...she could no longer excuse her cowardice in the face of Anthony Masen's extreme sacrifice.
Just like he once had, she would straighten her back and face her fears with her shoulders squared, like a Swan should.
.
.
Isabella prepared her father's supper, saw him safely to bed, and no longer conflicted, threw on her coat and shawl.
She set off unmindful of the drizzling rain, to tell Michael Newton of her decision, breathing deeply the frigid, moist air as though it were liberation.
When she finally stepped onto his porch, she didn't have to say anything; one look at the resolve shining through her wet and wind-blown face told him everything he needed to know.
He greeted her with a sad smile in the knowledge he had given it his best try.
"Good evening, Miss Swan, rather late for a lady to-"
"Pastor Newton," she interrupted, impatient to finish it for both their sakes. "I am terribly sorry to inconvenience you at this late hour. I simply could not sit by another moment and have you believing that I was still considering your offer."
Thinking her cruel, Michael Newton's face hardened into a mask.
Isabella steeled herself to confess, more than she ever would in his church. "The truth is that I shall never marry. I have always known it. It was inexcusable of me to delay my answer in this manner, I cannot apologize enough."
She looked up into his eyes and told it to him plainly in a quiet voice. "I could never be your wife, Pastor. I am not a God-fearing woman, nor a good Christian. I delayed only so that I would not break my Pa's heart outright, as he believes that you are my last chance, come to save me from my spinsterhood." Isabella smiled bitterly, wringing her hands. "He loves me, and wants what's best for me, and I wanted to let him believe it but a little longer. I should have known better. It was so selfish of me, and I truly am sorry."
Michael Newton rested his hands on his hips for the lack of a better thing to do with them, struggling for a reply to her bleak honesty.
Lowering his head, he nodded, finally accepting that she would never be his. Rain began to fall in earnest then, as if the skies were lamenting their missed opportunity.
"Let me take you home, Miss Swan, I cannot allow you to trudge home in this weather," he said stiff as starch, reaching inside for his coat and hat.
"Oh no, I could not presume-"
"No, no," he hushed her, his hands upraised. "Please now. Let me do this. It's only right."
And so it was that Isabella sat beside Pastor Newton in his little buggy, with rain pelting their backs as they pushed through an awkward soup-thick silence.
.
.
Disoriented, Charles sat up in bed at the sound of movements outside. By the time he finally got to his feet, a quietly sobbing Isabella stood like a stone cold pillar on the porch, and Michael Newton's buggy was pulling away, the Pastor a picture of wet, hunched over misery at the reins.
"Goddamn it," Charles whispered, looking to heaven and wishing more than ever it'd been him who'd died all those years ago, in place of his Renee. Once more, Isabella needed her mother's arms to grieve in. He'd always felt so inadequate when she needed comforting, his hands seemingly big and awkward when trying to soothe a fragile girl.
He shuffled to the door, steeling himself for her old pain to drip out of her like blood from a reopened wound. All he could do was assist her inside with his arm around her shoulders for once.
He was glad when she let him, though he had a distinct sense of it being for his sake.
Somehow he knew that she was far away with her old grief rotting away in her heart, with memories of the boy she'd buried long ago.
He'd always been a capable person, but this... This had always been beyond him. He hated his helplessness.
.
.
Inside the little house embraced by the forest, two lonely people lay in separate rooms, mere feet and entire worlds apart.
Isabella laid restless, embraced by the moonless night, black shadows elongating over her clasped hands and inside her heart.
She had made her choice long ago, and felt only relief at finally releasing the pastor, and her father, from false hope. Even Charles had seemed to finally understand she feared only disappointing him, and not the consequences of spinsterhood. She almost cried again herself thinking at how valiantly he had finally relented.
Many nights were sleepless, haunted by specters of the past, but this night was different. This night was cathartic. Tonight, however, she felt as though she could let Peter go, too.
Strangely, nothing had outwardly changed, but she herself was different. She felt liberated, no longer under the weight of any man's expectations.
Throwing back her coverlets, she tiptoed from her bed and kneeled by the timber glory box that once might have accompanied her to the home of a husband.
Setting aside good linens and gifted treasures, she reverently lifted out a small silver tobacco box, opening it close to her nose.
She breathed deeply, drowning in the familiar and distinctive dry scent, and in her mind's eye, watched Peter's face the day he gave to her the treasure within it, so hopeful, and at once so afraid, drowning under the foreboding that he would not come back to her from the war in the south.
Fresh tears began to fall under the weight of those memories, but instead of the heavy, desperate grief, she felt lighter. Sensing that she could finally release Peter's ghost from the vault of her heart, Isabella lifted a blue ribbon from the tobacco box, and studied the blond lock of hair tied within it.
He had been beautiful, her Peter, as fair as a pink cherub with golden locks, the kind she'd seen in an old painting once.
Smiling through a rainbow of memories, she recalled the day they'd exchanged locks of hair as keepsakes, the same day they gave each other their innocence on the moist grass of a riverside clearing.
The day before he left.
Cloaked in a thick blanket, Isabella walked out to the porch clutching the keepsake.
Into the windy, dark night, she held up her hands and released Peter's hair from the ribbon, wisps of corn silk floating away on the cold breeze along with her farewell.
"I think... I can let you go now," she whispered into the night, and watched as the empty ribbon fluttered from her fingers, disappearing among the ancient trees.
"Farewell, Peter. You were my best friend, and I miss you still."
The forest whispered and swayed, and she imagined a weight sloughing off her body, shedding to the earth like an old skin.
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A/N: Thank you for reading. For those who asked, I hope to update this once a week or so, life permitting. Cheers, ~a