Thora K. knelt to pull some weeds and rearrange rocks around one of them.
HARVEY D. STROCK, 1852–1880
GONE TO JOIN HIS MAKER
“Crushed ’is arm in a cave-in, ’ee did. In the Poorman Mine. Did turn to rot and ’ee died of it. But ’is heart were broken afore the cave-in.” She nodded toward a wooden enclosure that had ornate newel posts at each corner. Inside it a solitary marble shaft pointed heavenward.
GONE BEFORE US
OH OUR CHILDREN
TO THE BETTER LAND
VAINLY WAIT WE
FOR OTHERS IN YOUR PLACE TO STAND.
OLGA MARY STROCK. B. 1873, D. JULY 5, 1879.
Shay walked around the enclosure to find another inscription on the next face of the shaft. Elsie Strock had been three years old when she died the day after her sister.
The next side was mercifully blank, but on the last face Shay found that Jane Ann Strock was only a year old when she followed her sisters two days later.
Shay felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. “Oh, Thora K. –”
“Me babies. All did die in the summer. And the next spring me Harvey joined ’is girls ’ere on the hill.” Thora K. stood and brushed off her skirt, her eyes dry, empty. “’Twere an awful time.”
“But your little girls all died in less than a week.”
“Fever raged the town, dipthery it were. ’Twere a new town then and most of the graves ’ere be children from that summer. Us was lucky it left Corbin. Some folks din’t ’ave a wee one left.”
“It’s horrible. How could you bear it?” Shay sniffed back tears. “I mean three children gone in just a few days.”
“Ahhh, bless yer sawl, child. Them be ’appy in heaven.” Thora K. hugged Shay and kissed her cheek. “And I ’ave me a daughter again now, don’t I?”
The next morning as she left the outhouse, Shay still pondered the courage of the little Cornish woman and the devastation diphtheria had left in Caribou’s cemetery. She’d been depressed all the way back to Nederland. After a fitful night’s sleep that depression had deepened.
“Brandy, look what I brought you.” Corbin rounded the corner of the cabin with an expectant smile. “I asked Mrs. Tyler to save the next one for us.”
The chicken he held by its feet still twitched. Blood dripped from a headless neck. “I told you I’d buy your chicken for you.”
Corbin and the chicken blurred. Brandy’s stomach rolled. “But … it’s got … feathers.”
“Of course it has feathers.” He held it higher so she could see the blood better. “You can cook it for supper.”
“That’s not the kind you cook.” They come naked and cut in pieces and wrapped in cellophane and, oh God, stop twitching. “That’s the kind that lays eggs … or something.”
“Brandy, this is a rooster.”
“But I don’t know how to cook a chicken with feathers.” She backed away as he approached.
“You scald it and pluck it first, of course. Don’t tell me you’ve never plucked a chicken?”
“Don’t bring it any closer, Corbin Strock. It’s … it’s bleeding.”
He laid the murdered bird on the ground and wrapped his arms around her waist, laughing. “Brandy, my little Brandy. You can help set a man’s leg and yet grow faint over a chicken with its head cut off.”
“It’s not funny, and that was a rotten thing to do to me.” Her voice was muffled in his shirt and soon so was her crying. She relaxed against him, thankful for a good cry, if not for the poor chicken. It felt wonderful to have some release for her emotions, to be held and comforted.
Corbin pulled Brandy’s chin up so Shay had to look at him. “Don’t you cry now. I’ll teach you how to pluck a chicken.”
“Whoopee-twang.” With tears still on Brandy’s cheeks, Shay began to laugh. And then Brandy was kissing Corbin, and Shay was surprised at them.
Brandy was a nubile young woman and Shay no shrinking violet. Between the two of us, there’s no telling what trouble we can get into. She tried to draw away, but Corbin wouldn’t have it. He tightened around and against her, and returned that kiss till she thought Brandy’s neck would snap.
Oh, hell, who was it said, if it feels good do it?
… and then she felt the telltale ache of Brandy’s uterus. Shay knew the signs … depression … moodiness … and Corbin seemed so sexy this morning and … Oh, Brandy, not now … had Tampax been invented yet? Even Kotex? Surely they did something.
