She'd taken a long, appraising look at me, with my freckled skin and unruly mane of red hair, my sullen face, and decided that a proper finishing school was what was needed if I was ever to make a decent marriage. "It's a wonder you weren't sent home years ago," she clucked. "Everyone knows the climate in India isn't good for the blood. I'm sure this is what your mother would want."
I'd had to bite my tongue to keep from asking how she could possibly know what my mother would want. My mother had wanted me to stay in India. I had wanted to come to London, and now that I'm here, I couldn't be more miserable.
For three hours, as the train made its way past green, hilly pastures, and the rain slapped wearily at the train's windows, Tom had slept. But I could see only behind me, whence I'd come. The hot plains of India. The police asking questions: Had I seen anyone? Did my mother have enemies? What was I doing alone on the streets? And what about the man who'd spoken to her in the marketplace--a merchant named Amar? Did I know him? Were he and my mother (and here they looked embarrassed and shuffled their feet while finding a word that wouldn't seem too indelicate) "acquainted"?
How could I tell them what I'd seen? I didn't know whether to believe it myself.
Outside the train's windows, England is still in bloom. But the jostling of the passenger car reminds me of the ship that carried us from India over rough seas. The coastline of England taking shape before me like a warning. My mother buried deep in the cold, unforgiving ground of England. My father staring glassy-eyed at the headstone-- Virginia Doyle, beloved wife and mother peering through it as if he could change what had happened through will alone. And when he couldn't, he retired to his study and the laudanum bottle that had become his constant companion. Sometimes I'd find him, asleep in his chair, the dogs at his feet, the brown bottle close at hand, his breath strong and medicinally sweet. Once a large man, he'd grown thinner, whittled down by grief and opium. And I could only stand by, helpless and mute, the cause of it all. The keeper of a secret so terrible it made me afraid to speak, scared that it would pour out of me like kerosene, burning everyone. "You're brooding again," Tom says, casting a suspicious look my way.
"Sorry." Yes, I'm sorry, so sorry for everything .
Tom exhales long and hard, his voice traveling swiftly under the exhalation. "Don't be sorry. Just stop."