“Honey?” I say as I walk through the door and shut it behind me. Only the silence answers me, though. No hoofsteps, no voices. Kind of nice actually, after the hot, noisy ride home on the subway, crammed together with everypony from trash collectors to power brokers. Mass transportation in the summer heat: the great equalizer. After that, the lack of a thousand conversations pressing on my ears makes for a welcome change of pace, plus the ceiling fans after baking in that underground oven feel good. “Honey?”
Still nothing. Cordial must be busy, maybe gone shopping. I’ll catch up with her later. It’s just nice to be home.
Another tough day at work today. The stock market dropped last week, and it still hasn’t recovered much, so an endless parade of investors wants to know what we can do about it. And of course my best accountant needed a sick day. His daughter’s having a minor operation or something, so I told him to take the day off. In my business, I can put a price on a lot of things, but not family.
Everything will turn out fine in the long run, though. That’s the way stocks work… which I keep telling all those panicky clients, but they can’t see past the down arrows today. It’ll all fix itself—it always has, so far. Play the long game. That’s what I do.
I peer around the corner, into the kitchen. Even if Cordial’s gone somewhere, I’d think the staff would be around. But no butler to greet me and take my coat. Serves me right for even wearing a coat on a hot day, but it’s part of the suit, and ponies just expect that sort of thing. Ah, I can put it away myself. It’s never hurt me before, and it’s not going to start now. So I grab a hanger out of the closet and drape my coat over it. No idea where Starched Collar keeps the lint roller, so I’ll have a fuzzy jacket tomorrow, too. Oh, well. Maybe he can do it before I leave for work again.
Not just him, though—where’s Clean Sweep? I don’t hear her tidying up anywhere, and neither one of them has started dinner. “Cordial?” I say, a little louder, but my voice just echoes back from the foyer. And on the hall tree out there, my wife’s saddlebags hang from their usual hook. She wouldn’t have left without them.
Of course! She must be upstairs, having another imaginary tea party with our… our daughter. I’ve come home to a few of those over the past couple weeks, and they have a rather elaborate one on Saturdays. The real thing, then. Hot tea, scones, the good china. Not that they use cheap plastic stuff during the week—Cordial wouldn’t stand for that. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, I can hear her saying in my head.
Yes, that’s it. They’ve gone upstairs to mime sipping some Darjeeling and nibbling on air crumpets. It’s not the weekend yet, so only the dishes are real today. They’ve gotten the staff involved, everypony’s lost track of time, and here I am missing out. So I’ll sneak up the stairs, quietly open our filly’s bedroom door, and give her a little spook. Not enough to make her spill any tea on the rug, of course, but we’ll all have a good laugh, and then I’ll pull up an extra chair and pour myself a cup.
I don’t know what it is about her. Never in my life would I have envisioned myself enjoying prim conversation about what Duchess Featherbottom is doing today, complimenting Starched Collar on the exquisite flavor of those air crumpets, or gasping at the fine job she’s done on applying far too much makeup. I grew up without a sister, so I’d only known wrestling, running, and generally being loud and uncouth with my brother.
But when I see that smile on her face, all that goes out the window. Clothes and dolls and comportment: things my younger self would have laughed at me endlessly for doing, but they don’t bother me anymore. Now, I’ll gladly play dress-up with her. I come home hoping she’ll ask.
I grab my lunch receipt from my coat pocket before shutting the closet door, and I put it in the basket where I keep everything for my expense account. Then I creep up the stairs to our condominium’s second floor, pricking my ears for any sound of clinking porcelain or polite laughter. She does have a little trouble with her speech, still, but Cordial’s been working with her, and the dear filly is really trying. Other than that, she never stops smiling. No sounds yet, but noise doesn’t carry well from upstairs, so it’s not unusual, especially if they have the door shut.
Sure enough, as I reach the top of the staircase and make the turn down the hallway, it’s all dark, no sun shining through an open bedroom door or…
Clean Sweep is sitting there, on the floor, her bucket of dusters and spray cans tipped over and its contents spilled around. She taps softly at the last door on the left, the guest roo—our daughter’s room. Her hoof trembles.
No. Oh, Celestia, no.
I rush over to Clean Sweep, and she looks up at me like I’m about to pronounce judgment on her. The blood drains from my face. “It’s okay,” I tell her. I don’t know what’s okay, but it will be. It will be. I have a few good guesses.
