The English Descendants

9

Thomas does not stay with Lucille for long. While his heart aches for someone to keep him company, it is clear once he has returned to her that she is not what he wants. He wanders the small graveyard and she follows, talking incessantly of what they once were, how he belonged to her, and how it was the only place he will ever belong. And he says nothing in return. He travels to the mines. His mines, as he thinks of them. They are extensive, with equipment much larger than his little steam powered contraption digging up the red clay. She follows him one evening, for he always visits when there is little chance of being seen.

"Oh Thomas, you and your clay...why do you return to this place? The house is gone. I am at your grave. Do you need to be here?"

"It is good clay."

"What?"

"I was right. It was a worthy pursuit, even if I could make nothing of it."

"But no one would give you a chance, my love, so we had to seek other means."

"No, no we did not. We chose unwisely. I chose unwisely. Except for Edith."

"You would hurt me so by bringing her name into our good death?"

"Good death? You consider this a good death?" He gestures to his face, "You drove a knife through my face, dear sister. My final thoughts were prayers that you would not do the same to the only person who saw value in the clay...in me. This was not a good death. A good death would have been decades later by the firelight in my old age, asleep in her bed with the warmth of her body beside me."

"And where am I in this fantasy of yours?"

He pauses, then decides to be entirely honest, "You aren't."

"Why...after all I've done for you!" and she is gone.

Thomas looks once more out over the mine. It will bring Edith and Alan a fortune over the course of their lives. It will ensure their children and their children's children are comfortable and well cared for. It is his gift to them, he thinks- the one way he can repay her for the trauma he made her endure at Allerdale Hall. The only way a dead man is capable of taking care of his family. And it makes him smile, even if just a little.

His family.

He no longer belongs here. There are people in Detroit that he loves dearly, people who will, over time, forget about what he has done. And if they do not, their children never have to know. This realization startles him. They never have to know. Edith and Alan will not tell his story and he doubts Eliot or Charlotte will either. If he is careful, he could just be a ghost, an imaginary friend to the children, a protective spirit waiting and watching. His smile broadens and he laughs to himself. He has a place. An awkward one at the moment, perhaps, but it is somewhere to belong.

He leaves the mine. There is a brick house in Brush Park he needs to visit, a house so full of life and the complete opposite of Allerdale Hall. It is what he has longed for. Lucille will always be rooted to England. Thomas, however, follows his heart and goes home.