The Endless Forest

by Sara Donati

  “It was wrong,” Callie said.

  “Yes,” Martha said quietly.

  “Before Nicholas came, I think I was on the brink of real madness. I don’t think Ethan could have helped me then, but Nicholas brought me back to myself.” She drew in a long breath. “Martha, I’d die before I let Jemima get hold of that boy. Blood or not, I can’t bear the thought of what she’d try to make out of him.”

  “Of course you’re right,” Martha said. “Of course he must stay here with us.”

  “She’ll want to take him away. Could we hide him?”

  “For a while, but not forever. Callie, we don’t have to figure this out on our own. We have Ethan and Daniel and the whole clan, and you know that they will help.”

  “I hope so,” Callie said. “I hope you’re right.”

  Just before sunrise Daniel saddled the horses and took Callie down to the village, because she wouldn’t stay even when he offered to take word to Ethan.

  “The fresh air will clear my head.”

  “You’ll need five, six hours of solid sleep to clear your head,” Daniel said. Callie would usually have had a smart comeback, but she was half asleep in the saddle and wrung out. There hadn’t been time for Martha to tell him what was wrong, but he could see for himself that Callie was in a bad way.

  The day was overcast and the wind already fitful. His aunt Many-Doves would have seen an omen in the color of the sky. Daniel wondered, but he didn’t have her gifts. Certainly he was at a loss when it came to saying the right things to a woman in Callie’s state. His mother would know; even his father would know. For the moment the best he could do was not talk at all; not offer any false comfort or hope. Let her be in the world without distraction.

  Once they crossed the bridge into the village she said, “Thank you. I can go on from here alone. I’ll make sure the horse gets back to you later today.”

  Her tone left no room for argument, and Daniel watched her move away. He could turn around and go straight back to Martha, but she would sleep for a few hours at least, after last night. He headed for his mother’s kitchen where he found nobody but the LeBlanc girls, who were baking. According to Anje, his mother and all the rest of the family had gone over to Curiosity’s not a half hour before, to spend the day. If he had come up by the regular way he would have seen them parading along behind Simon and Ben carrying Lily between them on her divan.

  For so much of their childhoods Lily had done her best to gain the upper hand over her brother and cousins, and now she was making the most of it.

  “Your da is in the stable,” Joan said in a surly tone. “And you’re in the way.” Martha hadn’t been exaggerating about Joan, he could see that now. He wondered if he should say something to her, if that would make matters better or worse. There was no way to ask her about any of this without sounding cruel, but he would have liked to know exactly what wrong Joan thought Martha had done her.

  Daniel went out to the barn and found his father sitting on a keg of nails in the open doorway, his face raised to the sky.

  “That storm means business,” Nathaniel said by way of greeting. “Things battened down at home?”

  “Martha can manage,” Daniel said. “I just wanted to talk for a few minutes before I head back. Can you tell me what’s going on with Callie? She came up in the middle of the night, and they talked until light, her and Martha. From the look of her she’s shed a bucket or two of tears.”

  “You don’t want to wait to hear it from Martha?”

  Daniel crouched down to rest on his heels. “If you tell me now that gives me the ride home to sort it through.”

  “Fair enough,” said his father. And he told him.

  Later Daniel said, “That bitch.”

  “That’s one word for her.”

  He walked in a circle through the stable to think it through. “Da, is there any way to know who the boy really is?”

  “Probably not,” his father said. “Maybe she gave birth in Boston and couldn’t stand the sight of him. Maybe her own child was born dead and she got another one from the orphanage to take his place. Lorena wasn’t in the house long enough to get any sense of things.”

  “Jemima did the boy one favor,” Daniel said. “She handed him over to Lorena instead of raising him herself.”

  Rain had begun to fall in heavy drops that raised dust in the door-yard.

  “You know what Ethan’s thinking? How he wants to handle Jemima when she comes back? I doubt she’ll just give over when she hears Callie sold the orchard out from under her.”

  Nathaniel said, “I think most of us have an idea of how to handle Jemima, but your ma would object. You got any suggestions?”

  “Maybe,” Daniel said. “Let me think about it for a bit.”

  The wind picked up and began to drive the rain against the roof and walls. A warm rain, the kind that was made for children to play in. Daniel realized he was sorry to have missed the little people. Even more than that, he saw how things had changed. Just a few months ago he would have been glad to be left to his own devices.

  “I got this idea,” said his father. “Your ma wouldn’t like me asking you such a thing straight out, but I’m going to anyway. You count yourself happy these days?”

  It was a word Daniel seldom considered. He wasn’t even sure what it meant, and he said so.

  “You are your ma’s son,” said his father with a half smile. “If you cain’t even take a word like happy at face value.”

  “Da, this is the best way I know how to say it. If one of Jennet’s fairies offered me the chance to change one thing in my life, I don’t know what I’d say. I like teaching, and I’m getting better at it all the time. I like where I live, halfway between Lake in the Clouds and here. I like coming here on Sundays especially. And—” He paused, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to put the way he felt about Martha into words. His father waited, content with the quiet.

