injustice as an injustice.

Into this rabble Mr Boris Nermin, foreign correspondent, said without any warning at all, 'I saw Jims the other day.'

Total silence descended. It was broken immediately by a volley of questions from all corners of the Ford-Hargreave alliance. Ignoring all of them, Ben Nermin, foreign correspondent, said, 'It was the funniest thing, because when I asked for his address to call in on him, they said he was living with his brother at…'

Cass did not hear the particulars of the address. She had gone suddenly cold, Madrun's rich veal cutlets solidifying in her stomach. She ran hot, then cold then hot again. A minor explosion had gone off at Rilla Ford's dinner table and they were now sitting in horrified silence amidst the fallout. Cass thought, desperately, Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal one…

She was acutely aware that Persis had frozen over Sissy's cutlets. Anthony, mouth agape looked disproportionately terrified for a boy last seen escorting the young Minnie Watson home from school. But then, Cass supposed he was just at that age where if ever he might feel propelled towards normalcy… She could not think about this now. Anthony and his terror would have to wait. Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and Immortal One…

Now Mr. Nermin was saying, unsolicited, 'It was the strangest thing, because I hadn't realised Jims had a brother his age. I thought all of them were here.'

He laughed, so Rilla laughed and Ken joined in, and then so did Persis and Cassandra Hargreave. They all laughed raucously because wasn't it funny this thing Mr. Nermin, foreign correspondent, had said? It was so funny that Noel Coward couldn't have done better. No he could not; Cass and Persis had seen their share of Coward plays, so Cass felt confident she knew about these things. It was so witty and clever they were all choking on their laughter.

Nermin gestured at the rigid tableau of a dinner table. Ken sat immobile; Catherine Foster fussed with her napkin. There was danger there, Cass thought, but she couldn't think about that now. Liam squirmed and writhed in place. Anthony, ever the conversationalist, but looking ever more terrified the longer they sat like lemmings, said helpfully, 'That's right. Jims has only got us.'

Oh God, thought Cass. Panic began to boil, hot and prickly in her stomach. She watched, helpless, as opposite her, Persis went from white to red to colourless to white to red, and on like that. But for her twisting stomach, Cass was sure she herself had gone waxen, frozen there in her place with her fork poised delicately between index and middle finger, her cutlets cooling to inedibility on her plate. The silver of her fork winked and brought out the highlights in Persis's hair. Cass, frozen, studiously affected not to notice. It was no good. The years had made this an impossibility. So she watched out of the corner of her eyes as Rilla Ford tried impossibly hard to fail to notice her own inability not to notice the blinking, threaded gold of Persis' hair.

The candles flickered across Rilla's face, and in its temperamental light Cass looked away from Persis long enough to read the dread of the other woman, how her face said in spite of itself, Oh God, and then, That can't be right, followed swiftly byThat isn't right, followed swifter still by I have got to say something. They are all sitting like lemmings and God help me I must say something. At least Cass could sympathise with this last. Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal One…

'Oh,' Rilla said, scrabbling about wildly in the conversational void. 'That must be one of the Anderson boys.'

There were no Anderson boys. To hear Rilla tell it, the unfortunate James Anderson had drunk himself to death following the disastrous death of his wife and second child. Something about an Island cliff-face may have featured. Or not. But Mr. Nermin did not know this and did not need to know this. Certainly Rilla Ford wasn't going to tell him. Cass, petrified with her fork between her fingers wasn't about to tell him, either. Nor was Kenneth Ford, nor poor, terror-stricken Anthony.

Opposite Rilla, Ken unfroze and clicked his fingers. 'Of course!' he said. 'Gosh, d'you know, Rilla-my-Rilla, I'd completely forgotten that. Little Kitchener! It's been ages!'

