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There were other Lockwood children. Anthony knew that. But he didn't think about it much. Tried not to. Something about it felt wrong, like he was encroaching on something sacred, private. As though he were trying to glimpse his parents' deepest wounds. To think about it, to mourn, would be to pretend the wound was his own— to make it about himself. It would be selfish, really, to think about it too much. Disrespectful to act as though his parents' wrenching loss was his own — to act as though the twinge that he felt in his soul when he saw kids with lots of siblings was anything compared to the cross his parents bore.
There were three of them. Two before Lockwood, one after. All too little to know if they were boys or girls. Celia was convinced the last one was a girl. Jess never questioned it. Lockwood wondered how she knew.
Jess used to talk about them. She named them, made stories about them. She said there were two girls and a boy— it went Jess, boy, girl, Lockwood, girl— a pefect pattern, if she were right. She named them Luke and Rose and Jane. Anywhere he went, she said, anything he was doing, anything that happened, he would always have three little saints interceding for him.
Now that Jess was gone, too, he'd shut them away with her. Except for one thing — the only image hanging up in his bedroom, the room that used to be his parents'.
On the wall above the dresser, there hung a small golden frame. Inside it was a water color illustration of three flowers, each of which's stems intertwined with the others, making a bouquet of sorts. A hawthorne, a peony, and a violet — May, November, and February. Celia had painted it and given it to Donald. Perhaps it was for Father's Day.
It was the one picture Lockwood couldn't bear to take down. It would have been wrong, to banish the little flowers from the house they hadn't even had the chance to live in.
Originally, all three had been buried in the garden, beneath a redbud tree. Donald had made small cedar boxes, carved a cross on the top of each.
After Celia and Donald died, Jess wanted the babies to be buried with them. She had cried, arguing tooth and nail with Nanny.
"If we have a family plot," she said, "then we stay together. As a family."
Nanny had said that it wouldn't be proper, that DEPRAC would have a fit if they knew the children had been buried in the garden, against protocol, not to mention that exhuming a grave was a surefire way to stir up Visitors. In the end, it was the parish priest at the time, Fr. Donahue, who came to Jessica's aid.
"Miscarried infants are not likely to come back as Visitors, ma'am. Babies rarely are. Even if they did, they would only be type ones. Besides, moving them to be with their parents seems to me something that would please the little saints, don't you think?" He raised an eyebrow, watching Nanny's expression closely. "And, perhaps most importantly, the Problem does not dispense us from the obligation to give due care and respect to our dead. I see no issue burying the children with their parents."
And so Anthony knelt in the garden beside Jessica as she dug up three little boxes. She cradled them in her hands like she was holding a box of crystal that contained the most sacred artifact in the world. Tears streamed down her face and a mix of confusion and terror churned in Anthony's belly — Jessie was so, so sad.
He was too, of course. He would miss Mummy and Daddy. But Jessie was crying because of the little boxes. She said that Luke, and Rose, and Jane were in them. He didn't understand that. His siblings were in heaven, not in a box. And if they were in heaven, then why was she crying? Weren't they happy now? That's what she'd always told him—
Lockwood understood now.
Following Nanny's orders, they had dug up the boxes in broad daylight. An older boy, a friend of Jessie's, was with them in case anything went wrong. His name was Quill, and he was an agent. Anthony thought that was neat.
As Fr. Donahue predicted, they had no issues moving the boxes. Quill helped Jessica wrap them carefully in silver netting, and they took them to the chapel in the cemetery, where their parents' bodies were waiting to be buried.
Quill, Jessie, and Anthony each carried a little box. Jessie instructed Anthony to carry it as carefully as possible and he did. He never let it tip. She had handed him Luke's box and he was glad. He didn't really want to carry a girl-box. He wrinkled his nose at the thought.
Their parents' casket, mahogany with an iron lining, sat in the nave at the foot of the sanctuary, sorrounded by an iron chain. The undertaker opened the casket for the children's last view, but all that was left visible were their parents' hands— one of Celia's resting gently on Donald's chest, his own hand resting on hers: Beneath both of them, tangled in their fingers, was a rosary they held together. Their faces and legs were covered by sheets of silver.
"Can we see their faces?" Lockwood whispered, childishly loud.
Jessie bit her lip and shook her head. "No," she said. "We can't."
"Why not?" He asked, softer this time. His voice tremored.
His sister looked down at him, big brown eyes filling with tears she was trying to fight. She swallowed. "Because...well, Ant, the car...the accident was really bad, dear. There was fire, and hot glass, and—"
"Did the fire burn them?" He asked.
She nodded.
