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The house hadn’t changed. At least Susan thought that it hadn’t. In her memory, her aunt and uncle’s house had always looked like this, painfully tidy with a small, manicured lawn at the front and a spotless porch with lace curtains greeting visitors coming up the stoneset path to the front door. The house has no personality, Edmund had put it many years ago, beyond the need to fit in.
It couldn’t be more different from her own tiny mid-terrace house with no front garden beyond three paving stones that she could put a potted plant on, and only a narrow strip of a garden at the back. She hadn’t even hung curtains yet, much less washed and painted the front door - which someone had very evidently done to the door in front of her. Susan could imagine her aunt doing it, sleeves rolled up and bony knuckles scrubbing away at the wood while letting the breeze flow through the house from the open door to the open windows.
And… that was it . Susan ran her eyes over every single window and… they were all closed. There was not a single one open, not even for an airing out. And if there was something that she knew about her aunt and uncle, it was that the windows were always open, winter as well as summer. For them to be closed… Something odd was definitely going on with aunt Alberta.
The letter had arrived a little over two weeks ago. Addressed to her parents’ former home, it had nevertheless made its way to Susan’s new address, the old family house closed-up and sold as soon as she had been able to find a buyer. In the aftermath of it all, she hadn’t been able to even think about keeping the house, and short of a few cherished items it had all been sold or given away. What still remained of her childhood home now cluttered up the two small bedrooms upstairs in her new home while Susan herself slept in the back reception room. Her mother would’ve tutted at her if she had seen her, but… she wasn’t there anymore.
The envelope had been postmarked in Aunt Alberta’s town and though there was no return address on the outside, Susan had felt sure that it was her aunt that had written. They had agreed to stay in touch after cousin Eustace had been put to rest, but as with so many other things, it had slipped through her fingers as she grieved.
When Susan had opened the envelope, she had found a single sheet of paper inside with barely half covered with text, a shocking waste from someone like Aunt Alberta, who would rather fill a single postcard with tiny lettering than waste pennies on a letter set.
Dear Susan , the letter began, I’m sorry for not writing sooner as we promised each other, but I found myself busy with the usual tasks and it slipped my mind. Harold and I are fine, though we are thinking of relocating somewhere smaller now that we have less need for room. I have begun sorting through Eustace Clarence’s things and have found a collection of letters that he exchanged with your brothers and sister these last years. I have to admit I understand little of their contents, but I thought that perhaps you would like them to remember your siblings by. There are sadly too many of them to easily send to you, but perhaps you will visit next time that you come to attend to the graves.
Oh, and before I forget: Eustace Clarence always showed preference towards an old painting that we had hanging in the guest room. Perhaps that would be something of interest to you as well?
It was signed simply ‘your aunt Alberta’ and though on the surface it seemed perfectly innocent, something about the tone of it bothered Susan. She knew nothing about the correspondence that her aunt was speaking of, nor the painting and yet… Something made her think that it was about… about that and that perhaps for once, she oughtn’t ignore it.
She had penned a reply the very same day and sorted out with her employer to get leave for the visit on the next. Family emergency, she had told them. The stares of pity at her back had been beyond uncomfortable but hard to avoid. Gossip loved misery and her life had more misery than most.
In the end, it had left her where she was standing now, in front of the Scrubbs’ house and feeling as if someone had walked across her grave.
Susan adjusted the grip on her suitcase, then went up the path to knock on the door.
Aunt Alberta had always struck Susan as a nervous woman. Tall and thin, she never appeared to be able to stand still, fluttering around to adjust curtains, fetching more tea or just moving in restless circles around the room. She had never seemed at home in her own skin, and, from what Susan’s mother had told her, had been the same ever since she was a child.
The woman that opened the door and stepped aside to let her inside was far from that. At first glance, Susan thought that she looked much the same, but… There was a weight to her, as if someone had filled her shoes with lead.
“Aunt Alberta!” Susan leaned in to kiss her aunt’s cheek. “How happy I am to see you!”
“Alberta," her aunt corrected her (at least that remained the same, Susan thought), returning the kiss perfunctory. “I was surprised that you could visit so soon.”
