I couldn’t tell her about Owen. I wanted to, but something in me held back, unsure.
“Owen came to see you, didn’t he?”
I was stunned. “How—” I began. Then I realized she must have seen his boat somewhere after he departed the island.
The delight in her eyes vanished. “I knew it,” she said, accusingly.
I wanted to tell her about my first real kiss—one that counted—about how Owen said he’d return to gather me at the end of the week. About how he knew someone who was going to drive the long, muddy road to Duluth and that he was willing to take a rider for free. About how Owen said he’d accompany me, to make sure I found a place to work and stay. That he had showed me an ad for lace-collar jobs from the Duluth News Tribune, employers advertising for on-the-job training for stenographers and secretaries for “girls of good reputation.”
They were jobs relatively new to women, jobs that could offer me freedom and independence. Perhaps if I worked hard at saving what I’d earn, I’d be able to put myself through college. It might take me forever, but it would be worth it. Besides, Duluth was a big port city on Lake Superior. I could imagine myself there—a modern young woman living on my own—maybe someday with Owen, too.
“Well, aren’t you going to tell me what happened?” She glared at me.
But I didn’t want to tell her anything. I didn’t trust her—trust this streak of jealousy. “Oh, nothing much,” I said. “He said he’d come for me in a few days. He dropped by to let me know. I can’t stay here forever, after all.”
“Oh, so nothing happened between you two then?” Her tone shifted, softened.
I shrugged.
She studied me. “You’re a terrible liar,” she said and then laughed.
“Oh. I didn’t want to make you feel bad, especially after—”
“After?”
“You know, Victor. When I arrived.”
She looked at me as if she had no idea what I was talking about. “Silly Sadie Rose. You have a wild imagination, don’t you?” Then she pushed her blonde curls back out of her eyes. With childlike enthusiasm, she motioned me to join her on my thick layering of blankets. She plopped down, cross-legged. “So you and Owen! Tell me every detail!”
Her sudden warmth primed me like a pump, and everything I’d only one second earlier decided not to share with her flowed out in a gush of words. This time she seemed to soak up my good news, smiling.
She hugged me. “Sadie, I’m genuinely happy for you! I truly am.”
The next day passed, and with it, Trinity’s mood.
As trees cast late-day shadows, I was getting hungry, wondering if Trinity had forgotten me again. I hated being a burden for her. She arrived, but this time with a single slice of bread between her fingers. She thrust it toward me, as if I were a tiresome prisoner. “Here. And don’t complain. Some fare far worse than you.”
Her words and actions left me tottering, uncertain what she might do or say next. I wanted to take back every precious secret I’d shared with her about my time with Owen. I wanted to leave Baird’s Island and wished I’d insisted on climbing in Owen’s boat when he’d left.
The next day she didn’t step foot near the cabin. I kept watch at the lakeside window, feeling much more a prisoner now than guest or stowaway. If only Owen would arrive early. I moped about the studio cabin until I’d memorized each and every sketch and painting, every chink between the logs. I’d already come to expect the same red squirrel each morning in the petunia box, where he ate a pinecone half his size. The flaky seeds he didn’t eat he buried in the soil.
After sunset, I slipped from the cabin to a sandy nook sheltered by overhanging branches. If I waited until after sunset, the mosquitoes died down. I hung my nightdress over a branch and eased my body into the cool water. Washed, then floated under dazzling pinpoints of constellations and waves of milky light. An occasional boat ventured along the channel, but no one could see me as I rubbed the chill away with a towel.
But that night, a white moon rose—just shy of full—spotlighting my bathing area. I hurried and returned to the cabin in my nightdress.
On my extravagant pile of blankets, I pressed my palms against my belly, which had grown thinner. I couldn’t survive long on a slice of bread and water. My stomach rumbled and complained, echoing off its empty chambers.
But thinking about hunger didn’t make it go away.
