Tuesday—November 24th, 2020

Five years ago, on November 24th, at the age of fifteen, Penelope Featherington fell desperately in love.

The Featheringtons were the closest neighbors to the Bridgerton Manor—which, unfortunately, made their humble home look like it was part of the Bridgerton state to anyone looking in. As good neighbors do, the Featheringtons frequently showed up for brunch and afternoon tea, something that became sort of a ritual after Penelope and Eloise, who were the same age and went to school together, became best friends.

And on that November 24th, the five Featherington women, a widow mother and her four daughters, were having a nice afternoon on the grounds of Bridgerton Manor. They were in deep conversation with Violet Bridgerton and her eldest daughter Daphne, and none of them noticed when Eloise and Penelope slipped away from the group. Penelope looked over her shoulder to make sure her mother hadn't seen anything, which was a rare thing because Portia often kept a close eye on her youngest daughter.

But that day, she was distracted. Prudence, however, the eldest of the Featheringtons, did notice but there was nothing she could do about it because Daphne was talking to her and if there were any unspoken law in Great Hamptons was that one could never ignore a Bridgerton.

Eloise headed down to the fields alleging that her brothers were probably doing something fun while they were trapped in "girl-talk". Maybe they could convince the boys to include them in their plans, uh? Penelope was sure that Eloise's brothers wouldn't want to include a sick girl in anything but decided to follow silently. Then Eloise, squinting forward, shouted "There they are!", and Penelope turned just as the wind picked up quite suddenly and lifted the green scarf she wore around her head. She was bald at the time, due to the two years of chemotherapy and five months of radiation she had endured, and often wore scarves and turbans that didn't make people stare at her any less but helped her feel less exposed.

The scarf flew away. Just for a second she was able to see two riders on horseback coming too fast, and next thing the scarf hit one of them in the face, completely blinding him. He tried to stop the horse but that only made it whine and throw him off, and the boy fell, landing most inelegantly in a nearby mud puddle.

Penelope gasped, Eloise stopped waving and the other boy made his horse halt. Penelope didn't think; she just ran to the boy she'd injured, asking him if he was alright, stammering apologies and mentally begging his forgiveness. She knew, in her soul, that something awful was about to happen. He'd be furious. Penelope remembered of the time she spilled water on her late father's shoes. He had gotten so mad, shouting curses, and he'd even taken the glass from her hands and smashed it against the wall. That was the reaction she prepared for because that was how men reacted when women were clumsy or inadequate.

And yet Colin Bridgerton allowed her to help him up and when he glanced at her there was neither anger nor disappointment in his eyes. He didn't make a face, or yelled, or cursed. He didn't pity her or looked away like some people did when they saw her bald head. There was none of that I-can't-be-mad-at-her-because-she's-dying sort of nonsense.

Colin wasn't mad, period. Instead, he was laughing. Laughing! Colin Bridgerton laughed. And Penelope fell in love.

"You could say I've had more gracious landings," he said with mirth as he wiped an embarrassingly placed spot of mud off his cheek. He then proceeded to retrieve her scarf, which was now covered in mud, and added: "I'm gonna have to give you this back later, Penny. If that's alright. I'll have it washed for you."

"I'm so, so sorry, Colin," she said for the thirtieth time. "The wind... I..."

"Hey, no worries." He was still smiling, making her completely dizzy.

"Really, Penny," said Benedict, still on his horse, "if it hadn't been your scarf, it'd have been something else. But you can be sure I'd have won anyway."

Colin turned to his brother. "Ben, I—Hey, Mom!" He exclaimed, seeing Violet approaching with Daphne and the rest of the Featheringtons.

"Penelope!" her mother was shouting. "Penelope! Are you hurt? You know you can't go on like this by yourself!"

"It was nothing," Eloise answered. "Colin's fine. And so is Penelope."

"I am, you know," she confirmed to her own mother who was touching her everywhere, trying to make sure nothing was broken, even though she wasn't the one who'd fallen off her horse.

From there on out, Penelope lost track of everything that happened. She was completely aware of the wrong she had done to herself. She knew she wouldn't be sleeping that night, or any of the nights to follow, because she'd be obsessing about every word Colin Bridgerton had said to her. She had condemned herself to spend every second of every future day thinking about Colin. She'd dream of him, she'd imagine conversations that would never come to pass. She'd be in love with him forever and that was a secret she'd have to learn how to keep.

Because only a very specific type of girl could strike a Bridgerton. A girl like Holly Macclesfield. Blonde and tall and beautiful. Not sick girls like Penelope with her bald head, flat chest, nose freckles and a dying sentence.

Penelope was just twelve and finishing 6th grade when she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She'd been having shortness of breath, pain in her wrist and terrible headaches that made her agonize in bed for hours for the last month or so. She was also growing paler and paler. Her pediatrician at first thought she had a virus or something, so when tests showed she had leukemia, it was a shock. Penelope had been in treatment ever since then and still had another year to go. Her main treatment was chemotherapy, but she'd also endured spinal taps, surgeries, blood transfusions and life-threatening infections.