Had it been her aunt of old, the statement would’ve been a chastisement, a hint that Susan oughtn't have taken leave and come so suddenly. This version of her aunt however… It was just something polite to say.
“Oh, I know how hard it is to sort things through,” Susan said with deliberate breeziness. “I couldn't let you face it all alone if I can help. And where is unc–Harold…?”
Alberta’s face went blank, but she quickly recovered and presented Susan with another polite smile. “Oh, he rents a room in the city now, coming back once or twice a month. It’s better for him not to travel every day.”
And that, Susan thought, was a bare-faced lie. Why her aunt felt the need to tell it, she couldn’t imagine.
“I see,” she said, deciding not to comment. “Anyway, I hate to be rude, but could you show me to my room? It’s been a long day of travel and I would dearly like to wash up.”
“Of course.” Alberta closed the door and turned to head up the stairs. “This way.”
The guest room was much the same as Susan remembered it, with the exception of the closed windows. When she looked around for the painting that her aunt had mentioned in her letter, there was nothing but a crooked nail on the wall. After a bit of rummaging, however, Susan found a likely painting at the back of the wardrobe, carelessly wrapped in a curtain that looked like it had come right off the rail.
For a moment, she debated whether to have a look, then decided that since her aunt wanted her to have it, she surely wouldn’t mind Susan having a look to see what it was.
She unwrapped the painting and leaned it against the wall. It was a seascape, that much Susan had noticed while handling it. There hadn't, however, been any obvious indicators as to why there’d been such a fuss about it. Seeing it properly however…
“Well then,” Susan said, a bit shakily, to herself. She wished that she was surprised. Or that there was any doubt about the subject of the painting. But even nearly ten years later, she could remember seeing ships like it at anchor in… She frowned, then laughed, incredulous at herself. She could remember the ships, down to the colour of their sails, but she couldn’t name the harbor from which they sailed. Peter would have given her such a look.
Peter.
All emotion drained out of her.
She put the painting down, and, wanting not to leave it out, wrapped it up again and put it back in the wardrobe. Then she opened the window, leaned out of it and took a deep breath.
She had known that this was what she had come to face. And… she was ready. She knew that she was. Alberta and Harold were the only ones left with a chance to understand everything that had happened and… she couldn’t do it alone.
There was a knock on the door and when Susan called out “Enter,” Alberta stepped inside. Her gaze was immediately drawn to the open window, but she said nothing about it, despite her hand twitching as if she wanted to go close it.
“Tea will be ready in an hour,” Alberta said, then, without looking at Susan, said, “I will go down the road to the Bakers afterwards and borrow their telephone to call Harold about your visit. I don’t expect that he will be able to come.”
Susan smiled non-committedly, unsure how to react. “We’ll have to see, I suppose.”
Alberta nodded briskly, still not looking at Susan, then left, closing the door behind her.
Susan took another deep breath and looked out the window. She could see the church from there, the same one at which Eustace had been interred. The church at which she had put her family to rest was on the other side of town, close to the old family home. She would have to make sure to visit both of them.
She owed them that.
It was a quiet evening with Alberta going out for her errand after tea and Susan withdrawing to her room with the stack of letters that her aunt had shoved into her hands on her way out of the door. It didn’t take long before Susan was grateful for the privacy. Tears were shed and there had been emotions that she had honestly thought that she would’ve run out of by now.
In one of the letters that must’ve been written that summer that Lucy and Edmund had stayed with the Scrubbs’, there was a scribble that Susan would’ve recognized anywhere as belonging to Edmund.
I know that we agreed to let Susan be, it said, but I still think that we ought to tell her .
They hadn’t told her, of course. As she had asked of them. Emotion welled inside of her again, especially as she read the addendum at the end. Aslan said that Lu and I can't come back. Eustace might still. She wondered how they had felt. If they had felt as abandoned as she had.
She would never know now.
Alberta served them a cooked breakfast the next morning - still vegetarian, Susan noted with some relief. Perhaps the closed windows were just a preference and not a sign of anything else. They spoke politely about Susan’s new house and the difficulties of settling all the finances of her parental estate. It felt clinical - as if she was discussing matters with her solicitor rather than her aunt.
