Once he got home and put on some weight, Fergus looked much the same as ever on the outside, from his bulbous chin down to his hammer toes, but his mental faculties were a different matter altogether. It was as if his innards had been scoured clean, leaving just a dry husk of a man smiling at elements he could no longer put together in good faith.
In the bustle and logistical riddles of moving the bedridden Fergus, it was initially easy for Hazel to dismiss the faraway sea that his eyes had become, or the nonsense words he sang to himself like a toddler. She knew very well, of course, the state he was in, but it wasn’t until he was home that she truly felt it. Hazel was surprised to find that she minded the drool that collected on her husband’s chin during mealtimes and that the babyish way he clapped his hands and begged her to sing to him affronted her. “I’m no singer, Fergus, you know that,” she told him roughly time and time again, pushing his hands back down by his sides and turning her cheek from his pleading gaze.
But Mercy, it turned out, had a voice like an actual lark. “I’ll sing for you, Fergus,” she said out of the blue one evening when Fergus started up his frantic jiggling and shaking of Hazel’s hand. “What do you want to hear?” And then, without waiting for an answer, she took a deep breath and let out a note so high and pure it seemed snatched from heaven. It was “Amazing Grace,” Hazel realized, but sung with such a lilt that it came out like a whole new song. How odd, she thought, watching as some of the light seeped back into Fergus’s gaze and his chin took on its familiar sensible set, that a mere chit of a girl would be the one who could bring him back, and not his own wife. That thought was immediately followed by another, more unsettling one. Why is that?
Hazel crossed over to her spinning wheel and began fussing with the spindle—her cure for ailments of the soul. She still had some carded wool left over from last spring’s shearing. She’d coax out a good long string of yarn, she decided, and go make some color. She’d tucked some dried blue hyacinth blossoms in a jar somewhere in the pantry, she remembered. Blue for constancy, for memory, but also the color of a heart grown cold. Hazel gave herself a shake. What nonsense. Fergus’s mind might be in a bit of a pickle at the moment, but his heart was going just fine. It was as steady as ever, red as the day was long—a fist right in the middle of him holding all the loose ends of Hazel in a single bunch. As long as it held fast, so would she. She just didn’t like to think about the fact that Mercy might be the glue in that knot.
Hazel and Mercy were walking out to check on the flock when they discovered a web of coyote prints outside the barn—little dots of treachery flecked into the snow. It was the week before Christmas, but out in Hazel’s valley you wouldn’t know it. There was nothing festive about the woods. Together, Hazel and Mercy stared at the marks, trying to read the pattern, though prints like that screamed only one thing any way you blinked at them. Cursing a blue streak, Hazel flung open the barn door to find her sheep huddled in a panicked clump on the far side of the structure. She crossed over to try to comfort the flock, but they were having none of it. They rustled and bunched away from her. The biggest ram struck out at her with a foreleg and bared its teeth, and Hazel didn’t half blame the poor beast, for even with all of Mercy’s help things hadn’t been what they ought around the place since Fergus had come home, and even the animals knew it.
Mercy settled the beast and returned to the marks, her mouth flattening into a hard line as she studied the divots first from one angle, then from another, as if she were auguring the future. “That’s not from a coyote,” she finally insisted. “It’s from a wolf.”
Hazel froze with the bucket of water she was hauling and considered. A rogue wolf creeping around her animals was the last thing she needed to worry about. She sniffed and poured the water into the trough in one smooth motion. “That’s ridiculous. There haven’t been wolves in these parts for fifty years.” But, more and more lately, hadn’t there been sightings? Hazel believed she might even have seen one herself not long before the accident—a silvery shadow slipping into the far end of the valley just after dusk, a flicker so quick it had been easy to brush it off as a trick of the light. Coyotes, Hazel knew how to deal with. Foxes, too, and bears, of course, but a wolf was a different creature altogether—smarter, more patient, almost human in its cunning. You could look a wolf in its eyes and see what its opinion of you was, providing it let you get that close and live to tell about it.
