by Delia Parr
No response.
When she got to the bottom of the steps and looked about the room, she gasped and dropped the skates she held in one hand and the cross and handkerchief she held in the other. Pale and wan, Orralynne was sitting in front of Emma’s desk. With her skirts twisted and bunched at her thighs, she had braced her elbows on the top of the desk and scrunched the bottom of her skirts together to create a bowl of sort to catch the blood still dripping from her nostrils.
Although Emma knew that Orralynne had suffered from serious nosebleeds as a child, she had no idea they continued to plague her or that the nosebleeds would be so severe. Blood was everywhere, on the fabric in Orralynne’s hands, the top of her desk and the oil lamp, and even the small, framed sampler Emma had left on her desk.
Both alarmed and horrified, Emma rushed to Orralynne’s side and bent her knees to lower herself to get face-to-face with her.
Orralynne’s complexion was ashen, and her features were splashed with blood. When her pale blue eyes filled with embarrassment, even mortification, Emma’s heart constricted. “Are you all right? How can I help? Do you want me to send for Dr. Jeffers? Or your brother?”
Trembling, Orralynne tightened her blood-stained hands holding her skirts, sighed, and ever so slightly shook her head. “Go away, Emma. I’ll . . . I’ll be fine. The blood’s nearly stopped flowing,” she managed in a shaky voice.
“I’m not leaving you alone. Not like this.”
A single tear escaped and trickled down Orralynne’s cheek. “It’s ugly and disgusting and messy,” she snapped.
In that angry, bitter response, Emma could almost hear the echo of those very same words shouted by caretakers who had no love or pity to share with the young, sickly orphan girl Orralynne had once been.
“Go away. Just go away. I don’t want you here. Once the blood stops, I’ll need to rest awhile before I can clean up everything, but I will. I will,” Orralynne insisted.
Once again, Orralynne’s words opened the window to her spirit and unwittingly let Emma see the hurt inside and hear the voice of a young girl, scared and alone and forced to handle the consequences of her physical maladies.
Emma tugged the other chair closer to Orralynne and sat down. “Don’t worry about cleaning up anything. Are you sure there isn’t something I can do? Maybe I should get you some cold cloths for your forehead. That would make you feel better, wouldn’t it?”
“No. Go away. And you don’t have to be nice to me,” Orralynne whispered. “I can manage on my own.”
“I’m sure you can, but there’s no need to face this all by yourself. Not this time,” Emma replied. She massaged the woman’s shoulder for a moment with her fingertips. “I’m going to get you those cold cloths. I’ll be right back.”
Orralynne’s eyes widened. “You can’t tell Lester. You can’t tell anyone!”
“I won’t,” Emma promised, although surprised that Orralynne would keep something like this from her brother. With little time to waste, she chose the quickest and easiest way to the kitchen, let herself outside into the cold, and prayed the panther was far, far away. Guided by the lights coming from the windows, she raced to the back of the house, where it was pitch-dark. When she passed by the chicken coop, she could not see anything, but all was quiet. Still, she hoped Steven would be able to strengthen the pen Monday morning, as Mr. Atkins had promised.
When she charged into the kitchen, she found Liesel and Ditty sitting together in front of the fire. They were working on their samplers. Ditty looked up and frowned. “What were you doing outside in the dark? Aren’t you afraid of the panther?”
Liesel kept on stitching. “Don’t be silly. Widow Garrett isn’t afraid of anything. Besides, she chased that panther off earlier today all by herself.”
“Well, I’m afraid of lots of things, and that panther is on the top of my list at the moment,” Ditty countered.
“I just need to gather up a few things,” Emma explained as she rubbed warmth back into her arms. “Where are Mother Garrett and Aunt Frances?”
Liesel put down her sampler. “They’re in the parlor with the Ammond brothers, trying to work out a new tavern puzzle. Would you like us to do something for you?”
Emma hesitated, but then decided she could get back to Orralynne quicker if she enlisted the two young women to help. “As long as I can trust you not to ask any questions and to keep this to yourselves, I’d be very grateful for a little help.”
