Sleeping syrup befriended me in those months after Luther's enlistment. I had scarred the label with my fingernails but had not yet managed to tear it off. The label was the last thing I read before falling into bed at night. Each ounce of this single-use syrup contains alcohol, cannabis, chloroform, and morphine to guarantee a good night’s sleep.
The grandfather clock bong bong bonged for noontime when I woke. My stomach growled for lunch or at least some chocolate, so I sat up, cradling my aching head. My vision spun, but just a little. I stared at the wall across my bed, remembering where Luther's crib used to sit. Before his passing, James would hum songs for Luther, lowering him into the crib. His side of the bed would be smooth and creaseless, while on my side all my tossing and turning had twisted the sheets into a rope.
When Luther was a baby, I would sometimes enter the room to see James sitting in the rocking chair, Luther in his arms, both snoring softly. I would remember the scene in the coming years. I would hoard it and become drunk on it. Then, three Christmases later, I would stand at the window and watch my husband leave on a trip to the grocery from which he would not return.
And now, twenty-five Christmases later, staring out the same window, I looked down into the empty street, dusted with snow, untouched by footprints. All down the street, the business had “closed” signs on the doors. Work halted for a day, and gift wrapping filled the rubbish bins of every house.
All except mine.
Lavinia said she would be checking in on me in the evening. She used that phrase a lot these days, “Check on you,” like she was a doctor. She'd “checked in one me” Christmas morning, bringing me a gift I still hadn't opened. I’d gone right back upstairs and stayed in bed the rest of the day. What was the use? Without customers, I had no reason for dirtying the kitchen.
The day after Christmas, there’d be no business either. Good. I hadn’t the energy or the will to go downstairs. I sighed and leaned my forehead against the windowpane. Wait. There, in the distance, a few souls wandered the street. Odd. I squinted, pulling at the blinds for a better view—two men trailed by three little girls. One of the men hoisted the smallest girl on his shoulders, while the other two girls danced circles in the snow. Their footsteps trailed behind them all the way down the street. They looked like they were headed for the shop. Didn’t they know Christmas was already over? A few knocks rattled the door. At first, I didn’t bother to go down and answer it, but they persisted.
“Your carols won't help me,” I muttered, not nearly loud enough to be heard.
But still the knocks persisted.
Finally, I wrapped a sweater around my shoulders and pressed my feet onto the wood boards. At first, my legs wobbled, but I turned the doorknob to my bedroom and creaked down the freezing wood steps. The knocking persisted, this time from the back door, not the shop door like normal customers. Curious. I spotted their blurry outlines through the glazed windowpanes, and walked through the kitchen to open the back door.
“Love Mum!” two arms wrapped around me.
Crying out, I blacked out for a moment in Luther's arms. My head throbbed and my face glowed as blood rushed to my cheeks. Luther had brought others too—Jim and some little girls. I slammed the door behind them, locking it, but I couldn’t fit the key in the lock on account of my trembling hands. None of them would ever leave this house again, never.
“Mum, it's okay,” Jim took the key from me gently. “Nobody's after us. Luther's here to stay. Merry Christmas.”
“Oh, James!” For the first time in years, I called him by his full name, his father's name. My son’s name.
I clasped his cheeks, his nose, his chin, just like when he was a baby. Three white-haired, round-nosed little girls waved at me from the doormat. Their cheeks swelled with butterscotches.
“Who are they?” I asked.
There hadn't been a little girl in this house since Ethyl Brand twenty years ago.
“Mum, meet the Moreau sisters,” Jim said. “Adele, Bernadette, and Celeste.”
“Bonjour Mère Noël,” the oldest said. “Is this North Pole?”
While the girls prattled on, Luther stared at the kitchen, boggle-eyed. He touched the handle of the cabinet that he would hide in after his tantrums, like an old friend. He didn’t dare open it, just touched it. He continued to the flour sacks and the jars of sugar, powder sugar, cocoa powder, almonds. He touched the hanging spoons and whisks from his candy-making days. His footsteps wandered through the door, to the shop, behind the counter. Silent as a ghost, he stared through the glass at the fudge selection, the jars of rainbow bonbons, and finally, at the end of the counter, he came to the chocolate truffles.
I followed, watching him raise the truffles to his eyes, inspecting them slowly. And then he started weeping like a baby.
“Mum.”
I was able to do my job again. I held him tight until every tear dried. Luther’s, mine, and even Jim’s.
Luther would have nightmares the rest of his life. Candy making wasn’t as fun for him anymore, but he still did it, mostly for the girls. He discovered in the Spring that Warwick Castle was still searching for a baker, and the job was his. We bought a bicycle, and he rode to work every day.
In the coming months, the sugar-fed giggling of the three girls bounced off the walls of the sweet shop. Santa dolls accumulated on the chocolate-bar shelves, and when the bells jingled over the door, happy customers asked me if they could try the best truffles in Europe. And when closing time came, I would lock up the door, clean the counters, and Lavinia would stroll by with the girls.
Lavinia, who was never able to have children, jumped at the chance to offer a room to the girls and quickly became a mother figure to them. We both did our best to make sure they felt at home, although Lavinia did her best to spoil them.
Jim returned to the frontlines shortly after Christmas, where he delivered mail to the troops for another three years. On the day he returned from France, he locked his uniform in a case under his bed and never opened it. Using his savings from his service, he moved into a brown-brick apartment in Warwick. The apartment had two bedrooms—one for him and one for Celeste to share with her sisters when they visited. There were no social services or adoption laws in those days, especially in the chaos of war.
Life was still plenty hard, and Jim was out of a job a number of years and the girls shed many tears over their loss and adjustment to England. But Luther was always able to make them laugh. Always.
Every Christmas after that, we would meet at my house to exchange gifts and reflect on all we'd survived. Occasionally, Ethyl Brand would be in the country and stop by to see us. And always, at the end of the evening, I would sit with Luther and eat sweets until his snores echoed through the house, and then I would guide him to bed.
“Love you sweet, Luther,” I would tell him. “Love you sweet.”
“Love Mum,” he would whisper back. “Love Mum.”