As she stirred the foxglove seeds into the soup, Mrs. Boyle thought to herself that maybe they had always been hurtling towards this fate. That this was God’s plan for them, and Sally’s obstinance in the face of reality might have been a blessing in disguise. Maybe Sally’s fourteen years of fighting her guidance every step of the way was a clue, a sign to recognize when the time came, to show her what she should do.
She had a choice with Sally.
She wouldn’t let them take Elizabeth and Anne. She couldn’t. They were delicate. They wouldn’t survive without her. Or, if they did, they’d be warped by the world without their mother to temper the onslaught, bent and twisted into something damaged and obscene. She wouldn’t let that happen to them.
And she had to go with them. She couldn’t live without them anyway, but if she didn’t go with them now, the Germans would execute her when they found out later. She had considered standing to face their judgement. She thought perhaps that she was as brave as Mr. Cranmer and the Lashfords. She imagined how it would feel, the spiteful vindication when the Germans came to steal her daughters only for them to find that she’d placed them beyond their reach.
It would be no better than sending them to Germany if she didn’t go with them now though. They’d be scared, but she’d be there with them.
Her husband had to come too. If she left him alive, he’d be the one the Germans looked to blame. They’d say he let her do this or that he conspired with her. They’d execute him anyway. He was damned to take this trip with them too. It was better that they all went together.
But she had a choice with Sally.
The Germans wouldn’t blame Sally. She was only fourteen. They wouldn’t take her to Germany either. If the Germans said they wanted only children thirteen and under, you could be sure those were the only children they’d take. So Sally would not be in danger from the Germans if Mrs. Boyle didn’t make her come along. She’d either adapt or she’d live in a hut in the woods eating berries. Either way, Sally could survive this.
A part of Mrs. Boyle, best left unexamined, felt that her family would be more ideal if Sally stayed behind.
Was it cruel to leave Sally to this world, when she refused to for Elizabeth and Anne? There wasn’t a good argument to say not. The only defense Mrs. Boyle had was that the kind of woman Sally would become was already so much of an open question that it was beyond her to decide whether she ought to prevent it entirely. She didn’t see any of the possibilities for Sally as especially worth preserving, but Sally wasn’t like her other girls. Sally was hard.
Even once the soup was nearly ready, she still wasn’t sure.
—
“You can’t understand what it’s like, can you? For someone to take your children away, to send them where you can’t protect them, where you can’t even hold them when they cry, when they’re scared. You’re not a mother. And you probably never will be, will you?”
Sally fumed at her mother. She’d been trying to help, trying to comfort her and her mother threw it in her face. Sally stormed from the kitchen through the dining room and slammed the door as hard as she could on her way out.
That was it then. Mrs. Boyle let out a breath of guilty relief. She wasn’t sure if she had said those things on purpose or if God had guided her fury. It didn’t matter. Sally left and so it was out of her hands.
Mrs. Boyle ladled the soup out into bowls.
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