Nate kept his laughter to a low rumble in his chest. “I’m not.”
Frank crossed his arms. Without his usual pomade, his hair flopped onto his brow. He smelled of the lavender sachets Edith used to scent her sheets.
“This is different,” Nate said. “Especially with Meg. If she needs me, Frank—well, let’s just say it’s not in the way a girl needs a father. Do you mind the way Edith needs you?”
Frank’s eyebrows arched. Looking over his shoulder, he watched his wife bring glasses of water to Meg and Sylvie, then disappear again before returning with linens for the couch. Facing Nate again, Frank clapped his shoulder. “The truth is, I need her just as much. More, I think. Yes. Definitely more.”
Nate stole another glimpse of the women. “I know the feeling. Or I’m beginning to, at least.”
“Is that right?”
Nate smiled. “Yes, it is.” It was very right, indeed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1871
Dear Father,
It’s me, Sylvie. It’s one o’clock in the morning, but I can’t sleep.
I don’t even know if you’re getting our mail. Somehow it’s easier to write what I have to say thinking that you won’t, that no one will ever see this. But part of me wants you to as well.
I’m having a difficult time adjusting, after the fire. Nate said what I’m experiencing sounded familiar. Now I wonder if he was referring to you.
My heart beats too fast sometimes, and I have episodes where I sweat far too much for a lady if I’m thinking about the fire. Sometimes even in the day, my memories overwhelm me and it’s like I’m right there all over again. My nightmares are so vivid I’d rather suffer insomnia than willingly rest. I think I understand why you barely slept.
I wish I had asked you more questions about how you were doing when you were home. Maybe you wouldn’t have wanted to answer them, anyway.
I wish I knew you better.
I want you to be well. Come home, and we’ll try again.
Your daughter,
Sylvie
NOVEMBER 13, 1871
Dear Father,
I hope this letter finds you well. I hope it finds you at all. Did you get our letter about what the Spencers told us?
By this time next week, you can send mail to us at our old address. I don’t want to upset you, but they are building our temporary shelter in the backyard, over your map of Andersonville. We plan to sell books out of the house on the back of the lot until the new shop can be built.
I’m trying to paint with my left hand, because my right will never cooperate. I’ve been working on a portrait of Sylvie for practice. Do you remember when I was very little and starting to paint? The flower I made on the paper was nothing like what I had in mind, and I wanted to quit. But you told me not to. You told me that if painting was what I loved, I shouldn’t give it up, I should do it more. That’s what I’m telling myself now.
Do you have enough books to read? I know the asylum has Bibles. I’d like to send or deliver something else too, but I wish I knew the package would reach you. Please write and let me know what you’d like to read. If you can. (Asylum staff, if you’re reading this, the least you can do is reply to this question.)
We can’t wait for you to come home. We still need our father.
Your loving daughter,
Meg
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1871
Stephen paced four steps in his cell and about-faced to march the other way. It was past time for the medicine, and they wouldn’t let him out until he’d had it. He could tell by the vigorous beating of his heart that the previous dose had worn off almost completely.
Letters from Sylvie and Meg had arrived today, and what Sylvie had shared upset him. His little girl was suffering.
Hours ago, when the drugs were still dimming his mind and spirit, this discovery bobbed among his turbid thoughts, refusing to sink below the surface. Sylvie suffered in a way she didn’t understand. Meg wouldn’t fully understand it either. But he did.
He cared. He felt. He hurt, but he felt alive again. Perhaps it was by some miracle that his next dose had been delayed long enough for him to reawaken.
Stephen knew exactly what was happening to Sylvie. He didn’t pretend to know why or how, but her descriptions were indeed familiar, just as that reporter had said. The young man ought to be thanked for mentioning it, for if he hadn’t, Sylvie might not have brought this to him.
