"I should have known."

Bridgette tore her gaze away from the spot in the darkness where Sid had disappeared a few minutes earlier. "Should have known what?"

"What would happen if he was ever caught in a hailstorm like this one. What kind of memories it might bring to the surface. Death and destruction, falling from the sky."

Oh. So Lady Felicia, despite not being around when Sid first came to Kembleford, was in the know about what, exactly, had landed him in the countryside as a child. "It would have been a foolish waste of time for you to think about such things." At least, that was what Bridgette kept trying to tell herself.

"Would it? We get hail often enough."

"Not like this." Bridgette picked up one of the thousands of balls of ice that had accumulated within the bounds of the conservatory during the natural assault they had just survived. It was large enough to be mistaken for one of her soup dumplings. "There was nothing normal about this."

She had honestly thought that the bad part was over once it had started to rain. That was how things were supposed to go. Oh Lord, if they had been caught out in that deluge... "I will spend a week on my knees in thanksgiving if no one we know was seriously hurt, or worse."

Lady Felicia let out a hmph. "You're already free of that promise, then."

"What do you mean?" Her eyes widened as she turned to the woman seated beside her under the table. "Don't tell me you're injured?" She had seen the nasty scrape on the back of one of Lady Felicia's hands, and they both bore cuts from the debris that littered their hiding space, but those things hardly qualified as serious.

"No. But Sid is."

"...Oh." Huffing, Bridgette adjusted her position on the cold, hard ground. She understood why Sid had been so insistent that they stay under cover while he went for the car, but it was far from comfortable.

Then again, maybe the true root of her discomfort wasn't physical. After all, it was hardly Christian to tongue-lash someone who had just saved your life, even if you didn't know at the time that was what they were doing. And Sid had, Bridgette was certain, saved their lives with his rough insistence that they take cover. More importantly – even though there was no reason, no precedent for thinking that he would be so emotionally affected by the storm – she should have seen his fit coming. She, not Lady Felicia, should have known.

"...Mrs. McCarthy?"

How long had she been quietly lost in her guilt? "That trauma happened long before tonight," she said. "I don't count it the same." Maybe she ought to, though. Father Brown believed that a disturbing memory could be more damaging to a person than the actual event at its core. It was one of his many arguments in favor of both official and unofficial confession. Sharing a bad memory, like sharing guilt over a misdeed, sometimes proved to be all that was needed to lift the weight from one's soul.

"It feels like it all happened so much longer ago than it did. It also feels like it happened only yesterday." Lady Felicia sounded distant, reflective. "Were you near it at all, Mrs. McCarthy? The bombings?"

"No, and thank goodness for that." She had rarely felt a more powerful swell of gratitude than when she had heard the first reports about the Blitz. She'd been in London just a few days before it started, and the thought that she might have been caught up in it had she delayed her departure even a little still made her pulse quicken. "I was here when it began, and here is where I stayed until after it stopped."

A match scratched to life. It was easily the brightest match Bridgette had ever seen, as the rough edges of the hailstones all around them refracted the firelight dozens of times over. Lady Felicia lit a cigarette, then tossed the match away to sputter and die. "I was there," she said simply. There was no emotion in her voice now, just the eerie sterility of fact. "I didn't live in the city full time, of course – it wasn't the same for me as it was for Sid, huddling in a basement and hearing it every night for weeks on end – but I was there too often to avoid it entirely."

The level of detail about Sid's early life that Lady Felicia had clearly been made privy to was dismaying. So far as Bridgette had been aware, she and Father Brown were the only people in Kembleford who knew the exact circumstances that had spurred Sid's evacuation from London. It wasn't necessarily a surprise that Sid had spoken to the Countess about it – they had been like two peas in a pod since the first time they'd met, almost as instantly and irreversibly twinned as Sid and the Father – but her perturbation lingered. "...I see," she said stiffly. "Then I suppose it's no wonder that he has told you something of what he went through."

Father Brown would probably say that what she was feeling right now was more of the same envy that sent her to the confessional after every visit to the Montague conservatory. Well, maybe he was right. Bridgette suspected, though, that regretting that the mercy of God had kept her far away from any enemy bombs was just as bad a sin as envy could ever be. Now that she understood why Sid had pulled away from her to lay his head on Lady Felicia's shoulder, she couldn't keep either emotion from welling up. A sense of unfairness joined them, forming an unholy trinity that made her eyes burn with unshed tears.

Hadn't it been her, not Lady Felicia, who had labored alongside the Father for months to draw the sad, sullen ten-year-old they'd been entrusted with out of his shell? There were moments later on when she almost rued the extent of their success – who could have guessed the amount of trouble their Sidney would find to get himself into once he had remembered how to flash that impish grin? – but it was still her victory, at least in part. She had heated the milk that chased away the bad dreams. She hadpatched the clothes rent by fences and tree limbs. She had bandaged the wounds from schoolyard fights and, in recent years, more serious escapades. So why should this woman, the woman who had everything, get to share such an important life experience with the nearest thing to a son Bridgette had ever had, when Bridgette herself could not?

