A/N: Lips zipped. Thank you for all the support and love and just genuine responses. I am sorry I am woefully behind on answering everyone. I was really, really sick this past week. But you are all brave to go with me into this story. Lips zipped.

Chapter Twenty Three

Matthew never sleeps wholly well, in the middle of the bed, spread out on his back, alone but not lonely–an honorable distinction. In the dark, there is little room for honor or even dignity, not even the idea of the better man winning.

But.

Instead, the darkened room harbors Mary's hot ire, the grip of her hand on his bicep, the way her spine straightened with pride and her eyes shot sparks at him, tipping her chin, as if she would rather be hit than hear his excuses. Of course, she finally yanked the truth from him with cutting remarks and sharp teeth–so by not talking to you, Mary, by not looking at you, I'm trying to love you the only way I have left–and shocked, she brought her hand to her mouth.

You shouldn't speak of such things.

Has she paid any attention these past years?

There may not be room for honor or dignity in his darkened bedroom but this is what he tries to offer Mary and the Better Man, that is, Mackenzie. He can give them nothing but this. His apologies and eyes go to Mack before Mary. He can share a cigar with the man and Robert and smile, forgoing the port. He can live with seeing Mary once a year. One day, she will bring back dark haired things with American accents that call Mackenzie "dad." He can only do these things. He has too.

I wouldn't want to push in.

But she does. She is always pushing in. She demands things from Matthew. She always has and she probably always will.

Honor and dignity do not keep a man warm at night while he tries to sleep and that is why there is so little room for them. They are useless here.

There are three, quick hard knocks on his door, an abrupt end to his pitying silences. His mother does not wait for for his permission to enter; she calls his name briskly–an unwanted cold wind, rushing up under his coat in the winter time. "Matthew. Matthew. You must wake up."

"I am awake," he replies in the dark.

"You really must wake up." His mother does not use five words when three will do, let alone repeat herself. She does not waste things nor words. She does not suffer fools.

"Oh," she murmurs, another wasted syllable, as if this is not the outcome she expected.

"Well?" he asks. "What is so important that you are waking me after eleven?"

"Matthew." He hears the tension and hesitation in her voice. He cannot remember when he heard such a tone before, perhaps it is a long forgotten memory or uniformly recognized, but something in her voice makes his heart turn over in his chest, an unbeating lump, while he waits for her to finish. "It's Mary. Matthew, it's Mary."

He knows he is in a car but he does not know whose car or how he came to be in it. He does know where it will take them. To the hospital. To Mary?

It's Mary.

It's Mary.

He thinks of her hands–long fingered, beautiful, graceful things–an art unto themselves, gloved or free. He pictures them around the stem of a wine glass at dinner, while she preens and looks down at him as Andromeda. He can see them playing with the tablecloth–are you conforming to the fitness of things? doing what is expected? He remembers the day of the garden party, how they fluttered like the wings of a distressed bird. When they made up, and they handed him her best toy, she said, "Such good luck," and she kissed his cheek. Later, those hands grew practical; they pushed his chair and tucked the blanket around his legs. And curled into to silent, screaming fists in her lap when Carlisle came around. When Matthew finally danced with her, the show that flopped, when they kissed, he memorized those hands, caressing each finger, and then the whole of them around the silk of her gloves. If she were his...

He stops himself because he does not allow himself to start sentences this way anymore. He has not allowed it for sometime now, since he stopped drinking.

But.

He is in a car he does not know and his mother is white faced, her voice pitched to reach him in the dark, "it's Mary," she said and changed everything, so he allows himself this.

He allows himself to imagine if Mary were his.

He would kiss each pad of each finger; he would suck each knuckle into his mouth; he would nibble around the bone of her wrist, in the pale moonlight or daylight filtered through the curtains; he would worship those hands–Mary–as he always wanted to, as he always should have worshipped them–her.

Her hands. Dear God, what if they never pick up a tea saucer or grab him by the arm and march him outside ever again? What if she is–

After the war, it became of interest to study the men "who came back." A war like no other, they called it, and psychologists and so called doctors wrote books and articles as if paper could help a nation of grieving widows and the wives with husbands who slept in chairs to protect the women they loved from their night terrors. Matthew found the the studies uninteresting and obvious. "The human brain has the capacity to see only so much, to take in so much...before it [he] focuses on one thing solely...something simple, something which reason cannot account for...or it [he] turns everything off..." He wanted to take these "doctors" and put them in a trench and see what they did with their it and [he].