She was embarrassed. He understood that, of course he did, but she shouldn’t be ashamed about this, not with him. Once upon a time he’d been able to soothe her cares by scooping her onto his lap and letting her stay there until she wanted to climb down of her own accord. Sometimes he’d read stories to her, other times he made them up, customized to fit her trouble and please her. He’d never pushed her away.
At least not before the war.
If asylum patients were allowed to communicate with the outside world, he would pick up a pencil and write to her now. He would tell her a story of a father who lost his way, and of the daughter who was the light that led him home.
He wanted to go home now. He needed to go home. Sylvie wasn’t insane for her reactions, and if she wasn’t insane, neither was he.
Stephen wasn’t getting better here. He was disappearing.
In a sense, staying here was easier than leaving, but his girls had already lost their mother. They still needed their father. He bowed his head into his hands, fingertips grazing scabs left by vermin, and examined himself afresh. The Spencers had said they’d seen a man take his gun from him, which meant he hadn’t killed Hiram.
But they’d also seen him pointing that gun at people. It was loaded. If he hadn’t killed anyone that night, it was only by the grace of God. Were his daughters really better off with a father as volatile as he was?
Anguish dropped him to his knees on the hard floor. Stephen cried out, “Oh, Lord, I need you now. I need you to make me into the man my daughters deserve.”
The iron door squealed on its hinges, and two attendants filled the room. Linden folded his arms across his white uniform while Slattery brought the glass vial forward. “Talking to someone who isn’t here again? Good thing we’ve brought your next dose.”
“I was praying to God.” Stephen pushed himself up, his joints aching. “And He is here.”
Linden smirked. “Remind me to add religious fanaticism to your list of mental diseases.”
“I’m not taking that.” Stephen planted his feet wide and clenched his fists to keep them from nervous tapping.
“This bottle has your name on it,” Slattery said. “It’s yours. It’s time for you to take it.”
“I told you, I won’t do it.” Sweat trickled from Stephen’s temples.
Linden latched and locked the door behind him before angling toward Stephen again. “You’re saying you want the jacket, then. And solitary confinement. Is that it?”
Nausea rolled through his middle. He swallowed hard and shook his head. To be alone with his thoughts and hallucinations made for poor company indeed. Last time he’d nearly gone mad with the isolation.
“You can’t go without treatment.”
His wits scattering, Stephen uncurled his fists and slapped his legs before he could stop himself. He rubbed his chin and felt only stubble, his former beard a phantom. He was weak. But God’s strength was made perfect in weakness, wasn’t it? The Bible’s promise, long ago memorized, rattled through him now.
Slattery whistled. “Look at you. You’re a mess. This is what happens when we’re late with medicine, Linden. I told you we should have come earlier. Now 283 isn’t in a temper to cooperate.”
Were these really the only two options? Isolation or mind-numbing drugs? His knees softened. He needed to be sharp, to remember who he was and the daughters he could still father.
The attendants grabbed him by the arms and threw him to the cot, pinning him there. Stephen clenched his teeth and thrashed until a knee
to his groin sent white-hot pain darting through his middle. He closed his eyes, and a hand squeezed his jaw, forcing it open.
He didn’t want these vile drugs. But God help him, he could not face confinement again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1871
Dawn slipped in through scalloped curtains and landed in pink and grey curves, like oyster shells, across the quilted bed. Languidly, Meg listened as someone padded into the baby’s room to answer his waking cries. The smell of coffee and hiss of bacon in a pan signaled a new day.
It all felt so ordinary. She could almost believe she’d only dreamed of the break-in at Hiram’s house, and that she was here on holiday, visiting friends. But she couldn’t forget that every day Hiram’s murder went unsolved was another day her father endured the asylum. She still had no idea how he was.
Suppressing a groan, she pulled the blanket over her head as all her concerns rained down on her at once. The Bible said to cast her cares on Jesus, and she did. But every day, it seemed, she took them back into her own hands.
Her hands.
With a start, she sat up and wiggled her fingers. It had been five weeks since Dr. Gilbert had first wrapped her wounds. It was time for her right hand to be free again.