'Lucky to have a brother,' said Catherine Forster, gamely. For all Cass knew, Miss Forster thought this to be true. 'He'll be wanting to save money, I'm sure. The relief, you know, when Jem and Faith took me in…'

And so, mercifully, the conversation turned. Crisis averted. Except for the uncompromising fact that Cass knew that Jims had no brothers on the Anderson side, saving money or otherwise. And that one wrong word from Miss Catherine Forster to Dr. James Blythe could send the remnants of their exploded world scattering to the wind. God, one wrong word from Rilla to any of her family…

Cass prayed to God none of the Cherubs would comment upon this fictional Anderson brother, but Anthony only looked ever more terrified, and Catherine Forster, God bless her, had got the conversation moving too fast. She was back on the possibility of a war and that was fine with Cass. That was absolutely fine. Let them talk politics. Oh, please God, let them keep talking politics.

Under the table, Persis's ankle brushed reassuringly against hers and Cass started, because this house of cards they had built so carefully was collapsing all on its own and no need to speed the demise. Persis seemed to understand, because she smiled apology and tried to revive Liam's story about the hockey tournament.

Little Lissy, heretofore the picture of tranquil infancy, began to fret in her chair, and Cass said with altogether too much relief 'Here, let me,' because she could not talk politics and needed to be away from the detritus of the dinner table explosion.

'No,' said Rilla, with more force than was probably warranted. Cass registered the sting and tried to make allowances for the other woman still stumbling about in the rubble of Jims and the fictive Anderson brother. She did not succeed.

'No, really,' said Cassandra. 'It's no trouble.' She was halfway out of her seat. Rilla looked ill.

'No,' Rilla said and scooped the baby up before the argument could escalate. 'No, I really think I'd better…She isn't very good with strangers yet.'

Cass sat back down as one stricken. Anthony, also stricken, turned gamely to her and said, 'Aunt Cass, did I tell you about the Vaughan Williams setting we had to sing? It sounded like people wailing…'

There was more to this story but Cass couldn't take it in. Over Rilla's shoulder, little baby Lissy looked at her with wide, regretful eyes that seemed to say I know you are not a stranger. But it was no use. Whatever assistance she and Persis had offered over the years, whatever the fun, music and games, it was not to be Lissy's lot. Cassandra Hargreave knew this deep in her bones, heard it in the funeral knell of Rilla's departing heels, click-clacking against the cool slats of the hardwood floor.

'Better now?' asked Persis when Rilla returned. Rilla nodded. Persis offered to get the pudding, but Rilla said she was up anyway and not to bother.

'You should see your guests,' said Persis, but Rilla was adamant. So Rilla Ford fetched Madrun's pavlova and carried it through, looking all the while exactly as the wife of The Toronto Star's head reporter should look, while also mutely conveying to Cass and presumably Persis, through no uncertain terms, the extent to which she considered this their fault. The pavlova melted gently onto the plates of various Fords and Cassandra Hargreave. Lissy mashed hers into a glorious mess. The dining room filled with the sticky-sweet smell of merangue and jam filling. Boris Nermin never noticed. As for Catherine Forster, reporter, either she didn't notice either or was electing not to. Cass tended to think it had to be the latter, because Catherine Forster was too good at her job, and judging by the table talk too attuned to politics, to fail to register the descent of Rilla Ford's table into cataclysmic catastrophe. Cass wondered unworthly why Dr James Blythe couldn't have taken in a waif and stray significantly less clever, less observant.

Somehow they got through the meal. Rilla gathered up the dishes of largely uneaten pudding, the baby at her hip. This was ridiculous, because both aunts were established as beyond good with the children, but that was Before. And because there was a wideness in God's mercy after all, the others did not elect to stay. Catherine Forster made some excuse about returning to God Wednesday, thereby astounding the idiotic Boris Nermin for the first time that evening, while said idiotic man clapped Kenneth Ford on the back and assured him he would see him at work the following week. He even congratulated Ken on a successful dinner, never mind Cass could comfortably swear that this was none of Ken's doing.

In the ensuing silence of their departure, the family stood like a game of Statues at a particularly dire children's party. Anthony was first to move.

'I should probably warn – ' he began and Cass could have told him this was a lost cause.

'Don't,' said Ken, with terrifying savagery. 'You're not to talk to him.'

'Jims,' said Anthony stubbornly. Cass wasn't sure if he was hell-bent on getting to the end of his sentence or just needed to say the name aloud. Possibly both.

