Their mother was gone, lost during their birth in a tragedy that left behind silence rather than answers. Their father, Nathaniel Hawthorne, responded to that void by vanishing in his own manner—burying himself in business, flights, and endless meetings, convincing himself that distance was the solitary path to surviving his grief. Professional nannies had arrived and departed in quick succession, each offering polite excuses that ultimately meant the same thing: the house was too quiet, the master was never present, and the infants cried more than they could endure.
Only Eliza remained.
Love Without a Title
She had not been employed as a caregiver, nor paid to warm bottles in the pre-dawn hours or hum lullabies in the dark. Yet, whenever the twins’ distress echoed through the vacant halls and no one else responded, a tightening in her chest became impossible to ignore. She would gently lift them, one in each arm, whispering songs her grandmother had taught her in a small town she seldom mentioned anymore, becoming the singular steady warmth those children knew.
She did not conceptualize this as sacrifice; to her, it felt like the only rational response.
The Deepest Cold
That particular winter night was harsher than most, the cold pressing against the exterior walls as if forcing an entry. The heating in the nursery failed just enough to render the room unsafe for infants. The cribs felt impossibly frigid, and one twin burned with a worrying fever while the other cried harder, seemingly sensing his brother’s distress and responding with panic.
Eliza paced the length of the house for hours, cradling them tight, her knees trembling and feet aching until her vision blurred at the edges. She murmured softly, “It’s alright, I’m here, I won’t leave you,” until their cries subsided into uneven breathing, and finally, into sleep.
The Sanctuary of the Floor
When she looked toward the staircase leading back to the freezing nursery, something within her revolted. Carrying them back into that chill felt fundamentally wrong.