Read Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 16 for Free Online Page A

childhood, fishing with my father, diving along the rock face and see your name carved on the cliff under my pale leg; I will be unloading gravel in the corner of my garden and read the first two letters of your name; I will be touring a museum and find a bit of your cloak, the ragged stitches recognizably mine, on an Indian tapestry. I cannot promise the means, only the end: leave this place, never come back, you the better for it.
    * * * *
    The Way to This House
    My son, my son knows what it is to be a child, to belong to something. He holds it aside, a strangeness. Here, nothing belongs to anyone if it is not nailed down. But nails are too solid, too tangible. Too obvious. If the children here kept diaries, the ones with little golden locks, they would be fakes, full of puppy poems and meal lists. If the children here kept diaries they would have the golden diary with the golden lock hidden under the mattress, and it would be full of realistic-sounding lies that looked like secrets. But if the children here kept diaries, the real ones would be thin and strapped next to their hearts under flesh-colored bandages, or buried under a rock under a rosebush in the garden, only removed on moonless nights, or securely cradled in the razored-out bed of another, larger book. Their secrets would be written in blood and it would kill a person to read them.
    And everyone knows this. So the children here do not keep diaries. My son always knew I was not like them, but he did not always know that I was not like him. He remembers, puts it away inside. Before. It is his secret diary. He, at least, has a lock.
    My son will come to me, I know. He will come in the dead of night, a child again. He will carry a silver knife and say nothing. I read the last page of the book, then burned it. Between then and now I do not care, I am not here. I can sit in the library and sneak down to the kitchen and sleep in my husband's bed. But one night you will come to me, and hold out your hand, and in it they will lay, small and fragile, no longer pale but darkened with age and air. What your father took from me.
    I followed the path for days until I came to a house, a cottage, really. An unlocked door like a welcome, that was how foolish I was. I did not know that the walls would own me, a bit, and that open doors are like bear traps, so I stumbled in.
    I went inside. I had a knife, from the blond boy, from the village. And who else who have me?
    There was a great fireplace, and a wooden floor. A table. Cupboards were bare, dishes were clean. I climbed up the ladder to the loft. A pile of blankets and furs, heavy with lingering smoke. I hid myself in the dark and slept. When I awoke, the room was filled with men, the fire roaring. They were drinking and celebrating. Like at the parties my husband gives now, when he says, “My wife,” and I rise, hold a cup aloft. The only bit of silence the whole evening. The visitors can see that only three fingers circle the silver stem. And I smile, and bow, and sit. Then food is served. But I was not there, so there was no moment of silence in the cottage.
    "How sad,” he said. “I was to have married her.” And then he tore the garnet baubles from her ears, red hair covering her white neck. The dead were at this party, dancing, flung about like dolls, heads flopping back, blood lace at the throats. The men would not grow tired of their games. I crawled back to my corner, buried in the blankets. A knife under my pillow. I slept like a baby. I was already dead, you see, that is what I told myself.
    And I awoke in the morning and they were all gone. But their things were there, and I looked through them for some reason, a clue, a map. Bread and cheese and meat. A pile of jewelry, coins on the table. Other objects which I did not know the use for, although now I do. And I ate their bread, like Goldilocks. I had slept in their bed. There was a trapdoor, and under it were the dancing partners, the dead. I was down there