Mercy didn’t say anything. She never sassed back, Hazel had noticed, or even disagreed when she thought someone else was wrong. She simply stayed silent and let the quiet take its course, which some might have said was good manners but which Hazel was starting to find sneaky for reasons she couldn’t articulate.
“Okay, fine,” Hazel finally conceded. “I’ll rig up another floodlight on the back side of the barn. That ought to do the trick.” But still Mercy said nothing. Does she want the damn beast gone or not? Hazel wondered. Ever since the accident, things down in her valley were changing—she could feel it. For one thing, Gert Snow’s unearthed bones were causing all kinds of controversy all over town, and then there was the news that the mill was going to do a round of layoffs after the holidays, and folks were still up in arms about the accident.
Bringing Fergus back from near death—and the more Hazel replayed the scene in her mind, the more convinced she became that Mercy had been an initiator of the event rather than a simple witness—had not necessarily worked in Mercy’s favor the way Hazel had thought it would. Because Fergus remained feeble, he was of absolutely no use in clearing anything up about what had happened with the bus. Not only couldn’t he recall the accident, he could barely remember his own name. Several times a day, Mercy tried to jog his memory when Hazel wasn’t looking, but Hazel always caught wind of what was going on and broke up those sessions.
“That’s enough,” she’d declare, waving Mercy out of Fergus’s face. “Let the man have his peace.” Although, to be honest, Fergus was nothing but peaceful these days.
The news of his startling recovery had bitterly divided the town. There was a small contingent, led by the grieving Dena and the addle-brained Stella, who viewed his return as a genuine wonder. As a result, they were inclined to give Mercy, and maybe even her brother, the benefit of the doubt, but most of the town was confused by the apparent act of God and therefore suspicious of it. On one of her rare trips to town, Hazel overheard Stella Farnsworth loudly opining in the bread aisle of the general store, “Why would that Snow girl want Fergus to regain his senses if he was then going to turn around and incriminate her brother? I mean, think about it. That would just be stupid. Maybe it’s true that Mercy Snow knows something about that crash that we all don’t.”
The strenuous rumble of Dottie Billings put Stella in her place. “Once a Snow, always a Snow. Trust me, they’re no good. I’ll have you think back to Pruitt and how unpleasant he was.”
Hazel held her breath and listened for anything more, but the two women adjourned to the cash register, unaware of her presence, much to Hazel’s relief. Though Hazel would never admit it, she, too, vacillated between amazed gratitude for whatever Mercy had possibly done to wake Fergus and the unsettling worry that if Zeke Snow hadn’t caused the accident, maybe it was Fergus who had.
And then there was the business with June McAllister and the money she’d tried to give Mercy to make her leave town. That didn’t sit right with Hazel at all. What was it to June, Hazel mused, if Mercy stuck around Titan Falls spouting off her brother’s innocence to anyone who would listen? Cal was about to let a fifth of the men go from the mill, so Hazel knew that the McAllisters didn’t have money to burn, especially not the kind Mercy had mentioned. She tried to imagine what would make them want the Snows gone so badly, and though she had a hunch, she decided ignorance was bliss. The first thing you learned in a mill town was to keep your nose to the grindstone and out of other people’s business, especially when they happened to own the damn mill.
I should have hired a boy, H
azel thought. She observed Mercy now in the chilly air of the barn, but the girl was the picture of innocence. “Everything all right?” Hazel asked.
Mercy cracked her knuckles joint by joint, sending tiny little pops into the air, like bubbles breaking. The sheep flicked their ears. “I’m fine.”
It was the worst kind of fine Hazel had ever heard, but in spite of all the questions firing inside her head, she wasn’t one to pry. She swung the empty watering bucket back and forth. It had a deep dent down near the bottom, but that was okay. Hazel couldn’t remember for the life of her how it had gotten there, and she didn’t care either. If a thing still worked, why worry yourself sick about the dings and nicks it collected? Spend your time splitting hairs, Hazel knew, and soon you’d be bald. It was a lesson Mercy would do well to heed, Hazel thought, her stomach seizing in a knot of concern for the girl, in spite of all her better efforts.
