When they were young, Edith never wanted Alan to leave. She stifled her hurt for the entire week leading up to his departure, going so far as to refuse seeing him off until her father convinced her otherwise. As irrational as it was, she took it as a personal betrayal, the abandonment by her best friend.
But Alan had to leave. He had to. By that point he had decided on fashioning himself into an ophthalmologist. Though not the most respected field, it ensured that he had at least one patient. The most important one. He imagined Edith in his future practice, him fitting lenses over her cornflower-blue eyes.
His medical studies would make him return a made man. It would prove him to be financially sufficient in the eyes of Edith's father.
I left for you.
For their future.
But Edith had begged him, had begged him, because while he gazed into the future, she was looking at the present and her need for him now.
It never occurred to Alan that the time and the distance would ever weaken their bond. Or that he would return, bottled full of yearning, leaping in excitement, his passion for her stronger than ever and she would be… so calm. So grown. So formal.
Dr. Alan McMichael. A family physician. An old friend. Was that what he had become to her?
Alan always thought he could make up for missed time. That they could catch up on each other's adventures. The stories. The books. The slides. She never left his heart, and all it would take was time to rekindle hers. He fought so hard to win her attention again, ran so fast, chasing after her through libraries, socials, parks.
It never occurred to Alan that maybe time was limited, and his had ran out, for Edith had already been swept away by another man.
Alan's heart broke at Edith's cries in the snow, the rawness in her voice as she called for Thomas. The love that she had tried to restrain had burst out, the thought of his loss too crippling for her to bear.
The pain Alan felt then was worse than any stab wound, worse than bearing witness to her marriage. Because what he was watching now was how deeply Edith had been cut.
No amount of time would heal this wound. No amount of intimacy would remove her from the other man. Sir Thomas Sharpe had clawed into her soul and left his mark. He would haunt her to her death and torture her with his.
And any protest Alan had would only come out in vain.
.
Rain pounded against the window. Below, cloaked pedestrians splashed through the cobblestone streets, black umbrellas battling against the winds. Opposite was another row of tightly-crammed shops, rivulets of water running across iron railings and wooden placards.
Edith picked at her glove, her gaze lost on the outside and her mind lost somewhere even further. Her outfit was a plain one that spoke of mourning, her hair loosely woven and hidden by a modesty veil.
Framed against the window, she looked like the centerpiece of a lost Emily Osborn painting, though she was too old to be an orphan and too young to be a widow. Just a glance at her profile and neck spoke of her past beauty, of how radiant she once was and could be, if only painted with brighter colors.
"Dr. Alan McMichael?"
At the door were two London policemen, tall, straight-backed, and well-groomed. Strapped around the waistline of one man was a holder for his truncheon. The other looked to be a detective. They brought traces of the weather indoors, the wool of their uniforms beading with water.
To Edith, they took off their hat, requesting a private moment with her companion.
Edith paused. Her gaze fell to Alan, who revealed himself to be awake, slowly stirring and rising up against the headboard. He gave her a smile and nod. It did not wipe away her troubled look, but she conceded, letting herself be wheeled away from his bedside.
As soon as the door closed, Alan squared his shoulders. He regarded the officers, careful not to betray the apprehension their appearance brought about. He swelled with a need to confess, to tell them about Crimson Peak and the two murderers dwelling within.
The people needed to know. The truth needed to be out.
Alan desperately wanted the truth to be out—out of his chest, out into the light, where people could gather and justice could strike, the monsters vanquished and the heroes freed. A speech to mark the finale of every detective novel.
Except life was never so simple, so easily wrapped up by words on a page. Alan was not as simple as a character nor the world a vessel for his plot. Horrors in Cumberland were of no concern to the officers of London. It became apparent from their questions that they were looking for leads on another case. They came to check that the attack he suffered was not connected.
They seemed surprised when Alan told them his injury happened far up north. The detective lowered his notepad. "If you don't mind us asking, sir, why are you in London?"
Alan explained his university connections and his familiarity with the present physicians. Given the severity of his injury, he believed the city would better his chances of recovery.
After a pause, he added that the relocation was also to put his lady companion at ease. These gentlemen could imagine how such a violent robbery tainted her perception of the countryside. She felt safer within a well-policed city such as London.
The officers responded well to the compliment, and any suspicions they had about the couple gave away to politeness and hospitality. After a few more formalities, the men wished Alan good health and turned their backs.
And through the door, another opportunity lost, the truth left fluttering blindly in its cage.
Silence was dangerous, Alan knew. The longer they kept the darkness, the longer Lucille Sharpe lived.
Crimson Peak had been her domain. Within its walls, they had been helplessly trapped and at her mercy. But after their escape, power was theirs. How the light of society would expose her, scorch her. How easily she would perish from a few words, if only Alan ever freed them.