Pushing back the quilt, Meg swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood on the braided rug. She didn’t need the doctor for this. She didn’t even need Sylvie. What she needed was God’s courage to finally face what she’d been dreading since the fire.
Shivering in front of the cold hearth, she removed the pin from the end of the bandage and unspooled the linen strip.
There.
She stared. She’d seen this before, but today was different. It held a note of finality that hardened into a stone in her chest. Tears caught in her throat and burned her eyes.
Her thumb and first two fingers had been fused together, the pink scars contracting them into a permanent position. The fourth and fifth fingers could move stiffly, like the fingers on her left hand, but she had lost the ability to hold anything unless she could pin it between her last two fingers and her palm.
No glove could cover this.
In a fall of watery light, Meg stretched her hands and fingers the way Dr. Gilbert had shown her. She’d had more than a month to prepare herself for this moment and ordered her thoughts to fall in line with the truth. She was limited, but God was not. She had to trust that He would find a way to make something beautiful through her. She thought of Asa Jones at the Soldiers’ Home, who’d lost both leg and arm, and of so many others who also bore injuries. She was not the only one who suffered a loss of function.
Meg knew all this in her mind. But as she washed her face, brushed her hair, and painstakingly pinned half her locks in coils on top of her head, the ache she felt persisted.
As Meg finished dressing, Sylvie knocked on the door and came in, her face still puffy from sleep. Her gaze fell first on the linen strip in a pile on the washstand table, then moved to Meg. “No more bandages?”
Meg shook her head. “This is as good as it gets, or near it.”
With a determined smile, Sylvie embraced her. “It’s a new chapter, then,” she said. “‘As good as it gets’ may be better than you expect.”
After making quick work of their morning routines, Meg and Sylvie joined Edith in the kitchen, where Edith held baby Henry on one hip while scrambling some eggs. She was still in her dressing gown, her light brown hair pinned at the sides of her head but otherwise falling in waves down her back. Meg almost reached to take the baby from her, wishing to lighten her load. But with only one hand that could grip a squirming ten-month-old, she backed away. Sylvie took Henry instead, with an ease that made Meg’s heart sting.
That wouldn’t do. “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked Edith. She could have entertained Tommy, but apparently the toddler still slept.
Frank clomped unevenly into the kitchen, his hair slicked back and a bit of shaving soap still visible above his collar. With a wink, Edith pointed to the spot on her own neck, and he wiped it away. “Help me find my other shoe, Meg? Tommy loves to walk around in them but doesn’t love putting them back. I’ve got an early meeting today, so I’m in a bit of a rush.”
She smiled at his stockinged foot and agreed.
When she found the missing shoe in a laundry basket, she brought it to Frank as he was eating eggs and bacon.
“Thank you!” He took it from her, saw her hands, then met her gaze with steady eyes. As a pharmacist, he had likely seen much worse. “Nate says you’re an artist.”
She hadn’t been expecting that. “Yes, I was.” She glanced at Sylvie feeding Henry shallow spoonfuls of mush.
He took a drink of coffee. “No, he says you are. Present tense. You’re doing the stretches? How is it going, training your left hand?”
“Frank,” Edith said, warning in her tone. “Are you hungry, Meg? There’s plenty of food. And you’ll have to forgive Frank. He can be so inquisitive. But I suppose you’re used to that if you’ve spent much time with Nate.”
“It’s all right.” Meg sat at the table and helped herself to a crisp slice of perfectly fried bacon. “To answer your questions, yes, I’m doing the stretches. As for training my left hand to substitute for my right, I’m making progress, just not as quickly as I’d hoped.”
Frank nodded without a trace of surprise in his expression. “That’s typical. If I could bottle patience and sell it along with pills, I’d be a rich man.” He shoveled the last of the eggs on his plate into his mouth and glanced at the clock. “Wish I could give my boss a double dose of it,” he muttered as he shoved back from the table and straightened his tie. “I’m off.” With a kiss to Edith and another for Henry, he grabbed his cloak and valise and left.
