We Could Get By

xviii.

Nellie stretched her legs out in front of her and dug her toes into the cool sand. If the tide got any higher, it would swirl up around her ankles and lap up the edges of their picnic blanket and sweep it easily into the sea. She shielded her eyes against the orange glare of the mid-morning sun. Toby was just a little formless shape standing along the edge of the water, a dark smudge up to his ankles in the tide against the bright blue sky. Sweeney, a little less formless and just a bit closer, had busied himself untangling the long string of the new red kite they had bought earlier that day. He stopped suddenly, raised one arm to beckon the boy closer. Nellie smiled.

Early autumn was the best time for picnics. In retrospect, Nellie thought really that any time was a good time for a picnic, but that early autumn was truly best. She drummed her fingers thoughtfully against the slight swell of her stomach. It would be a winter baby. Nellie could picture the four of them bundled comfortably by the fire, a slightly distorted but just as happy portrait of the family she had dreamed of having. She was not yet sure whether she was hoping for a boy or a girl; a part of her felt that she had not had the time to even consider it properly. Every time she attempted to consider it properly, it frightened her. Though she knew Sweeney had to have helped care for Johanna, he did not look like a man who would cart a baby around in his arms. He did not look like a man who did much of anything.

Sweeney left Toby once the kite had been set steadily aloft, coming back to settle unceremoniously beside her on the blanket. She smiled at him. He regarded her for the briefest of moments, then lifted the top of the picnic basket and rooted through it for something to eat.

She watched the veins that bulged through the skin of his hands, the way his hair curled slightly at the back of his neck, the barely-there lines hiding at the corners of his straight-lipped mouth. How strange, Nellie thought, that Sweeney had not always been a fully grown man. It was stranger, still, that Toby, small and far away along the sand, had been a baby once. He had come to her as a boy, and an irrational part of her just figured that's how he had always been. Of course, she knew it was not the truth, but she had not seen him any other way. She could not imagine him a decade from then, grown into a man, himself.

Had he been a fat baby with cheeks like pillows and fingers like little sausages? There was no way for Nellie to know. She could not even ask the boy because he would have no way of remembering. She could not ask his proper mother, whoever and wherever she may be. What kind of person had his mother been, to just desert him like she had?

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, Nellie chided herself for it. A desperate woman, maybe. Somebody what can't take care of a child. Still, she wished so desperately she could have been there for Toby's formative years, his childhood - he was her son, and she had no part in any of it. She squinted her eyes at Toby's shape in the distance, tied to the kite like a little anchor. Nellie had caught herself mourning the small death of what might have been. She wished there might have been a photograph of him then, somehow, just for her to see. Anything at all would have sufficed.

Perhaps Toby's real mother had died.

Nausea bubbled up sourly in Nellie's stomach, and she frowned. Suddenly, even watching the motion of the water was too much for her. It was much bluer here than it had been at Aunt Nettie's, when she would sit on the big wraparound porch and watch its almost-black surface for hours. She closed her eyes and sighed audibly in spite of herself. Lucy would not have complained about a bit of morning sickness, Nellie thought, the idea twisting her insides further. No, Lucy would not have complained about anything.

"Nellie."

To the untrained ear, her name was a statement, an afterthought that might perhaps accompany a polite nod of acknowledgment. But Mrs. Lovett caught the careful, almost-concealed undertone of concern.

"Hm."

There was silence as she waited for her husband to voice his concern properly. She knew without a doubt that he was, in his stoic, unfeeling way, inquiring as to whether or not she was alright; but she wanted to hear him ask.

Sweeney uttered the tiniest defeated sigh, then, "Are you sick?"

"They oughtta call it 'afternoon sickness'," she responded. "Bloody 'morning sickness'- 'morning' me arse. 'M never sick 'til it gets 'round noon."

She thought perhaps that Sweeney would reach for her hand. He seemed to almost consider it, and her heart fluttered in her chest when he looked just too long at her, but after a seemingly eternal moment, he plucked a crab cake from the picnic basket instead.

-

It was not until Sweeney finally glanced up from the dog-eared page of his book that he noticed Nellie had, at some point, dozed off beside him. In the comfortable stillness of their bedroom, it was not a terrific accomplishment; but it amused him, all the same.

She was still sitting upright, slouched heavily against the overstuffed pillows she had piled in a generous heap behind her. The alabaster white of her face had been burnt a gentle red by the sun, all splotched across her nose and her high cheekbones, giving the impression that she was permanently blushing. Her long, dark lashes rested lightly on her cheeks like feathers or spiders' legs. The slight rise and fall of her chest beneath the low neckline of her nightgown caught his gaze, almost the way it had after she had fallen- there was no urgency this time, though, no fear-induced sickness twisting him.

Nellie shifted slightly, just enough to jolt him away from her, in the event that she might awaken and catch him eyeing her. The baker did not open her eyes. She merely settled on her side, facing him so that he could catch glimpses of her face out of the corner of his eye whether he wanted to or not. Nellie stuffed her hand beneath her head and sent the tiniest of snores into the room.

The bruise on her forehead had darkened and spread, all black and red and purple, up into her hairline where it disappeared into the twisting forest of curls. Her bare feet stuck out of the bottom of the blankets where they had twisted and gotten rumpled.

His first instinct, bubbling up from some strange and untouched place within him, was to cradle her cheek in his hand, to brush his thumb over the smooth skin of her face. Elegant was not a word he ever would have associated with Nellie Lovett, especially not when she was awake (and especially not now that she sported such a frighteningly large head injury), but that was the word that played at the edges of his brain just then. It was something about her thick mane of curls, or perhaps the way she suddenly seemed to take in the glow of the lamp. She did not just lay there and let it hit her: she swallowed it up and let it pulse right back through her skin and her eyes and her veins.

His fingers twitched- his heart twitched, somewhere beneath his chest, but he merely flexed his hand and took to pinching the bridge of his nose.

What the hell was wrong with him, he wondered not for the first time that week. Sweeney had the sneaking suspicion that something deep inside of him had softened. It was true that he still felt very badly about Mrs. Lovett's fall. He felt guilty enough that he had taken it upon himself to paint the guest room like she wanted- the last thing he needed was Nellie taking an unfortunate misstep and tumbling off the ladder when he was not around to do anything about it. She could easily lie unconscious up there at the top of their house for hours before he got worried enough to come looking for her. By then, it would be too late. If he had heard her shouting that night, he could have done something, could have come to her rescue somehow. Sweeney should not have cared one bit for the woman, but that burglar very well could have killed her, and it was just guilt that was eating him up.

Isn't it?