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She had never been bothered about the flowers, the church, the dress, the cake, but his family had wanted it and so here they were, practicing vows with the same deacon who had interviewed them earlier. “Do you both intend to have children from this marriage?” he had asked, and they had both nearly laughed. It didn’t matter how the Chancery hemmed and hawed, they would have a December wedding for a January baby; she knew now she’d get to keep this one, unless he was born dead. Like a disgruntled answer the baby surged inside her, barrel-rolling his disgust at being smothered beneath so many layers of white lace and tulle. Tobias clutched her warm hand in his sweaty palm and stuttered through the haves and the holds, and Eileen looked across at her almost-husband: buoyant, brilliant, knowing.
—
She would come downstairs to find her husband in a starched white shirt and smelling of Bryllcreme, whistling “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” with a overdone vibrato, orbiting the sitting room with enough nervous energy to set her on edge. She’d get one look and know he’d give her no choice but to go back upstairs and make an effort with her hair, put a nice dress on. In those years their son would negotiate between them, soothing her with his quiet attentiveness, then charming his classless father with the childish japes that sometimes brought his ire down. Christ, but theirs was always the little diplomat. They would slip into the back of the church, late and red-faced from rowing, and their waist-high Berlin Wall would stand between them during the carols, holding the paper-collared candle close to his face, flame mirrored and doubled in his wide, dark eyes.
—
She had read an article about how Muggles had built their churches on land with strong magnetic fields. How her boy would have laughed at that—or else lifted it from her hand and read it again with his glasses on, then hurried upstairs, quiet as a ghost, to bring a thick book down and read it curled up in the sitting room armchair, flipping through its pages and bending low in concentration, forever chasing a new idea. Here, now, she moved to the end of the nave where the magnetic buzz of ancient magic was at its quietest, and ran her hand along the memorial they had given everything to build, marble white for his soul and black for his preference. From the corner of her eye she saw Tobias enter; he drove her but rarely came in, and she felt his presence behind her like that of a policeman. He came to her and mumbled something meaningless about the Advent candles, but she neither heard nor answered. She didn’t speak to her husband when her son was near.