by Sara Donati
“I knew Jemima wanted to go to Martha’s,” Becca said. “But I didn’t think they’d let her. You’d think she’d be happy to get her way.”
Charlie lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I don’t think anybody will ever understand that woman. Or how she came to have such a sweet boy.”
“I understand her,” Becca said, lying down again. “She’s as mean as a snake and twice as twisty, and thank the dear Lord that Nicholas takes after his da.”
“It’s not like you to be so uncharitable,” Charlie said. “The woman is dying.”
“Let her get on with it, then,” Becca said. “It cain’t come soon enough. Can you remember a time when she wasn’t causing trouble?”
“If you put it that way,” Charlie said, and blew out the candle.
Daniel came out on the porch and Martha said, “Did you really think I’d be able to sleep?”
He shook his head and put an arm around her shoulder. The night was warm and there was a breeze that stirred the grass and Martha’s loosened hair. She smelled of soap and salt, and if there had been any real light Daniel knew what he’d see: her face swollen with weeping.
“I didn’t think you’d want to wait and watch,” he said.
“I’m not sure I do, but I don’t seem to be able to stay away. Daniel?”
“Hmmm?”
“Have you thought much about having children?”
He knew she felt the jolt that ran through him, because she held up a hand. “I’m not.”
“Not yet,” he said.
She would be blushing, but her voice was calm. “Not yet. But I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t know if I can. That is, I’m fairly sure I’m capable—” Her voice trailed away.
Daniel drew in a deep breath and let it go. “You are physically capable—”
“I assume so.”
“—but in your mind you feel unprepared.”
“In my heart and mind, yes.”
“Who is ever prepared for a first child?”
“No,” she said. “It’s worse than that. For Lily it’s different than it is for me. Don’t you know what I mean?” A tinge of exasperation and unhappiness in her tone and she shifted uneasily on the bench.
“Yes, I think I do. You’re afraid that you’ll be a mother like your mother was.”
“I’m afraid that I will turn into that kind of mother.”
She seemed to be waiting for permission to go on. He said, “Martha, I’m listening.”
“I know. I know you are. When I was young, I had this odd idea that every mother was like mine, but some were just better at hiding it. Becca, for example. She’s gruff, but there’s no doubting how she feels about her children. Even when she yelled at them, you could feel it. But I was sure that it was all for show.”
“Maybe it was easier for you to live with that idea,” Daniel said.
“Maybe.”
“When did you figure out that some women do make good mothers?”
She was quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure I ever did. Sometimes when I see a woman who is loving and open with her children, I still feel some doubt. Even with Amanda, and she is the gentlest, kindest soul I know. Even there I wondered now and then what stories Peter might tell if I asked him the right way.”
“So. Are you saying you don’t want to have children at all?”
She turned to rub her cheek on his shoulder. “That’s the problem, Daniel. I do want to have them. Whenever we’re together some part of me hopes I’ll catch, but then afterward—the thought frightens me.”
After a long moment Daniel said, “Did you ever wonder what kind of mother Jemima would have been if Liam Kirby had loved her and married her? If he had been there to help raise you?”
She lifted her face to look at him. “I have to say that never occurred to me. I wonder why not, why I can’t imagine her happy, and that’s—I don’t know what it is. Sad, or tragic. She sometimes told me that if I hadn’t been born, things would have gone differently for her.”
“And I thought I couldn’t get any madder at her than I am already. She blamed you for her mistakes.” His voice had taken on an edge, but he couldn’t stop himself. “She’s a sorry excuse for a human being. You know that you weren’t responsible for her unhappiness, I hope.”
“In theory, yes.” She said it very quietly.
“I can tell you one thing for sure,” Daniel said. “There’s no simple explanation for why a person turns out the way they do. Good parents or bad, rich or poor. Your grandmother Southern was a good woman, but Jemima still turned out the way she did. And then there’s Becca; you said yourself that she’s a good mother, but her own mother was a drunk, and mean too. Maybe you haven’t heard those stories, but it’s true.”
“I’ve heard them. Curiosity told me some of that, and she said something I forgot about until just now. She said, the reason Becca works so hard and never allows herself a moment’s peace is because she’s running away from the idea of her mother. Trying to prove to herself that she’s not the same person.”
“Yes, that makes sense,” Daniel said. “I wonder she hasn’t dropped dead of exhaustion long ago.”
Martha laughed, a short tight sound.
He said, “All I know to do is to be here, Martha. You don’t have anything to prove to me. You may doubt that it’s in you to be a good mother, but I don’t, not for a second. Maybe if we hadn’t been rushed into marrying I could have had time to make you understand how I see you, and how fine you are to me. I should tell you more often, but words don’t always come easy.”
He felt her relaxing against him and it made him want to hold her tighter, to turn her to him and show her what he meant to say.
She said, “Listen.”
In the clear night air there was no mistaking the sound of horse and cart coming up the trail. Hopper roused himself and growled, the fur standing up on the back of his neck until Daniel spoke a word.
