The Orphan of Cemetery Hill - Hester Fox Page 0,51
he said finally. “Mrs. Hodge told me when I paid the rent this morning.”
Tabby stopped chewing, the johnnycake turning to ash in her mouth. “Oh?”
“Caleb Bishop.” Eli’s gaze was still trained on her, as if he could see every half-truth and secret she was keeping from him. “He created some kind of havoc and then slipped clean away. Gave a guard a good lumping on the head.”
Slipped clean away. So, Caleb was gone. A light rain was starting to fall, pattering against the window and turning the world inside small and quiet. Would she ever see him again? Was he somewhere safe at least? Good, she reminded herself; it was better this way. A dangerous temptation had been removed. He was nothing but trouble, and the farther away he was, the better. But then why was there an entirely new and unwelcome ache in her chest? It seemed that the great ocean of time had claimed yet another person she cared about, and that she was destined to sail alone through life.
As if reading her thoughts, Eli broke the silence. “Do you ever think of marriage, Tabby?”
She nearly choked. “Marriage?” she asked weakly.
“You’re almost twenty-four, a full-grown woman. Now, I’d keep you here with me forever if I could, but that’s no life for you.”
“I—I hadn’t given it much thought.”
That was only partly true. She hadn’t given it any thought until she’d recognized the young man with chestnut hair standing beside an open crypt. Since then she’d had many vivid—very vivid—thoughts about what it would be like to marry one man in particular. But the golden fantasies quickly turned to dust when she tried to envision day-to-day life with a rakish young man. He would irritate her to no end with his careless behavior. Besides, who said that he even would have wanted to marry her? Kisses and smoldering gazes were one thing, but young men like Caleb traded in those as easily as breathing. Never mind that he came from a different world, a world of plenty, a world of sparkling ladies and sumptuous entertainments. Never mind that he thought her a fraud and a liar. He was gone now, and she was still Curious Tabby. She would never know what it was like to take vows, never know the warm, satisfying weight of a baby in her arms, never know what it was to be loved unconditionally.
Eli gave a sigh, folding his napkin and pushing back his chair. “I know I’m not the family you wanted or needed, but I want to do right by you, see you happy. And settled. I won’t be around for—”
“Don’t say it,” Tabby begged, a sob choking in her throat. “Please.” His hair was turning grayer, his stoop more pronounced, but like the death’s heads etched in stone in the cemetery, she wanted him to stay the same forever, to never leave her. In that moment she vowed that she would not let Mr. Whitby get anywhere near Eli and the little life they had built together, even if it meant she could never see her father again.
After she’d kissed Eli on the cheek and watched him shuffle across the street to the cemetery, she went to her room and locked the door behind her. It was dark and gray, the soft September rain still falling outside. Crouching before her bed, she pulled out her carpet bag, the one she hadn’t used since she’d run away with Alice, and began piling her few belongings inside it. When it was full, she perched on the edge of her bed, paralyzed by the enormity of what she had to do next. Hours passed as she watched the weak shadows on the wall fade into nothing.
The sky was growing dark, and Eli would be back soon. It was now or never. There was no cousin in Rockport, nowhere to turn. The old feeling of desolation flooded over her. She was to be a runaway again, an orphan without a home.
Taking up her bag, Tabby closed the door to the little room in the eaves. She folded a note addressed to Eli and left it on his place at the table. She couldn’t tell him everything, but she could tell him that she loved him, and that she would see him again someday. Then she walked down the creaking boarding house steps for the last time, and emerged out into the world, a lost child once again.