But now he thinks of the article, and [he] can see his brain (it), hearing, "it's Mary," and how it [he] went into crisis mode. [He] cannot think of Mary (God, the sound of her voice, their argument earlier today, her smile, her arching brow, her quick wit, the blush on her cheeks, if you really like a good argument–); [He] focuses only on her hands.

[Matthew] thinks of Mary's hands.

Sybil is pacing and Tom is at her elbow, asking her to please sit down, but she wriggles away from him like a puppy who won't be leashed. Robert looks up at Matthew with too much hope and dread on his face, haggard. He is murmuring, "How could this happen?"

Edith is closed lipped and pale, holding her mama's hand while the woman weeps.

The Dowager sits very still, gripping her stick and Matthew thinks of their sacred moment in the hall–my good man, she called him.

His mother, of course, is the first to ask if there is any news. She asks the question Matthew does not, for fear of the answer.

Sybil moves out of Tom's grasp and throws her hands in the air. She begins as if they are all in the middle of a conversation. "She just couldn't have known about the baby!"

Matthew heaves out a breath he held since the knocks on his door in the middle of the night. She is alive. But then Cora stops weeping and everyone is looking at Sybil as if she speaks another language. "She didn't know," Sybil repeated stubbornly and with quite a bit of determination. "I spoke with her, I have spoken with her at length on the subject, several times, and I am telling you," her voice raises dangerously, "I know my sister...Mary had no idea she was pregnant."

"Was?" Matthew croaks.

Sybil goes to Matthew and takes his hands. Hers are different than Mary's. She looks him in the eyes as if she knows this is what he needs, just as she was the one to call the house, because she knew he needed to be here. "The car accident–her arm is broken and one of her kidneys is badly beat up but there is hope it can mend itself. Even so, she can live perfectly well with one kidney. You heard me...she...she miscarried. We haven't seen her but Clarkson said she has some good gashes on her–"

"She'll scar," Cora says suddenly, woodenly, before she begins to weep again. "Mary will have scars."

"Mama," Edith admonishes. "We haven't seen her yet. This isn't a gothic novel."

"Well, Cora," Matthew says shakily because he must say something. "I doubt very much Mack will mind if there are scars of any sort, if Mary is well in the end. Isn't that all that matters?"

His attempt to say the right thing, just when his heart starts to beat in his chest again, is met with widened eyes...Even Robert's glitter with unshed tears: "He promised me he would never break her heart and now I must tell her–"

"He's dead," Tom interrupts and says the hard thing. "The poor man didn't even make it to the hospital alive."

"Does Mary–" Matthew begins to croak.

"No," the Dowager speaks from her place. "And now, there is the question of whether Mary should know of this miscarriage at all, if it as Clarkson says, very early, and as you say Sybil, she did not know she was expecting a child."

Clarkson must have come upon them at some point in their stumbling conversation. He glares at the Dowager and her presumptions before speaking. "I will not knowingly keep a patient's condition from her." Everyone is shocked by Violet's question. Matthew feels the need to sit. Sybil's jaw is still wide upon.

"Granny!" she hisses.

"Mama–" Robert begins.

"No, no," the Dowager interrupts them, shaking her head. It is only then that Matthew sees the glimmer of tears on her lashes, caught in the light. "I see very well. You all think I am the unfeeling one for wanting to prevent my granddaughter's continued pain. Isn't losing a husband enough? Must she loose a child–a child she didn't know of–as well? Who will be the one to double her grief? Clarkson?Are you up to the task?" She hits her stick against the chair she sits on before she swivels to look at her son. "Robert?" Finally, she turns to look at Matthew. My good man. "And you?" she asks him directly. "Will you do it?"

The family does not breathe. Matthew and Violet stare at one another. He feels his own eyes begin to fill. He cannot swallow.

In the silence, they are able to hear Mary stir in the room behind them.

She calls Mack's name.

A/N: Believe it or not, we have a long way to go and the toughest parts are to come. Other than that, must continue to keep these lips zipped for the next several chapters.