The first chapter in this story to prominently feature Abe Portman. Since we only see him as an old man in the movie, it was challenging to write him at a younger age. The next chapter will focus on Miss Peregrine's first days with her first charge, which she talks about briefly here.
Abe reached Cairnholm by ferry in the late afternoon, but he didn't set out for Miss Peregrine's house until well after nightfall. He had dinner in the pub, chatting with locals and drinking a beer to pass the time, and forced himself to wait, despite how desperate he was to talk to Miss Peregrine. Visiting her under the cover of darkness would be safer — and more convenient for him, too. He needed to speak to her alone, so he waited until late enough that all her children would be asleep — he remembered her household schedule very well, and it hadn't changed, of course — then, as quietly as he could, checking to make sure he wasn't followed, he began the walk to her loop.
The island was very dark at night, but there was a full moon out, casting enough light for Abe to see by. He looked at the moon as he walked and thought about how astronauts were working to travel there in just a few years, to actually get out of their space shuttle and walk on it. He imagined telling that to Miss Peregrine's children; she would never allow him to talk about the future to them, of course, but he tried to imagine the looks of wonder on their faces. Now that Abe had grown up, it was strange to see them — those eternal children who had once been his playmates, and Emma, who had once been his sweetheart. The older he got, the more he was torn between feeling sorry for them and feeling jealous of them.
The older he got, the more he felt torn between the peculiar world and the ordinary one, and that feeling that grown even worse since he'd gotten the news.
Inside the loop, he paused, as he always did, when he turned the corner in the path, and Miss Peregrine's house came into view. Abe knew that no matter how far he traveled, no matter how much he saw, nothing would ever affect him like the sight of this house. Even by moonlight, it was impressive — the red gables over the windows, the stained-glass panels in the front doors, the flowering ivy that climbed the walls, the topiary bushes on the lawn. The first time Abe had seen it, when Miss Peregrine brought him here from that miserable refugee camp years ago, he actually broke down crying.
He had almost reached the house when, from out of nowhere, a falcon suddenly swooped low over his head. Abe startled and swore in Polish, and then Miss Peregrine was there, in her human form, beside him. "Miss P, don't scare me like that."
"Well, you gave me quite a scare too, Abe, showing up here at this hour," she answered, smoothing down a few strands of her windblown black hair. She must have been out on one of those late-night flights she liked to take sometimes. "At first I thought another loop had been raided, but you weren't walking fast enough."
"No, no, it's nothing like that. It's... well, can we go inside?"
"Of course. I'll brew us some tea." As they went up the front steps, she smiled warmly at him and squeezed his arm. "It is good to see you again, Abe, even at this hour."
The kitchen was bright and warm, and while Miss Peregrine put the tea kettle on, Abe took a deep breath and told her the news that had brought him back to this island. "My wife's going to have a baby."
Miss Peregrine turned around from the stove with a smile on her face, but before she could say anything, Abe went on.
"I-I don't think I'm ready for this," he blurted out. "I know I'm supposed to be happy, but I'm so afraid I'm going to mess this up." He had been sitting at the kitchen table, but now, he got up and began to pace the room, wringing his hands. "And I keep worrying, what if the baby's peculiar? What then? But... but what if it's not? I don't even know which would be worse. I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm going to mess this up, I just—"
"Now, Abe, stop it," Miss Peregrine interrupted. She was chiding him in that same voice she used with the little kids, but he didn't mind; it actually made him feel better. "You're as bad as the children, getting yourself worked up like this. Sit down and have some tea."
"Yes, Miss P," he answered automatically, sitting down again. The old phrase, some of the first words he'd ever learned in English, sprang to his lips as if he'd never left this loop. Miss Peregrine had drilled those words into him, and all her children, as what they were to say whenever she told them to do anything.
Miss Peregrine fetched two teacups from the cabinet and poured tea for both of them while she went on in her smoothest voice. "Of course becoming a parent for the first time is very overwhelming. I think every mother and father fears that they won't do it properly, that they'll fail in some way. What you're feeling is perfectly natural, Abe. It's part of the experience, I'm sure."
Abe smirked behind his teacup; how ironic to hear this coming from an ymbryne. Ymbrynes, he knew, had special instincts in caring for children, at least for peculiar ones. That was how Miss Peregrine always made it look so easy. He leaned back in his chair and studied her across the table. He'd always loved Miss Peregrine, of course, but he respected her more now that he was about her age — though he'd never ask her age, because she had taught him better manners than that — and could appreciate how much she did for her children.
