But underneath the disorder, Eliza could see the bones of a well-loved home. Handmade curtains now faded, a dining table scarred with use, but solidly built. Children's drawings pinned to the walls with careful placement. James was waiting at the top of the stairs, her carpet bag at his feet. This is your room," he said shortly, pushing open a door.
The room was small but clean with a single window looking out over the front yard. A bed, a dresser, a wash stand. Simple furnishings, but more than Eliza had expected. Someone, probably James, had made up the bed with sheets that smelled of sage and sunshine. "Thank you," Eliza said, meaning it.
James's expression didn't soften. "My ma's things are in the attic. P couldn't bear to move them so they're just sitting up there gathering dust. You're not to touch them. You're not to go in their bedroom.
And you're not to think you can just walk in here and take her place because you can't. Each word was like a small stone thrown with precision meant to hurt. But Eliza had been hurt by experts. Harold's mother, her own parents, the whole town of Ash Ridge. A 12-year-old boy's anger, no matter how justified, couldn't touch her the way their judgment had.
I'm not here to take anyone's place, James," she said quietly. "I'm here to help, that's all. " "We'll see," James said and turned on his heel, leaving her alone in the small room with her carpet bag and her thoughts. Eliza sat on the edge of the bed, her hands trembling slightly now that she was finally alone. The enormity of what had happened today was beginning to sink in. This morning, she'd woken in her childhood bedroom in Ash Ridge, knowing her father planned to sell her, but not believing it would actually happen.
Tonight, she was in a stranger's house, 8 miles from everything she'd ever known, responsible for five grieving children who wanted nothing to do with her. She pulled the locket from beneath her collar and opened it, looking at the tiny portrait of her mother. The woman in the picture was smiling, young, full of hope, nothing like the cold stranger who'd turned away from her in the square today. I'm sorry, Mama, Eliza thought. I'm sorry I couldn't be what you wanted.
I'm sorry I'm broken. But even as she thought it, both Thatcher's words echoed in her memory. She won't be judged anymore. Not in my house. Maybe broken was all right here.
Maybe broken could still be useful. Eliza changed into her night gown, washed her face in the basin, and crawled between the sage scented sheets. Through the thin walls, she could hear the sounds of the house settling, floorboards creaking, a child coughing, the distant sound of Bose's boots on the stairs. Tomorrow, she thought she would begin the work of earning her place here. Tomorrow she would face whatever challenges these children threw at her.
Tomorrow she would prove that a woman didn't need a working womb to have value. But tonight, alone in a strange room in a house full of grief, Eliza Morland let herself cry for everything she'd lost and everything she might never have. She cried for her marriage, for her parents' love, for the children her body would never create. She cried for the woman she'd been expected to be and the woman she actually was. And somewhere in the depths of that grief, she found the smallest spark of something else.