The Stowaway

XXXIV

"Saying his name stabbed my heart, like someone had ripped through my carefully stitched up world and exposed the infected, pulsing red tissue that I thought was healing. " Colleen Houck

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XXXIV.

Mrs Banes watched as her daughter trudged through the next five months of her life. Every step looked as though it was a struggle, and every part of her character that was once vibrant and silly was now replaced with someone melancholy and serious.

How had Mrs Banes prayed over the years for Eliza to develop a little seriousness. Had she known how it would turn out, she would have taken it all back.

There was a dullness about Eliza now, and that was a word which she would never have put anywhere near her daughter.

But she did battle, every single day, and that made Mrs Banes terribly proud of her. She was trying, and she was not giving in. Every day she did seem a little better, but only in the way that she might have slept a little longer or cried a little less.

She was never happy, and Mrs Banes would have given her last penny in the world to see Eliza happy.

How foolish she now felt to have spent so many years preoccupied ... well, obsessed with finding Eliza a rich husband with an acceptable position. It seemed utterly ludicrous now that she had ever envisioned Harry for her.

Harry so clearly belonged to Katy, and seeing that happiness in one child, only made her all the more desperate for the other.

Christmas came and went, as did the new year, and both Eliza and Katy's twenty-fourth birthdays. Five years ago, why, a year ago, Mrs Banes would have found it a little humiliating to have a daughter unmarried at Eliza's age.

But every priority had changed the minute Eliza had run away. She wanted Eliza happy, and only the sea captain she yearned for would make her so.

Mrs Banes had complained to Katy once a few months ago that she wished Eliza's happiness was not so dependent on a man she could never seemingly have. Katy had helped Mrs Banes to understand that Eliza's sea captain had given her more of a life in a few months at sea, than she had ever had as a lady in England.

She not only longed for Captain Tom Buckley, but the person that she could be when she was with him.

Mrs Banes had come to a decision, and she would act on it with or without her husband's support, though she had always been able to persuade her husband to her point of view.

But it would need to be after another ordeal first.

Katy had been away from Wilshire for nearly six months. Harry travelled back and forth as much as he could, but they all knew the visit could only be temporary. She belonged with Harry, and their children needed to return to a sense of normalcy.

Mrs Banes hugged Katy again as they all stood outside the Banes manor, careful not to squash her newest addition.

Katy and Harry's son had been born four months earlier on the tenth of January.

He was given the second names Francis and George, and Mrs Banes was quietly glad that her husband received an acknowledgement while Mr Spencer had not managed to.

Katy had wanted to name him John Harold Francis George, after Harry, but Harry had luckily managed to talk her out of it, purely for the reason that he had never once been called John in his life. The baby was eventually named Harrison, son of Harry, while also being a nod to his own father.

Harrison was sweet and perfect, and Mrs Banes was going to miss him terribly.

Katy went to hug Eliza again, for the hundredth time. Mrs Banes could see the reluctance to leave in Katy's eyes, but it was time for her to go. Katy was a wife and a mother, and an important member of the community. She had responsibilities and could not always hold Eliza's hand.