The space under the table lit up again, more softly this time, as Lady Felicia took a long drag. Bridgette was tempted to mock-choke when the smoke was released into their small shared space – and since when did Lady Felicia use tobacco, anyway? It wasn't exactly ladylike, though she supposed that in a stressful situation such as this one it could be forgiven – but there was a sorrow in the other woman's exhalation that stopped her.

"It was terrifying as an adult," Lady Felicia murmured. "And as an adult with a bit more information about what was going on than most people had, too. I can't imagine what it must have been like for a child." She sniffled. "That poor, sweet lamb. I will never be able to forget the way he was shaking. Never."

Oh, yes, that was something Bridgette was sure she herself would be tortured with for all eternity should something – her old friend envy, perhaps – consign her to Hell. The tremors that had accompanied Sid's childhood nightmares had been unbearable, but seeing them overwhelm him as a man had nearly torn her in two.

What had come after the shaking had almost been worse. Sid had lain in the combined cradle of hers and Lady Felicia's arms for several long minutes, unmoving and unspeaking. Bridgette had thought that he was only ever still and silent when he wanted to be sneaky. Tonight had taught her that a strong enough wave of terror and desperation could induce the same state in him. It was knowledge she would have been much happier living without.

"This can't happen again, Mrs. McCarthy," Lady Felicia continued. "It just can't. I wanted to tear my hair out when he didn't stop crying right away. It was as if he couldn't stop. I felt so useless when what we were doing didn't seem to be helping at all." A beat passed. "I think he needs to talk to someone."

"I know." Eventually Sid had pulled himself together, lit an unsteady cigarette, and begun insisting that he was all fine, that it was nothing, and that no, he didn't want to discuss it out here in the middle of a freshly minted wasteland. Bridgette hadn't believed him – he obviously wasn't all fine, and hadn't been for all these years, because if that were the case then the fit would never have happened – and apparently neither had Lady Felicia. "Father Brown is an excellent counselor," she reminded the younger woman. "And he has always had a special way with Sidney. Once we get out of here, he will be able to help."

"I know he'll do everything he can," Lady Felicia agreed. "But sometimes things like this require a professional. And if that's what he needs, we'll get it for him." Her cigarette flared again. She must, Bridgette decided, have gotten it from Sid at some point before he left them. "I don't care what it costs."

Bridgette sighed. Her thoughts a short while ago had been unkind, and untrue, too. Lady Felicia had a lot, but she didn't have everything. In fact, she lacked the one thing that she had always and deeply wanted above all others. She might have been extremely talented at passing herself off as childfree rather than childless, but Bridgette understood the look that sometimes flashed behind the Countess' eyes. It was the same one that she still caught the occasional glimpse of when she looked in a mirror. There was a sort of sisterhood between the two of them despite all their differences. It was that very sisterhood, Bridgette now realized, that could make them both exceptionally indulgent when it came to Sid.

"I didn't think that it might still bother him," she suddenly found herself confessing. "What happened. What he saw. He seemed to have gotten over it long ago. He hasn't had any problems during normal storms, besides a little jumpiness when the thunder is bad, for ages." Although, she gulped as she thought backward, Sid did tend to sleep at the presbytery rather than in his caravan whenever the forecast was stormy, and he never looked well-rested the following morning. "...But I should have known." She shook her head. "When he kept looking up earlier, and saying the air felt funny...oh, I should have known."

"No." Lady Felicia found her hand in the darkness and patted it briefly. "You can't blame yourself, Mrs. McCarthy. You were right when you said that this is not a normal storm. How were you to know? I know I said that I should have seen it coming, too, but really, none of us could have. I don't even think Sid realized how bad it would get. Why would any of us ever imagine that we'd find ourselves hiding from ice balls you could play golf with in the wreckage of my conservatory?"

"I would hardly call this a fairy tale dream, that much is for certain." A rare companionable silence unfurled between them. "...Do you think he's made it yet?" Bridgette asked after a while.

Lady Felicia took one last, hard pull on her cigarette, then stubbed it out and pitched the end into the remains of her greenhouse. The glowing dot that had marked its movement between her fingers and her lips didn't vanish, however. It took Bridgette a moment to puzzle out that the other woman had used the dying embers of the first cigarette to light a second. A trick she had learned from Sid, perhaps. It seemed unlikely to be something she'd been taught at whatever girls' boarding school had polished her into a capital-L Lady.

"No," came a soft answer. "Usually this would have been more than long enough to walk to the garage, but the ice will slow him down."

"I wish we hadn't let him go." Bridgette shook her head. "Or that we had gone with him. After the state he was in..."

"You know neither of those was an option. You were here for the argument."