“Did you get a hold of Harold yesterday?” Susan asked as she helped her aunt clear the table.
“I did,” Alberta confirmed. “He said that he would arrange to come home as soon as possible.” Her tone implied that it didn’t seem very likely to her. Susan wondered internally what had happened - her aunt and uncle had not been the most physically demonstrative of couples, but she had always thought that there was real affection between them.
“I do hope I get to see him,” she told her aunt, aiming at being polite but not insistent.
Albera made a noncommittal sound and took the last plates from the table. “I need to go to the shops. I’m sure that you can entertain yourself while I'm gone.” She was silent for a moment, and Susan had the impression that she was thinking over something. “There are more letters. In the sitting room. If it interests you. “ Then she pointedly began to clatter with the dishes and Susan took the hint to show herself out.
Yes, she thought to herself. Something was off. She hoped to find out what.
The door to the reception room was closed when Susan made her way there later in the morning. When she opened it, a wave of cold air hit her along with a cloud of dust. All of the furniture, except for a single chair and a table, was covered with dust sheets, and along one wall there were open boxes, some of which Susan could see held school uniforms. The combined impression the room gave was of disuse and neglect. Susan couldn’t remember it ever having been like this before – the Alberta that she had known used to display her home rather than close parts of it away.
Uncomfortable with the closed feeling of the room, Susan made her way to the windows to open them up, feeling a bit like she was play-acting the aunt that she used to know ( fresh air, niece, fresh air! it’s what keeps us all healthy ). It immediately seemed to refresh the room and Susan felt her shoulders relax.
She could see why Alberta wanted to downsize, Susan decided. It seemed to be much the same as her reason to close up and sell her parents’ home. It just wasn’t her family’s home anymore, it was just a… house, with too many memories.
The single in-use table was covered with papers and when Susan came closer, she saw that they were all letters. It seemed strange to her - Eustace had never struck her as much of a letter writer. She picked one up, peering at it with mild curiosity.
“ ...we must get our hands on the Rings! We can’t let Narnia…”
Susan dropped the letter. Then, hand shaking a little, she picked it up again. Well, of course. She had known it had to be about… She took a deep breath. Narnia. There. She had said it. Even if only inside of her head. She waited for the anger to come, half-surprised when it didn’t. The regret, however, lingered.
Sitting down in the chair, she turned the letter around to check the dating, then proceeded to sort through them and put them in order of postmark. There weren't as many letters as she had thought, the reason for the number of sheets being the increasingly long letters. She recognised Edmund as the writer of most of them, though it seemed that her siblings had all had a hand in the contents. They were all dated within the last few months before their deaths.
This, Susan realised, had to be it. The answer to why everyone that had been to Narnia died, except her. That her parents had died, even her siblings’ death, could be explained by that long-planned visit. But the rest? It had made no sense at the time, though she had always… She had had her suspicions.
Feeling jittery, she put down the letters and went to make herself a cup of tea. Then she settled in and began to read.
By the time Alberta came back, Susan was still sitting in the reception room with the letters, on her third cup of tea and with a half-eaten pear from the garden on a plate. She’d read the letters, read them again and then tried to make sense of it all, with her time-dulled memories. In the end, however, it did make sense.
Trying to return on a technicality , she thought. Yes, It did sound like them.
Alberta called out for her and Susan got up to help her put away the groceries. Her aunt didn’t mention the letters and neither did Susan. She still hoped that Harold would come back so that she could speak with them both.
“Since you’re here,” her aunt said as they finished off, “you might as well help me to get things down from the attic. I still have Eustace Clarence’s baby things up there, and there’s no need to keep them now.”
“Yes, Alberta,” Susan replied, which is how she found herself in a dusty loft-space with her hair under a hastily found scarf, a borrowed apron and looking through old boxes when the door downstairs opened and her uncle stepped inside, calling out to his wife.
Her aunt, in the middle of stepping through the hatch with a box tucked between herself and the ladder, nearly fell. Her uncle, having spotted her, caught her and helped her down.