Edith poured a cup of coffee for each of them. “Frank can be direct and abrupt. I’m sorry if it’s jarring to you. Especially today. It’s a big milestone, isn’t it?” She laid the question down as delicately as if she had been dressing a wound. In a way, she was.
Even fully dressed in her mauve jacket and skirt, Meg felt raw and exposed. But Edith’s gentle manner soothed her. “It is.”
“Well,” Edith said, stirring cream into her coffee, “don’t hesitate to tell us how we can make you more comfortable. What our home lacks in crystal and damask, we make up for in ointments and tonics. Do you have pain? Physical pain?”
A discerning distinction. Meg glanced to her lap at the hand half-dead to sensation. “It only hurts when I stretch the scar tissue, and I need to feel that so I know how far to push.”
Edith pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Ah. If only we all knew that. Some pushing is necessary for growth and healing, but too much, and we may snap something that isn’t meant to be severed.”
Sylvie looked up. “Something tells me we aren’t just talking about the human body anymore.” Henry leaned forward, mouth wide open, for more food.
A thoughtful smile warmed Edith’s tired face as she watched Sylvie feed her son. “There are parallels to be drawn, yes? Take Nate, for example. He pushed himself to become a guardian, providing for my siblings and me when he was eighteen, and he pushed us to certain standards of responsibility and morality too. In the case of my sister Harriet and I, I’d say it worked. But when he pushed my brother, Andrew, Andrew pushed back. It became a match of wills, and eventually something snapped between them that hasn’t yet been repaired.”
A low, comforting purr came from the fire still burning in the stove. “Are you saying Nate was too hard on Andrew?” Meg hadn’t observed a stern disciplinarian side of Nate, but she could well imagine it.
Edith passed Sylvie a napkin for the baby’s face. “He was no harder on him than he was on himself. That’s the trick of it, isn’t it? Everyone’s different. You have to know how hard to push and when to give a little grace.” She wrapped her hands around her mug and smiled at Meg. “The same goes for yourself. I realize we haven’t known each other lon
g, but I feel like I know you through Nate. So if I come across as too straightforward, blame it on that, or on my husband’s influence. But what I want to say to you is this: push yourself, but don’t set an impossible goal.”
Meg would push herself, indeed. But her goals remained the same.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1871
As soon as Jasper opened the door, Meg knew something had changed.
“Come in.” He stepped aside, allowing her and Sylvie to enter. The vestibule no longer smelled of lemon or linseed oil, now that Helene and Kirstin had taken work elsewhere.
“What’s going on?” Sylvie unpinned her hat and hung it on the hall stand along with her cloak. “You seem different.”
“Everything’s different.” He looped his thumb on his belt. “I found it.”
“The will,” Meg whispered. Steadying her breathing, she unfastened the buttons of her cloak and hung it beside Sylvie’s. The suspense coiling inside her was so strong she nearly forgot to be embarrassed by her right hand, which Jasper had seen yesterday. There had been pity in his eyes, which she supposed was better than disgust. Today she saw neither.
“Yes, the will,” he confirmed.
“And?” Sylvie dared to ask. “Is it—did he leave the property to you?”
The slightest smile betrayed him. “He did. Come see for yourself.”
Relief flooded Meg as she followed him into the library, where a legal document lay on the study table beside a stack of textbooks and a candlestick. It was creased where it had been folded. Quickly she scanned the date—December 30, 1869—and type until she found what she was searching for. Just as he’d said, Jasper Davenport was named the sole beneficiary of Hiram’s estate. At the bottom were the signatures of Hiram Sloane and his attorney, Thomas Grosvenor.
So it wasn’t left to her father. Stephen had no motive, none whatsoever, to kill his friend. She’d already known that, especially since the Spencers had shared what they’d seen, but seeing the will made her breathe easier.
Veiled in Smoke Page 23