- if you were a stone ., sarah

[rowan gallagher]

The sound of the chair rocking back and forth filled the small room they had once shared like a metronome, carefully counting out the distance between them. Rowan closed his eyes as he leaned against the door. For a moment he could almost imagine that Clara was still his; that the woman before him was still his wife. She was in there somewhere, he was certain of it. He just didn’t know where to find her. Instead he stood, listening to his wife’s soft voice as she hummed, her slender hands embroidering the hem of a skirt. It was as though nothing had changed, as though their lives had been suspended within a painting. Just like in a painting, Rowan couldn’t hold her or comfort her. Longing settled as an ache in his bones. It had been so long since he had held or kissed her. Clara was both his wife and a stranger. He missed her more than he knew how to express.

He stared at her for a minute longer, praying that she would turn and her face would light up as it once had. But she didn’t move. Instead, she continued rocking. Staring ahead. Lost to the world they had once shared. Resignation welled within him as he turned away and slipped silently down the hall and into the kitchen.

He could still hear the well-intentioned voices of his family echoing in his mind causing his head to ache. “It’s been a year, Rowan. A year and she’s not improved. She needs more help than you can give her,” his father-in-law had argued over dinner earlier that evening. Such meals had become a weekly occurrence and he had grown to loathe. Rowan merely endured them, attempting to contribute as little to the conversations surrounding his wife. Tonight, however, he hadn’t been able to remain silent. “She’s our daughter, Rowan. We only want to do what’s best for her.”

“And I do not? She is my wife!”

“We only meant –”

“You only meant that you have known her longer and therefore are the only ones concerned with Clara’s wellbeing. Of course, how could I be so blind? But then, I have not forgotten that she is sitting in this room with us. My wife may have forgotten some things but she can most assuredly still hear all that is being said.” He glanced toward Clara who was absently pushing peas around her plate with a fork. “Clara, luv? Would you like me to draw you a bath?” She didn’t respond. Silence, pregnant and heavy, filled the small dining room. Rowan’s hands clenched into fists beneath the table’s surface, tendons straining white across the bones as his father-in-law cleared his throat and nodded toward Clara. His mother-in-law rose then, and led Clara from the room with a promise of biscuits. “She’s not a child,” Rowan said as he watched them go.

“She’s not a wife either, boy. No one can accuse you of not trying. No one would blame you at all.”

“My god! Do you even hear yourself!? This is your daughter and my wife. I took vows. Before God. Before you! And now I’m to lock her away in Bedlam? How is that best?”

“She’s not getting better.”

Rowan hadn’t stayed to hear the rest of the now-familiar argument. Clara was getting better; they just couldn’t see it because they were not by her side every day. She no longer screamed when he was near, and they had conversed over breakfast just that morning. Seasons did not change in an instant, they took time. Clara was trying to find her way back to them all, she just needed more time.

He glanced over his shoulder at the silhouette of his father-in-law against the upstairs window before disappearing into the familiar London streets. He ambled along, not seeing the damp brick of the buildings he passed or the people who called them home. He wanted to keep walking until his life made sense once more. Until he could no longer move forward. Instead he settled onto a bench and rested his head between his hands. Clara had been his dream, and they had been so happy. The problem with dreams, Rowan had realized, was that when they left they took everything with them.

[sarah maccrae]

She was perched on a man's dirty pant leg, stained and soiled with ale that had slopped over him more than once. But she had long past stopped noticing. She took another long drink of gin. The world was a blur, and her in it. The other man across the table told a bawdy joke, and they all laughed louder than the joke deserved. Jeanette sat on his lap and stopped his raucous laughter with a kiss. Jeanette wasn't her real name, their names never were. "Jeanette" found they gave her more coins when they thought she was french.