If only he could, he thought, staring helplessly at the ceiling.
The same light that would burn Lucille would now burn Edith too. Edith, the wife of a serial killer, widowed by the noose. Even if innocent, damaged. She would be a walking omen, the people whispering of the day she would be claimed by the same hysteria.
Her reputation would never survive the scandal.
But was protecting her name worth the risk? How long before the Sharpe siblings claimed another victim? Before Lucille found them? He and Edith would never be free of the terror they faced.
Forget entertaining himself with detective novels. At this point, Alan would much rather prefer a fairy tale, the story ended after the witch was pushed into the fire and the oven door slammed shut.
.
The winter was passing, and with it, the bitterness in the air.
Acquaintances came calling, inquiring after Alan's health and events in America. He would introduce them to Edith, whom they would gift with many compliments, if not too many.
For months, they lived within the trivialities of polite society, to the point Edith felt pulled back into her old days in Buffalo, before her encounter with the Sharpes, before all the insanity and chaos. The lifestyle she had once ridiculed so mercilessly was now her haven; what had once suffocated her now let her breathe.
Under the many falls of rain, Edith would think of her father, of what their lives would be like were he still with her. The night he last held her, he had proposed a journey to the West Coast, just the two of them. They would travel and dine. There would be thundering trains and great architecture and brilliant sunsets, all absorbed into her pen and out into words.
He had held her so gently, and she had shut him out.
She had continued to shut him out, even after his death. Closed her eyes and ran far away. Sold her memories and never looked back. She refused to ever consider the possibility that perhaps it was her own greed that killed him. That perhaps she faced a choice and made it, when she traded one man in her life for another.
Edith no longer looked away. Carter Cushing deserved a proper mourning.
And she, the time to understand.
She needed to know the meaning of loss, of the worlds that vanished with every road unwalked. Of her true desires, and the world she wanted to create.
Under the wings of her father, Edith had grown up a firm believer in building one's own future. She had grown up praising the miracles of industrialization, of progress and change, of fearlessly plunging oneself into the depths of the great unknown.
What they had failed to understand was that you cannot choose everything you unleash. Even miracles have costs. With progress came poison, the same poison that would paint her own mother black. The same poison that would twist and disfigure the newborns, quietly smother the elderly in the late night. At what point was pushing forward foolish? At what point should she simply be grateful for all she had been given?
Alan placed a hand on her chair. Without looking away from the view outside, she leaned back, letting his presence enclose hers.
There were no words between them. Two decades of history spoke plenty, the memories flowing from her imagination to his. The happier times, the silly and stupid, cowboys and pirates, two compatriots running through endless fields of wild grass and ferns.
They were so well matched—like the skies and the clouds, the dandelion and the wind—that guests easily mistook them for husband and wife. At some point, they stopped correcting them.
At some point, Edith allowed herself to just breathe.
At the end of every rainfall was a fresh beginning. Nature could cleanse, just as time could heal. Soon, the bruise on her finger would be nothing more than a distant memory.
But it would be up to her what new memories to create, what new love to embrace, what new wounds to bear.
.
A platter sat forgotten in the corner, the meal finished. A wooden box with the Sharpe engraving lay empty. A handkerchief dangled off the arm of a chair, the ghost of a stain blossoming in the center.
The rooms of Edith Cushing and Alan McMichael were vacant, its occupants having run away together, two partners in crime from the high mountains to the deep seas.
They could be spotted miles away at the heart of civilization, amidst thundering trains and great architecture and a backdrop of a brilliant sunset. A sheaf of loose papers fluttered wildly in the wind, fighting to free itself from its master's grip.
The people roared, the engines steamed, the clock chimed. There was no telling what words the good doctor gave his lady companion on the platform. What words she returned in their passionate exchange. What words kept them in their own spellbound world despite all the movement and frenzy around them, what words brought forth the joy, the tears, the sudden pull as she took his lips with hers. Her hair freed with the wind, the strands of gold in the air as a speeding train hid them from view.
By the time the train was gone, so was she, vanished, the only evidence of her existence the novel left behind in his hands.
.
The sound of rumbling engines echoed in the distant hills. Fog was lifting from the skies, the frost of winter retreating from the earth. In spring's resurgence, roads were busy again, soon occupied by the bouncing beat of hooves.
The carriage rider pulled to a stop before a gentleman. He was young and handsome, wearing a tight-form, dark waistcoat over high-collared linen and equally dark trousers tucked into his boots. His gloved hands held firmly onto a walking stick.
Despite the air of dignity, there was a notable strain in his gait. The result of a bad fall… from horseback, perhaps?
The gentlemen tilted his hat in greeting, though made no effort to remove it.
The carriage rider returned the gesture. "Where can I take you, sir?"
"Cumberland."