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Mother in the family plot. Actia painted him out of her portrait, because she thought maybe he never should have been in it at all, even if she had gotten his nose just right. She stopped painting after that and stuck to writing.
New brother’s funeral was a small affair, attended only by family and the curate. In black bonnets and shawls, the three sisters stood over new brother’s grave with Aunt and Father. Confused and distraught, their father mourned his son a second time.
“My brilliant boy,” he said.
Listening to prayers roll out of mouths and drift over the puppet brother’s coffin, Actia wondered if they had done wrong. She feared that they had trespassed against nature. Elly stood next to her, the veil over her bonnet hiding the same wild look that had been in her eyes since she’d returned from London. The church bell tolled three times over the misty moors. Elly’s eyes grew fierce and she whispered, almost inaudibly.
“We’re all bells, really.”
Lottie stood straight-backed and unrepentant. When the service ended, she threw a handful of dirt onto the grave and brushed her hands off briskly. There was work to be done, the history books were expecting it.