'Don't,' said Rilla Ford this time, and winced.

'Well somebody,' said Persis, presumably, Cass supposed, because she had faced down her share of lions that were frequently literal and was in any case unafraid of her brother, 'should warn Jims.'

'Don't,' said both Fords together, and honestly, why Persis couldn't leave the bear bristling and unpoked now more than ever, Cass didn't know. But she didn't have the energy to argue the point with her, either. Not here. If nothing else, the only way out of this shambles Boris Nermin, Foreign Correspondent had spawned, was together. Cass pressed her fingers to her temples and scrubbed at them.

Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal One…

'This is all your fault,' said Rilla Ford.

'Mine?' Persis said incredulous.

'Ours, she probably means,' said Cass. She was deeply, achingly aware of the baby on Rilla Ford's hip and Sissy's wide, anguished eyes.

'Well, if you hadn't been so involved with him – ' Rilla Ford began.

'Of course it's their fault, Rilla-my-Rilla,' said Kenneth Ford. 'You have nothing to explain. Jims was quite normal when you brought him home in that soup tureen.'

Simultaneously Persis said, 'If you two hadn't spent what was it, Cass, three years? Four? Clawing at each other like cats – '

Anthony, heretofore frozen against the door jamb that was the segue from centre hall to lounge parlour, unfroze.

'Come on Sis, Lissy,' he said. His voice was pitched too high and squeaking dangerously, but he got a firm hand on Sissy's back and with the other, awkwardly scooped the baby out of his mother's arms. He was loosing her head quite badly but no one remarked on it.

'But – ' said Sissy, her stubbornness untrampled by her recent brush with polio.

'Nah,' said Liam, rallying to Anthony's cause. 'They're casting asparagus. No reason to stay for that.'

Off the Cherubs went. Well, thank God for small mercies.

'Now look what you've started,' said Kenneth Ford.

'We've started?' said Persis, furious and bristling.

'Of course you have,' said Ken. 'You're the one who…'

There was a headache building behind Cass's eyes. The terrible, pressure-ridden kind that would almost certainly stop her sleeping. This, though, was too much. Perhaps ill-advisedly, she got between the siblings Ford and said with far more conviction than she felt, 'No. You leave her out of this.'

And Persis, presumably because she was undaunted by lions and had now got Cass mediating, said with a gesture for the departing Cherubs and awful quiet, 'That is exactlywhy Jims had so much to do with us.'

Ken Ford went a terrible, bruised colour that brought out the scar he had incurred in the war. It stood there, an angry, livid white amongst the mottled purple of his face while Rilla stood resolutely in front of the coatrack. She was still poised, Cass noted obliquely, as if holding the baby. She looked furious.

They had got to get out of here. Cass thought this as opposite her Kenneth Ford's looming features ran through a range of purples, from lilac to blue-black fury. They had got to get out, and back to St George St, where a waiting Andromache the kitten was no doubt mewling for her humans.

'We should be on our way,' said Cass, not liking to move from where she stood between fighting Fords but even then eying the coatrack. She was hoping to galvanize Rilla Ford to action. It did not work.

Kenneth Ford's eyes narrowed, as if he had only just noticed Cass, and she was suddenly, horrifyingly aware of the brute force of his acuity coming to land on her.

'And just what are you, anyway?' he said, so quietly Cass almost missed it.

'Ken,' said Persis warningly. Somehow she manoeuvred so that their positions were revered, and now it was Persis in the middle of this frightening reel of three they were dancing.

'No,' said Rilla Ford. She crossed her arms about her chest, finally registering the absence of the baby. 'I want to know, too.'

Total silence, bar the agonized ticking of a pendulum clock. On and on it went with metronomic precision while Cass stood there mute, like the man who put stones in his mouth, and couldn't speak.

'Go on,' said Kenneth Ford levelly.

'Ken,' said Persis. 'Leave it.'

Somewhere nearby, Mops the dog whimpered. Cass looked from Kenneth Ford, to Persis, to the stairs and felt roiling dread seep leadenly into her blood.