"And what about you, Miss P?" he asked, suddenly curious. "Did you ever have a baby?"
Miss Peregrine sighed and stirred her tea, looking wistful. "Mm-hm, I got Claire when she was a baby. She was still a newborn, practically. She was my first charge, did you know that?"
Abe shook his head. "I'll bet you were never this nervous."
She chuckled a bit. "Oh no, I had the opposite problem, which is much worse. I thought I would always do everything perfectly and never make any mistakes. But then, when I actually got Claire..." She hesitated. It would be too awkward to tell Abe what had actually happened. "Well, things didn't go at all like I'd expected. It took some time before she warmed up to me."
Abe had been skeptic before, but at this, he couldn't help scoffing. "With Claire? But she thinks you hung the moon in the sky."
Miss Peregrine smiled. "Well, perhaps she does now. She came around to me eventually, thank the birds, but it was... difficult while it lasted. My point is," she went on, her voice firm again, "that there are always bumps in the road when it comes to caring for children. I went into it with far too much confidence and had to learn that the hard way."
Abe nodded at this, and she could tell that he was reassured, but his eyelids were dropping over his tea, and Miss Peregrine almost smirked. He was nearly as obvious as Claire, who would protest that she wasn't a bit sleepy around a huge yawn as Miss Peregrine carried her upstairs to bed. "Abe, how long have you been awake?" she asked him.
Abe blinked several times, then shrugged. It had been a very long trip from Florida to Wales.
"Well, no wonder you're worrying yourself into a fret. You should get some rest, as long as you're here, and your old room is still vacant. Come along."
"Yes, Miss P," he answered again, before he could stop himself. He hadn't planned on it, but the idea of spending the night in this house again was too tempting. Waking up in this loop wasn't like waking up anywhere else. "I mean, if you're sure it's no trouble."
"Of course not. I told you when you left for the army that you would always have a home here, and I meant that."
"My wife doesn't know I'm peculiar, you know," Abe said softly, as he finished his tea and got up from the table, swaying on his feet a bit. "She doesn't even know what I really am. I'm lying to her." His wife believed that Abe was away on a business trip right now, not that he'd run back to Wales, to the closest thing he had left to a parent, because the idea of becoming a father had terrified him.
But feeling sorry for oneself was right next to tardiness on the list of things that Miss Peregrine had no patience for. "You're keeping her safe, Abe. Your peculiarity doesn't affect your everyday life, and wallowing about it won't do any good, now will it?"
Everyone else in the house was sleeping, so they crept upstairs quietly, and as Abe climbed the stairs, he woke up enough to tease Miss Peregrine. "It's nice of you to leave my old room vacant, Miss P, but you don't have to do it for my sake, you know. When are you going to take in a new peculiar child?" He smiled as he said it, for he knew how often she heard this request from her children.
"Oh, stop it, as if I don't have my hands full enough already. Ah, here we are."
Abe paused in the doorway of his old bedroom. The view out the window was exactly the same, of course, and as beautiful as ever. So many evenings he'd sat on that windowsill, staring up at the stars or down across the garden to the sea. Everything in the room was exactly the same – except him. Could he still fit on that windowsill if he tried it now?
Miss Peregrine squeezed his arm. "I think you'll be a good father, Abe," she said softly, "even if you don't think so yourself yet. Mazel tov."
Mazel tov. That stopped him. He couldn't even remember when he'd last heard those words. They made him think of his parents, and he realized, for really the first time, that his baby would be his parents' grandchild. It seemed so obvious yet so impossible at the same time.
He almost never spoke of his early years with his family in Poland, not even with those closest to him. Abe was older now than his parents had been when they were killed by the Nazis, along with Bubbe and Zaidy and nearly every Jew in the village. His parents, against all odds, had gotten him safely away to England, where he'd not only survived but gotten to live very comfortably in Miss Peregrine's fine house.
As Abe laid down, he closed his eyes and forced himself to remember the last time he ever saw them – his mama kissing his face, the tears in her eyes as she wrenched her hand from his and pushed him aboard the loud, scary black train of the kindertransport. At the time, he had been angry at her for sending him away, but now, he couldn't imagine the sheer force of love that it must have taken for her to do that. His parents had loved him. There was more to their legacy than was just tragedy. That, Abe decided as he fell asleep, would be the legacy that he would pass down to his child.