Page 48 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

Five years later, on a glorious sunny autumn afternoon, an old man stands at the upper balcony of Shadowbrook House while a young boy roams the bricked walkways of a walled garden outside of Shadowbrook Children’s Infirmary.

The boy’s brown curls look auburn in the sunlight, and at thirteen, he’s beginning to grow into his elbows and knees.

He pushes a wheelchair around a stand of late-blooming chrysanthemums. He points to the flowers.

The old man knows he’s explaining to the child in the chair that the late bloomers are his favorites, and that when he was her age, he was ill and weak, but the last few years have brought him a marked improvement.

The boy gives Shadowbrook all the credit.

At this distance, the man cannot hear the boy, but he knows the words he’s saying: “I grew up in the house beyond this wall. The hospital wasn’t even here until two years ago. My family had it built. I used to think it was made just for me, but now I know it was also for you.”

It’s the same thing he tells all the children he sees when he comes to Shadowbrook between school terms. And he means it every time.

The man watches the boy direct the wheelchair down to the dock, where seats are placed for patients and their families to visit near the water. A couple sits together, a baby in the man’s arms and a toddler at the woman’s knee.

As the boy wheels the chair beside the woman, she turns and smiles in welcome. The breeze carries the tune of her voice to the old man, and he can guess at the words. “Hello, Max. Clarissa, dear, you’re looking very happy this afternoon.”

The girl smiles at Pearl, revealing a gap where her front teeth are missing. The man knows Pearl would like to see Clarissa again when the bones in her leg are mended and her new teeth change the shape of her face. Pearl always wants to see the children again.

Pearl’s smile reflects the bounty of her life, crammed full of the most joyous blessings: her husband, her daughters, and her boy Max, who is growing into a young man before her eyes.

Oliver shifts the baby to his shoulder and turns her to look up toward the refurbished house. He points up to the balcony, and the baby waves a chubby arm. Arthur waves back.

Arthur Ravenscroft finds new reasons every day to step out into the light, or the rain, or the star-strewn night.

He feels the comfort of his home as well as the blessings of the world beyond Shadowbrook’s walls.

His eyes are drawn to the red-brick facade of the children’s hospital where his endowment pays impressive young doctors to discover cures for childhood illnesses.

He thinks of his favorite portrait gallery, the turreted room at the top of the house where he can go to remember and visit the family that has moved on from this world.

He still hears ghostly violin music as he gazes into the faces of those he’s loved and lost, but the music is more often cheerful than mournful, and the whispers speak of a future filled with happiness.

Now Arthur looks down toward the dock, where he sees a small fist throwing kisses up to him. He throws a kiss back to the baby, locking eyes with the beautiful little girls with their bright eyes and easy laughs. His gaze connects him to the family that will outlive him for many years.

Arthur understands that as with every family, each member of the Shadowbrook household struggles with their own dark moments, but those are small in comparison to the joys they discover every day within the walls of their home. Healing is in the air, and love abounds.