When both Liesel and Ditty got up, Emma set each of them to separate tasks before tackling one of her own. Ten minutes later, she was headed back out the kitchen door. Loaded down with most of what she needed, she had to walk more slowly this time, which only heightened her worry that the panther might be lurking nearby. When she finally got back to her office, her teeth were chattering and her hands were numb, but she was safely inside again.
Orralynne had moved from the desk to her sleeping cot, where she sat upright with her feet on the floor. She was still wearing her blood-stained gown. The moment Emma looked at her, the woman turned away and stared at the wall. “I told you I could manage alone.”
Emma set down her load and rubbed her hands together to get them warm again. “You’ll feel better if you can manage to get out of your gown. Did you bring a dressing gown, or would you like to borrow one of mine? We’re about the same size.”
“No. I don’t need to borrow anything. I was just about to change.”
“Good. Then while you do that, I’ll wash up the desk,” Emma suggested. After she handed Orralynne the cold cloths she had brought for her, Emma turned her back to the woman. Working quickly, she wiped down the top of the desk and the oil lamp, as well as some drops of blood on the wood floor that miraculously had missed the carpet.
When she picked up the sampler to wipe it clean, she read the simple message to herself: God is love. With the tip of her finger, she traced each of the letters stitched in dark green thread. Ironically, several pinpricks of blood had splashed onto the sampler and dried dark crimson, a poignant reminder of the precious blood spilled by His Son in the ultimate act of pure love. She set the framed sampler back down on her desk without trying the remove the tiny blood stains.
When she finally turned around, Orralynne was sitting on the sleeping cot with her feet flat on the floor. She had wiped her face clean, and she was wearing a dark blue dressing gown that was belted tight at her waist. With her shoulders drooped and her gaze downcast, she looked totally bereft and as limp as a soggy piece of bread. Her gown lay in a crumpled heap on the floor at her feet, but the poor woman looked like she had neither the strength nor the desire to pick it up.
Emma swallowed the lump in her throat. “What do you usually do now? Do you lie down for a spell?”
A long, long breath. “I can’t lie flat. Not for a while. Sometimes the bleeding starts up again, and I’d choke. I’ll . . . I’ll just sit here. There’s nothing more for you to do. You can leave now.”
Emma glanced at the sleeping cot and the single pillow resting at the head. “I have an idea. I’ll be right back.” She scooted back up the stairs all the way to the garret, grabbed four extra bed pillows stored there, and stopped on her way back downstairs on the second floor to put pillowcases on them.
When she got back to her office, she propped all of the pillows at the head of the sleeping cot. “Try lying back now. You may have to adjust the pillows a bit, but you should be able to rest better if you lie back against all five pillows. There’s enough of an incline that if the bleeding starts up again, you won’t start to choke.”
To Emma’s surprise, Orralynne simply turned, pulled her feet up to the cot, and leaned back against the pillows. Emma did not know if the woman was too exhausted from the loss of blood to argue or if she had finally decided that having someone care for her was somehow now acceptable.
In either case, Emma let the woman rest and busied herself tidying up the room. She wrapped up Orralynne’s gown and stored it near the door alongsid
e the other cleaning rags and a pail of bloodied water. She picked up the skates she had dropped and stored one in each of the empty desk drawers, along with the cross and the handkerchief. After she pulled a chair next to the sleeping cot, she dimmed the light and sat down.
Orralynne’s eyes were closed. Her breathing was slow and even. She may have actually fallen asleep.
In the quiet of the moment, with only the sound of their breathing in the room, Emma let her mind wander away from the adult woman lying in the sleeping cot. She looked back to the past, searching for memories of the little girl Orralynne had once been.
Since she and Orralynne were nearly the same age, Emma’s memories were from a child’s perspective; even so, she recognized how painful it must have been to arrive at the town hall, along with other impoverished children and adults, to wait and see who would bid, if anyone, to be paid by the town to care for them for the coming year.
