5.

There was a new bay window. They liked to stand together in its compass and watch the sky and the fields. Today the fields lay below a steel-grey sky. Two crows were strutting along the path. Wind scuttled rain against the window while a line of cloud brightened to the south. Emma observed and behind her Charles strode the room.

This grasp at a moment wants to make visible the transition between niche and cloister. They (we) call it a crossroad. Remission or decline, extinction or rebound? How can all that has been not be? How can faith be beside the point? What is about to happen? Repetition, like the scattered rain hitting the window, will carry them forward. Once the next scene is upon them there will be no window or rain or crows strutting or clouds brightening. The horizon may be blue to the south, but Emma will be watching her son and Charles will be climbing the stairs to the attic, where Anne, wide-mouthed and feverish, will become Annie, treacherously asleep on a galleon, free of her parents’ out-loud promises, and indentured to something invisible.