Chapter 5: Chapter 5

She put her stitching down when March belched and settled back to sleep. Christy could smell the alcohol rolling off him. With luck, he would be out for the night.

“Mrs. Wainwright took them for a bit,” she said. “They were upsetting him.”

Christy nodded. Mrs. Wainwright would no doubt feed the children too, thank God, as it was unlikely that there was any food in the house, if one could call the hovel that they now lived in a house. Christystill couldn’t believe it. He had returned from his brief stint in the infantry and the war with Napoleon, flush with success at managing to stay alive, to find his father dead, and his mother on the verge of remarrying.

He looked at her. She looked weary and defeated. Her fair hair was escaping her cap and her eyes were sunken.

“Here.” He pulled out the pie and the bread and cheese and passed it to her, one eye on March.