by Betsy Tobin
* * *
After the burial I accompany my mother to Dora’s cottage, to claim those things that were most precious to her: the wooden chest and its contents, including the tiny shattered portrait of her mother and the diary filled with words she will never understand. I hesitate when my eyes come to rest on the spot where her money lies buried. I cannot bring myself to unearth it now, but know that it is there—that it may one day purchase opportunity. The painter waits patiently outside while we go through her things, and when we emerge, my mother clutching the wooden box tightly to her chest, the two of them come face to face. She hesitates, then nods at him and he falls in beside us, and together we return to her house, just as night begins to fall. We leave her there, the painter and I, and she does not seem to question his presence any longer, merely thanks us for our help and bids us good night.
Together we walk slowly back to the Great House, pausing at the graveyard one last time. I stare at the freshly mounded earth that covers them, knowing that they are somewhere else, atop the ridge, far away. The painter takes my shoulders in his hands and turns me slowly round to face him.
“Come with me across the water,” he says. My eyes flicker back to her grave: I think of her flight and the world she left behind, the world of the diary. At once I see my own life on its yellowed pages: the years of loneliness and servitude, of visions and nightmares. Like her I long for more—but I do not wish my flight to end as hers has done.
The painter looks at me and reads my thoughts. “We cannot know our end,” he says. I nod, knowing he is right, look down at my hands and this time see my own flesh and bones. If not her hands, then what has she bequeathed me? I close my eyes and struggle to see her, cannot find her features in the darkness of my mind.
But instinct tells me she is there, somewhere deep inside me, and that she will set me free.
About the Author
BETSY TOBIN was born in Ohio and emigrated to England in 1989. A journalist, playwright, and prize–winning short story writer, she lives in London with her husband and four children. Bone House is her first novel.