but mostly older people, who are more frail. Your mother is still young and in good health,” he reassured Annabelle. He felt sure that Consuelo would feel better in a few days. And he left some laudanum drops to help her sleep better, and aspirin for her fever.
But by six o’clock her mother was so much worse that Annabelle decided to spend the night. She called Josiah to let him know, and he was very sympathetic and asked if there was anything he could do to help her. She assured him there wasn’t and went back to her mother, who had been listening to the call.
“Are you happy with him?” Consuelo asked her daughter faintly, which Annabelle thought was an odd question.
“Of course I am, Mama.” Annabelle smiled at her, and sat down on a chair next to the bed and reached for her mother’s hand. She sat there holding it, just as she had when she was a child. “I love him very much,” Annabelle confirmed. “He’s a wonderful man.”
“I’m so sorry you haven’t had a baby. Has nothing happened yet?” Annabelle shook her head with a serious expression and gave her their official line.
“We have time.” Her mother only hoped that she wasn’t one of those women who was never able to have a child. She thought it would be a tragedy if they never had children, and so did Annabelle, although she wouldn’t admit it to her mother. “Let’s just get you well,” she said, to distract her. Consuelo nodded, and a little while later she drifted off to sleep, looking like a child herself, as Annabelle sat next to her and watched her. Her mother’s fever rose over the next hours, and by midnight Annabelle was bathing her forehead with cool cloths, as Blanche prepared them. They had far more comforts at their disposal than she did when she worked on Ellis Island, but nothing helped. She spent the night awake at her mother’s bedside, hoping the fever would break by morning, but it didn’t.
The doctor came to see her morning and afternoon for the next three days, as Consuelo continued to get steadily worse. It was the worst case of influenza the doctor had seen in a long time, and far worse than the one Annabelle had had three years before, when she missed the fateful trip on the
Josiah came to sit with his mother-in-law one afternoon, so that Annabelle could get a few hours’ sleep in her old bedroom. He had left the bank to do so, and was surprised when Consuelo woke and looked at him with clear bright eyes. She seemed far more alert than she had the day before, and he hoped she was getting better. He knew how desperately worried his wife was about her mother, with good reason. She was very, very sick, and people had died of influenza before, although there was no reason why she should with such good care. Annabelle hadn’t left her side for a moment, except to sleep for half an hour here and there, when Blanche or Josiah sat with her mother. Consuelo hadn’t been left alone for an instant. And the doctor came twice a day.
“Annabelle loves you very much,” Consuelo said softly from where she lay, smiling at him. She was very weak and deathly pale.
“I love her very much too,” Josiah assured her. “She’s a remarkable woman, and a wonderful wife.” Consuelo nodded, and looked pleased to hear it from him. More often than not, she thought he treated her like a younger sister or a child, and not a wife or a grown woman. Perhaps it was just his way, since she was so much younger than he was. “You have to rest and get better,” he encouraged his mother-in-law, and she looked away, as though she knew it wouldn’t make any difference, and then she looked directly at him again with an intense gaze.
“If anything happens to me, Josiah, I want you to take good care of her. You’re all she has. And I hope that you’ll have children one day.”
“So do I,” he said softly. “She’d be a perfect mother. But you mustn’t speak that way, you’ll be fine.” Consuelo didn’t look as sure, and it was obvious to him that she thought she was dying, or perhaps she was just afraid.
“Take good care of her,” she said again, and then her eyes closed and she went back to sleep. She didn’t stir until Annabelle came back into the room an hour later, and checked her fever. Much to her dismay, it was higher, and she signaled that to Josiah as her mother opened her eyes.
“Feeling better?” Annabelle asked with a bright smile, as Consuelo shook her head, and her daughter had the frightening feeling that she was giving up the fight. And so far, nothing they had done for her had helped.
Josiah went back to the apartment then, and told Annabelle to call for him in the night, if there was anything she wanted him to do. Annabelle promised she would, and as he left the Worthington house, he was haunted by what Consuelo had said. He had every intention of taking care of Annabelle. And the fact that he was all she had in the world, other than her mother, was not lost on him. In some ways, particularly if her mother died, it was a heavy burden for him.