  “And when it comes to Martha, I can’t believe my own good luck. Even arguing is something to look forward to, and I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in one day. There’s nothing to not love about her.”

  And there it was, the word that loomed so large in his mind, bigger by the day. The word he had never spoken out loud, even to Martha. The word neither of them had said aloud.

  His father watched the rain for a long minute. Then he said, “That’s the way it’s supposed to be, and I’m pleased for you. But what about your bad arm? Caught you off guard, did I? You weren’t even thinking about it.”

  “I guess not,” Daniel said. He looked at the hand that lay in the fold of the sling, and then, quite deliberately, he flexed his wrist and then, before he could lose his nerve, lifted his elbow. The pain was there, but was there less of it?

  Maybe Hannah’s needles were making some difference. He had never allowed himself to consider that possibility. He had accepted the pain and the loss of his arm, or he thought he had. The idea that there might be some improvement made him feel jumpy.

  “So.” His father got up and stretched to get the kinks out of his legs. “Rain or no, there’s work to be done. You planning on staying around or heading back to that girl of yours?”

  Daniel said, “I’m already gone.”

  58

  Curiosity said, “You got a scowl on you would sour milk. You finally ready to tell me what’s been eating at you the last couple weeks?”

  Birdie came all the way into the kitchen and sat down on the stool next to Curiosity’s rocking chair. It was a little easier here on the talking stool, as she thought of it. It was a good place to settle her mind when things were going badly.

  “June,” Birdie said, “has been a terrible month.”

  Curiosity pursed her lips. “Go on.”

  “First Levi and Lorena get married and don’t even have a party after.”

  “I don’t suppose you can forget that any time soon,” Curiosity said dryly.

  “And it’s rained almost every day since.”

>   “It has been some wet this year, that’s true.”

  “The little people get awful fractious when they’re stuck indoors for any length of time.”

  Curiosity looked at her down the slope of her nose, and Birdie heaved a great sigh.

  “I get fractious too.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Auntie Jennet is so big she waddles.”

  “And just why does that bother you? It’s a natural thing.”

  “It bothers me because that baby is sure to come on the Fourth of July and then that party will be ruined.”

  “She’s pretty close,” Curiosity agreed. “Might could be on the Fourth.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want her to have the baby. I’ll be just as happy about the baby as everybody else, but first you and Ma and Hannah will close yourself up with her and you won’t come out for a whole night or maybe even longer, and that will be that, no more Fourth of July.”

  “You always borrowing trouble. Why is that?”

  “I’m just being pragmatic,” Birdie said. She pronounced the word carefully, as she had only written it down in her notebook yesterday. “And there is real trouble. Daniel got a letter from Manhattan. The new teacher isn’t coming.”

  That got Curiosity’s attention. She put down the magnifying glass and the book she was trying to read, and looked at Birdie more closely.

  “Do tell.”

  “His ma is sickly and he can’t leave Manhattan.”

  “Now that is a disappointment. What does Daniel say?”

  Birdie fluttered her fingers in the air as if to shoo the idea of her brother away.

  “He’s going to put a new advertisement in the newspapers, but you remember how long it took last time? I just know when school starts we’ll all be crammed back into the one classroom. He won’t even talk to Martha about taking the class. I asked him and he got all stony-faced.”

  “Not in front of you, he won’t talk to Martha. That business is between him and her, and you had best stay out of it.”

  “So you think he might ask her?”

  “Mayhap,” Curiosity said.

  It gave Birdie some hope. Some very little hope.

  “You think she’d rather stay home all day looking after the house? That doesn’t sound like Martha to me.”

  Curiosity pursed her mouth while she thought. Then she said, “Other things might keep her at home.”

  “Not another baby.”

  “I don’t know about that one way or the other,” Curiosity said. “But it’s just a matter of time. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Birdie said, “I wish people would stop having babies.”

  “You won’t feel that way in another ten years or so.”

  “I will too,” Birdie said. “I’m never going to have any.”

  Curiosity raised her brows, two strong white wings against her dark skin. “You say so?”

  Birdie nodded. “I’m going to go places and do things, and babies just get in the way.”

  “Well, then,” Curiosity said. “Duly noted.”

  Birdie looked at her closely and saw nothing of amusement in that familiar face. Curiosity wouldn’t make fun when it was something really important, and it was a comfort to her.

  “Tell me,” Curiosity said to Birdie. “Was there any other mail?”

  “Nothing for you. Ma got a letter from somebody famous about something she wrote in a newspaper; it came all the way from Germany. Luke got letters from his office on Whitehall Street.”

  Curiosity said, “Would you just go ahead and spit out whatever it is you come in here to talk about?”

  Birdie said, “All right. Every grown-up has been whispering in corners for weeks, it seems like. Nobody will tell me what about, but it’s something important. I asked Da straight out and he told me that it was serious business and none of my concern. Can you imagine that? None of my concern, as if I was one of the little people. If everybody is worried, then I have got the right to be worried too.”

