Ivy walks alongside her father in the rain and remembers their recent conversation. She is grateful that her decision to give up the family profession has seemed to not have negatively affected their relationship.
She glances around at the other families travelling with them and remember who've been her patients, whose houses she’s visited, whose physical anguish she’s likely felt in her echo-sense as strongly as if she had their illness herself.
She won’t have to regularly experience others’ pain again, and sighes gently in relief at the thought.
Ivy turns her eyes to her father’s side profile again. For a moment, she can see her brother again in him.
Thomas. Gone. His grave now under tonnes of water. So is his, and her, tree. And all the other places where they both made childhood memories, whether echoes or not. Ivy's freedom came at the cost of utter disaster.
Part of Ivy wishes she hadn’t run away to Leeds the first time, and that she had been in Little Avoning her whole life. She would have a deeper connection to her hometown. And she would have spent more time with Thomas before he was gone forever, too. Maybe then, she wouldn’t feel so relieved right now.
Most of all, Ivy wishes Thomas was here with her. If losing Little Avoning had been inevitable, perhaps it would be even a bit less painful if Thomas was alive with her and the rest of their family for years to come. Not dead and bound to underneath a watery abyss.
There are so many woulds in Ivy’s mind, so she thinks instead about what will be, or at least could be. She will return to the profession that she loves. She could be happier eventually. Even with all her grief. Ivy will wait to see what her return to Leeds brings her.