How long has she been waiting here? Poor mare. I lean in and hug her, and she finally lets go, tears running down her cheeks. “It’s okay,” I say again as I pat her back. She shouldn’t have to restrain herself in front of me. She’s worked here twenty years if a single day, and she’s part of the family, too.
But she shakes her head. “I couldn’t stop Miss Cordial.”
That was my first guess. I take a deep breath and exhale slowly, but it still comes out all unsteady, my shoulders quaking. I’ll have to go in there and talk to Cordial again. Maybe it will go well this time.
“Where’s Starched Collar gone?” I whisper.
“To the train station,” she says through a sniffle. “To see if he could catch her in time.”
I figured. “Shh,” I say, then stand and give Clean Sweep’s hoof a squeeze. “Don’t you worry.” Of course she’ll worry. It’s the kind of thing I’m expected to tell her, even though it doesn’t mean anything.
“Go lie down.” I angle my head toward her door, across the hall. “Take the evening off. I could be in there awhile.”
Without waiting for an answer, I set my jaw, close my eyes, and turn the doorknob.
No laughter, no tea service laid out. I hold a breath and glance at the bed. Empty. Of course. And unmade. Clean Sweep must not have been able to come in here today. That’s just how Cordial gets. She’ll gather up every mistake she’s ever made, every bad thing that’s ever happened to her, and wear it like sackcloth, the stifling air all heavy against her. The ceiling fan hangs there, lifeless.
The setting sun shines through the window blinds, leaving thin, bright stripes across the far wall in the gloom. Where they cross Cordial’s back, I can’t help thinking they resemble lash marks. They might as well be, given what she must have sat here all day long doing.
Under the window stands our crib. She… she’s gotten it out of the storage room again.
It sits there empty. Always empty. A happy little toy stares at me from the back corner, its price tag still attached. Even with Cordial facing away from me, I can see the pieces of her heart lying jagged in her lap.
I clench a hoof. It’d be easier if we had someone to blame. But there never is. Just some… horrible game of chance that she always manages to lose.
“Cordial…” I say. She hunches over further and shudders, even the wellspring of her breath gone too dry to support another whimper. And she clutches her forelegs across her stomach as if they’re the only things keeping it from tearing open.
“You can’t keep doing this to yourself.” She doesn’t answer, just shakes silently. It’s not her fault. She won’t say it, but she always feels like she must have done something wrong.
After the second time, the doctor… the doctor said it was genetic. We’d run a high risk of it happening again any time we tried. So we—
I wipe a few tears off my cheeks. It was hard enough on me, but for her… We put the crib away after that. I should have donated it, sold it, thrown it out… something. Perfect condition, no wear and tear. I should have, but she wouldn’t let me, just in case. Maybe the doctor would say he’d made a mistake, maybe they’d develop a cure, maybe—
But maybe doesn’t happen. It never does, not for Cordial, not about that. And then once every year or two, I find her like this, in here. Usually, it’s on one of the anniversaries of… those days, though. Today is different.
Today is different because this morning, that bed wasn’t empty. This morning, we had a daughter, a daughter we could hug and talk to and serve imaginary tea. During that hot subway ride home, I could only smile, thinking about how I’d change into a fresh necktie for her while she paraded around in some fancy dress Cordial had bought her, spilling out musical giggling the whole time. I sniffle and swallow hard—I have to be strong for her.
I lay a hoof on Cordial’s withers and dry her eyes, but the tears won’t stop. If Clean Sweep hasn’t straightened this room yet, then Cordial must have stayed in here all day long. Hours upon hours. But still, the tears won’t stop.
I pull her into a hug, but she just hangs there like a limp doll. “Shh,” I say, rubbing her back, but she only shakes harder. She’d gotten numb all by herself, but with someone else here, it’s opened the wound again.
She wouldn’t ever consider adoption. It has to be family, blood relations, or it wouldn’t feel the same to her. She’s stubborn that way, like her whole side of the family, and I long since learned not to fight it. But what if the adoption was family? I brought it up once, and… well, she didn’t shoot it down immediately. Just a notion, though. Not like that would ever really happen. Except… then it did.