She had been. It was Sid's idea to fetch the car. "The garage is only half the distance away that the house is," he had pointed out. "I can make that trip blindfolded and asleep. You two can stay here, under cover, and I'll come get you. Even if it...if it starts...to..." He'd closed his eyes and turned his head to the side, struggling. "If the storm comes back," he managed finally, "we'll be safer in the car than out in the open."

Indeed, the storm was still hovering above them. It was late enough to be full dark now, but neither stars nor a moon showed overhead. There had been two or three brief spits of rain, but those smatterings petered out quickly. Bridgette hoped that meant that the clouds had dried themselves out in the first burst of hail. They had earned that much of a reprieve, surely.

Lady Felicia had had less faith about the weather. "You'll be too exposed if it starts again," she argued. "You can't be out in hail like that without any protection. Besides, there's no path from here straight to the garage, and everything looks different with the ice. You'll be navigating blind. And alone." She had laid her hand on his arm when he appeared unmoved. "Sid, please. It's too dangerous."

"It's the only thing we can do, though, innit?" He'd been flexing his hands, making fists, releasing them, making them again. He paused when Lady Felicia touched him, then resumed the action as he spoke. "And we have to do something. We're not sitting out here all night in the cold. We'll freeze."

It was, in truth, much too cold for the season. Every rebuttal that Sid made created a visible puff in front of him. The temperature had dropped sharply when the hail fell, and although Bridgette trusted that the spring warmth would return once the ice had melted, who knew how long that would take? They could very well freeze before morning.

"Anyway," Sid continued, "you know the Father'll come looking if we're not back soon. His umbrella won't be any better protection against this," he flung one hand out to indicate the piles of ice all around them, "than yours would have been, if we'd already been out there."

"We will go with you, then," Bridgette had jumped in. "Lady Felicia is right. Going alone, in the dark, would be reckless."

"And how far do you think you two'll get, walking through ankle-deep ice in those shoes?" Sid tapped the knee-high leather boots of his chauffeur's uniform. "My feet will be fine. Yours wouldn't be. 'Sides, someone has to stay here in case the Father shows up. We can't all just up and vanish."

The thought of Father Brown slipping and sliding all the way out here in search of them was enough to give Bridgette palpitations. Sid making a lonesome trek across the dark estate when the heavens might open up again without warning wasn't a vision that gave her any more comfort. There ought to have been a third, less dangerous option. Without a lesser evil to choose, she was stymied.

It was Lady Felicia who relented. "You're right. I hate it, but you're right. Father Brown will have an absolute fit if he makes it all this way and then can't find any of us. At least if you and I are here, Mrs. McCarthy, there will be three of us to fret together over Sid's whereabouts."

She'd turned back to Sid then and pinched his chin between her thumb and index finger. Just, Bridgette had thought, like she had often done herself when she needed the rambunctious child version of him to pay close attention to what she was about to say. "Sidney," Lady Felicia instructed with a careful evenness, "go and get the car."

"Yeah, that's...that's sort of the whole idea, Lady F."

"Hush." Sid hushed. "Go and get the car," Lady Felicia went on, "and then hurry back. Hurry back safely." Strain was coming through in her words now. "Safely, Sid. If I find out that you did something reckless-"

"More reckless, you mean?"

"Yes, fine, more reckless...my point is that you had better be damned careful." Here, finally, her voice broke. "Do you understand?"

"...Right," Sid agreed. "Mind the oil pan and don't ding up the fenders. Got it." There had been a glint of a devilish smile, like he was hoping to jolly the Countess into a laugh, but it quaked when a single tear ran down her cheek instead. He took her hand from his chin and kissed it. "See you soon, Your Ladyship." A moment later, Mrs. McCarthy felt the ghost of a peck on her cheek. "Mrs. M." And then he had gone.

"We didn't have any other option," Lady Felicia repeated dully, pulling Bridgette out of her recollection. "But you're right. We shouldn't have let him go. People...people die in hailstorms like this." She paused, then frowned. "What is that? Do you hear it? It sounds like something's moving up the hill towards us."

There was a sound, yes, and a familiar one at that, though it seemed heavier than usual. Mrs. McCarthy perked up. "The car?"

"No, I'd know the sound of my own car." They sat and listened, considering, as the noise swelled. Suddenly, Lady Felicia gasped. "Oh, no. No, no, please no..."

The noise was identifiable now as the marching cadence of a dense curtain of rain sweeping towards them. Except, Bridgette quailed as it began to batter the table, it wasn't rain. It was hail, more hail, slightly smaller than before but more. Her hand groped out and found Lady Felicia's. Their cold fingers curled tightly together as they leaned into each other under the center of the table. "Perhaps it will end before it catches up with him," Bridgette half-shouted, half-prayed.

"Yes...or maybe he's already at the garage, and the car's just being difficult," Lady Felicia screamed back. Her nails dug into Bridgette's flesh, as if she thought a small blood sacrifice might make their hopeless, helpless pleas come true. "Oh, my God, Bridgette," she moaned, her face a portrait of misery. "What have we done?"