Chapter One

June 1946

It was odd, how quiet it was. With all the people in her room, with all the teary eyes watching her shallow breathing, the ears marking the gentle rattle inside of her chest, the lips that quivered only slightly at the end of a short battle no one was quite prepared for … in spite of it all, it was quiet.

Tremendously and beautifully quiet.

Sybbie listened to the contrast of everything; she listened to the small, silent movements that moved the air around her - the sniffling, the sighing, the bowing of heads. She listened to the steady tick of the clock beside the bed, its chirping against the peace of it all. A soft sound, an otherwise comforting sound, but not now. Today it was loud, terribly loud, in the solemn quiet of the room.

She let her eyes drift toward it, toward the little gold clock. She let her eyes drift over the heads of her aunt Mary and of her father as they sat perched on Granny's bed. She let them drift over and away from George as he held onto one of the four posts, his brows pinched together and his mouth turned down as he watched the scene before them. Yes, she let her eyes go to it, to the offending, ticking clock by Granny's side, and she read the time, the second hand rounding the twelfth mark again and again: it was a quarter after ten in the morning.

A quarter after ten.

Somehow, in some strange way, it seemed suitable for Granny. To go at such an hour in the morning. With the warmth of the sun pouring in her sky blue room, the sweet songs of morning birds bleeding with the soft tick of her clock, the delicate scent of the white rose Donk had brought in only three hours before, it not yet drooping in the crystal vase beside her bed, it seemed like Granny. This time of morning, when everything was awake and fresh and the sleepiness of the world had been gently brushed away by the sun, it seemed like Granny. Bright. Warm. Beautiful. Kind.

Granny.

Another shift of air, a small tightening of her grandfather's hand against her grandmother's caught her gaze. The duvet's golden threads of silk shimmered in the light.

Donk sat quietly in the chair there, by Granny's side. His arm rested on the bed, his shoulders slumped forward. Sybbie watched as his lips moved over her grandmother's name, and she watched as his eyes roved about Granny's thin outline beneath her bed sheets. She watched as his eyes moved up to her face, her hair that had slowly become more gray locks than dark, her lips that seemed a bit chapped, slightly parted as if she would speak and pink, her eyes that fluttered over the faces of everyone around her, toward the canopy of her bed, and then up, again, to Donk.

"Darling."

It barely moved the air at all, Granny's breath of a word, but Sybbie heard it. They'd all heard it.

And in the echo of the sound, Sybbie's vision blurred. She wiped at her cheeks, quickly, quickly. She blinked away the image of Donk softly stroking her grandmother's hand. She wiped away at the realization that this would soon be it … this would be it. A loss she was not ready to endure, another person she couldn't quite give up. She turned to George and found that he, too, was not ready.

Her cousin, this man who had been to war, who'd flown in planes and counted bombs, he'd stopped bothering to dry his cheeks, his hands held tight to the wooden post, knuckles white. In the sunlight, the glimmer of his tears made him look quite young.

"Any word from Edith and Bertie?"

Aunt Mary's voice, though barely only whispered, shook her and Sybbie pulled in a breath. Of course they weren't all here. Aunt Edith. Her younger cousins. Uncle Bertie. Granny couldn't go, not without everyone.

Everyone. She had to stay here, for everyone.

"Marigold phoned when they were at the station," Uncle Henry's voice answered flatly back. Sybbie lowered her gaze at the sound. "She and the boys took the 8 o'clock. Edith and Bertie were following soon after."

He stood behind her, behind Sybbie, next to Grace, next to Paul, next to those who they'd welcomed into their family in the past half of a year, those they would soon welcome, Grace's hand touching the not yet swollen belly where the future of their family grew. The diamond Sybbie had only just shown them all still cold and heavy and unfamiliar on her finger.

How could she ever be married without Granny? How could George bring his new child into the world without Granny? How could any of them manage without her crooked, knowing grin, the little tilt of her head toward Donk, the gentle, comforting grasp of her soft fingers on their wrists? How could they manage?

How could they?

She wiped at her cheeks again, furiously; she blinked down, she shook her head, she tried to curb her tears as best she could - for Donk's sake as he brought her long fingers to his lips. For Aunt Mary's as she gripped her handkerchief more tightly. For George...for...for Granny. Oh, but it was no use. For Granny, her granny, was dying.

She was dying.

Sybbie swallowed, she wiped, she bit down on the choking sensation of sobs that she did not want to allow. The world seemed to close in around her, in brilliant shimmering light, in sounds of birds, in barely noticeable chirpings of time moving along, thinning the moments she'd ever have left with her grandmother. She swallowed again. She wiped again. She bit, and bit, and bit … and her father moved slightly upon the bed.

He looked over his shoulder to her, his brows dipping, and Sybbie watched, her vision swimming and the light streaking across his face, as he smiled sadly at her and offered his hand.

With a nod, with a change in his own teary expression which glimmered and shone, her father's fingers grasped her own. "Oh, love." She closed her eyes at the strain in his voice. "There's no shame in tears."

And Sybbie frowned, nodding, a soft sob shaking her harder than she liked.