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“But this friend was special to you.”
“Yes, he was very special.”
“You know, sometimes it takes losing someone pretty special for us to really appreciate what’s right there in front of us. What’s really important to us. And sometimes somebody’s loss is another’s gain.” Darcy cocked his head slightly, offered him a knowing look. Confiding. “I don’t justpretendto know what I’m talking about here.”
“And what have you gained?” Bron asked, almost too quickly. “Through your loss.”
“Well, I …” Darcy contorted his face into a serious pause before letting out a deep sigh. “I suppose I’ve gained an awareness of who I was before my loss, and in doing so it has informed the person I’ve become after it. It’s not always easy.” Darcy held his jaw in his hands, rubbed at it like an ache, and Bron looked to the floor, felt the heaviness of his chin and lids cast down. “Trust me, I’ve lost a fair few friends along the way, and more than that too.”
Darcy rose to leave the room, a movement that, as he shuffled away, made a scratching noise on the wooden floor like a mouse burrowing through.
“Thank you,” Bron said. “For saying all that.”
Darcy yanked at the sleeve of his dressing gown, twisting to face him. “I haven’t said anything you didn’t already know,” he said before ascending the stairs and disappearing into the dark.
On Christmas morning, Bron had woken to find a box, wrapped in silver paper, outside his bedroom door. It read his name in a miniature hand, and within the comfort of his rooms, he lifted the lid. Inside was a netting of tulle and gauzy paper that looked like a wedding veil, and beneath it were two neatly folded items: a cozy, maroon-colored jumper that read “It was not the thornbending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn,” and underneath it, a garment of gray cashmere. The softest thing he’d ever held. Lifting and fanning it out, he realized it was a shawl. He read the note accompanying the box:
To keep you warm in case you fancied a change from the yellow, though you continue to be a thorn in my side. A quote possibly from the wrong sister, but the sentiment stands.
—Darcy.
This gift had touched him, made him truly, properly cry. The shawl offered to him a sense of finally being seen by a man he so desperately wanted approval from. And the jumper, well, he continued to think about that deep into the night.
But Christmas Day came and went, and with it another year had passed. It was safely, securely January, and he was watching Netflix on his Sunday off, again alone in his bedroom, all the while struggling to fully immerse himself into the folds of English countryside, into the strained love affair that was happening on screen. He had found the repetitive string of festive days unsettling, considered the way the house came to life to be a burden. At each gathering, Darcy nodded his head in acknowledgment of his presence—a conspiratorial nod, but he wished every time for Darcy to take a step further. To envelop him in his arms, there in the room, for all to see; to ask him if he had received his present, what he thought of it. Bron would say that he understood the sentiment perfectly, though he wasn’t really sure about the whole thorn thing.
So Bron grew bored of the movie, closed the streaming service’s tab to open another, and tried to occupy himself through other means. Inspired by Birdie’s departure (whichever version of it was taken), he ripped a page out of one of his many books and, borrowing Ada’s new art supplies, ballooned the quote“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me”into its center in a steady calligraphy. Once dry, he’d frame it, take pics of it in good lighting, and in the interest of working toward his New Year New Megoals of being more business minded and professional, he’d upload it onto some online marketplace and wait for someone to buy it. Afterward, he tingled for something else to do: opened up several apps on his phone to key variations of the nameEllie Awolowo Flanders—Eleanor, Eleanora, Eloiseinto Instagram, Twitter, and even LinkedIn, but with no luck. He swiped away the different interfaces but dwelled on the last, backspacing Ellie’s name and slowly typing in another, hesitant to hit “Enter” on the search.
Harry Blackwater’s name loomed at him like it always did, and then the countless older men he’d come across who shared the same name, the blank profile that had once been active, and the wall of unanswered text messages he’d sent to it:
He swiped the last screen away, blacking out his phone. There was a double rap on the door, a twist of the handle, wedging as if locked. This gave him enough time to pull the sheets closer to his chest. The handle rattled again, and Madame Clarence walked in.
“There you are, Bron,” she said. His eyes flicked from her to the screen, as hers did from the screen to him. It was a verbal conversation only on her part, but his silence urged her to go on. “Mr. Edwards would like to see you downstairs in the drawing room.” She was mid-retreat when she stepped back into the room and said, “The door was not locked?”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”
“We will ’ave someone come to oil it.”
He quickly changed out of his slacker clothes and made his way downstairs. He walked past the library’s open doors, the room erected with scaffolding, and into the drawing room, where Darcy and Ada stood by Mr. Edwards at his desk, looking not unlike two misbehaving schoolchildren who’d been sent to the headmaster’s office. Bron joined them in the line. Mr. Edwards poised over his ledgers like an office clerk or a merchant. While most of his things had been lost in the fire, the drawing room had become Mr. Edwards’s new domain for office work. Bron thought of the room as a redesigned set piece, a filming location on budget with all the typical supplies there to be found: the tower of folders, the hole punch, the stapler. Mr. Edwards dipped his pen into an inkpot. With one hand, he stroked Captain behind the ears, and with his other hand concluded his letter writing with a flourish. Darcy called the dog’s name, startling both pet and master.
“Oh, good heavens, you three,” he said. Rising from the desk chair, he asked them to sit on the couches, rustling Ada’s hair as he did so and patting his son on the back. To Bron, he offered a light brush on his shoulder. The dog trotted away to his bed by the fireplace.
Bron waited for Darcy to sit first before dropping onto the opposite couch.
“So, do I have some exciting news for you all? Ah, there you are, Clarence, with my tea.”
Clarence strode into the room and handed him a steaming cup. She stood waiting for him to take a sip. When he did, she smiled, and leaned forward to rearrange his tie.
“Th-thank you Clarence.”
“You’re welcome, sir.” Bron had noticed this before, the way Clarence’s face rearranged itself around her employer, morphing into something less uptight, something gentler. At first he’d taken it as a nervous fret, but now he wasn’t so sure.
Mr. Edwards’s eyes lingered on her as she left the room. They were all waiting for something to happen.
Ada finally squeaked, “Papa?”
“Oh yes, yes. The news, the news—exciting news. The very best. Well, it turns out that the house fire has spread a little further than first suspected.”
“I knew it,” said Ada. “It’s the smoke particles in the air.”