  “Sound to me like you already worried,” Curiosity said.

  “You know what I mean. If there’s something wrong I could help.”

  Curiosity’s expression softened. “Your folks just trying to keep you safe.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Curiosity said.

  “Jemima,” Birdie said. “I know it’s Jemima everybody is whispering about. Can’t you just tell me that much?”

  “Of course it’s Jemima,” Curiosity said. “She’s that bad penny you always hear folks talking about. I can tell you this much—”

  Birdie sat up straighter.

  “It ain’t none of my business, and none of yours either.”

  When Curiosity got a certain look in her eye, it was best to leave things be. Birdie got up and went to find her mother.

  Nathaniel Bonner pushed back from the breakfast table late on the morning of the Fourth of July and ran a handkerchief over his damp brow. Elizabeth glanced at him from the newspaper she was reading, revealing ink marks on either side of the bridge of her nose.

  She said, “You’re grinning. I take it I have ink on my face?” And she held out her hand for his handkerchief.

  “I’m guessing you got a headache if you’re pinching the bridge of your nose.”

  “A little one. I’ll ask Hannah for one of her powders.”

  He leaned over and kissed her on the brow. “Boots, it’s time you admitted you need spectacles for reading.”

  Over the years she had seen at least a dozen people fitted for spectacles—at her own expense too—but now she avoided doing the same for herself.

  “An occupational hazard.” Whether she meant the ink or the need for spectacles wasn’t clear, and she clearly had no intention of pursuing the subject. Instead she reached back to a basket of clean laundry and hooked a fresh handkerchief out for him.

  He said, “I’m on my way down to the village to see how they’re getting along with the fire pits. I’m hoping there won’t be any fistfights tonight.”

  “Now that’s a fib,” Elizabeth said. “You look forward to the ruckus all year.”

  It was true that he looked forward to the Fourth of July celebration. The food was good and plentiful, there were contests and games and dancing. In the evening, Joshua Hench would set up his twice-a-year fireworks display.

  “You saying you don’t like the Fourth?”

  “I love the Fourth,” Elizabeth said. “And you know it. I just wish it weren’t so very hot. I keep thinking of the July I was eight months gone with Robbie, when I thought I would suffocate in that heat.”

  She sometimes talked of the children they had lost so early, and in such warm tones that anyone who didn’t know her would think she had got past the pain. The fact that the lost ones were on her mind meant that she was more worried about Jennet and Lily than she could even admit to herself. To Nathaniel it seemed that all the women were on edge these last few days, and he wondered, fleetingly, if there was something amiss they had decided to keep among themselves. If he asked her straight out she would tell him, but then again he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  Instead he said, “Why don’t you come down with me? I’m guessing the little people will have all kinds of mischief going, and I know folks will be asking after you. Curiosity will have some harsh words for me if I leave you here.”

  “It just seems unfair that Hannah should have to stay behind.”

  “Hannah,” he reminded her, “is a doctor, and if she thinks she needs to stay with Jennet and Lily, that’s up to her.”

  He watched her turn the idea over in her mind. She said, “I could send one of the children up to check on them now and then.”

  “Exactly,” Nathaniel said. “Fetch your sunbonnet, Boots, and let’s get going.”

  In the deep shade of the parlor Hannah stood at the window and watched her father and stepmother start out for the party in the village.

  “He did it,” she said. “I didn’t think
he would, this year. But she’s going.”

  “Well, good,” Lily said. “Good for Da.”

  Hannah sat down in the rocker Simon had fitted with a system of ropes and pulleys. She put one foot on a small board that pivoted as she rocked, and in response a thin rectangle of perforated wood hung overhead began to swing back and forth, sending a current of cool air through the room.

  “Och,” Jennet said, putting her face up to catch the breeze. “Don’t stop.”

  “I think Simon could sell these contraptions from Florida to Quebec,” Hannah said.

  Lily stretched and yawned. “He is clever, my good husband. Is it possible that I need another nap?”

  “Take it while you can get it,” Hannah said.

  It was a luxury to have husbands and parents and children elsewhere, so that they could rest in each other’s company. Even the LeBlanc girls had the day off, so that there was no one to overhear them and carry tales to the village. To Hannah it was worth a hundred firework displays.

  For a long time they talked on and off, each of them slipping away into sleep for a few minutes, half rousing, falling back into slumber. When the baby roused from his nap Hannah fetched him to the parlor and nursed him in the pleasant breeze from the fan, and then they passed him around and entertained him until the heat made him sleepy again. Hannah took him back to the infant cot that had a permanent place in her stepmother’s kitchen and saw him settled.

  Then she put together a tray and they sat around it in the parlor—Lily still on her divan, Hannah and Jennet on chairs—eating boiled eggs with salt and butter and new bread. There was a jug of water she had retrieved from the springhouse, and cold mint tea.

  “In the village they’re eating pork cut off the spit,” said Jennet. “But the very thought makes my stomach turn.” She ran a hand over the great swell of her belly.