'I could give you options,' he said now, still to Cass. She could tell this was aimed at her because he was looking past Persis to where she stood near the maddeningly ticking clock, her own arms crossed in unconscious echo of Rilla. She could not look away from the stairs in their massy, shadowy grandeur.

'Yes,' he said, although Cass hadn't spoken. 'Let's do that. Are you for instance, a boarder at St George? That's what we've said for years, so perhaps that's the most likely option. What was it Miss Forster said about saving money?'

'Please,' said Cass, 'let's not do this now.'

Kenneth Ford wasn't listening. Persis had opened her mouth to say something but he marched conversationally on, her verbal volley drowned to nothingness. 'Or you might be a companion. That seems less likely, because if my sister wanted company she could always have come home to our mother. That would have been very helpful, after the war, and her flu.'

'Who says I wanted to play nurse?' asked Persis, who was gold and incandescent with indignation there in the hallway.

'Or perhaps you're – '

'Stop, both of you,' said Cass as severely as she could muster, which was not much, not because she was frightened by this inquisition, although she was, but because Anthony was standing in the doorway, still with the baby in his arms, bristling like a cat caught by a dog while his siblings amassed on the stairs. He was holding Lissy in his arms and he was trying and failing at almost-16 to puff himself up to Kenneth Ford's monumental stature. He looked ghastly and petrified, his face a terrible, ghostly white.

'She's our aunt, Dad,' he said, quiet but fierce, and hugged Lissy closer than was surely comfortable. 'Cass found my choir for me, remember? And taught me the piano.'

'And,' said Sissy, emerging from where she was half-hidden behind her brother, 'she taught Jims to cook.'

'Much good that did,' said Ken, and behind him Rilla only nodded. She made a move to reach for her baby but Anthony wouldn't give her up.

'That's probably partly why he's – ' she began.

'You're still casting asparagus,' Anthony said, and stroked the baby's head.

'And,' said Sissy, who had not finished, 'and she taught me to climb trees, and…'

'And how to do an index,' said Liam. 'Kinship tables.' He had moved to stand with the others.

'I'd forgotten,' said Ken. But then he said, 'Remind me – how would you fit on a kinship table, Miss Hargreave? Do they have a classification for your relationship to my sister, my children?' and Cass knew he had not forgotten at all, was only holding Persis and herself more responsible than ever for Jims' choices. As if choice had anything to do with it. But try telling the Fords that.

Rilla Ford, unable to reclaim her baby, had since retrieved the relevant coats from the rack and now handed them warily to Cass. Cass took hers, the red martin fur soft to the touch, and felt the weight of it descend like armour around her shoulders. She saw in the glow of the lamplight how anxious Rilla was, and how frightened. Some of that is for Jims, she thought. Then, viciously And of us maybe, and what we can do, but certainly not forus.With effort Cass tamped down this last thought, not because she thought it was wrong, but because Jims was more important. Terror-stricken Anthony was more important. Cassandra Hargreave gloved her hands and said as she arranged the fingers, 'Don't be too hard on Jims. The world can do that for you.'

'It's all right for you,' said Rilla Ford in her famous cold, pale, tone. 'You can fly under the radar.'

'In another life, maybe,' Cass said ruefully. 'But not now. Not here, anyway. Tell the Cherubs we love them?'

For a moment it seemed Rilla Ford wavered. Persis came and retrieved her coat, and as she buttoned it, Cass half-registered Anthony and the other Cherubs, still in the doorway, still near enough to hear. Well, that wouldn't hurt them anyway. At least they'd know, Cass thought, as she braced herself for the howling void of outer darkness, that this was not their fault. She tried to catch Anthony's eye, to bolster him one last time, because maybe he needed her, and how much she didn't know, and maybe they would never again meet like this. But Anthony looked down at the last minute, nervous more Cass thought of his father than of her, and Cass was left staring at the Persian carpet. It was not the same. There was no need to tell them not to come back, but Kenneth Ford said it anyway, Cass and Persis poised on the steps leading to Maple St. Cass could not bring herself to look back and see if the Cherubs had heard that, too.