When the last of the tea and coffee had been sipped and only crumbs were left from the cakes and slices, people began to disperse.
"I'm sorry for your loss," mouth after mouth murmured, accompanied by the occasional, "We will keep you in our prayers."
Lips compressed into a tight curve resembling a smile, Alberta wondered just how many people really would be praying for her and Harold. She pictured a line of identical prone figurines occasionally uncovering their heads to cross themselves. It was so absurd she almost wanted to laugh.
"Nevertheless, I will be praying for you."
And then Millicent really was there, holding out her hands with that soft, sad smile that whispered, "I, too, have lost a son". Something shifted and grew within Alberta; if she were to fall upon a trope, she might have called it a hole, but it did not feel empty. There was some warmth to it- yet it was not pleasing, and already she could feel the dastardly familiar prickling behind her eyes; that affliction that had come upon her the day after Constable Watson's visit and had not left since.
Without speaking, Millicent looked Alberta directly in the face (as directly and boldly as Eustace Clarence would look at her, even after Lucy and Edmund had stayed with them in Hampstead). And although she could not read or understand what Millicent was projecting (if she was indeed projecting anything), Alberta was strangely comforted.
And now Millicent, too, was gone, and her unfashionable coat and frayed gloves melded into a symphony of coats and gloves.
"So you have met Samuel's wife," Harold murmured in her ear, and she tensed slightly before relaxing.
"I didn't hear you come," she said slightly stiffly. To her ears, it sounded as though a strain of punishment had wound itself into her voice and she wondered dimly at it. Despite the air and space between them she felt Harold stiffen and knew that he had heard it too.
"I- I yes," she said, hoping to break the still swell filling the space, "she spoke with me earlier. She-"
Alberta halted. She almost understands, she wanted to say, but she wasn't sure that that was actually the case. She didn't irritate me like the others would be more accurate, but it was a rather unpleasant thing to say at such a public gathering, and she had already been snappish (unfairly, her mind added, somewhat unhelpfully) with Harold. Then she grasped at the thread that Harold had offered her as it led her to a completely different direction.
"- you met Millicent's husband?"
My peace offering, my apology, she thought, please, Harold-
"I don't see why you should punish me, Alberta," Harold said, and she detected a shade of (loneliness) a cool, faded colour in his voice. But he took the proffered branch and reached out to take her right hand, so tenderly. "Samuel MacPherson came and spoke with me not long after I spoke with Susan."
Susan.
Guilt decided to take Alberta's insides and thread them into a little pattern, akin to the skyline of Munch's celebrated Scream.
"How is Susan, Harold?"
She felt the pressure around her hand intensify a moment before subsiding as Harold took a shaky breath. The air quivered, tiny breaks tripping over scattered rocks. Harold did not take shaky breaths.
"I've invited her to dine with us tonight" was all he said, and Alberta nodded.
"It is a good thing to do," she murmured. The right thing to do. The thing I ought to have done.
Harold slowly wound his fingers through hers.
"She looks a little like you," he said softly, and despite herself, she laughed.
"A long time ago, perhaps just a little. But I've aged, Harold." Her voice grew softer as the wooden panels of the door blossomed, formed a surreal box (sitting beneath the pulpit, now heaved to the back of a car). "I've aged."
She felt, rather than heard, Harold's tired breath.
"We all have, Alberta," he said, and it almost scared her to hear the brokenness in his voice. "We all have."
Together they watched as the people silently dispersed. Alberta saw, from the corner of her eye, a person in a suit taking the portraits of Eustace Clarence, Victor, Helen, Peter, Edmund and Lucy from the walls.
Like an exhibition, she thought, and felt as bare and empty as a gallery stripped of its works.
A/N: Sooo I'm trying to bring Susan and Jill in but they keep insisting that Alberta needs just a little more time to herself. Soon, it will be soon!