Quoted By:
You are sometimes called "Mrs. Bowers" by the denizens of your new home. This is improper— you failed to marry, and are now far beyond a marriagable age— but you also find it preferable to the alternative. You wonder often how your life would look if you had chosen differently some 25 years ago. Then you chastise yourself. This is the life that God intended for you, and it is not in your remit to question. And think of how Clary's life would look if you had chosen differently. She would be dead by now.
(You used to add: think of how the girl's life would look. After the tragedy, there is no point. It is now apparent to you that she was and was always going to be a lost soul.)
In times of weakness, you will admit privately, you sometimes wonder what the difference would be. Your little sister Clara was never entirely right, it's true. As a young girl she was ditzy. Odd. But terribly sweet, always bright and adoring, and never odd to the point where it mattered. Then that wolf of a man swept in, charmed her, showered her in little presents, and slept with her. Naturally she became with child, naturally she eloped, naturally she was summarily disowned by your venerable parents. You, the good sister, ordered to never speak of her again.
You don't know what happened those nine months. That man has claimed to you that she was taken good care of. He had a well-paying job, but no wealth— the heritage squandered on drink and cards and whores generations ago, and his salary squandered on much the same in the present. Your sister was always evasive, when she was comprehensible. You believe it was a difficult pregnancy and a worse labor, and this— plus the man's roving, or the estrangement, or any number of stressors— led to the first hairline cracks in Clara's poor bright mind.
(That, or it was the girl. She laid with a devil and birthed a demon. But, after the tragedy, you are not thinking of the girl.)
First it was a black unshakable melancholia. She would not eat, would not leave her room, would hardly rear her infant. To his minor credit, that man found you, and spoke to you, and you were moved enough by your sister's plight (not <span class="mu-i">his[,/i] to be clear) that you stepped in. The household was managed. The infant was tamed. In time your sister roused herself from her state, but she was never the same after. She would return to usual for a time— weeks, a month— then slip back into impossible, unmaternal darkness, or worse its opposite. During her other states, she was boundless, irrepressible, completely and utterly unreasonable— would begin projects and never finish; would disappear with that man for days, leaving the child with you; would crack deeper, and blaspheme against God, or try to fly out the second-story window. Your sister had grown very ill.
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