“There,” he said, once Alberta was safely on the ground, “now, why in the world are you up in the attic rummaging around while we have guests? And where is our niece? Surely she isn’t up there?”
Susan took that as her cue to stick her head into the open space. “Hello, Harold. I was just helping Alberta to retrieve some old boxes.”
“Old boxes?” Harold looked at the box in her aunt’s hands and his face fell. “That’s our Eustace Clarence’s things.”
“Yes it is.” Her aunt stepped away and put the box down. “It’s beyond time to sort through them and begin to get rid of things.”
Susan hastily climbed down the ladder, wanting to prevent any quarrel from starting. “I’m glad you made it!” she said, tip-toeing up to kiss her uncle’s cheek. “I thought you’d be here when Alberta wrote to me for help with some letters that cousin Eustace wrote.”
Harold’s face lit up. “You found the letters?” he asked his wife.
“Between the bed and the wall,” Alberta said shortly. “It’s all nonsense though. I thought perhaps that our niece could shed some light on it.”
“Can you?” Harold asked, turning back to Susan. “Eustace Clarence seemed to post at least one letter a week before… Before. We had wondered if they could give any hint as to what happened, why…” He trailed off, from the look on his face suddenly remembering that Susan had lost her family as well.
“I can. I will.” Susan smiled at them, though Alberta looked more sour than grateful. “Perhaps this evening, after tea?”
“If I had been a drinker, I would’ve brought out the brandy,” Harold said.
Alberta made a face. “Don’t even mention it.”
Harold laughed. “I promise I haven’t grown degenerate over the past months,” he said.
Months? Susan wondered, while her uncle and aunt bickered. Her aunt had made it sound as if it had been far less than that. She absently took off her scarf and apron, folding them up to be shaken out outside. Her aunt gave Susan hers as well and Susan took herself off to deal with them, sensing that her uncle and aunt needed some time alone.
Coming inside some minutes later, after listening at the door to make sure that she wasn’t interrupting anything, Susan found Alberta in the kitchen and Harold in the closed off reception room, busy removing dust cloths and opening the windows that Susan hadn’t gotten to. She heard him muttering about damp as he folded the cloths and returned the room to a usable state. Not wanting to disturb either of them, Susan left for her room to retrieve her handbag and good coat. This might be a good time to visit Eustace’s grave and let her aunt and uncle settle whatever arguments they might have.
She was half-way out of the door when Harold showed up in the hallway, coat in hand, and asked: “Are you going to see Eustace Clarence? May I come? Alberta is making dinner and I do believe she would like us both out of her hair for a while.”
“Of course!” Susan said and meant it. It would give her the opportunity to learn why Alberta had been so insistent that her uncle wouldn’t come home. It also meant that she wouldn’t have to face the church on her own.
Harold popped his head into the kitchen to let his wife know that they were going, then followed Susan out the door and up the street towards the church.
“I apologise about my… words with Alberta,” Harold said after a while. “It hasn’t been easy since Eustace Clarence passed and we haven’t always seen eye to eye on matters.” He hesitated. “Has… my wife mentioned her health?”
So, there it was, Susan thought. “No,” she said out loud. “Only that you and she are thinking of downsizing. She mentioned that the house felt too large.”
“That’s true,” Harold said, “but that was not what I meant.” He sighed. “My wife… she took Eustace Clarence’s death hard. Perhaps harder than I initially expected. I fear that Alberta had to… leave… for a while, and when she returned, she made it clear that I wasn’t welcome in the house.”
“Oh.” Susan didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t know.”
Harold waved his hand. “I’m sure. I had hoped that her inviting you meant that she was finally returning to her old self.”
“I’m sure she will, eventually.” Susan knew it was a platitude - one that she had been told herself far too many times. “No,” she impulsively added, “I don’t know that. It’s hard, losing someone. I don’t know if she will be alright.” I don’t know if I will be alright , she didn’t add, but she knew that her uncle could hear it.
“Will any of us?” her uncle said, the sorrow coming through in his voice. “Still, is it too much to ask that we can somehow move forward?”
