Late April, 1937

She wasn't sure why she felt so calm. Wait, no – calm wasn't quite right. Insulated. Yes, that was better. As if someone had pushed her deep underwater, warm, still, cloudy water, where she could, somehow, still be breathing. Her mind was somewhere restrictive, but comforting. Cocooned.

Ah, but – a voice was breaking through. Yes. She knew it. It was Beryl Mason – Patmore, she once was, for a very long time. She was sitting across from her, a concerned look on her face. And another person was there, a younger woman, in her thirties, with big eyes and brown hair and a stomach rounded with child. She knew her as well. It was Daisy, of course. Obviously. Why hadn't she recognized her immediately?

"Elsie," Beryl was saying. They had done away with formalities nearly a decade ago, when the cook had retired for good. They were old woman who had known each other for decades, and it seemed mad to carry on with formal names that were no longer even their proper surnames. Mrs. Hughes and Mrs. Patmore were of a former life, a different time, a fading era.

"Beryl?"

Her friend exchanged a relieved glance with Daisy, reached out and took Elsie's hands in her own work-worn ones. Elsie squeezed and suddenly realized her face was slick with tears.

Daisy stood, easing her cumbersome stomach around the table. "Mrs. Hughes." The young woman breathed, shakily. "Mrs. Carson, I mean. I'll make some tea." She glanced nervously over at Beryl, who nodded. As she walked by to get to the stove, she did something that confused Elsie: she squeezed her shoulder, gently. It felt strange, out of place: this girl – no, she was a woman, now, though Elsie had known her since she was a girl – this woman was usually on the receiving end of some motherly or teacherly gesture from one of the others. Not giving comfort, support. Regardless, Elsie pulled one of her hands free from Beryl's grip, and placed it on Daisy's, who looked surprised.

"Thank you, Daisy," she wasn't sure exactly for what. She also wasn't totally clear why the young woman was here, in the cottage, in her home, right at this very moment. Not that both she and Beryl weren't regular visitors, but because she was having a hard time piecing things together.

"Daisy, if yeh will, add a bit of something extra to that tea, yeh hear me?"

"Yes, Mrs. M," she replied, and pulled her hand gently away from Elsie's, busied herself at the stove. Elsie watched her for a few moments, still puzzling it all out. Then she turned back to her friend, who seemed very close to tears herself.

"It's all a bit of a shock, I'm sure," Beryl nearly whispered, wrangling her other hand again. "You were doin' alright there, for a bit, then yeh just…went somewhere else."

"Yes…." She started, reaching back, trying to remember where she had been earlier today. Why was it all so fuzzy, unclear?

She glanced out the window: it was a perfect late-spring Yorkshire day, from where she was sitting. Clouds scuttling across a dark blue sky, the branches of the freshly green trees tossed with a light wind, the sun shining gently on everything. She stared out at the day, the perfect day, and then her eyes shifted slightly down to the loveseat below the window. She frowned at it. It was just…their worn-out, red velvet loveseat, where, over the past dozen or so years, she'd sipped hundreds of cups of tea, read countless novels, had endless late-night conversations with her husband….

That was it.

Charlie. Charlie. Where was Charlie?

Then, suddenly, her mind surfaced from the murky depths of shock and grief: she had been with him just last night, sitting on that loveseat, he, holding her cold toes with his shaking hand, raising an eyebrow at something she'd said.

Because the next time she'd seen him, he was already gone. He had been there, on that loveseat, but who Charles Carson was, had been, was gone. She had thought he'd dozed off in his favorite spot after leaving their bed, which he did some nights, when the tremors were especially bad. Oftentimes, his absence woke her. As it had early this morning. But she knew the minute she saw his face that her Charlie was not there anymore.

She could hear the birds singing to the dawn, when she went over and brushed her hand across his too-still face. He was warm, and she leaned over and kissed his forehead, as she had a thousand times, and sighed. She had felt so heavy, so calm.

And now she stared at the loveseat, as if she could conjure him back to his usual corner, than any second she'd see his long legs stretched out in front of him, resting on the matching rug. But nothing changed. The loveseat remained forlorn and empty. She felt terrible for it.

