We hope to go home in not too long. Lilian has gotten allergic to England. Finches and Eliots are not meant to live so long away from Boston. Summer does not exist here. Everything turns wet and green and they call it summer. Nurse Metcalfe and I believe it a conspiracy.

If I have to I will finish my treatment, which is what they call it not I, at one of those places on the North Shore with iron gates and bricks, alongside such as Will Williamson and poor Bud Sears. Mrs. Choate will visit every spring as her spa.

I am proving my salt by spending weekends with Lilian and the children and not scaring the wits out of anyone, including myself. Right now I am fine but the nature of the thing is that you can be in top shape one minute then down in the bleakest depths the next. And for no reason that you can see. They’ll probably discover that it’s just a matter of vitamins.

Yours,

Gilbert Finch

They’d given him drugs and it made him babble.

I never loved anyone like you, Lily, Gilbert said.

I know. She closed her eyes, then opened them quickly: there was another man’s face there.

So kind, Gilbert said. His voice was fading from the medication. So good.

I am not, Lilian snapped.

I don’t know how I got so lucky … His eyes closed.

Lilian pressed her mouth together, her lower lip protruding, and watched him for a few moments. He looked like something which had been beaten and pounded at till it got soft. She collected her coat and put on her hat, not checking the mirror, and left the tin smell of the clinic. Her walk home was a sleepwalk, for when she arrived back at the tangled thorn bush it was dusk, and she had no awareness of time passing, or of distance having been traveled.

Dear Winn,

We are thinking of coming back. I would have been back a year ago if I was able and now it’s up to Kurt Howze to give us the final word which it looks like he will do. Lilian is finding out about places on the North Shore like Hazel Hill and Bartlett’s which I know Father does not think highly of, but if it’s a question of staying here it will have to do. It has been a strain on Lilian though she wouldn’t say and if we’re not careful she’ll be the one in here not I. After her trips to London her spirits rise but then sink again.

I hope the lawn is in some shape so the children can run about. I have stretches of clear sky and concentrate very hard to see what went into it so I’ll be able to conjure it up another time. Best to Edith and Winthrop and yourself.

Love,

Gilbert

V: Irene

V

Irene