“I don’t know,” Susan said, “is it?” She knew it wasn’t what she would’ve liked to hear, if she was her aunt. Then again, she didn’t know what she would have liked to hear. Relenting, slightly, she said: “I think that rather than asking each other how we feel, how we can move on, perhaps we should just sit down and… see where we are right now. Alberta… she hinted there might be questions that I might have the answer to. Those answers… might be what she needs right now.”
They walked a bit further in silence, then Harold abruptly said, “We didn’t know what was going on with him, Eustace Clarence. We didn’t know why he was writing and receiving so many letters, why he was pushing meeting up with his cousins - your siblings - so often. He had told me a little of Jill and at first I thought that it was about her, but… I don’t think it is. But I don’t know what it is either. And not knowing… not knowing why he put himself in that situation, why they all went on that trip…”
“Oh,” Susan said, without thinking, “it was all planned. In detail.” She laughed, but far from happily. “I would’ve been on that trip, you know, if I hadn’t been so angry at… If I hadn’t been so angry.”
“You know why they—” Harold cut himself off before he got any further. “No, no, this isn’t the time. Or the place,” he added. “Let’s wait until we get home. Until Alberta can join us.”
“Yes,” Susan said. She hadn’t meant to say anything now, hadn’t meant to make such an outburst. But… The letters had shaken her more than she had thought.
The church gates loomed in front of them, and Susan wrapped a hand around the black rail for a moment before turning away. “Let’s go through the side gate. It’s closer.”
Her uncle gave her an odd look, but said nothing, following her.
Once inside the cemetery, he took the lead, zigzagging between the rows until they reached the plain stone that belonged to Eustace, a single rose resting in front of it. Harold smiled when he saw it, bending to touch the petals.
“Alberta,” he told Susan. “Every week, without fail.” He reached into a pocket and took out a single small coin, placing it on the stone. “And that is me. I don’t expect them to be left in place but… it was my thing. Mine and Eustace Clarence’s.” He nodded to the grave next over. “That’s my parents. We… used to come here together.”
Susan nodded, then closed her eyes for a few moments, trying to remember Eustace as he had been. She only had a few memories of him, but… it was enough.
Alberta had the food ready on the table when they came back and all in all seemed to be in a better mood. Susan decided against doing anything that might upset the fragile peace and simply followed along with what was going on. Once tea was over and the kitchen had been wiped down, Harold suggested that they all withdrew to the reception room with some tea and biscuits. Alberta didn’t comment on this either, simply made up a tray and trailed after them into the restored room. Susan noted that her aunt must have been in there cleaning while they were gone, since there was not a single speck of dust anywhere and the floors were freshly cleaned. Even the letters had been tidied up - though Susan noted that the order that she had put them in was the same.
At a loss at where to begin, Susan looked at Harold. “You said that you had a question?”
Harold sighed deeply and Alberta gave him a withering look. He met it calmly, then looked at Susan.
“I guess the first question would be: what is Narnia? It seems to be the common theme among all the letters - old and new alike.”
Susan took a sip of her tea, buying some time. How was she even going to explain it? Could she explain it?
“It’s a long story,” she tried, feeling for the words. “Beginning during the evacuation.”
“The evacuation?” Alberta said, evidently startled. “Eustace Clarence hadn’t even - didn’t even–” Then she cut herself off, clasping her hands tightly. “Nevermind, go on.”
Susan took a deep breath. “It all began with Lucy…”
Susan spoke until she was hoarse, telling the whole story as she knew it. Only when she reached the end of her own part of the tale did she hesitate. “This is where my story ends,” she told her aunt and uncle, “and Eustace’s begins. I don’t know the full extent of it, so I think that this is where we have to rely on his letters. What I suppose happened, is that during Edmund’s and Lucy’s visit, he entered Narnia alongside them.”
“Through that painting,” Alberta said, sounding quite certain. “Eustace Clarence said as much, in one of the first letters. It was after that he began to show such a preference for it.”
“It’s a Narnian ship,” Susan said, smiling a little. “I do wonder how it ended up in a painting in England.”