Martha was up and moving slowly toward the sound. It drew her forward as steadily and unrelenting as a rope. He could call her back, but he doubted she’d even hear him. Following her at the right distance, that was the trick, but then she stood there in the dark, all the color leached away so that it seemed to him, for that moment, that he could see through her, see her bones and the flow of blood and the shapes of her muscles.
He took her hand. Her pulse was hammering high and fast, while his own heart seemed to be settling into a preternaturally slow rhythm. Daniel was aware of the knife at his hip, of the sweat trickling down his back, of the nightbirds in the woods and the stars overhead.
He wanted to take her back into the house, but she wouldn’t thank him for his interference. She had decided upon a course of action, and he would not try to stop her.
Martha drew in a short sharp breath when Nathaniel came out of the woods. He was carrying a lantern that swung in rhythm with his step, with Florida following.
It was true, then. It was happening. They would take Jemima to Lake in the Clouds, where Susanna would nurse her until she died.
The cart Florida pulled was just big enough for a couple lambs or barrels, but it would handle the mountain trail all the way up. They had lined it with something, quilts or blankets, and turned it into a makeshift chair. A throne, of sorts, where Martha’s mother sat wrapped in blankets despite the heat. The swinging lantern revealed a shoulder, a cheek, the jawline in turn.
Ethan followed with another lantern, and behind Ethan came Callie.
Martha’s breath caught in her throat.
Beside her Daniel said, “Callie’ll do what she must, and so will you.”
“I can’t leave her to handle it on her own,” Martha said.
“You can,” Daniel said.
Nathaniel and Ethan raised hands in greeting but their pace didn’t slacken. Callie’s gaze was fixed on the cart. Martha had the idea that Callie wasn’t even aware of where she was.
“I’ll regret it for the rest of my life if I leave her to do this al
one.”
Daniel started to say something and then fell silent, because the figure in the cart shifted and a harsh voice was rising in question. It was Nathaniel who turned to answer, and in response Jemima’s voice rose another octave. Callie’s voice and then Jemima’s, both sharp as sticks.
“Martha!” Jemima yelled. “I can see you there. Martha! Will you send me off to die among strangers?” She was struggling to free herself of the covers, shouting at Nathaniel to stop, to stop right here, to stop right here or by God she would put out his eyes.
The cart stopped, and Martha began to move forward with Daniel by her side.
Callie called out, “Go back. Go back. There’s no talking to her. She’s as mean and stubborn as she ever was.”
“Martha Kuick!” Jemima shouted, her voice cracking. “You get over here right now or I will box your ears, I promise you that, missy.”
Those words came out of the past and struck Martha with such force that she stopped, unsure of herself and the world around her. Everything folded in upon itself and narrowed to a small island of wavering lantern light on the border between open field and the dark of the woods, between herself and the woman who had borne her and raised her, the woman who demanded recognition, who would wring it from her like water from a rag, if Martha let her. Out of pity, out of guilt and a regret she could hardly explain to herself.
For that moment Martha met her mother’s gaze and a great stillness came over her, an understanding. Jemima was dying, and she was afraid. Fear and desperation had brought her back to Paradise, and to this spot on the mountain. In her rage she would strike out, as vicious as an animal caught in a trap, and she would strike first at those who were bound by blood to care for her. The mother Martha had wanted, the mother she had wanted to believe lived deep within the mother she knew, she would not show herself in these last days. There would be no gentle words or kindness, because that woman had never existed.
The woman in the cart, and the people who stood nearby talking to her and to one another, their voices small and distant … Martha was aware only of herself and Daniel, standing so close that she felt the heat of his body. Close enough to touch, but not touching. Waiting.
She drew in a hitching breath and held it for three heartbeats. Then Martha turned and started back for the house.
Behind them the cart began to move again, Florida tossing her head so that her harness jingled. Jemima was still shouting, her voice so strained that the words came out first garbled and then not at all. She hissed and squawked like an angry goose, but the cart moved on and she went with it.
Martha was aware of Daniel looking over his shoulder to watch. Then he stopped so suddenly that she would have fallen if he hadn’t steadied her.
“What?” she said. “What?”
Daniel said, “It’s Levi. Stay here.” And he ran off at a lope toward the group that had stopped again, just short of the spot where the trail turned into the wood.
Martha watched Daniel moving away from her, and then she jolted out of her waking dream.
She raised her skirts in her hands and ran after him.
Daniel was aware of his father’s steady voice, talking in a tone most people recognized as something to take seriously.
“Levi,” he was saying. “You won’t mind me pointing out that laying in wait with a loaded musket ain’t exactly neighborly.”
“My business is with her,” Levi said, jerking his head toward Jemima.
“I was wondering if you’d ever get around to it,” Jemima said. She sounded almost pleased. “All these years you been thinking about this, haven’t you. Getting me alone and making me pay.”
Ethan said, “We could gag her.”
“You should take your own advice,” Jemima said. “Unless you want me to start talking about you.”
Levi held the musket easily, like any tool a man might pick up to fix what was broken. Daniel felt the weight of the knife under his hand. It would be easy enough to disarm the man, if things got that far. If he could make himself do it.
“She wants to talk about my mother,” Levi said. “Let her talk.” He looked at no one but Jemima, even when he was speaking to someone else.
