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“You are most welcome here,” Indis tells her, blue eyes very bright and full.
Nerdanel knows she means it.
(But what does it mean, to be welcome in a home she was united in scorning? She never hated Indis, Fingolfin, or the rest. She never desired to see them snubbed and second-best.)
(She only loved the man who did.)
Nerdanel has to count the birthdays of sons she may never see again. She must watch January and February pass in the cold filth of the city, and she must never ask herself the question that plagues her dreams the most.
Finarfin comes to dinner every Thursday. Sometimes Earwen and Angrod and Aegnor come with him, but often he comes alone.
“We have had no word of them,” he says quietly to his mother, when Nerdanel is busy pouring herself more tea. She drinks so much tea these days, and has appetite for little else. “Not since Finrod’s letter.”
Nerdanel cannot bite her tongue any longer, and she catches Finarfin in the foyer one evening, as he is just lifting his hat atop his head.
“Brother,” she says, the word numb in her mouth, and he takes his hat off again.
“Nerdanel. What is it?”
He is always unfailingly kind.
“Are you angry with her?” (This is not the question.)
“With—”
“With Artanis. For refusing to promise that she would come safely home.” It is rude to ask a father that. Or would be rude, if she was any other mother.
(The twins are younger than Artanis.)
“Angry?” Finarfin asks, and his eyes are as blue as Indis’s, and he does not look, to Nerdanel, like Feanor at all. “No, I am not angry. We miss her, Nerdanel. We miss her terribly. I make no room for anger in my heart.”
It is only right, Nerdanel thinks, that a man such as Finarfin would raise—and even lose—a child with no blood, no rage, no cruelty.
“I hope she returns to you,” she says. “When the right time comes.”
“Finwe had friends,” Indis offers gently. She is knitting by the fireside. Nerdanel’s hands are limp in her lap as she stares at the flames. When Nerdanel says nothing, Indis adds, “Friends who can send messages, if you wish it.”
Nerdanel chokes on her gratitude, her shame, and the way that both taste of the same bitterness. “Thank you,” she says, “But I do not want them to be found.”
Melkor Bauglir has gone west.
It was all wrong, Nerdanel realizes. She was all wrong. She thought she knew what Feanor was trying to save, to protect—even in his own, misguided way.
In truth, what he wanted was a battle, and he left her on the other side of the line.
“Are you angry with them?” Finarfin asks, over a game of checkers. Sometimes, they play checkers.
Her husband and sons are murderers, outlaws. They left her to live or die without them.
“No,” Nerdanel answers. She is glad he does not ask if she is angry that she stayed behind.
(That, after all, is the question.)