“They caught me in a dark place and I couldn’t escape,” she said.
As she continued her story, telling him what she could and leaving out what she could not, he listened intently. She had been around him all her life, so she knew it wasn’t the kind of story he wanted to hear, but he listened anyway for he knew he must. He knew that what he was hearing was what had happened to her, and she could see in his eyes and his expression that he wanted to understand. He’d been waiting and imagining and praying for her safe return for so long that now he wanted to know everything he could. He wanted to have that bond between them, the bond of knowing.
“So it was the young master who finally helped you to escape,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes, it was.”
“He was a gone miserable lad while you were away,” her pa said, recounting a bit of how it was from his side of it all. “The master and I, the two of us as doleful as cold poke, used to talk about it, trying to figure out what we could do for the lad, but I think our talks did more for the pair of us menfolk than they did the poor boy. But in the end, I reckon he figured a way through it all on his own.”
“I reckon he did,” she said in agreement, but refrained from saying more. Her fondness for Braeden had become immeasurable, but it wasn’t something she could easily talk about with her pa.
“And you thanked him kindly for what he did…” he said, always wanting to make sure she was doing right by other folk.
She nodded, assuring him that she had thanked Braeden, and that she would again.
“And what about your mother?” her pa asked. He didn’t know her personally, but he knew that her mother was important to her. “Have you been able to see her since you returned?”
Serafina’s heart clouded in sadness. “No,” she said. “She went away and I have no way to reach her.”
“Well, I hope she’s all right,” her pa said, but it was clear that he didn’t know what else to say.
Serafina’s thoughts lingered. She didn’t quite know how to ask the question that had been swirling around in her mind since she’d crawled from the grave, but she thought that if anyone could help her, maybe her pa could.
“Pa, does it feel to you like so much has changed since I’ve been gone? Everything feels so different…but in other ways…” Her words dwindled off. She could see right away that she wasn’t going to be able to express it the way she wanted to.
But he looked at her and said, “I think I understand what you’re gettin’ at. The way I see it, everything is always changing and everything is always staying the same.”
His words shouldn’t have made sense to her, but somehow they almost did.
“You see, everything around us is always changing,” he continued, “the machines and the inventions, the people coming and going through our lives, even our own bodies over time—yours is growing up and mine is getting old. The trees in the forest are changing and the courses of the rivers. Even our own minds are changing, growing and learning, finding new paths to follow, shifting and shaping over time.”
“But if everything is always changing, what can we hold on to?” she asked.
“That’s where the rest of it comes in, Sera,” her pa said. “Everything is always changing, but everything is always staying the same, too. The trees are growing and dying, but the forest remains. No matter how the river changes course from year to year, it always keeps flowing. Your body and your mind are changing, but deep down, your soul, your inner spirit, stays the same. I’m the same deep down inside that I was when I was twelve years old, and the spirit you feel inside you tonight will be with you fifty years from now. Yes, you’ll be different, the whole world will be different, but the spirit inside you—the thing that makes you you—will still be there.”
“But if we’re always growing and changing, I don’t understand how that can be,” she said.
“Look at Mr. Vanderbilt,” her pa said. “When he was your age, he was a kind but quiet little boy who loved to read books, study art, and travel to faraway places. Now he’s a great man of wealth and power…”
“…but he’s a kind and quiet man, who loves to read books, study art, and travel to faraway places,” she said, finishing his thoughts.
“That’s right,” her pa said, smiling. “The twelve-year-old little boy will be the fifty-year-old man. It’s been him the whole time, all the way through. His body has changed, and everything around him has changed, but his spirit has always been with him.”
Serafina nodded, feeling like she was beginning to understand.
“You asked me what we can hold on to,” her pa said. “I’ll tell you this: you hold on to the people around you, Sera, to your friends and family, to the people you love, and you hold on to that spirit deep down inside that never leaves you, that spirit that’s always flowing, like a river inside you.”
Finally, her pa paused. He looked at the floor for a moment, as if thinking about his own words a bit longer, and then looked at her. “Does any of my blither-blather feel like it makes any kind of sense to ya?”
Serafina smiled and nodded. It did indeed. She was pretty sure that her pa couldn’t reckon the soul-splitting, haint-walking horror of what she’d been through, but somehow he seemed to have sensed just the right words to say to her.
“There’s one more thing, Pa,” she said, “that I need your help with tonight.”
“Another question?” he asked gently.
“No,” she said sheepishly. “I need you to help me make something.”
“Make something?” he said in surprise, for in all her life with him in the workshop, she had never expressed any interest to fix something or make something. She was absolutely the least mechanically inclined person who had ever prowled the night.
“You’ve seen how Braeden wears a brace on his bad leg,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, a twinge of sadness in his voice.
“One of the metal pieces at the joint broke,” she said. “I would like to see if we can come up with some way not just to fix it, but to improve it, maybe something that’s less like a bone and more like a tendon.”
Her pa looked at her and smiled a broad and happy smile. That was definitely something he could do.