Instead, I imagined a big dinner of pork roast, glazed carrots, and mashed potatoes with gravy. I drew a deep breath and pressed my belly outward, pretending I was incredibly full.
And then I imagined a different kind of full belly. My hands smoothed over an imaginary swollen womb, wondering what it might be like to someday carry a child. I’d felt so wronged being brought up in a brothel that I’d never imagined that I’d someday want a child of my own.
But if I could offer a good home, a sense of belonging.
If it were Owen’s child . . . if he and I were to become something more . . . not that I was in a rush . . . I longed to continue my education before I married and thought about a family . . . but for the first time, I realized I could warm to such dreams. Someday.
For now, I certainly could warm to Owen’s fingertips, his lips and tongue on mine, his hands . . . the way he had of building a slow fire of deep embers within me.
I breathed in the truth of Owen’s words—you are not your mother—and the way they were more than words. A key that set me free. Free to live my own life. I would always be linked to my past, as everyone is, but I wasn’t bound by it any longer. Now I had a better understanding of my real mother. She’d been in love once, married, had a child, and out of desperate circumstances, tried to keep herself and her child alive. I would hold fast to the good in her.
I breathed—deep, long, grateful breaths—and let my thoughts return to Owen.
I was falling all right. Tumbling in a sweet free fall.
But so far, Owen was proving a sturdy and welcoming net.
That night, I dropped into a peaceful sleep.
I woke to a whistling wind, to branches scraping at my window, and to something more . . . a single, low, and soul-piercing howl.
I sat up, waiting to hear it again.
I’d heard wolves howl before, their ancient chorus of voices rising into a melancholy whole, penetrating marrow, reaching an eerie crescendo, then dropping off, voice by voice, into silence.
Once, right in the middle of the day, when our passenger train from St. Paul had stopped for repairs after hitting a bull moose, howling had sliced through the cold fall air. Everyone in the passenger car stopped talking to listen. And another night, on a sleigh ride with the Worthingtons when I was six, wolves had sounded so close that I’d huddled closer to Mrs. Worthington, and she’d wrapped her arm around me until the howling—shrill and shuddering—stopped.
I surfaced from a cavern of sleep, but the night was quiet. I sat up, waited, then lay back down again, questioning if I’d been dreaming.
Again, the soft-pitched howl.
This time I recognized the voice.
I wrapped the quilt around my shoulders and nightdress and rushed out, following Trinity’s voice, which carried on the sharp, northerly wind. I dashed along the twisting paths, through stretches of darkness and patches of moonlight. I ran toward the ridge and peered down. Trinity, bathed in streams of milky light, stood on the roof of her namesake boat, her hair silver and blowing across her face.
“Trinity?” I called out in a whisper, but I was downwind and too far away. I had to get to her before anyone else found her this way. Before she hurt herself.
I hurried down the path, slipping once and skidding on my bum, and then started off again across the beach and onto the dock.
I whispered as loudly as I dared. “Trinity! It’s me. Sadie Rose. What are you
doing?”
She tilted her head back, her nipples pressed through her sodden nightdress, and howled at the moon. Then she glared at me, her hair wet to her scalp. “Go away,” she said. At her side, a knife glinted in her hand. I thought of the way she’d shown me the boat’s monogrammed silverware, the way she’d lingered over the knife. I’d felt uneasy then, but I never imagined this.
“Help! Trinity needs help!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“I won’t let them send me back,” she snapped. “Not ever again!” Then she tilted her head back again and let out another moaning howl. Stiff-armed, from shoulder to wrist, she swung the knife back and forth, half-circling her body. Not only was her mind not right but her movements were awkward, as if her mind were making threadbare connections with her limbs.
In seconds, lights flashed through the trees.
Voices broke the night.
Screen doors whined on sleepy hinges.
Footsteps pattered.
I could have ducked into the shadows of the boathouse, lowered myself into the water, and swam around the island and back to my hiding place. But not with Trinity in this condition. I couldn’t leave her like this. She’d said we could try our hand at friendship, and if that’s what this was, what kind of friend was I to flee and leave her now?