An unwanted image of Hutchison Maddon interfered with her thoughts of Corbin Strock … the feel of his pain, the lurch of his body as his leg …
“Pardon me,” a voice said behind Corbin. “But I got this telegram for Mrs. Strock.”
Corbin let go of her so suddenly she fell against a tree.
Lon Maddon leered at them from the middle of the clearing.
“And why are you running messages, Maddon?” Corbin’s voice was gravelly with embarrassment.
“I was in the office when it came. Deck said it was urgent, and I was coming up to Samuel’s anyway, so …” He handed an envelope to Shay. “Ma’am.”
The telegram was from Sophie. John McCabe was very ill. Brandy was being called home.
14
Home. Home to the Gingerbread House and to the wedding mirror and through it to her mother and father. I won’t marry Marek for a while and perhaps not at all. But the things I’ll have to tell Mother! Shay adjusted Brandy’s bonnet. I’ll make the mirror work somehow.
“It do sound bad, them callin’ ’ee ’ome. Might be yer fayther’ll be better by the time ’ee get there. All set for the trip?” Thora K. glanced at Brandy’s skirt meaningfully.
“Yes and thanks for showing me what to do.”
“I just canna figure wot ’ee been doin’ all these years till now.”
The fact that Thora K.’d had to point out the use of those folded rags and pins in Brandy’s trunk seemed to shake her theory that Brandy was a witch rather than crazy. But Shay was so confident she’d be leaving this world soon, she didn’t fear losing her one ally.
“I’m going to miss you so,” Shay whispered and hugged Thora K.
“Heavens, child, ’tain’t like ’ee edden never comin’ back.” Thora K. looked flustered but pleased.
No, I’m not coming back. But I hope Brandy will and that she’ll like you as much as I do. Where’d Brandy been all this time?
Shay gazed around the tiny cabin almost regretfully. She’d never forget this place or this adventure.
Corbin walked her to the stage, loading for Boulder, and she embarrassed him by throwing her arms around his neck. “Take care, Corbin.”
The sickroom at the Gingerbread House was the downstairs bedroom Rachael and Jerrold Garrett would use. Some of the furniture was the same.
Now it was darkened and the sound of John McCabe’s tortured breathing filled it. He lay still and staring, his face a swollen gray.
Sophie rose from a chair beside the bed and held out her hands as Shay crossed the room. “Brandy, I’m so relieved you could get here before …”
“Elton said it was a stroke.” Shay let herself be hugged.
“It was so sudden. He said your name twice in the night. Those are the only words he’s spoken since he was struck down. Brandy, I think he regretted your marriage and it’s weighing on him now. I know how you felt, dear, but … the doctor says your father hasn’t much time. We didn’t expect him to last the night. Don’t let him die with your anger on his conscience. Tell him you forgive him.”
“Will he hear me?”
“I don’t know. At times he seems to respond and be aware of us.”
Shay leaned over John McCabe and took his cold hand. “I forgive you, John McCabe … I mean, Father.”
He didn’t blink or show that he could hear or see her. But Sophie said, “John McCabe? Father? I’ve never heard you speak to him that way.”
“I don’t think he heard me.” These little slips in speech would
n’t matter soon.
“Stay with him and keep trying, dear. I’m going to find something to eat and I’ll be back.” Sophie paused in the doorway, looking confused. “Brandy, are you feeling well?”
“I’m feeling fine.” Shay sat in Sophie’s chair and wondered what to do. She’d never seen anyone dying before. In her limited experience the old or sick went into a hospital and left the world without distressing anyone.
She hoped Sophie’d hurry. The gloomy room and the raspy breathing were eerie. She fidgeted on the chair. Brandy’s skin was scraped raw from the chafing of those disgusting rags.
John McCabe stirred suddenly and Shay jumped. She stood over him in case he could see her.
“I forgive you, Father. Don’t worry. Everything’ll be okay.…”
His eyes focused from a long way off. “Brandy?” he said faintly.
