As I Lay Dying

Epilogue

1930

The sunlight splinters through the gaps in the shutters, casting long fingers of light across the bed. Evelyn shifts slightly, frowning against the brightness, but she doesn't wake.

It's a long force of habit that sees me awake before anyone else. I don't sleep properly, I'm constantly alert, even in sleep. After Luke was born I spent every single night in his room, dozing in the chair next to his cot.

The sight of his tiny body stirring in the night didn't bring me warmth, just cold, sinking fear. The thought that he may be taken from me, as so many before him were. Evie long gave up trying to persuade me not to watch him sleep.

Evelyn sighs softly and I turn to look at her. There are fine lines in the soft skin under her eyes, barely visible when she sleeps like this.

It's strange, but they make her more beautiful. Her faces changes with the early blossoming of age and each change is beautiful. The passing of each year is like a gift, a perfect gift for which my gratitude never diminishes.

Luke's birth was difficult and to Evie's sadness we were told that there could be no more, not for us the small army that Jimmy and Ellen seem to add to every year.

We came to realise that it didn't matter. Luke and Bobby were enough for us, our two sons are more than we could have hoped for.

I wonder what Luke would have thought of me naming my son after him. He would have called me a sentimental fool, no doubt. But it was the right thing to do. That brave boy who sang as he faced death will always be beside me when I look at his namesake. My son can take the adventures with the freedom that Luke was never given chance to enjoy. Strangely, I often think of Luke's parents, how they don't know that there is a child named for him on the other side of the world. How there is a dear friend who misses him everyday and offers up a silent prayer for him with the breaking of each dawn.

Bobby is stirring. I can hear his heavy footsteps in the room above ours. As he grows he becomes more the image of Robert with each passing day. Yet he is kind, honest. I'm proud of him, proud when he calls me his father.

What would Darlington say if he could see his son call me father? See how I love his son as my own?

I don't care. He's dead. Gone. I'm glad he lived for bringing Bobby into the world. The pain he inflicted on me has faded to a dull, throbbing memory.

For the first time in years Antoinette flashes into my mind and I wonder if she survived the war. Henri would be Bobby's age, Brigitte growing into a young woman. It's always been strange to me, how lives can touch for moment before we lose each other in the passage of time. How one person, one moment, can alter a life but be gone in the next, leaving just the imprint of themselves on a soul, a mere footprint on a persons path of life.

Evie shifts again, turning from the light and draping one pale arm across me. I pull her closer, running my fingers across the tangle of curls and pressing my lips to her forehead. She smiles softly, soon to wake fully. Perhaps later we will walk for a while, take a picnic beneath our beloved old oak tree.

Happiness comes in many forms. Some men value riches. Some grasp for glory, fame, power.

For me, it was the soft weight of her in my arms. Her heartbeat against mine. I have loved her since I knew what love was. Without her I was lost and broken.

How many ways there are to die.

A man can be dead for many years, already dead in his mind before eternal sleep finally claims him.

I was gone, lost. Consumed by fear and horror. It still haunts me, to think that the hands that hold my child have taken someone else's.

Yet she pulls me back, forces me to face her weaknesses and holds the mirror to my own.

She saved me, reached out to claim me as the world turned its back to me. When all else was lost, when I was drowning in the merciless sea of my own mind she rescued me.

She loved me when all else was gone, she took the broken parts I brought back to her and healed them as best she could, all the while fighting her own wounds.

She saved me, brought me back to life.

She breathed life into me.

As I lay dying.

Fin

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I would like to dedicate the end of this story to two people; theycallmelexi20 and the wonderful minniemair xx