“Trinity, honey,” called a man, soothingly. “Come down from there, sweetie!”
Emerging from the path, Trinity’s parents ambled onto the dock. In a dark smoking jacket over pajamas, Mr. Baird headed for the boat, his stricken face so fixed on Trinity that I thought he might fall off the dock. Mrs. Baird hurried, buttoning her robe over her ample middle. Her hair was so thin and short that I realized her daytime hair was in reality a wig. When she spotted me, her voice and finger raised at me. “Hell’s bells! Who are you?”
I opened my mouth to explain, but she put up her hand. “Oh, I’ll find out later. My knees are bad. Get on the boat and get a blanket from the stateroom!” she ordered. “Hurry!”
I pulled the quilt from my shoulders. “Here. Use this.”
Now others gathered near the shore, some in moonlight, others in shadows.
“Look! I see a toad!” a child said, holding an adult’s hand and pulling toward the sandy beach.
“Children, go back to your beds!” someone ordered.
“Quick!” Mrs. Baird advised me, pointing upward. “Hand it up to my husband.”
I tossed the blanket toward Mr. Baird, who despite his stoutness, had managed to scramble up onto the boat’s canopy roof with his daughter. I hoped it would hold them. He caught it by its edge.
I stood on the dock beside Trinity’s mother, so I could see.
Now Trinity stretched her arms, palms braced, like a preacher envisioning hell.
“Oh, I thought this was coming on,” Mrs. Baird said, wrapping her arms around her plump waist. “She had been doing so well, and then these past few weeks—”
Trinity was screaming now, shouting. “No! You come one step closer and this time I’ll do it. I will not be taken captive alive!” Then she pointed to me, standing below on the dock. “She’s the only one who is on my side!”
Trinity held her knife high, wielding it as if she were some warrior. Mr. Baird stepped in slow motion toward her with the edges of the blanket stretched wide, a large shield.
“Don’t!” she shrieked, her voice the color of pain. “Come! A step! Closer!”
He dropped the blanket, arms at his sides. “Darling, Trinity,” he soothed. His voice was maple syrup on the verge of crystallizing. “Put down the knife, Trinity. Come down, dear girl. Please just come down. Whatever you’re afraid of, it’s okay now. You’re safe, and everything’s just fine.”
I wanted to believe him.
On the dock, Mrs. Baird turned to the half-dozen adults forming an audience below. “If he can just get her wrapped tightly in the blanket, she’ll calm right down. You’ll see. Everything will turn out fine.”
“Oh, that’s what you want me to believe!” Trinity said. “Don’t you idiots understand anything? Are you that stupid? What kind of fools are you? They’re coming! They’re hiding out there—” She pointed toward the island’s silhouetted pines. “And there!” She stretched her neck, as if she could truly see something or someone. “They’re hiding in the jungles. And there’s no way out for any of us! For once you all need to listen to me!”
“Trinity,” Mr. Baird continued sweet and slow. “You know I won’t do anything to harm you. I only want to help you, sweetheart . . . now put the knife down.”
“Noooo!” she wailed, her hand clamped on the knife’s silver handle. Her eyes glinted, fierce as a predator after its prey, and she held the blade high in her fist.
Just as I was wishing there was something I could do, Mrs. Baird turned to me, pleading. “She seems to trust you. Can you try?”
I clambered onto the boat and up onto its roof. “Trinity,” I said, my voice unsteady.
“Sadie Rose,” Trinity said, softening for a brief moment as she looked beyond Mr. Baird to me. Then her father eased back as I stepped forward.
“Trinity,” I said again. “I’m here . . . and I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.”
Her eyes flashed wide. “Why should I believe you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” The boat rocked slightly, throwing me off balance. The wind iced my back and legs. “Because we’re friends. You’ve helped me, remember?”
