8.
Making Things Right
Silas’s carriage moved through narrow, grime-streaked streets, its wheels clattering against the cobblestones. He leaned out the window, shouting instructions to the driver as he desperately tried to recreate the path he and the Ghost of Christmas Present had taken. Since the spirit could have easily transported them directly there, he had to believe they’d walked the route so that Silas could find his way back.
The unexpected kindness of that act was not lost on him.
A particularly rough area came into view, each building more run-down than the last, the crumbling façades sparking his memory. The streets were oddly quiet on this Christmas morning, giving him the eerie impression that he was all alone in the world. The thought didn’t give him the comfort it once would have.
“We can’t be far,” he muttered, as much to himself as to the driver, the fear that he’d never find them growing.
A few moments later, his gaze landed upon the building where Grace and Emmaline lived.
“Stop!” Silas cried.
The carriage pulled to a rattling halt on the side of the road, and Silas jumped down, his boots splashing in a filthy puddle. Hope surged within him, and he dashed across the street.
Inside the building, the tenement’s staircase groaned under Silas’s weight as he hurried up it to the next landing, each creakechoing his anticipation and dread as he climbed. A thin wail of despair came from somewhere below, and on the second floor, the walls rattled with shouts of anger. The sounds disconcerted him, and he wondered how Grace and Emmaline could bear it.
You’ve given them no choice but to bear it.
Filled with shame, he climbed one more set of stairs and reached her door at last, taking a deep breath before he knocked.
Grace answered almost immediately, as lovely as she’d been ten years ago, though thin and wan. She wore a threadbare gown of faded green, her once-bright golden locks mostly hidden beneath a brown scarf she’d wrapped around her head and neck for warmth.
“Grace,” he said, her name spilling from his lips, weighted with all the emotion he had thought he’d forgotten how to feel.
Her head jerked up, her blue eyes wide with shock. For a moment, she was frozen, but then the carefully constructed guard in her gaze crumbled at the sight of him.
Emmaline lay on a bed behind her, her small body nearly lost beneath a mound of ragged blankets, her resemblance to him painfully clear. Her hair spread around her face like a dark halo, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.
Grace straightened, her posture rigid as if bracing for the blow she was certain would follow. Silence stretched between them, taut and uncertain. “You,” she managed, the word trembling with disbelief and accusation. “Why are you—”
“Are you an angel come to answer my prayers?” Emmaline’s voice, soft and dreamy, cut through the tension. Her eyes fluttered open, piercingly green, and fixed on Silas with innocent wonder.
The question struck him, leaving him momentarily breathless. How could she still believe in such things? How could she possibly look to him to save her, when he was the cause of all her suffering?
Grace left the doorway and moved to their daughter’s side, her expression torn between anger and something softer as she smoothed the child’s unruly hair. “It’s not an angel, Emmy,” she whispered, never taking her eyes off Silas. “Just a ghost.”
Her words pierced him, though he had no defense. It was what he had become—a specter from the past. His voice wavered as he moved toward the bed and knelt beside it, the grandeur of his attire absurd in the squalid setting. “You’re unwell,” he said, reaching for words that might mend more than illness. “I’m here to help you.”
“She’s not yours to worry over,” Grace snapped, though her voice cracked.
“Isn’t she?” he asked, his heart breaking. “I’m so sorry, Grace. I didn’t know. I never would have stayed away if I’d known.”
She looked at him, really looked, as if seeing the gulf he had crossed to find them, the effort it had cost him. Her blue eyes softened, if only slightly, before hardening again. “What do you want, Silas? Why are you really here after all this time?”
He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. How could he explain it? Any of it? He couldn’t even explain the events of last evening to himself. “To make things right,” he replied, the words foreign and raw on his tongue. “To—”
“We don’t need your charity,” Grace cut in, her voice fierce but lacking its previous certainty. Emmaline’s hand gripped hers, small and frail, a reminder of how much they did need, how much she couldn’t provide.
Emmaline gazed at him, a wistful smile playing on her lips even though fever clouded her eyes. “He looks like me, doesn’t he, Mummy?”
Silas’s heart wrenched at the tender trust in her soft voice, at how close he had come to never hearing it. His hands shook, not from the cold but from the terror of hope. “Please,” he said, hisvoice stripped bare. “Please, Grace. Let me help. I know I can’t change the past, but I can provide warmth, shelter, medicine, good food, a doctor...”
“And if I say no?” Grace asked, her voice quivering, her distrust of him obviously softened by her fear for their child.
“Then I will leave,” he replied, the weight of the words nearly crushing him. But they were true. He would leave if that’s what she needed from him. Although he would make sure she had the things she needed so that their daughter could be made well.
