After Alice Fell: A Novel

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

  “Can you?”

  He pushes the chair arm so it rocks, and twists to watch the men in the yard. “We’re having a bonfire.”

  There’s a squeal of wood yanked from the building below, then the clap of it to the others. The boards that will be saved. Just the posts and rafters remain. Amos climbs a ladder to what’s left of the roof and straddles a beam.

  Everyone busy or away. I take a bite of cheese, then swipe a crumble from my skirt. Everyone busy.

  “Toby, take the molasses bread to the men.”

  “I want to have an archery lesson.”

  “Yes.”

  Amos’s boot swings in time with his hammer.

  “I’m going to lie down. Take the bread to the men, all right? I want the house quiet.”

  “But—”

  “Take the bread.” I stop him with a soft hand to the arm. “Tomorrow. I promise.”

  The house is curiously still. The curtains in the parlor and dining room are closed against the swampy heat and glare, cloaking them in a russet light. The furniture and curios feel as if they are encased as a fly in amber. A gash of light from the transom over the door brightens the hall.

  My slippers are quiet on the parquet, too loud when I hit a loose square. I traipse the hall, peek into Lionel’s office. Dust particles hang in the air, too lazy to fall. There’s a half-finished cup of coffee on the corner of the desk. The milk has curdled. My hands tremble. I ball them into fists to stop it. Keep my fingers curled around the splint.

  I touch the knob of the cabinet to the left of his desk, the one with the complaints and the notebook that wasn’t his to take. Still locked. Each of the drawers locked tight. The desk drawers as well.

  There’s a loud pop. I freeze and wait. Just the house settling.

  I kneel, run my hand under the middle drawer, then drop to my haunches when I find nothing. No key tucked away.

  If only I’d been as good with a hairpin and followed Lionel’s lessons when we were young. I’d thought it dishonest. Raised my nose and marched inside. The good little girl.

  My eye stops on the shelf across, on Lydia’s photograph tucked near the back. Easy to miss if walking by but directly in the line of sight if sitting at the desk. Lionel rarely talks of her. As if to say her name brought too much pain.

  I slip to the kitchen. Find a knife, a thin fillet knife. I clutch the handle, then hide the blade in the folds of my skirts as I leave the room.

  But it doesn’t help with any of the locks. It’s too wide for the lock itself and too thick to slip in the space between cabinet and drawer. I stride from the room, down the hall to the parlor, to Cathy’s tall secretary. The shelves are full of curios. They sit behind the paned glass doors, and the knife turns the lock without much effort. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I lift up a vase painted ruby and gold, tip it to see the contents, find it empty save a single gold clasp to a necklace. A bluebird of happiness has a place of honor on the middle shelf, and on the lower a tintype of her mother and father in their Sunday finest, him in proud sideburns and her with round glasses and the hand on her lap blurred because she moved it too soon. I’ve never met them; they trailed their other daughter to the Ohio Valley sometime past. If Cathy receives letters, she does not share the news.

  I push the door shut and turn the latch. There is but a single drawer to the desk, though it is wide and deep. I curl my fingers to the handle and give a good pull. The drawer squeals as it opens, the sound like a banshee shriek in the still of the room. I push my thigh against the front to stop it from dropping out.

  The household ledger, green leather with worn corners, seated to the left. Two nib pens resting on a piece of cloth. On the cloth, dark ink stains. A stack of blank paper.

  I lift the ledger to the desk, then bend to peer into the back of the drawer. One box. I reach for it, hold it in my palm. It is plain maple, oiled and hinged. I set it atop the ledger and lift the lid. Inside is a crushed-velvet bag, the satin strings drawn tight. I pick at the tie with my good thumb, but the knot is too tight. I twist to hold the end of a string with my other fingers, using the weight of my arm and splint, but there’s not a way to untie it, and when I jerk, the splint knocks the box to the floor. I grab it up. Push the bag inside and shove the whole of it to the pocket on my skirt.

  The ledger holds the normal pages of transactions for eggs and milk, the Mortons’ weekly payments. Cathy’s handwriting tilts and whirls, but the numbers are precise. Deposits from Lionel. House money. Sewing thread and rush baskets. I flick the pages back from the present, stop on April 5 the last. Run my index finger down the figures and stop. Buttons 10-. It is an exorbitant amount for buttons, even for Cathy, and perhaps I’ve skipped a line, for my head is beginning to throb. I run my nail along the ledger’s line, from the amount to the item.

  The other figures are as expected, the daily costs marked with care, the deposits from Lionel generous and regular. How many creditors has he borrowed from? Then again, May 6: Buttons 10-.

  And June 5, the same.

  July 7, double. Final.

  I roll the pages backward, to the first of the year. There are no payments out of the ordinary until the one on April 5. Each month forward, a purchase of buttons and a figure not less than ten dollars.

  Each payment nearly a half of the funds Lionel has given for the running of the household.

  The thud of a door startles me. I shut the book, slip it back to the drawer. I grip the knife, then cross the room, my hip catching the corner of the card table as I pass by. I drop onto the settee, lie back, grabbing at a magazine and thumbing the pages.

  Footsteps approach from the back, up the kitchen steps and through the hall before stopping at the parlor. “I’m trying to read, Lionel.”

  There’s a shuffle of a boot. “It’s Amos, ma’am.”

  My eyes snap open and I sit up. “Amos.”

  He doesn’t step in the doorway. “We’ll be setting the fire. If you want to come.”

  “I thought that was tonight.”

  “Ready now.” His voice is reedy, and his eyes don’t stop watching me. He points at my cinched arm. “Which bone?”

  “Both.”

  “Hell of a thing to heal, all right.” And then he rolls his sleeve and holds up his arm, showing off a bend in the forearm just above the wrist. The skin is scarred, white puckers. Old scars.