“It was a gift,” Alberta said, twisting her mouth. “It’s pretty enough, I suppose, but it was given to me by a friend of a friend and… well, the less said about her, the better.”
That would explain why it was hanging in the guest room, Susan supposed.
“So now you know what I know,” she said. “And I suppose you have both read the letters.”
Harold, having remained quiet so far, spoke up. “If I may ask… You say that your part of the story ended. What does that mean?”
Susan laughed, not wholly without amusement. “And that, as they say, is the great question. Aslan, when he spoke to me and Peter, intimated that we were growing too old and that we needed to find our own place - and him - in our own world, England.” She still remembered the hurt. “I didn’t take it very well and, in all honesty, went somewhat scorched earth. If he didn’t want me then I didn’t want him . I wasn’t stupid - I had long since figured out what the parallels between our world and Narnia were.”
Harold and Alberta shared a look.
“We had noticed you are reluctant to enter churches,” Alberta said. “There were some… comments at Eustace Clarence’s funeral.”
Harold harrumphed. “We put a stop to that. One’s personal beliefs are their own.”
“Thank you,” Susan said, meaning it. “Anyway, my resentment towards Aslan led me to be rather awful to my siblings when they attempted to talk to me about Narnia. They learned not to and I learned to ignore them if they accidentally let something slip.” She smiled to herself. “We made it work.”
“If you were no longer talking to your siblings about… Narnia,” Alberta said, pleadingly, “does that mean that you know nothing of what happened? Why they went? The letters, they were so… vague.”
Susan thought back to that evening, shortly before the fateful trip, when Lucy had knocked on her door.
“Su,” she had said, “I know that we agreed not to mention… Not to mention it. But something has happened, and I think that you should know, even if… even if you don’t want to be part of it.”
Susan had felt her stomach tighten. But… Lucy had taken the way Susan had chosen to distance herself from Narnia the worst and had, subsequently, been very good at not mentioning it. If she felt that Susan ought to… Perhaps she indeed ought to.
“Tell me then,” Susan said, and tried not to sound like she was speaking through gritted teeth.
Lucy flashed her a smile. “I’ll keep it short,” she promised, then took a moment to gather her thoughts. “We don’t have all the information that we would like, at the moment,” she warned, then continued. “Someone used your horn and it pulled them through to our last meeting. A man. He appeared to ask for help. We intend to help.”
Susan closed her eyes. She could see why Lucy thought that she should know. “I… have not seen or heard anything.” Just as Aslan had implied that she wouldn’t, in the future.
“I see.” Lucy looked at her, then, took two steps forwards and hugged her tight. “I understand a little more now,” she whispered, then stepped away before Susan could hug her back. “I won’t try to force you anymore.”
Susan nodded, clenching her fists at her side. “Thank you for telling me,” she managed to say and Lucy nodded, leaving without offering more information or inviting Susan anywhere. Perhaps she did understand more.
Returning to the here and now, Susan related the encounter to her aunt and uncle.
“It fits with what Eustace Clarence wrote in his letters.” Alberta said, tightly. “They must’ve come up with a way to do something - something with those rings - and they were meeting up at that station.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Susan said. Taking a deep breath, she met the eyes of Harold, then Alberta. “It would’ve been really important to Eustace, to all of them, to do anything they could to help Narnia. For them, it was their most important place. To abandon it, as they would feel that they would be doing otherwise, would be unthinkable.”
“You don’t feel that way though,” Alberta accused. “You’re sitting here, you didn’t help. Why couldn’t Eustace Clarence— Why didn’t Eustace Clarence—” She broke off into a sob and Harold went over to her, wrapping his arm around her as she continued sobbing, turning her face into his chest.
“I don’t know,” Susan said, to no one in particular, but feeling as if she had to answer the question. “I don’t understand either. I was told that I needed to live in this world, and I am, despite everything . I don’t understand why they couldn’t.” She looked down at her hands, cheeks growing wet as her aunt’s tears triggered her own.
“Personal freedom of choice,” Harold said darkly - and something about his tone made Susan think that he, too, had at one point made a Choice that did not fit with what his nearest and dearest wanted for him.
Susan looked away.
