Morning loosened its grip and fell into the lean stretch of afternoon. I confess I have long been able to draw another's hand, though I keep it as one keeps a fault. To shape letters not my own feels both clever and crooked, a child's trick grown too serious. Today I bent over the paper and gave myself to Mama's habit. I slanted the tall strokes to lean rightward, let the tails fall low as hers once did, and curved the y in the way she favoured when her mood was soft. Each loop I mimicked carried her voice, though it was mine that held the pen. It was theft made with ink, and yet the need pressed harder than conscience. If sin has sisters, need is the eldest. I prayed Mr. Fen would see only the hand, and not the hand that drew it.
Arabella clutched her ribbon as though it were a charm and whispered, urgent, "Shall we go?" Heath stood at the door with his stick across his shoulders, the posture of a boy who believed the world had to begin only when he gave it leave. I folded the note carefully, as one folds both hope and guilt together, and we stepped into the lane.
We locked the door behind us as though our few possessions required guarding, then walked three in a row where the path widened, one behind the other when it pinched. The wind carried the salt of the Atlantic, sharp as iron on the tongue, the sound of waves quarreling with stone. Seabirds scrawled their scripture across the sky and left it for no one to read. Arabella began her litany of food, arranging a feast aloud, for she would not allow her voice to learn despair.
"Bread first," she said, ticking off her fingers. "Then potatoes. And maybe cheese if God feels kind today."
"Bread and potatoes," I answered. "That will do."
Heath nodded. "Bread will do," he said quietly. His voice was steady, meant more for comfort than truth.
We passed the neighbours' yards, each a small theatre of what we did not have. A woman bent to her wash, sleeves rolled, arms strong, steam rising like mercy. Two boys dragged a broken sledge and declared it a king's cart. A cat lay in a patch of sun as though heaven itself had ordered the light there. From one window came the smell of onions, from another the thin cry of a babe who had not yet learned patience. We had learned it too well, and might have given it out if patience could be portioned like flour.
At the chapel corner stood the post-box, the wooden mouth that seldom remembered us. Arabella ran ahead with her quickness and lifted the lid with a flourish, as if unveiling treasure. She peered within and gave a cry, sharp as a bird's alarm yet piercing as a pin. "Clara" she called, her voice skipping between fear and joy. "It is Papa's hand."
Heath stopped so suddenly that I nearly struck him. My heart rose as if pulled by a string, then fell back at once, for joy in our house was always yoked to sorrow. Arabella held up the folded paper, triumph bright in her face though tears pressed behind. The writing sprawled bold and careless, the strokes leaning one upon another as if tumbling in haste. It was Papa's.
"We will read it at home," I said, though the urge to tear it open nearly overcame me. "Food first. Words after."
The Shoppe waited at the lane's end like a necessary judge, its door half open as though it had yawned. Inside, coils of rope gave out tar, flour sent dust and comfort into the air, and small casks remembered the seas. Mr. Fen stood behind his counter, weighing another family's hope upon his scale, his grey eyes attentive to both weight and want.
His greeting was his usual one, neither jest nor rebuke. "What mischief brings you three?"
"Need," I said, placing the note before him. "If you please, sir, bread and potatoes, and if there is room, a little cheese."
He took the paper as one receives confession, slow and deliberate. His lips moved as he read, as if tasting the words before swallowing them. Then he lifted his eyes to mine, searched without malice, and returned to the page. He sighed, not for us but for his ledger, then set the paper aside. He laid a loaf on the counter with care, as if the bread had feelings that must be soothed.
"Bread," he said, thoughtful, and reached into the sack of potatoes. "Choose. Sound ones for those who paid, bruised for the rest of us. A bruise can be cut away."
I chose with more reverence than I give some prayers. Arabella watched when he turned to the cheese, her lips parting as the blade bit the wheel. The piece he set down was modest. Her eyes lingered. After a pause, he trimmed a little more and placed it with a sideways glance that begged me not to make him a liar in his own account. He added it with a flourish, pretending generosity a small thing. It is not.
"There" he said. "Mind you stretch it. Cheese dislikes hurry."
"Thank you, sir" I said, though my voice came thin, like a ribbon pulled too tight.
He leaned on the counter, his forearms knotted as roots. "Tell your mother the month's end comes fast. If she cannot meet it, my hand must close. Not today. But soon." His face softened. "I am not blind. You do what you can."
We thanked him with the courtesy poor families pay as if it were coin. Outside, the wind met us with the frankness it gives the stones. Arabella cradled the loaf as if it were a child, Heath bore the potatoes on his shoulder like a soldier's kit, and I carried the cheese in one hand, Papa's letter in the other, light as paper, heavy as consequence.
