Isabelle and Alexander by Rebecca Anderson (new books to read TXT) 📗

With one hand around his fingers and one supporting his elbow, she bent and straightened his arm in silence until she heard him speak.

“Thank you.”

Tears sprang to her eyes, preventing her from asking what had prompted his expression of gratitude. She longed for more—was he thanking her for protecting his privacy? For moving his muscles? For standing here by his side? But he offered no more, and she tucked the unexpected tenderness away, knowing that it might not be repeated as often as she desired.

With his words, the tenor of the room’s silence changed. It didn’t matter what it was for; he’d shared an expression of gratitude that turned the tension to comfort.

When Yeardley entered the room with Alexander’s bathing supplies, Isabelle placed Alexander’s hand across his chest. Before she released his fingers, she gave them a squeeze.

What happened next stopped her in her exit. Did she imagine it? Did she feel a return of pressure?

She looked into Alexander’s eyes again and saw something that might have been surprise, but so much of their daily existence was surprising that she didn’t dare to ask him if he’d felt something. She smiled and excused herself from the parlor.

Outside the room, she stood with her back against the wall and grasped her fingers together, trying to recreate that phantom of pressure she may or may not have felt. Had he pressed her fingers? Had she imagined the touch, imagined the small shudder of pleasure that had followed?

And if it happened, if he’d moved his fingers, what did that mean for the future? Isabelle closed her eyes and pictured Alexander lying there on the couch. In her mind, her eye moved from the top of his head and his stylish golden hair to his face, with its sloping brow, aquiline nose, and the eyes that had surely made young women swoon and attempt to compose poetry or paint his portrait. She pictured his mouth, turned up in a smile—a smile directed at her.

Back still to the wall, she watched in her imagination as he turned his head to face her fully. And then her eyes traveled to his strong shoulders. Move, she commanded in her mind. Move your shoulders. Lift your arms. Make a fist.

Sit up, she thought. Straighten. Cross one leg over the other. Wave. Snap. Gesture.

Stand, her mind told him. Stand up and walk toward me.

Pressing her hands into her chest, she pleaded in her mind.

Stand even if you want to walk away from me, she thought. Stand and walk and move.

Isabelle felt drained of energy, as if she’d run a vast distance. But beneath the physical and mental exhaustion she was becoming used to, she felt anxious and eager to move, to push forward, to get back into the room and try the exercise again if it was truly healing Alexander.

Even with such a premonition of positive things to come, nothing could induce Isabelle to enter the parlor while Yeardley was bathing Alexander. So she paced the entryway for a few moments and then went in search of Mrs. Burns.

Not finding her in any of the expected places, Isabelle entered the kitchen. Mae was kneading dough, her arms floury.

The young woman looked up in surprise. “Mrs. Osgood.” She attempted to remove her hands from the dough and put them behind her back, standing upright.

“Please, don’t let me stop your work,” Isabelle said. She pulled out a chair. “May I sit with you for a time?”

Mae nodded, hesitating over her table.

“Please,” Isabelle repeated. “Carry on with your work. I simply need some company.”

For the next hour, Isabelle asked questions and Mae answered, growing more comfortable as time passed. Mae scrubbed vegetables clean in a bowl of water, occasionally rising to check the progress of a boiling chicken. Isabelle asked about Mae’s family, her prospects, and her happiness with their situation.

“I love my work,” Mae said, lifting a towel and uncovering the now-risen bread dough. “I do miss my parents when we leave the city.” She looked up, startled. “I don’t mean to complain, ma’am. I am grateful to come here to the country, but living here, sleeping here, is different than going home at night.”

“I understand completely. And I imagine you’re as ready to return to the city as Mr. Osgood is.”

“Indeed I am, ma’am. It will be good to go home.”

Home. Isabelle wondered when any place would begin to feel like it deserved that name.

“I believe you. And when I married Mr. Osgood and moved away, I missed my childhood home. I missed my parents and the familiarity of my place, but my homesickness and loneliness were not for a place, but rather for a person. When I left home, I ached for my cousin.”

Mae nodded. “Is she your age?” she asked, dicing a carrot that would be boiled into a textureless puree.

Isabelle said, “Who?”

“Your cousin, ma’am,” Mae said, a look of confusion on her face.

Isabelle laughed. “Oh, of course. You must think me daft. My cousin is a year younger. And a man. His name is Edwin, and he is my dearest friend.”

When she said the words, Isabelle realized how true they still were. She longed for Edwin’s company, but she couldn’t imagine him here, now. She couldn’t picture him within the home she was attempting to create, within the life she was living.

“Was he very sad to lose you when you married?” Mae asked, encouraged by Isabelle’s honesty.

“He was, for a time. But he is the kind of person who will always be surrounded by someone to love. It didn’t take him long to fill the hole my marriage left.” Isabelle smiled, pleased that what had felt so painful when she had read it not many weeks ago now seemed right, and if not joyful, at least good.

“He himself is engaged to be married,” Isabelle said.

“Do you like her?” Mae asked. “His lady?”

“I’ve not met her, but I am prepared to love her.”

Mae smiled as she sliced a potato and slid it