“Yes, and I forgive you … Brandy loves you I’m sure … I mean I love you.” Tears came to her eyes. Would Brandy have forgiven him? It’d be wrong not to reassure him at a time like this.
“Brandy … mirror … beware …” He sounded like a phonograph record playing at too slow a speed and his body struggled to help him speak as Grandma Bran’s had done. His eyes reflected the fear Shay’d seen then too.
“Mirror? The wedding mirror?”
He choked and seemed to be trying to sit up. She slid her arm under him to lift his head. “What about the mirror? Tell me.”
John McCabe stared over her shoulder. Fear and pain drained from his face. He smiled. “Joshua, oh, Joshua …” He fell limp against her.
“Elton. Sophie. Somebody!” Shay didn’t move except to look around for Joshua. There was no one else in the room.
Elton arrived first. He laid his father back on the pillow and drew Shay away. “Did he speak at all, Bran?”
“I forgave him and told him I loved him and he answered me.” Her teeth chattered with shock.
“Oh, thank God,” Sophie said from the doorway.
“Ma, he died in her arms. Now he can rest in peace.”
Shay and Elton sat at the kitchen table picking at their food, he mourning the loss of a father and she dying to get up to Brandy’s room.
Elton seemed real, not a caricature of times past. Shay’d never had a brother, and looking at him she wondered what it would have been like. She couldn’t remember her mother mentioning an Uncle Elton.
“It was so sudden, Bran. Did you know it happened in your room?”
“The stroke?” Her neck prickled. “Is the wedding mirror still there?”
“Yeah, we found him on the floor in front of it. He’d taken to brooding in there. Over you, I think. A thunderstorm was making so much noise we didn’t hear him fall or call out or anything.”
Upstairs, the wedding mirror sat in the corner, reflecting wavy light from the funny bulb in the ceiling. Did you cause John McCabe’s stroke? Did strokes come on that suddenly to apparently healthy people?
One of the books Sophie’d sent to Nederland instead of the mirror was a green leather-bound diary. Shay’d been disappointed to find it blank but had brought it back to the Gingerbread House. It was a way to communicate with Brandy privately.
A narrow table stood under a slope of the ceiling, a straight chair in front of it, a pen and an old-fashioned ink pot. Shay sat down to write to Brandy:
I hope you will return to your body when I leave it. I don’t know where you’ve been but I feel you must know what’s gone on here while you’ve been away.
Shay knew her handwriting was horrid and she dripped ink trying to use the unfamiliar writing apparatus but she wrote slowly and carefully.
She tried to explain Thora K. and Corbin, to soften the blow of life in Nederland and the death of John McCabe. But she avoided any mention of the Maddon twins. Brandy would make her own mistakes, obviously, or Shay wouldn’t be born a platinum blond.
And she didn’t go in to the future, except to admit she was Brandy’s granddaughter. Shay’d come to know how awful it was to know.
Poor Brandy would return to find the Gingerbread House a house of mourning and herself trapped in an unconsummated marriage.
She added more of Corbin, knowing that someday Brandy would continue the family line with Hutch Maddon. Shay ached for Corbin.
It was late when she closed the diary and faced the mirror.
But the wedding mirror wouldn’t work its magic that night … nor the next … nor the next.…
Sunlight flooded Columbia Cemetery, the trees too young to mask its glare.
Elton’s arm trembled in Sophie’s. She pretended to lean on him as a grieving widow should on her grown son. But in fact he leaned on her.
“Yes, it was so sudden, such a shock,” she repeated for the umpteenth time, now to the president of the bank, Mr. Harker. He looked in pieces to her befogged mind, all cut up by the black threads of her veil.
Brandy stood next to the husband John had forced upon her, staring at little Joshua’s grave as if she’d never seen it.
… the line of stilled black carriages filling the trails of the cemetery … spilling out onto the road to town … horses stomping, jingling harness … buzzing grasshoppers and the sweet call of a meadowlark … subdued voices.
