Cuckoo

Back at the start of things, the scene of the crime. McHenry Bridge. Edith stands at its middle on the pavement, silently watching the river flow out towards the bay, feeding the endless unfathomable ocean. She thinks back, asking herself how long it's been though she knows precisely - almost to the minute. Thirteen months and three days, five or six hours. Many of those nights have been spent sleeplessly, days listlessly in a brooding fugue.

Bryan would be two in a few months' time. Only his name is Thomas now. Bryan is in the unfathomable ocean someplace. Only his name was Thomas. Thomas Albert Hopkins, son to a Doctor and Missus Jacob Hopkins. Thomas and Bryan, Bryan and Thomas, one and the other dead in some way, in both ways. Edith leans out over the McHenry Bridge and silently watches the gloomy river below, wondering what little Thomas might grow up to be someday. Wondering what the real Thomas might have otherwise been.

It was unforeseeable, really. The guilt. But then, Bryan-Thomas was a Hopkins and little Thomas-Bryan another mouth to feed, same as before. Only he wasn't hers anymore, just a bastard mouth and a guilty reminder. And then there was the impending future to think of, watching him grow and become perversely attached to a mother that wasn't his own, to a woman who had robbed him his birthright. Why even bother at all, if that were to be the case? It was better this way, she'd thought at the time as she dropped the squirming sack off the middle of the bridge into the unfathomable darkness.

It was a simpler solution, a horrid fix with untold misery as a consequence. Wondering and wishing and praying, ceaselessly praying yet waking up every morning to the very next day from before. A daily wretched trudge into lonesome spinsterhood awaits. Not even the thought of Bryan-Thomas' future prospects as a Hopkins could cheer her; he would never know his birth mother, would never be able to appreciate the sacrifice she had made for him. A literal sacrifice - Isaac and Abraham and the ram - only the dog was in the manger and the babe lifeless someplace in the ocean.

This ocean calls to her in what dreams had come during her nightmarish existence. It calls for her and she likewise has developed a thirst for it, coming here every day for the past fortnight. Coming and leaning over and wondering if today she could likewise plunge into those unfathomable depths, after that inky slaking unending darkness. Edith leans over the side of McHenry Bridge, watching the river intently. "My Bryan," she says to it, hoping for a response. But the words feel forced and lifeless, merely an empty gesture.

It would be an empty gesture. Someday, she thinks dolefully to herself. Perhaps tomorrow. With a pained sigh and a fleeting glance, Edith steps back and begins another long walk along the gas lit streets to her rooms on Calvert Street.