She left a little bit after that, sensing that her aunt and uncle needed to talk. As for herself… Susan needed to go for a visit.
She had buried her parents and siblings at the church to which they had belonged when she was only a small child, the same church to which her grandparents had belonged and had been buried at. Her parents had left no directives, and left to her own choices, Susan had chosen the church that felt… least wrong. And this way, their remains would have company, morbid as it sounded even to her own ears.
It took her a good hour to make her way there by various means, and by the time that she arrived, the church had just let out after evening service. Mixing with the people straying out among the graves for their own visits, Susan felt herself relax. Having company made her feel less seen, in a good way.
The graves were in a less used part of the graveyard, away from the new stretches of land added after much negotiation during the past years. There were still people there, however, and as Susan bent to put the flowers that she had purchased at a stand while switching buses, she was only one of many.
“Hello, mother and father,” she said at the first grave, then, to the joint headstone of her siblings, “Pete, Ed, Lu.” She bit her lip. “It’s been a while.”
Sitting down on the dry grass, Susan told them everything that had gone on lately, updating them on her new home and telling them all about Alberta and Harold. She didn’t mention anything about Narnia, keeping to their agreement even after death.
“I miss you,” she said at the end, “and I wish that we had been able to have that Christmas dinner we talked about, when we would all be at home together without school or other commitments getting in the way.”
For some silly reason, she almost expected an answer. It didn’t come, of course, and eventually she got to her feet and dusted herself off. On her way out, she looked up at the church, studying the great doors leading inside, standing open to visitors. She could see the vicar inside, further inside she could see lit candles. It was all so welcoming and yet… She refused.
“Not today,” she said, and turned away.
The laughter that echoed over her shoulder was warmly amused. But you will! her sister’s voice said in her mind.
You’ve always been stubborn , Edmund added.
Susan smiled to herself and walked through the gates and onto the street.
Harold and Alberta were deep in conversation in the kitchen when Susan arrived home, so after saying a brief good night, she withdrew to her room to give them some privacy. Feeling absolutely exhausted after the long day, Susan went straight to bed and fell asleep immediately, not even dreams intruding on her rest. She didn’t wake up until it was fully light outside and she could hear the noise of Alberta in the kitchen.
Not wanting to seem rude, Susan made short work of getting ready for the day and joined her aunt in the kitchen.
“Good morning,” she told Alberta and was waved towards the table, where a plate with a sandwich and a pot of tea waited for her. “I’m sorry I overslept.”
“You were out late,” Alberta said, then added, “thank you. Harold and I…had a lot of things to talk about.”
Susan, briefly distracted by the open kitchen window, nodded. “I thought you might.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry for Eustace, I truly am.”
Alberta made a derisive noise. “If you’re trying to say that you’ve gotten into your head and it’s somehow your fault that he got pulled into Narnia, get that straight out.” She turned to look Susan straight in the eye. “Some things happen. Other things are meant to happen. None of it can be controlled by us.”
Susan didn’t think that her aunt was only talking about Eustace, or even the entire tragedy. She thought about Harold’s words about her aunt’s illness, thought about the look in Harold’s eyes when he spoke about personal choice.
“No,” she finally said, slowly. “I suppose it can’t.”
“We’re happy that you came to tell us all of this,” Alberta said in a softer tone. “All the questions and not knowing… We consider ourselves lucky to even have the chance to get the answers to some of them. Most don’t.”
Susan knew what she meant. “It was selfish too.” She poured herself a cup of tea, not being able to bear the thought of looking at her aunt as she continued. “I couldn’t bear being the only one that knows about Narnia, though I’m the only one left that remembers.”
Without her hearing it, Harold had come up behind her, and now he placed his big hands on Susan’s shoulders. “Not selfish,” he rumbled. “Human.” He then stepped away and went over to his wife, kissing her cheek. “Good morning Alberta. I see we’ve decided to open our windows again.”
“Fresh air heals the soul,” Alberta said primly, but she was smiling.
Susan ducked her head, hiding her own smile. The future was looking better, she decided. The sadness would pass, eventually, and… well, now she had people with whom she could share her stories. She couldn’t ask for more.