The Lost Apothecary

by Sarah Penner

As a result, I had spent a lifetime wrestling with the abruptness of that grief, the incompleteness of it. Why didn’t my mother tell me the truth and use her last days to prepare me for a lifetime alone?

me. But to what end? Why did we go to such lengths to protect the fragile minds of children? We only robbed them of the truth—and the chance to grow numb to it

my go-to remedy anytime I felt a cold coming on; as one of the ingredients in Vicks VapoRub, eucalyptus worked wonders on congestion and coughs.

fearing as always that someone might look into my eyes and discern the secrets I kept within,

When this page was written, Nella’s heart was not yet scarred. Her joints were not yet swollen and stiff. Motherhood, and her own mother, had not yet been taken from her. Perhaps she’d revisited the entry because she meant to remember these things: the honorable work she once did, the sort of apothecary she could have been, the virtuous woman her mother wanted her to be.

items I wanted for safekeeping. But death was permanent. What earthly objects, then, did I need?

It would be wise for me to take it, so the secrets could sink with me to the bottom of the Thames; the words smeared, the pages dissolved, the truth of this place destroyed. In this way, I could protect the women within the register. Yet to protect them was to erase them. These women were not queens and great heiresses. Rather, they were middling women whose names would not be found in gilded lineage charts. My mother’s legacy embodied the brewing of potions to ease maladies, but it also meant preserving the memory of these women in the register—granting them their single, indelible mark on the world.

Why did we suffer to keep secrets? Merely to protect ourselves, or to protect others?

Intermingled in the mess was another, subtler secret that James and I had hid from each other for years: we were happy, yet unfulfilled.

It was possible, I understood now, to be both at the same time. I was happy with the stability of working for my family, yet unfulfilled by my job and burdened by the things I hadn’t pursued. I was happy with our desire to someday have children, yet unfulfilled by my achievements apart from family life. How had I only just learned that happiness and fulfillment were entirely distinct things?

Everything placed unto the body removes something from it, calls it forth or represses it. My mother taught me this simple lesson, the power of earth-borne remedies, when I was a child. They were the words of the great philosopher Aulus, of whom little was known. Some, in fact, doubted his very existence, much less the veracity of this claim.

I wanted more than anything to reverse time and pull her back upward to me. I stumbled backward a step, my knees weakened under the suffocating sense of regret.

I could not fall victim to this talk of reason, not again.

If there was anything that the last few days had taught me, it was the importance of shining new light on old truths hidden in dark places. This trip to London—and finding the light blue vial, the apothecary—had exposed them all.

“At some point along the line, I lost a part of who I am.

“It’s okay to change,” I interrupted, “but it’s not okay to hide, to bury parts of ourselves.”

not quite. Because now, having distanced myself physically and emotionally from this man, I was able to see through him to his real nature, and it reeked of deceit and unfairness. “You wanted me to pity you,” I said quietly, standing again.

And yet—this precise moment of breath, the light breeze at the back of my neck, the distant call of some hungry waterfowl on the river, the taste of salt on my tongue—these were all things I had not lost yet.

Eliza jumped in my place. A final offering to me, her last breath an effort to fool the authorities and implicate herself as poisoner. How could I possibly throw her gift back into the water to sink alongside her?

“But if there’s one thing I do know, it’s the importance of chasing dreams. Believe me, if you want something different, the only person holding you back is you. What is it you love to do?” I blurted it out without missing a beat. “Dig into the past—dig into the lives of real people. Their secrets, their experiences. In fact, I almost applied to Cambridge after graduation to study history...”

Brave. It wasn’t a label I would have given myself back in Ohio, but I realized now that she was right. What I’d done was brave—even a bit mad—but it was authentic and true to the real me. And despite how different my life looked from Rose’s now, her support reminded me that it was okay for friends to venture down different paths.

History doesn’t record the intricacies of women’s relationships with one another; they’re not to be uncovered.

whose support allowed me to balance my day job with my daydream.

For those of you interested in writing historical fiction: you know you’re on the right path when you can’t set down the research material.

To my husband, Marc. I think of the many hours you waited patiently in the other room while I typed away at a dream. You know the journey better than anyone. Thank you for always believing in me; this wouldn’t be any fun without you.