She saw that Mercy had managed to calm the agitated ram enough to be giving him feed by hand. Hazel narrowed her eyes. That animal normally had so much spitfire in his belly that Hazel was constantly tempted to put an end to him and eat him. Last year, when trying to shear him, Aggie had ended up with a bit thumb and one of his kneecaps knocked blue. But look at the beast now, nuzzling Mercy like he was a puppy. How did the girl do it? Hazel supposed she ought to thank her, but instead she felt a hot flush across her chest. They were her sheep, and Fergus was her man. A flock could have only one shepherd.
The distant sound of tires crunching over gravel interrupted her thoughts. Hazel frowned. She wasn’t in the mood for a visitor, but she was in less of a mood to stay here in the barn with the likes of Mercy. It wasn’t anything the girl did, really. It was more all the uncomfortable little truths she made Hazel realize about herself. She put down the pail. “Finish up out here. I’ll go see who that is.”
Mercy was entranced with the ram and didn’t reply, so Hazel stalked back to the house. Wolves, apparently, were the least of her worries.
Hazel had just managed to hang her coat on a peg in the mudroom when the knock arrived on the front door—a woman’s hand, Hazel could tell, for a man’s raised fist wouldn’t arrive with a question hanging in it like that. Hazel sighed deeply and then went to go greet whoever it was, trying to step lively about it. When she saw who was standing on her porch, however, she fought off the urge to slam her door and lock it twice. “June.”
As usual, June looked better than Hazel thought she had the right to. Hair dyed in a salon and not from a box, pearls strung around her neck, cashmere-lined gloves so soft and thin that Hazel could practically read June’s palm through them. June thrust out a smartly wrapped package. “Afternoon, Hazel. I brought you half a loaf of lemon tea bread. We missed you at Suzie’s service, you know.” Hazel accepted with reluctance. Just half the loaf, she thought sourly. Isn’t that typical?
It was true that she hadn’t gone to the memorial for poor Suzie, but she thought her lack of public piety should be her business and hers alone. Hazel’s faith in God had gone straight to the ground with Rory, and she was still waiting for it to return. She couldn’t have borne to sit in a hard church pew staring at another child’s coffin, and she didn’t particularly wish to split words now with the likes of June McAllister. Hazel remembered how much it hurt to talk after Rory’s passing and how, when she did, her voice came out broken and raspy, like she didn’t have enough air in her to put together two good thoughts. She steeled herself now and, against all her better instincts, opened her door a hair wider. “Come in.”
Normally, on the rare occasions when the town wives came out her way to buy their yarn, full of gossip from June’s infernal sewing circle, what they really wanted, Hazel was only too aware, was to sniff out how she produced her colors. Hazel happily sold off any and all of her skeins of yarn, but she never gave away any of her other trade secrets—not that they were really hers to give. Any of those women could have figured them out, if they’d really wanted to. The plants she used to dye her yarns were plentiful and free. All a woman needed to add was a little alum to fix the hues and whatever sorrows she happened to hold, and Lord knew there were more than enough of those to go around in Titan Falls.
But today June was after something else entirely. She shuffled inside Hazel’s clean hall, dripping rivulets of dirty snow off her fancy boots, craning her neck, peering about her like a prize turkey. She barely had the good grace to wait until they were settled in the parlor to get down to business. “Is that Snow girl here?”
Hazel’s eyes narrowed. She’d taken refuge on the stool beside her spinning wheel, but there were no contraptions in the world, she suspected, that could deter June McAllister when she wanted information. “Mercy’s in the barn.”
June placed a hand on her chest and fluttered her eyelashes. “Oh, good.” She lowered her voice ominously. “We need to have a little discussion, and it would be best if it were private.”
Hazel glanced at her watch. Fergus was napping, but any minute now he’d awaken confused, trapped in the sticky realm between sleep and consciousness, between this world and whatever came after it. Of all the moments that were difficult with him—and there were a host of them—Hazel dreaded these spells the most. It was the futility of sounding the voice of reason into a pair of deafened ears that got to her. She had never been one to perform an action without first identifying a corresponding motive, a fault that Fergus had always begrudged her. “Woman, ease up,” he’d pleaded just days before the accident, when Hazel was nagging him about why he still chose to drive the St. Bart’s bus—for free, no less—when neither of them attended church anymore. “When the Lord calls on you, he doesn’t give you all his reasons.”