It wasn't until years later that he wondered how their hands weren't badly burned. Only one each was visible, but still, it was impressive. If the inferno was as bad as everyone had said, Lockwood didn't think anything should be left of them.
At the time, he had protested that it couldn't be that bad. He had seen burns before. Like the one Jessie had gotten on her arm, making cookies. It was an angry red and oozed a little, but it wasn't scary. Jessie said bad burns didn't look like that — that, if they looked, he wouldn't recognize his parents. He didn't believe her.
Now he was glad she'd told him no. He didn't need another image to haunt him at night. He already had too many — Jessie's body, Robin's body, Lucy's face when she felt Annabel Ward die (at his prompting, no less) — No, he didn't need anymore images.
Jessie tucked the three boxes on her mother's chest, held gently beneath the arm that reached for her husband. The third box, Jane's, laid snuggly in the small indentation where their bodies met — where Celia's chest leaned into Donald's ribs, the two of them tucked closely together, as though they were simply sleeping.
Lockwood's mother had always told him that he was her rainbow baby — the ray of hope that came after the loss. That's why he was named Anthony, after the patron saint of lost things, because he was proof that lost things could be found again. He was the hope after all hopes failed. The child after child loss. Her Anthony, her lost and found boy, the balm to her grieving maternal heart.
She'd always miss them, the other three. The babies she didn't get to hold, to sing lullabies to, to read with. The babies she didn't get to teach about God's love while they sat on her knee — no, now it would be the reverse: her babies would sit on Jesus's knee, while he told them stories about their family on earth. Three little thorns would always be buried in Celia's heart. They'd prick when she moved just the right way. No number of living babies could change that. But what they could do — what they did do — was provide hope. Grief was easier to deal with when you had someone to snuggle.
That's what Celia had believed. Lockwood wasn't sure. She'd named him after the patron saint of lost things, a bitterly ironic choice, given his complete and utter inability to find things. He wondered if the Universe was mocking him. If it had a vendetta against optimistic people: "How dare you hope, how prideful of you to think that there might be something more to you than this miserable existence."
Maybe that's why good people suffered. Maybe that's why the most cheerful children were the ones who ended up dying in hospitals. Maybe that's why a boy named for found things was a lost thing himself.
Maybe the Universe mocked those prideful enough to hope.
If Lockwood was a gift given to his parents by a merciful God — well, then he felt bad for them. A sham consolation prize in exchange for three innocent lives. "Sorry I took your children. Have this absolute failure of a son, instead. But don't worry, you'll be dead before he can screw up too badly."
He'd stolen it from them, this life. If they were here, his parents wouldn't have needed a consolation prize. He was given to them to lighten their burden. He was simply a replacement, and a bad one at that.
Luke wouldn't have let Jessica die. He didn't even have to know him to know that. No good brother would have let that happen. And if he knew anything about his siblings, it's that they were good.
He'd never told anyone about them. Not Lucy, not George. Kipps was the only one who knew, and Lockwood certainly never talked to him about it.
He didn't miss them. He couldn't, he didn't know them. That wouldn't make sense. You can't miss what you never had, what you didn't know, what you never held.
His heart stung when Lucy mentioned her 6 older sisters. Stung worse when he realized they weren't good to her. He envied the Cubbins brothers, even though they weren't particularly close. Even Kipp's with his troop of sisters.
He didn't miss them.
Even before the rest of his family was gone, when he was too little to exactly understand, when he set up his trainset, he'd set an extra engine out for Luke.
He didn't miss them.
One sunday, shortly after their parents' death Jessie took him to mass. When the priest prayed the words, "Remember also our brothers and sisters who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection, and all who have died in your mercy: welcome them into the light of your face," Lockwood leaned over to Jessie, his whispers tickling her ear:
"He's talking about Luke, Rose, and Jane. He said brothers and sisters."
Jessie smiled.
He didn't miss them.
There was a little Fittes girl that he'd always seen around. Didn't live too far away, they tended to run in the same circles. She couldn't be much more than twelve by now. About the age Jane would be.
He didn't miss them.
Sometimes, when he brought flowers to his family's graves — roses for his parents, lavendar for Jessica — he'd tuck three extra flowers into his parents' bouquet: a sprig of hawthorne, peony, and violet.
He didn't miss them.
Even if he wondered what it would be like to have a little sister. Even if he wondered what it would be like to have a brother. Even if it was like he had three phantom limbs — so real he could almost feel them, until he remembered they weren't there. Until he woke up to an empty house.
There were more Lockwood children. If Anthony didn't know better he'd think they could hear him, even now.