The walk home lengthened as if the lane itself had grown. Bread weighed more than its weight, the letter less than its meaning. Arabella raised her face in brave hope. "Shall we read it now, only the first line, just the name?"
"Home," I said. "Let the hearth hear it."
A gust came from the deep, smelling of kelp and iron, with the grind of water on stone. Heath walked in silence, then spoke gently, as if measuring each word. "If he means to come, he will come early. That seems the way it should be."
He said it with a quietness that told me he was guessing, drawing a law for men from memory too faint to guide him. For though we had known a father once, he was long gone from our hearth, and Heath had been left with only scraps of a voice and the faint sense that men were meant to rise before the sun.
Arabella bit her lip. "Maybe this time he means it."
"Maybe" Heath said, and said no more.
At our door we paused, as if the threshold demanded recognition. Inside, the hearth glowed sullen red. I set the cheese upon the table like an offering, Heath lowered the sack with a careful grunt, Arabella smoothed the cloth with both hands, gazing as though her will might summon a feast.
At the window where the light falls faithful, I broke the seal with a finger that longed to tremble and would not. The letters sprang across the page with the reckless haste of the man himself.
Clara, my girl, it began, and my heart bowed, though it should have learned not to. Tell your little queen and the boy I will come Saturday next, in the morning. We shall go to the shore and I will bring sweet cakes. I am sorry for the last time. Work kept me. Do not think ill of your Papa. I am your loving father always.
He signed his name as if running downhill, letters tumbling until the last fell. I read it twice, for letters do not lie when unwatched. Men do.
Arabella clapped her hands, joy sudden as applause. "He says he will come."
"He says" Heath murmured. He read as generals read orders they distrust, folded it carefully, set it upon the mantle as though it were relic, and turned away so we should not read his face.
We ate with the honesty want gives to food. Bread was blessing, potatoes the earth's small mercy, cheese a holiday. Arabella sang scraps of song, turned crusts into quarrelling characters. Heath ate slowly, watching us more than the door. I listened to the letter as though ink might sound, as though its promise might speak. The promised day, it said, and the words sat upon me like a guest who expects much and pays little.
After eating comes washing, and washing may be prayer. I set the bowls into the basin we had scoured to its bones that morning. I watched clean water turn cloudy and thought of the creatures that had writhed there, of how innocence slips from the hand when the world decides to make a woman of a girl. I rinsed until the water confessed it had done all it could.
Heath went to the door, opened it a crack, then shut it again softly, as though to prove we were safe. Arabella climbed into my lap, though she grows near too large, and breathed the satisfied breath of one who has eaten, believing a meal is a promise. I envied her courage.
"Read it again," she whispered, and I did, soft. She smiled at sweet cakes, sighed at morning, as though morning were a coat against storm.
We read his letter as if it might show us what a father was. Between the lines we searched for a shape we had never kept, for the weight of a hand upon a shoulder, for the voice of a man who rose early because his children asked it of him. We were trying to define fatherhood in a house where it had slipped away, each of us building it from scraps of memory and hope.
The light thinned. We left the letter upon the mantle where even the fire must see it. I mended a seam without fault, Arabella practiced her invented bow, Heath leaned his stick as though a soldier could stand down at a child's command. When the chill crept in, we gave the fire more wood and pretended ourselves grand folk in council.
Darkness gathered. The deep spoke in its endless voice, steady, without pity. The wind fingered the cracks of the door. I lay in bed beside Arabella and stared at the mantle where the letter rested, warmed by the fire, warmed by our foolish hope. I thought of the last letter that promised the same, of the day that came without the man.
"Will he come?" Arabella asked into the dark, not a question but a need clothed in words.
"If the morning is kind," I said.
"And if it is not" Heath asked softly.
There was no answer.
We lay quiet, three children in a room that had learned our breaths. Outside, the waters laboured without rest, the night kept its patience, the letter did not change while we watched. Yet I listened, as though words on a page might stir themselves to speech. The morrow he swore to claim, it said. The morrow.
Thus the day ended, not with miracle, nor with despair. Hunger had been answered for the moment, hope had been summoned to the step, fear had consented to sit in the corner. The house slept with the letter upon its mantle as a lighthouse sleeps with its lamp. And I told myself that if Papa had written my name, perhaps he would remember my face. If he did not, still we would eat when bread was given, still we would bend the fire to our will, still we would walk to the Shoppe with a note that asked the world for mercy.
The morning he named, said the quiet. And the tide answered with its hand upon the drum, steady, endless, indifferent.