“No, he certainly doesn’t,” Hazel had snapped back. That was her whole point.
She patted the worn nap of her corduroy trousers over her knees now and resisted the urge to start fiddling with her spinning wheel. She should probably offer to go cut June a slice of the cake—a measly slice, she’d make sure—but if she went into the kitchen, she wouldn’t be able to hear Fergus. June, however, didn’t seem to miss the lack of refreshment. She smoothed her wool slacks and assumed an expression of concern. “And how is Fergus?”
“Just fine.” Hazel would straight up be a monkey’s butt if she were going to give the likes of June McAllister ammunition to take back to her sewing circle.
June waited a beat, but when it became apparent that Hazel would be providing no further information, she cleared her throat. “Well, that’s wonderful. It’s just a marvel, isn’t it, how he came back to us.”
Hazel didn’t like June’s use of the plural “us” in that sentence. Did the McAllisters have to lay claim to every damn thing in town, even the miracles? She lowered her eyes. “I guess.”
“And it’s just amazing how it all came to pass. Although”—she licked her lips—“it’s certainly ironic that the Snow girl was standing there when he got his life back while it was her brother who almost killed him in the first place.”
Hazel might not be cozy with the Lord, but she wasn’t above calling on him to get her out of a tight spot when need be. “Mercy didn’t do anything. It was all God’s work. She was just standing there.” Although was that quite right? Hazel thought back to the moment in the hospital when Fergus first opened his eyes. He’d blinked straight up at Mercy and even smiled a little, too, she remembered, like the two of them were in on the same secret joke.
June crossed her knees and spread one of her hands across her lap. She was wearing the pale kind of nail polish that barely showed, Hazel noticed, and what was the fool point of that? “That’s not what folks in town believe.”
Hazel sat up a hair straighter. “What do you mean?”
June’s fingers curled tight, as if she were hooking a barb onto a fishing line. “The ladies are beginning to wonder if maybe Fergus is the one who drove the bus off the road and caused the Snow boy to crash. I mean, I don’t believe such nonsense”—June tapped the spot above her heart—�
�but you know how gullible some of the women in town can be. After poor Suzie’s funeral, Mercy gave Dena Flyte some sort of charm that helped the poor woman through her grief. And I gather she’s been brewing some concoction for Fred Flyte on the down low. He’s quit drinking, if you can believe it.”
Hazel could not. Fred Flyte was as pickled as a barrel of Swedish herring.
But June wasn’t finished. “You’ll never guess what he’s gone and done.”
“What?” In spite of herself, Hazel was intrigued.
“He’s gone and applied for Fergus’s job driving the tow truck and plow.”
“What?” Hazel’s head snapped upright.
“Yes. And Horton says if Fred stays properly sober another two weeks, he’ll take him on. He can’t afford to be down a driver during snow season, and he feels sorry for the family.”
Hazel sat thinking. Fergus might never recover, or he might take years to do it. Of course Horton wasn’t going to hold a job for him, but still. It needled her to think that life was moving on so fast. And it irked her more to think that Mercy might somehow be the one urging it along.
“I think”—June touched the tips of her pink fingers to that treacherous spot above her heart again—“that perhaps you’re being a bit too kind for your own good here, Hazel. I can understand you needing the extra help, especially now with Fergus, but really, I think you should consider that you may have a wolf in sheep’s clothing in this girl.”
Hazel blinked at June’s choice of metaphor, wondering if it was deliberate, but before she could decide, June continued.
“These Snows have brought nothing but trouble since they’ve arrived. Zeke’s wanted, you know.” She shook her head. “I think it would be best if they left.”
Wasn’t that just like a McAllister, Hazel thought. Playing with people’s lives as if they were dolls in a playhouse. Paper dolls. She folded her arms. “You can’t simply up and make them leave town.” Was the old Snow homestead even in the limits of Titan Falls? Hazel wasn’t sure.
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