Trinity lowered her arm a few inches but still clutched the knife.
I reached down and picked up the quilt at my feet. “You returned this to me, all clean and dry.” I stretched it toward her. “Here. You’re wet. You’re freezing. Why don’t you wrap up in it?”
She studied the quilt. “It was your mother’s?”
I nodded. “Yes, it was.”
Trinity lowered the knife a few more inches, and then her arm went limp and she held the knife loosely at her side.
And then, as naturally as a child drawn toward comfort, she stepped toward me and the quilt. I wrapped it around her thin and shivering body, and in the same motion, I reached for the knife in exchange. She let go of it without a fight, almost as if she’d forgotten it was in her hand.
I hugged Trinity close, and she buried her head in my shoulder. I sensed Mr. Baird behind me, slipping the knife from my hand and backing off the boat.
I shivered and held Trinity close until her breathing slowed. As the Bairds sent the others back to their beds and called the visiting doctor from bed, a memory tumbled back to me.
It was morning at Darla’s boardinghouse. Smells of coffee and rising bread mixed with the scent of spilled blood. Amid screaming and crying, I stood in the bedroom doorway, watching the young woman in the washtub. She was flopped like a limp doll, her head lolling back, her pale wrists striped red in wash water turned dark as rubies.
I watched, helpless, relieved it wasn’t my mother.
I shuddered. The wind chilled my legs and neck as I held Trinity. She’d come so close to taking her life. What if I hadn’t heard her? What if I hadn’t been on the island to help her? And why would she do such a thing? Why?
I wanted to make sense of her actions, of why she would raise a knife against herself. She had all the social privileges and comforts anyone could hope for. She wasn’t like women who tried desperately to escape their bottom rung on the social ladder.
Despite her social standing, despite her family name, Trinity’s mind wasn’t well.
When Trinity began to cry, I said, “Go ahead. It’s okay. You can cry. Everything’s going to be fine.”
And after I was certain she was in a calmer place, we climbed down from the boat, where her parents stood waiting, shoulder to shoulder.
Chapter 28
Somewhere in that long night
, hovering near the bed as Dr. Mary Austin and Trinity’s parents came and went, Mrs. Baird said, “Oh, now I know. You’re the Worthington girl, aren’t you?” She had taken up the chair near Trinity’s head. I sat on an embroidered stool near the foot of the bed. Until someone ordered me gone, I refused to leave.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So Trinity was hiding you under our noses?”
I nodded again.
“In her studio?”
“Yes.”
“That explains her being so protective of her latest work. She said it was going to be her ‘masterpiece.’ Well . . .”
Mrs. Baird studied her daughter, and I followed her gaze. Trinity’s hair was matted and clung to her head. Eyelids closed, she looked peacefully asleep.
She’d willingly walked with me from the boat to her bedroom in the lodge. Dr. Austin, the first woman doctor in the region and a family friend of the Bairds, had helped settle Trinity with teaspoons of laudanum, as if she were a baby, eyes unfocused and half-closed. “We need to keep her calm,” the doctor said. “No more theatrics for a while.”
Now Mrs. Baird turned her head toward me. “You’re a good friend, to stay here like this.”
“She’s been good to me.” Though I didn’t pretend to understand Trinity’s fearful or delusional moods, I knew from the moment I’d met her at Red Stone Island that she’d been willing to help me.
Mrs. Baird lifted her cup of tea to her lips, but without sipping, set it back down again on the nightstand. “You know, when I’d heard you’d gone missing from the Worthingtons, I thought you might have run away. Trinity used to threaten to do that all the time. She succeeded a few times and gave us a real scare. When she was four, she went only as far as the house next door to ours. But when she was in her teens, she’d hide on the island from us. She was angry, and I don’t remember what always started it. I was just so relieved when she’d finally show up and I’d know she hadn’t drowned.” She looked at me. “This isn’t the first time.”
“First time?”
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