"Rose," the man beneath her said, clumsily kissing her cheek. Whenever one man started with his girl, the other always followed. What rivaling creatures. She sucked on her gin bottle again before tucking it in a pocket in the folds of her dress. "You don't want me ta buy ye a drink, luv?" He asked loudly, waving his tankard in front of her. She pulled the pint from his hand and took a long swallow. "Ye can't pay me with piss-water my fine gentl'man!" she shouted. They all laughed boisterously but it had clearly been the signal to move from the tavern, elsewhere. Madame's was on the corner but the men immediately lit up cigarettes outside and paused awhile. "Nothin' like a smoke outside," her client said, taking a deep drag. She stood near a wall, but careful not to lean so the soot and grease didn't stain her dress. She couldn't tell if the sky was clear or overcast, the smoke of the streetlamps shrouding the night in a hazy yellow light. The man turned and offered her a smoke. Most didn't, as they didn't share much else than a night with their whores. She took a long smoke, staring at her client with a coy little smile. He would be easy to pinch a few quid off tonight. The way he sauntered, he was a proud man. They never went to court to claim they'd be stolen from a prostitute for fear of their reputation. All she need was a quick slip into his pant's pocket while he was occupied with her.

Absorbed in her thoughts of thievery, a man and woman passed quickly along the other side of the street. They were young, probably around twenty, in the plain cloth of the working class. The woman held a bundle of blankets close to her chest in a strange, delicate manner. They weren't of the tavern scene, by the way they quickly hurried along to avoid the shambles of people who streamed from the Three-Fingered-Jack's stained doors. Sarah stared at them, strangely transfixed by this fleeting scene. The man wrapped his arm around the woman's shoulders protectively and Sarah saw it. The pale face of their infant peeking from the dark folds of blankets. Something gripped her chest and she gritted her teeth against the soured ache. She thought the child slumbered softly against the mother, but the couple was too far to have really known.

She pulled out her bottle of gin and took a long drink. Her tongue and mind were too numb to taste the burn. She pocketed it again and wrapped her arm around her client's waist. "If ye smoke anymore, I'll have'ta start without ye," she said with a wink. The men laughed loudly and her client fondled her lewdly as they stumbled forward. Her client kept trying to pull her off into an alley but Jeanette kept them following forward.

They staggered into another street, laughing, too drunk to know why. Sarah had thought they would have been to Madame's by now. She thought she saw the couple again, walking ahead. Suddenly, she didn't feel so well. She stumbled from her client's arms and waved them to keep walking. Her man snaked his arm around Jeanette as if she had been his all along. Sarah fell back into the shadows of a side-street and quickly emptied the contents of her stomach. She was sick until she had nothing left, not even gin. She rested on an overturned crate and smoothed back her flyaway hair. She retied her bright blue scarf and pinched her cheeks to give them a blush.

She steadied herself enough to gather composure and rushed back into the main street. She collided into something solid and somehow found enough footing not to fall. "Watch yerself!" she yelled, attempting to flee as quickly as possible. She thought it had been the couple, but it was only a solitary man. She looked around for the couple but there was no one. They would have been here, the only side-street was the one she ducked into. But all she could see was her company noisily turning the corner ahead. There had been no one else, except him.

"Move on, won't ye?!" she barked, side-stepping him. But then a soft voice, "Sarah?"

She stopped and looked over her shoulder. He looked familiar but she couldn't quite know why. It was a forgotten dream she was grasping at, faint and fogged. She stared at the contours and planes of his face, trying to find who he had been to her. It was harder when even the world around her now shifted and spun. She stepped closer and tentatively reached up to poise her hand just above his cheek, almost touching. She stared into his blue eyes, searching, the cloud of gin and memories removing her from time and place. And then she saw him. The young baker with a rounder face and a body he hadn't quite grown into yet. "Rowan," she said at last, and the spell had been broken.

She realized how strange it must have looked and she quickly pulled down her arm and took a step back. She felt slightly sobered by the moment, but not enough that her step back wasn't unsteady. "My, ye have gotten...grown," she laughed, too loudly. "It's been long, a long time,"

[/b] looking up to her old friend, unaware of how far they both had fallen. [/blockquote][/blockquote][/size][/font]