How Do I Love Thee? by Nancy Moser Read Free Book Online Page B

busyness.
    “Whoa!” we heard the driver shout.
    The carriage came to a stop. Henrietta exited the door nearly before the driver had a chance to unfurl the steps, and Arabel right after. How I wished I had their energy and health. I would have fought them for the privilege of being first into the house.
    “Help me, Crow. Please help me.” Together we pulled the blankets away, causing Flush to tumble to the floor of the carriage. He exited the door and I was about to call him back—would even my dog enter our home before I did?—when I heard Papa’s voice.
    “Well, well. You must be Flush.”
    I cried out with such joy I felt my heart would burst. “Papa!”
    He appeared at the carriage door, tall and handsome but for the weak chin of all Barretts. But even that one flaw mattered not a bit. His face was alight with joy. “My dearest Ba.”
    He held out his hand to me. Suddenly my awkwardness fell away, and I easily moved to the door of the carriage and let him wrap his able hands about my waist and lift me to the ground as if I weighed nothing.
    My arms found his neck and I clung to him, there on the street, my ear to his chest. “Oh, Papa, I am so glad to finally be home.”
    He kissed the top of my head and whispered for my ears alone, “Your absence has pained me more than any other.”
    I relished being his favourite and, as such, vowed to never make him worry again.
    He gently pushed me back and threaded my hand through the crook of his arm. “Come now. Come inside and greet your brothers.”
    I was home. Here I would be content. And here I would stay.
    Forever.

T HREE

    Crow adjusted the hooks on the back of my dress, finishing my toilette for the morning. Flush nipped at the black hem, wishing for me to settle so he could follow suit.
    “The sofa or the bed today, miss?”
    I quickly made an inventory of my ailments and chose the bed. She helped me to it, adjusting a myriad of pillows to use as backing for my throne.
    “Anything else, miss?” she asked.
    “Just my desk and pen. Thank you.”
    Crow retrieved them for me and left the room. I opened to yesterday’s page and began to make my list: malaise in morning, slight convulsive twitches of the muscles, a general irritability of the chest. Treatment: draught of opium.
    I closed my eyes and let my thoughts settle upon this morning’s symptoms. My head did not hurt. And my chest? I took in, then released a few breaths, gauging its condition.
    Nothing.
    Nothing?
    How could that be? I always had symptoms to report.
    When I opened my eyes I noticed the window box that my brother Alfred had made and planted for me. “Every sanctum needs flowers,” he had said as he pressed the scarlet runners, golden nasturtiums, ivy, and blue morning glories into the soil.
    Their beauty was vibrant. The very sight made me happy.
    And yet . . . the blooms of the morning glory—alive for but a single day—were already beginning to fade and list towards their afternoon’s demise.
    Am I at risk of fading into my own demise? Am I rushing toward the afternoon of my life?
    A sudden anger welled within me and I sat upright. What kind of foreign thoughts were these?
    Yet I felt compelled to answer them.
    I had been home five months. Spring was fast approaching, a time of renewal and fresh beginnings. I had been established in this lovely third-story room with family all around me. Cousin Kenyon often visited with literary gossip and new books for me to read. I was just about to bloom. I could not fade into the afternoon, into an early death.
    I looked at the notebook before me and saw it with fresh eyes. Pages and pages of daily notations of symptoms and ailments. Years’ worth. A catalogue of misery and despair. An enumeration of hopelessness.
    Suddenly, the sight of it and the very the touch of it filled me with disgust. Was this all that I was? All I had to look forward to?
    I tossed it across the room, where it bounced off my bureau and fell with pages open to the