On New Year’s Eve the doctor told them that Consuelo had pneumonia. It was what he had feared would happen from the first. She was a healthy woman, and not of a great age, but pneumonia was a dangerous illness, and he had the feeling that Consuelo was far too willing to let go of life, and they all knew why. She seemed to be slipping away before their eyes, and they couldn’t win this fight alone. They needed her help, and even with it, a happy outcome was not sure. Annabelle was looking terrified as she sat at her bedside. The only time she seemed to perk up was when her mother was awake, and she was trying to coax her to eat and drink, and assuring her that she would be fine soon. Consuelo didn’t comment, was barely eating enough to sustain herself, and was being devoured by the fever. She wasted away day by day, while the fever refused to abate. Blanche looked as devastated as Annabelle as she ran trays up to the sickroom, and the cook tried to concoct meals that Consuelo would eat. The situation was frightening for them all.
And on the sixth of January, Consuelo quietly gave up the fight. She went to sleep in the early evening, after a long, difficult day. She was holding Annabelle’s hand, and they had talked for a little while that afternoon. Consuelo had smiled at her before she went to sleep and told Annabelle she loved her. Annabelle had been dozing in the chair next to her at eight o’clock that night, when she suddenly sensed something different and woke up with a start. She looked at the smooth expression on her mother’s face and instantly saw that she wasn’t breathing, as Annabelle gasped. For the first time in two weeks, her mother’s face was cool, unnaturally so. The fever had left her, and taken Consuelo’s life. Annabelle tried to shake her awake, and saw that it was useless. She knelt at her mother’s bedside, holding her lifeless form in her arms, and sobbed. It was the final goodbye she had never been able to say to her father or brother, and she was inconsolable as she cried.
Blanche found her there a little while later, and started to cry herself. She gently stroked Consuelo’s hair, and then led Annabelle away, and sent Thomas to get Josiah. He was at the house moments later, and did all he could to comfort his wife. He knew all too well how great the loss would be to her, and how much she had loved her mother.
The doctor came that night to sign the death certificate, and in the morning the mortician came to prepare her. They laid Consuelo in state in the ballroom with flowers everywhere, as Annabelle stood by, looking devastated, with Josiah holding her hand.
Friends came to visit all the next day, after seeing the shocking announcement in the paper that Consuelo Worthington had died. Their home was plunged into deep mourning yet again, so soon after their double loss nearly three years before. Annabelle realized that she was an orphan now, and as her mother had said to him, Josiah was all she had in the world. She clung to him through the next days like a drowning person, and at her mother’s funeral at St. Thomas Episcopal Church. His arm was ever around her shoulders, and he was true to his word. Josiah never left her side, and even slept with her in her narrow bed in her childhood room in her parents’ house. She didn’t want to go back to their apartment, and insisted on staying at her house with him. She talked about their moving into the house, which was stately to be sure, but he felt it would be grim, and too hard for her. But for now he let her do as she wished. It was a nearly intolerable loss for Annabelle. Henry was often with them, and was a great comfort to her too. He came to visit frequently and he and Josiah talked quietly in the library late at night or played cards, while Annabelle lay upstairs on her bed, in a state of shock and grief.
It was a full month before she left the house. She had touched nothing in her mother’s bedroom. All Consuelo’s clothes were still there. Josiah was handling the estate at the bank. Her parents’ entire fortune was hers now, including the portion that would have gone to Robert. She was a very rich woman, but it was of no consolation to her. She didn’t care. And although it pained him to do so, in March, Josiah had to relay to her an offer to buy the house, from a family that knew hers. Annabelle was horrified and didn’t want to hear it, but Josiah told her gently that he didn’t think she’d ever be happy there. She had lost all the people she had loved in that house, and the house was filled with ghosts for her. And the offer was a good one, probably better than any they’d get if she decided later to sell it. He knew it would be painful for her to do, but he thought she should.
“But where will we live?” she asked with a look of anguish. “Your apartment will be too small for us once we