Not everyone who took in the orphaned or the elderly or the poor did so with charitable hearts and good intentions. Even fewer would step forward to care for children as sickly as Orralynne had been, or as deformed as her brother was. Some, however, were kind and good.
Emma closed her eyes. With a little struggle, she recalled at least four, no, five families who had taken in Orralynne and her brother. For several years, they had been separated, then reunited for several more, and finally separated again when Lester had been sent away to apprentice with a tailor in Hampton, Pennsylvania.
To his credit, Lester had brought Orralynne to live with him in the very same cottage they occupied before the fire after his apprenticeship ended and he returned to Candlewood to open his own tailor shop.
Emma bowed her head. While she had grown up knowing nothing but love and tender affection, both Orralynne and her brother had known only loss, as well as rejection, loneliness, and shame. The irony of their situation now, as adults, dependent again on townspeople willing to take them in, was almost too much to fathom. Was it any wonder they were still bitter? Or unkind? Or peevish or ill-natured?
She pressed her hand to her heart. Her spirit wept for the past, filled with hope and determination to be the instrument of His healing love. Quietly, she got up from her chair and retrieved the handkerchief and cross from the desk drawer. She placed them on top of Orralynne’s travel bag, turned out the light, and sat down to resume her vigil, just as the grandfather clock struck the hour of ten.
“You’re still here.”
Orralynne’s voice roused Emma just before she dozed off again. “Yes, I’m still here. How are you feeling?” she asked, disconcerted by having a conversation in the dark.
“What time is it?”
“The last time I remember hearing the grandfather clock, it was four-thirty, so it’s—”
Orralynne sat up. “Four-thirty? In the morning?”
Emma yawned. “Thereabouts, yes.”
“But you’re still here.”
“Yes, I’m still here,” Emma repeated.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to make sure you—”
“Never mind.” Orralynne sighed. “I know why you’re really still here. It’s about Judith Massey. You can say what you’ve come to say, but in truth, I need a drink of water first. My mouth tastes wickedly sour.”
Emma stood up. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t carry any more than I did. I’ll have to go to the kitchen to get you a drink, but it won’t take long. Unless you’re feeling up to it and would like to go with me. There’s plenty in the larder we can snack on, if you’re hungry.”
Orralynne sighed again. “I’m not going outside. Not with that panther lurking about.”
“If you’re strong enough, we could use the stairs to my room, but . . . No, we can’t. Aunt Frances is asleep by now in my room. She’d be frightened if we woke her up.”
“Can’t we just go through the library?”
Emma cleared her throat. “Not with your brother in there. We’d wake him up. Anyway, it wouldn’t be proper for either one of us to be in his bedroom, especially while he’s sleeping.”
She heard Orralynne slowly swing her feet to the floor and get to her feet. “Lester wouldn’t wake up if a pair of mules pulled a freight boat loaded with squealing pigs past his cot. I’ll go first. As long as it’s dark in the library, too, you won’t see a thing you shouldn’t see. Just follow me,” she whispered.
So Emma did, praying with every step that Orralynne was right and Lester would not wake up.
11
FOR BOTH EMMA AND ORRALYNNE, the moment of truth had finally arrived.
Emma sat on one side of the kitchen table facing the fireplace. Orralynne sat on the other side, still pale but somewhat revived by the warm apple cider and buttered molasses bread they had shared in virtual silence.
Like the first rays of the morning sun, a low fire burning in the fireplace chased away the chill in the kitchen and bathed the room with the gentleness of first light. The hurt and disappointment created by Orralynne’s thoughtless words at dinner, however, hung heavy in the shadows, like a curtain of awkwardness.
Emma, however, was unable to remain silent anymore—not if she hoped to restore peace within Hill House. “We need to talk about what happened earlier tonight,” she prompted, hoping Orralynne had had time to consider what she had done to Judith.
The woman flinched and lowered her gaze. “I had a nosebleed. I’m sorry for the mess I made, but you shouldn’t have cleaned it up. I told you I would do that. If . . . if there’s anything stained to ruin, I’ll see that it’s replaced.”
