The Empty House: The Empty House

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Title: The Empty House: The Empty House
Author: gardnerhill           
Word Count: 60
Rating: G
Warning: None.
Summary: There’s more than one kind of “sad bereavement.”


I couldn’t fault Mary for divorcing me. It reflects poorly upon a wife to have a husband in perpetual mourning for a friend, rivaled only by the Queen’s for Albert.

Her last words before she left seared but were true:

“I understood being second in your heart while he was alive. But I refuse to remain second-choice to the dead.”
 

Comments

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

She has a point!

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

How many times did she smile through clenched teeth and say "Of course, dear, have fun with Mr. Holmes"?

But she absolutely refuses to be the Second Wife to a widower in all but name who will not give up his attachment to the first.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Not that I want Mary to be dead, but this makes me even sadder than thinking she died. The thought that she and Watson were never completely happy together, and that their marriage ended in misery breaks my heart a bit. But I admire her bravery in leaving, and I can only hope she found some contentment in her life elsewhere.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Hm. No smiling with clenched teeth while my husband hares off with his friend at a moment's notice, day or night, rain or shine? No anxious looks at our savings while my husband tries to overcome his gambling addiction, knowing he has 100% right to all my money thanks to coverture laws? No death in childbed like half my married friends?

"We'd love to have you back, dearie," Mrs. Cecil Forrester says at the door.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I do take your point ^^" But it just seems so heartbreaking to go from "I'd rather have you than a treasure chest" to a bitter divorce.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

"I hadn't thought I'd find THIS treasure chest empty for me, too."

I can see her leaving him one of her four pearls as a keepsake - a valuable thing to keep on a very ordinary pocket watch-chain.

[debriswoman]

An interesting possibility.
And chilling, in a way...

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

It is sad - but it also keeps Mary from being the convenient wife and doormat who dies to make the story easier.

So maybe what she was doing while her husband was off playing detective was going to suffrage meetings and anti-coverture protests.

[debriswoman]

Certainly adds an interesting possibility:-p