But worse of all was definitely when she started losing her hair. First, there was the emotionally painful experience of waiting for it to fall out. Second, it stopped growing from below the root, so Penelope ended up looking like a polished egg. Third, she had to get used to the double takes and the pitying glances she'd get in the streets. And finally, there was the loss of her eyebrows, often the defining part of a face and the slowest thing to grow back.

Penelope hated the way she looked without hair. She avoided mirrors because she felt like she didn't look like herself. She tried to remind herself that beauty was only skin deep (in this case a whole lot of skin) but that didn't offer any helpful excuses when she was surrounded by people desperately trying to avoid her because they felt uncomfortable and didn't know what to say. There was nothing more depressing than dying, and baldness was a constant reminder to Penelope—and anyone who saw her—that she was ill. Deep inside, she knew who she was, and that person was smart and kind and often even funny, but somehow her personality always got lost somewhere between her heart and her cancer. 

Her silver lining was Eloise. In their time in school, the two of them kept to the library where they got to be by themselves without the interference of the meaner kids. Although Eloise had the same status and beauty of the other Bridgertons she wasn't as well known because she didn't like crowds. She was a loner, a bookworm. She didn't see the world between pretty and unpretty—she saw the world in words she wanted to capture.

And because of Eloise, Penelope had a lot of contact with Colin. And if she'd been in love with him before, it was nothing compared to what she felt when she truly got to know him. Colin was funny, witty and charming. He was nice to everyone. He was good looking and book smart.

But most of all, Colin Bridgerton was kind.

Kindness... Such a silly little word and still so meaningful. Colin always had something kind to say, and when Penelope finally worked up the courage to say something back, he actually listened. He saw her and it made being around him a blessing. Oh how she—

"COLIN'S BACK! HAVE YOU HEARD?" 

Penelope looked up from her phone to see Eloise bursting into her bedroom like she owned the place. As usual, she hadn't even rang the doorbell. She went into the house whenever she pleased—as she pleased—since everyone considered her a family member.

"He is?" Penelope tried to feign surprise. She quickly turned off her screen. She didn't want to explain the reasons why she had been looking at pictures of Greek beaches.

Eloise threw herself on the bed beside Penelope. "Yes. You should see him. He's so tanned. He says the sun there is amazing. I'm so jealous."

"There?" Penelope asked innocently. "Where was he this time?"

"Greece, Penny!" Eloise exclaimed. "Greece! Keep up!"

"Oh, yeah, that's where HG said he was. Did he like it there?" Penelope asked.

Eloise sighed. "Yes. He said it was amazing. Why am I the only one who can't just up and leave? I would go anywhere. Anywhere. Other than Sagaponack. Get me out of there."

Sagaponack was a small town east of Great Hamptons. It was a rural place with nothing to do and no one to see. The only thing there was SCC, the large college campus where Eloise went to.

"—and then he said that the water was so choppy that he actually barfed over the side of the boat—" Eloise made a face. "You're not listening to me."

"No," Penelope admitted. "Well, yes, actually, parts of it. I can't believe he told you he puked."

"I'm his sister, he has to tell me this stuff. You know, Mom asked him to stay at least until new year's," Eloise went on. "He was evasive and didn't promise her anything. Typical Colin, right? So I decided to interrogate him myself—"

"The poor bastard."

Eloise threw a pillow at her. "And finally got him to promise to stay. At least until new year's, he said. But he begged me not to tell Mom yet."

"That's not very smart. If your mom thinks his time here is limited, she will redouble her efforts to get him a new girlfriend so he'll stay forever. Isn't that what he wants to avoid?"

"A relationship?" said Eloise. "Or staying here?"

"Either. Both."

"It does seem to be his aim in life."

"If he fooled her into thinking that there was no rush, maybe she would give him some space."

"An interesting idea," said Eloise. "I should run it by him." She stood up, said her goodbyes for she had classes that morning and headed to the door where she stopped and looked back at Penelope. "Where do you think HG gets her information? She knows so much about my family, sometimes I wonder if she isn't one of us. A Bridgerton, I mean."

"That's crazy. If HG was a Bridgerton, she'd be you."

Eloise blinked. "That's a... surprisingly good point."

Penelope laughed.

Eloise grinned but it only lasted for a second. "Hey, have you talked to your mom about Thanksgiving yet?"

Penelope felt her mood plummeted. Her mom was being a bit of a nightmare lately. She was overprotective, which was understandable at first, but then it got to a point where she wouldn't let Penelope leave the house by herself or even lock the bathroom door to take a shower. Penelope being in remission didn't make much of a difference in her mother's way to treat her because she lived in constant fear that the cancer would come back.

"Dr. Farber told her that being trapped in the house all the time might increase my depression," Penelope said. "So she said she'd think about it."

Eloise made a very strange face. "You still call him Dr. Farber? He's your brother in law!"

"Oh, should I say 'Hi, Steve, how was your night? Did my sister let you get that sound system you wanted? And what about my pills? Got me a refill yet?'"

Eloise laughed. "Alright. When you put it like that..." She looked at Penelope. "Hey. Chin up, Penny. You're cured. You're fine. You're free."

Penelope nodded, only half believing that to be true. 

*

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