“I promised my sister!” she blurts out, her shoulders quaking even harder. “I promised her, Mosely! I said if anything ever happened to her, I-I’d…”
I hold her. There’s nothing else I can do. She’ll beat herself up over this the same way she does about our other children, and I’ll reason with her, tell her why she hasn’t done anything wrong. It doesn’t help.
Two children, two little foals that… that we never even got to meet. Never got to know whose eyes they had, whose parents they favored, what cutie mark—
My nose runs, but I don’t dare sniffle again. I need to be her anchor right now. If I go adrift with her, she…
No. I hold it in until my throat hurts, swallow it down, smother it. I can do this.
“You kept your promise,” I say. She already knows, though. She’s not letting her sister down, but somehow, that’s not enough. She failed those foals, she failed her sister, she failed me. I’d tell her she’s wrong, shout it at her if I had to, but it wouldn’t do any good. She understands, but understanding can’t ever take the place of the forgiveness that she won’t allow herself.
So she nods, too hard, too quickly, as a reflex. The proper response to whatever floated past her ears, but gone in the next instant. She wipes her nose on a limp kerchief. “I thought… we’d finally…”
Not an infant, but still a child. That would satisfy Cordial. It had satisfied her, and when ou-our daughter—who wanted to come here!—had gotten good and settled in, we could take the baby into our home, too. For once, Cordial must have felt worthy. Like she really deserved to be a mother. We’d talked about it even before we got married. “In a year,” we’d say. We’d say it for the first three years. Then she started counting down.
“Did she tell anyone why?” I ask.
Cordial can only point toward the bedside table, where a single sheet of paper sits. If I’d found it first, I could have… No. It wouldn’t have made a difference. I didn’t even peek in here before I left for work this morning. So quiet, and I didn’t want to disturb her. Had she already left by then? I walk over to it, smooth it out, and read.
Dear Aunt and Uncle Orange,
I’m sorry, but I can’t change who I am. I thought I wanted this, the fancy city life, in the middle of all the powerful ponies, the trendy folks who make headlines. For a while, I had fun. But I realize now, I miss home too much, and it’s the place I was meant to be. This morning, I saw a huge rainbow cross the sky, and it pointed right back to the farm. Somepony somewhere’s trying to tell me something. I like to think it was Mama. She always had a flair for color, but you’d probably know that better than I would.
I really appreciate you allowing me to stay here, and I really did like Aunt Orange showing me how to do my hair up and buying me those pretty dresses. And I really did like Uncle Orange playing tea time with us and getting in his nice suit whenever I asked. I know that’s girl stuff, but it made me feel good that you were willing to do that for me. I hope you didn’t hate it too much.
Please don’t be mad. I didn’t know it would turn out like this, and I didn’t mean to sneak out. But when I saw that ring of color in the sky, it tugged at me too hard to resist. Uncle Orange had already gone to work, and Aunt Orange wasn’t up yet. I just couldn’t wait. It never seemed like I quite fit in, and I know why now, but that doesn’t mean I regret any of the time I spent here. I love you, and not because you’re kin, but because you did something special for me, opened your home to me.
I hope I can come back to visit, I’m sorry for the trouble I caused, and please don’t be mad.
Love,
Applejack
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Pretty much what I’d guessed. Poor Cordial. And it was a fool’s errand for Starched Collar to go looking at the train station for her. Applejack had long since gone, but of course he’d make the gesture.
Before I go back to Cordial, I grab a tissue off the table and swipe it across my eyes and nose. I have to be strong for her. Then I hug her to me again, and in the silence, at least she’s stopped shaking.
“It’s okay. She’s not gone, not like…” I choke on the words—I shouldn’t have said that.
“We’ll see her at the next reunion. And we’ll keep sending the checks,” I tell her, for what good it does. Give her a couple weeks, and maybe she’ll feel better. Maybe I’ll feel better. “You’ve done your sister proud. Her children are well looked after. Your mother-in-law does a good job with them.”
She nods, much too quickly again, without a thought. So I hold her as she presses her face to my neck and trembles once more. I hold her for as long as it takes.
Author's Note
I always wondered how it must have felt for the Oranges when Applejack left. Maybe they didn’t care much, and she was little more than a curiosity, a way to gentrify Equestria one pony at a time. Or maybe she meant a lot more to them than she’ll ever realize.