She turned back to her friend.

"I remember, Beryl," her throat felt like sandpaper, and she gratefully gulped the tea Daisy set in front of her, especially for the addition of whatever alcoholic potable she had added. "I remember, now, about Charlie. I've been a'sittin' here, trying to figure out if my mind was broken." She paused, took another gulp of tea. It burned going down, but somehow, it felt good, right. She couldn't understand why she sounded so calm.

"But it's not my mind that's broken, 'tis my heart," and she rested her head on the table, and cried.

oooOOOooo

Two Weeks Later

Miraculously, strangely, she was alone.

It seemed as if since the day Charlie died, their home had been crowded with people. People cooking, people crying, people laughing, children shrieking and singing round after round of "Frog He Would A-Wooing Go", led by Will Bates, the verses becoming more and more muddled and ridiculous as the children added new lyrics, delighted by their own cleverness, leading the adults to shoo them outside, then begin rounds of their own songs.

Even after most of the mourners – if you could call people so joyfully remembering Charlie that – left for the evening, Elsie noticed someone would always stay – Beryl, Anna, Daisy, sometimes alone, sometimes, with their husbands, and once, touchingly, Thomas Barrow - until she drifted off on the battered loveseat.

But now.

She was sitting here, where she had ensconced herself the past two weeks. She could barely stand to be in their bedroom, let alone sleep in their shared bed. No, she'd rather suffer a sore back out here, than a sore heart in her own bed.

Her loneliness was so enormous, it almost felt like another person was here, just around the corner, and she wasn't quick enough to catch them, other than out of the corner of her eye. She decided she needed to sit with it, this new loneliness, reckon with it, now that the noise and tears and songs and conversations of the first burst of mourning had retreated from her home, from the home she and Charlie had shared for nearly twelve years.

And she was alone. Oh, she'd gotten more than a few offers to leave here, the cottage, and live with one or another group of people who truly cared for her. And she wasn't discounting those offers; she didn't think she was made to live a solitary life. However, though it hurt, desperately, this time on her own just felt right.

She picked up her much-loved, much-worn copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles. She had decided about a month ago to reread all of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, in order, as spring became summer. She had just begun The Hound when…when…everything had happened. Now, as she turned to the place marked by an old train ticket, she rubbed her finger over the inscription on the front flyleaf, written there over thirty years ago, and smiled.

She had just found her place when someone knocked at the door. And so it begins...

She laid the book carefully on the loveseat, rose to answer the polite knocking. Her curiosity was piqued; most people hadn't sat on ceremony these past few weeks, most bustling in with little more than a perfunctory rap. But right now, someone was waiting patiently for her to let them in.

She opened it to the tall, sturdy form of Kathryn Clemmens – now Forster – blue eyes as bright as the early May sky. She and her Dr. James had been at the funeral, Elise was nearly certain, though those few days were quite hazy and muddled in her mind. But her sister's long-time nurse and caretaker was a memorable woman, in many ways.

"Elsie," she said, reaching her hands out. Elsie gripped them tightly.

"Kathryn," she replied. "It's so good to see you. Won't you come in?"

The nurse sat as Elsie busied herself making tea, setting several of the endless number of biscuits Daisy had made onto a small plate. And though she loved so many of the people who had been with her the past few weeks, she was glad to see Kathryn, whom she liked and admired and appreciated, but who hadn't known Charlie well enough to be a true mourner herself. Someone kind, but neutral.

Elsie sat across from her, and the nurse smiled, almost shyly.

"I didn't want to intrude, you know," she began. "I would have come sooner, or called, even, after we saw you and the…services. But this seemed like something to do in person." She shrugged and took a sip of her tea. She caught Elsie's gaze with those eyes of hers. "Your wedding anniversary is in a few weeks, isn't it?"

"Yes…yes it is. Twelve years, it would've been." And Elsie knew that, another time, another day, that thought would make her weep. But in this particular moment, all she could feel was grateful. Grateful to have so much time with a man she had loved far longer than she'd been married to him. She smiled across at Kathryn, who took her hand again.

"It's good to see you smile, Elsie. Because I am here…I am here to give you your anniversary gift."