#farewell to the 1910s y’all 😭

[aheathen-conceivably]

The Darlingtons walked along the road, Florence’s steps growing heavier with every inch. Seeing her struggle, Isaiah ran over to grab her arm, leaving Summer to walk with his sisters. Suddenly they all saw it there, rising from the snow as they walked down the hill: Darlington Manor.

They made the rest of the journey in silence, until they stopped to stand in front of it, silent and separate from this cold mansion. Soon a woman appeared at the window, a child with curly brown hair in her arms. She was beautiful and clearly wealthy, bouncing her child around before stopping to look curiously at the family through the window. Florence waved at her, picturing Adelia walking Rosella through the halls or spinning around with Oliver to the gramophone at midnight.

Florence looked over at her children and smiled sadly, feeling the absence of the three people she loved who were no longer there, the only three people who could have shared in her memories of Darlington Manor. Their absences had rarely been so jarring, leaving Florence adrift in the present, alone with her past.

With a final glance, Florence turned toward her children and wrapped her arms around their waists. She looked at Zelda and said, “let us go, my child, it is time to get you aboard your steamer.”

They turned their backs to the manor, walking slowly and perhaps a bit mournfully down the street. Yet with each step there was an increasing buyouncy in the Darlington family.

Isaiah trailed behind his mother and sisters slightly, demurely grabbing Summer’s hand in his own, on the precipice of manhood and perhaps a life with a girl he knew that he already loved.

Virginia’s memories of wartime horrors and blind righteousness had found an outlet where she felt purposeful. She knew that she was going to do good in this world, and she was finally comfortable doing it alone.

Zelda’s fear and attachment to people dead before their time was beginning to ebb in favor of the unrelenting curiosity that she had felt as a child. Maybe, just maybe, she could see the things that she had always dreamed of and be her own woman.

Florence’s happiness was perhaps the greatest of them all. She would never get back her daughter or the love of her life. Yet here her children were, each of them with echos of their father in their faces and their personalities. Seeing Darlington Manor had reminded her of where she and Oliver had come from, and of what they had gone through to get what they wanted.

And somehow they had found exactly the life that they had sought. Their lives had been beyond what they had ever even dreamed about in that field when they were teenagers. There had been more love and freedom than Florence could have imagined, and she had been lucky enough to share it with the man that she loved for almost three decades. Florence stopped and looked into Zelda’s eyes. It was her turn to find the life that she and Oliver had been lucky enough to have.

Part 2/2