The night before, Sophie’d prayed to God to forgive her for the unexpected feeling of freedom and importance the devil had sent to her when she should have been mourning. She knew it was just the attention she received as the widow of John McCabe and that Satan had used it. But the realization that John’s every mood would no longer organize her day …
Guilt sent her through the house seeking solace. To find her son with his head in his arms at the dining-room table actually weeping, terrified at the thought of his father’s business affairs being thrust at him. Strange, sensitive boy she secretly loved above all others. But who was no help to her now. She’d had to comfort him.
And then upstairs to find her daughter looking at her with the eyes of a stranger. Brandy, too, seemed terrified, but Sophie could sense a strength here she knew was not in Elton. She couldn’t confide in the stranger her daughter had become.
People were filing toward the carriages and Sophie moved to Brandy’s side. “It’s time to go back to the house, dear.”
Brandy’s face was pale, a dark tinge marring the skin around her eyes. “Brandy had another brother … Joshua.”
“Of course. You and Josh had such fun together when you were small,” Sophie whispered, hoping no one else had heard, feeling a tightening around her heart. She prayed this behavior was due to sleeplessness, rather than serving as another indication of an unbalanced mind. Sophie’d heard her daughter moving about in her room at all hours since her return.
At the Gingerbread House, she was able to draw Mrs. Strock aside for a moment. “I’m worried for Brandy. She’s behaving queerly.”
“’Er do seem to be takin’ it hard, poor thing. It’s the age, ’ee know. Death be mystifying to they young.”
“If your son won’t mind, I’d like to keep her here for a while.”
“That’s as it do belong to be. ’Ee need she now.”
That night as Sophie and Nora arranged bedding on the floor of the parlor for the out-of-town guests who couldn’t be accommodated with beds or at neighbors’ homes, Thora K. bustled in to help.
The Strocks weren’t what Sophie would’ve chosen for Brandy socially but the seedy little woman wasn’t the ogre she’d pictured either. “I’m putting you and my sister, Harriet, in Brandy’s room. Elton’s brought down a cot. I think I’ll have Brandy and Mr. Strock sleep in the guest room next to it.”
Thora K., who was on her knees plumping a pillow, straightened suddenly. “’Ee mean to put Corbin and Brandy … oh, but …” she started and then seemed to change her mind. “That do sound like ’andsome arrangements, and I thank ’ee.” Her smile was unexpectedly sly.
In the kitchen Brandy sat with a towel still in hand while women moved around her finishing up the dishes.
“Sophie.” Harriet shook her white curls and rolls of fat simultaneously. “Your girl looks exhausted to me. She should be in bed.”
“Does your throat feel sore, dear?” Sophie asked her daughter.
“No, I’m just so tired. But I should be helping you now.”
“Bless you, but get a good night’s rest and you can help tomorrow. The ladies will understand if you go to bed early at a time like this.”
Again Sophie had that treacherous feeling of importance as her friends chimed in with sympathy and approval.
“Even with her husband struck dead, that Sophie doesn’t forget how to be a good mother,” someone whispered behind her as she led Brandy out.
Shay’d spent so much of her nights working on the recalcitrant mirror that when Sophie helped her slip into the strange bed she was asleep before she could identify and voice the nagging thought that the mirror might harm whoever slept in Brandy’s bed.
It occurred to her again when she awoke in the night, but was erased by the shock of finding herself snuggled up to a deliciously warm body.
Shay sat up. “Corbin?”
“Go back to sleep, Brandy.” His voice came strained out of the dark. “Your mother put me in here and I couldn’t object … without causing embarrassment. I won’t bother you, Brandy.”
Won’t bother me! Shay moved primly to the cold part of the bed and almost fell out. They sure didn’t used to make double beds very big. And just out of a period, Brandy felt about as prim as a bitch in heat. The only good thing about being in someone else’s body is being able to blame it for any unexpected eccentricities. Down, girl!
Shay went back to sleep wondering who she thought she was kidding.
She was dreaming shocking things about herself, Marek, and both Maddon twins when she awoke next … to find gray dawn seeping through window glass and Corbin wrapped around her from behind.
A warm hand moved carefully up, drawing the voluminous nightgown from her legs. It cupped around Brandy’s breast.
The Mirror Page 10