“He wants a confession,” Jemima said to no one at all.
“Now see,” Nathaniel said to Levi. “I know you’re too smart to let her draw you into one of her traps. She’ll poke at you until you boil over and point that gun at her. That’s what she wants, Levi.”
Jemima let out a barking laugh, but Levi’s face was stony. He said, “I’d be glad to oblige you, if you want to die right here and now. As soon as you confess.”
“You first,” said Jemima. “You tell everybody how it was you schemed your way into buying the orchard out from under Callie.”
“I got all night,” Levi said. “I’ll stand here until you feel like talking. I want to know how my ma died. Maybe it’s too late to see you tried and hanged, but I’ll have a confession.”
“Levi,” Callie said. “She’s never going to tell the truth you want to hear.”
“What truth is that?” Jemima said. “The one that makes you feel better?”
Nathaniel stepped right up so that he was towering over Jemima. He said, “’Mima, I’ve had just about enough of your nonsense. Another word and I gag you. You think I won’t do it?”
The lantern light lit only half her face, which looked to Daniel like a mummer’s mask, human and animal all at once.
“Now I think I got a solution that will satisfy Levi and won’t run too contrary to the law. You listening, Levi?”
“I’ve got nothing to say about this?” Jemima tried to sit up straighter.
“Not a thing,” said Nathaniel.
“Go on,” Levi said.
“I say tomorrow we fetch Bookman up here, and we have a hearing. An inquiry, I think you call it, into Cookie’s death. Will that serve?”
Levi uncocked his musket. He nodded. “Tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow afternoon. I got a new grandchild trying to make its way into the world and I’d like to be close by for a while. And I don’t doubt there will be some who want to speak to this on the record. Ethan, you think we can take care of this tomorrow afternoon?”
“Yes. As long as Bookman hasn’t ridden off somewhere.”
Jemima had been watching this exchange stony-faced, but now she turned her attention to Ethan. “You want a hearing, you had better be ready because I got stories to tell too.”
Ethan seemed to have not heard her at all. To Levi he said, “If you need a hearing, then that’s what you’ll get. Right now I think we all need to get moving.”
“I’m going up to Lake in the Clouds with you,” Levi said. “I’m not letting her out of my sight.”
66
Luke was a patient man and never balked at stepping out of the way when he wasn’t needed, but for once his calm had been shaken. When Elizabeth came to find him he was red-eyed and his hair stood up in peaks. He was frantic with worry, and she was here to tell him that there was indeed reason for concern. Ben sat with him, and for once there was nothing in his expression of good humor.
“She never screamed like that before,” Luke said. “With the girls, she didn’t scream like that.”
He hadn’t been with Jennet when Nathan was born, something he had always regretted; Elizabeth had heard him say it.
“It is not the easiest of births,” she said. She sat down across from him and wished for Nathaniel. Maybe Ben saw that in her expression, because he cleared his throat and leaned forward a little.
He said, “If you’ve got news it would be best if you’d come out with it.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “The child is very big, and Jennet’s not making progress the way we would hope. But it’s not time to despair yet. She wants to see you, Luke.”
He followed her up the stairs and along the hall, passing the empty rooms where his children would normally be sleeping. They had all been sent to Uphill House with Birdie, to
sleep two and three to a bed with their cousins.
There was no reluctance in him, but dread and confusion and a contained fury.
Jennet’s moaning could be heard clearly, though the door was shut, and as they approached it spiraled up into a hoarse scream, the kind of scream a man has rarely heard unless he has been in battle. Elizabeth hesitated, and Luke reached past her and opened the door.
The room was well lit, at Hannah’s direction, so that shadows danced on the walls. Both windows were open, but covered with cotton gauze pulled tight and pinned in place to keep the insects out. Whatever breeze this would have provided was countered by the fire in the hearth, where water was kept at a simmer and Hannah burned herbs.
Hannah and Curiosity did not even look in their direction. Curiosity was bent over Jennet’s straining form, her head turned to one side as she felt her way by touch alone, measuring what progress there might be.
Jennet’s scream fell away and Curiosity straightened to look at her while she took a damp cloth from Hannah and wiped her hands.
“You working hard, I know it. The child has got itself stuck, and I’ma have to turn it.”
“Then turn it,” Jennet whispered, her voice cracking. “But let me talk to Luke for a moment.”
Hannah said, “Just a moment, Jennet. Time is of the essence.”
She stood with one hand resting lightly on the mound of Jennet’s stomach, waiting for the first sign of the next contraction.
Elizabeth went to the far side of the bed to refold the pile of linen that needed no refolding, because while Jennet and Luke deserved privacy, it was a luxury Jennet could not afford. Curiosity turned to tend the fire, and Hannah began to organize the tray of medications and herbs. All of them trying not to listen, but of course they heard, every word.
Jennet said, “I’ve made a muddle of this.”
“So you have.” Luke’s voice firm and tender at the same time. “But you’ll figure a way out, you always do.”
“If things gae wrong—Luke, dinnae shake your heid, ye mun hark. Should things gae bad, then the bairns should be raised here. Lily and Simon wad take them, I’ve already talked to her about it—”