Although Emma had been referring to the earlier incident at dinner with Judith Massey, she was reluctant to correct Orralynne, if only to learn more about the woman’s affliction in order to be able to help her. “Nothing was ruined,” she offered, dismissing the tiny spots of blood on the sampler she kept on her desk. “How often do you have a nosebleed?”
Orralynne did not lift her gaze. “When I was a child, I would have one five or six times a year. These days, I don’t have one very often at all, so you needn’t worry that you’ll be bothered helping me or cleaning up again. Even if I do have another one while I’m here, which I doubt, I won’t cause you any more trouble in that regard. I can take care of myself.”
“I’m not concerned about cleaning up. I’m more troubled by the fact that you have the nosebleeds in the first place. When you were little, did you ever see the midwife, Mrs. Sherman? She usually takes care of the women and children in town when they’re ill. Or what about Dr. Jeffers?”
Orralynne sighed. When she lifted her gaze, her eyes appeared even darker than usual. “Orphaned children who are wards of the town don’t usually merit much attention or concern. Even so, most of the time I knew when to expect a nosebleed, so I just tried to live through it as best I could.”
Curious, Emma cocked her head. “How did you know to expect a nosebleed?”
Orralynne looked past Emma’s shoulder, as if looking back into the past, and her eyes shimmered with misery. “Usually I got one in the weeks right before I would find out if I would be passed on to another family. More likely than not, I’d be moved, and the nosebleeds would start again, but just for a while.”
Just imagining the fear and confusion that must have triggered the nosebleeds, Emma’s heart grew heavy. “I’m sorry. That must have been a scary time for you.”
Orralynne tilted up her chin. “I was scared because I was young. I was only five when my mother died. But I’m not scared anymore. I’ve learned to accept my affliction. In point of fact, I did see both Mrs. Sherman and Dr. Jeffers after Lester came back to Candlewood and took me to live with him. She tried to help, but there was little she could do to stop the nosebleeds from starting in the first place. Dr. Jeffers suggested I should take Riley’s Bilious Pills.”
She snorted. “Those pills made me so sick! I felt like my head was stuck in the middle of a cloud. I couldn’t get out of bed most days, and I still had a nosebleed occasionally, so I du
mped those pills into the trash pit.”
Emma nodded. “We used to sell them at the General Store. I’ve heard more than one woman say the same thing,” she admitted. Encouraged by Orralynne’s willingness to talk openly with the usual rancor, she tried to learn more. “Why do you think you had the nosebleed tonight?”
Orralynne’s cheeks suffused with pink, and her eyes flashed, as if Emma had struck a match and reignited her old self. “You want to know why? I’ll tell you why. Because I don’t want to be here. Because I want to be home, where I belong. Because I know no one here at Hill House wants me or my brother here, not even you. Not really. If you did, you would have taken us in the night of the fire instead of letting us be humiliated not once, but three times when we were put out by those other families.”
Stung by the truth of the woman’s accusation and bewildered by how to reply without antagonizing Orralynne any further, Emma moistened her lips. “Well, I . . . I—”
“Don’t deny it. I know it’s true, so don’t bother to lie or to try to defend yourself,” Orralynne demanded. “You’re supposed to be a woman who follows the Word. Or do you just follow your own rules at Hill House and attend services every Sunday but leave your faith in the pew when you leave, like most everyone else in this hypocritical town?”
Emma dropped her gaze and drew in a deep breath. She folded her hands on her lap before she looked up at Orralynne again. “You’re right. It’s true. I did hesitate to bring you and Lester here to Hill House. But in the same vein of truth, you should know that I didn’t have any idea your brother’s cottage had been damaged by the fire or that you needed a place to live until Zachary Breckenwith told me this morning.”
Orralynne’s eyes widened. “Even so, I’m sure you had to be persuaded to take us in.”
“Not by him and not by the sheriff,” Emma countered. “I had to persuade myself.”