  “How did it happen?”

  “I left the lid off the well when I was a boy. My father didn’t like it. He gave me a whack with a shovel.”

  I nod and look away. The sun has crawled higher, and the room is darker without the cut of it through the curtains. “No one to set it?”

  “No, ma’am. Just me and him then.” He rolls his sleeve down. “You don’t remember me.”

  “Should I?”

  “You were a nurse. I was Ninth New Hampshire. Came in from Hatcher’s Run.”

  He could be any soldier, I think. Though his eyes are disconcerting; something that would have been remembered. But not in the last year. Not then. Then the men came too fast, and each was a wound to drain and bandage, a face to wash, a final letter to a mother or wife that sounded the same as any other letter I’d written. I’d lost the mercy to care for them. I’d lost the ability to care for the cause.

  “I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  He lowers his head and shifts his boot. “Just a case of the Tennessee Trots.” When he looks up, he’s smiling and his teeth seem yellow in the muted light. “I deserved a medal for bravery. Just getting through that.”

  “You and everyone else.” I shift on the couch. The box I’ve stolen pokes into my hip. “You were lucky to live. More of you were buried to dysentery than a gunshot.”

  “It was a break from marching and fighting, I guess.” He runs his hand down the doorframe.

  “And now? Where’s your family?”

  “Got none. Just odd jobs to keep my mouth fed.” He glances around the room and settles his gaze back on me. “You looking to kill s
omeone with that?”

  My eyes drop to the knife I hold tight on my lap. “No. No, I . . .” I drop it to the lace-covered side table.

  Amos gives a quick click of his tongue and looks back to the dining room, then up at the arched window in the front hall.

  “You can go now,” I say.

  “Can I?” He arches his brow. He’s laughing at me. I’m alone in the room—in the house—and he knows it. He could do anything, steal anything from my person or the room and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. He gives a little nod of his head. “It’s cooler in here.”

  My jaw tightens. “Get out.”

  He clicks his tongue again.

  I feel the thump of my heart in my chest and the hammering throb of it down my arm. I grab the scrolled arm of the sofa to push myself up. “Get out of this house. Get out. Get out.”

  He stands there, hands raised, and looks down the hall. His mouth moves; he’s talking to someone, but I can’t hear it.

  Lionel strides in the room. He puts his hands to my shoulders, maneuvers me to a chair, and pushes me down. “Stop yelling.”

  “Get him out, Lionel.”

  Lionel kneels, hands curled over the chair arms, and gives a nod of dismissal to Amos.

  “I found her like this,” Amos says. “I just came in to see what the matter was.”

  “Go mind the fire.”

  My mouth hangs open. I try to breathe, to pull in a lungful of air, but it’s caught in the back of my throat. Lionel puts his hand to the back of my neck and tips me forward, head between my legs. His hand rubs the skin in time with my breathing, until my lungs no longer burn.

  “Who is he?”

  “Shh. It’s all right now.”

  We stare at each other. He moves away, running his hand through his hair. Then he stops and stares down at the fillet knife on the side table. “What’s this for?”

  “I think Saoirse left it. Such an odd thing to leave in the parlor.”

  “You didn’t bring it?”

  “Why would I?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t . . .”

  “I might have needed it.”

  “He didn’t—”

  “No.”

  “Good. That’s fine.” He picks the knife up by the handle, letting the blade swing as he walks out of the room. “Let’s get to the bonfire. I’ll have a word with Saoirse later.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Toby dances from foot to foot, hand gripped to the bow he won’t let go of, eyes glued to the first flames to lick the bonfire. Elias has a hand to his shoulder, keeping him far back. Safe from sparks. Amos tosses an old chair on the boards. He ignores me. Stays to the far side of the fire. The frays of fabric smoke and catch, the flames climbing to the seat and flaring bright as they eat into horsehair and straw. The smoke lifts, smudging the arch of sky.

  Cathy stands on the porch next to me, her hand to her forehead like a captain looking at the sea. She smiles like a satisfied cat. “Saoirse swears she didn’t leave a knife in the parlor.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not that it matters.” She shrugs. “What’s more worrisome is you.”

  “I didn’t do anything untoward. That man—”

  “I know what you say.”

  “What I say?” I can’t abide this. I reach for the stair railing and take the steps to the yard.

  The fire is like a wall of heat. The flames twist like sinews, blue and golden orange.

  Lionel holds a plank. A cheroot hangs from his lips. “It’ll be a grand view soon,” he says, then tosses the board to the pyre.

  “Did you tell him to leave?”

  “I can’t let him go. Not yet.” He says this under his breath, his back turned to the fire.

  Amos catches my eye and grins. He shoves a pole into the flames and steps around the fire, tamping and coaxing. His hair is flat with wax and bits of ash that have stirred in the air and settled on his head. He swipes at an ember and returns to his task.

  Toby lifts up his bow and spins, letting out a yell. Then he turns toward us. “No more boathouse.” His lips pull back in a grimace. He pumps his arm and yells once more. Then his shoe catches a root, and he stumbles.

  I rush forward, but Amos blocks the way. He wraps an arm around Toby’s chest, pulling him upright and back. Then he keeps a hand to Toby’s shoulder, leaning down to nod at something Toby’s said.

  I stride around, stepping over the wood and boards not yet added, and grab up Toby’s hand. “You’ll stay with me.”

  “He’s all right here,” Amos says. “He won’t come to harm.”

  “It’s too close to the fire.”

  “You should be more careful.” Amos steps close, his eyes on me. Then he scoops up Toby’s bow and holds it out to the boy.

  Toby’s hand is hot and dry in mine. I pull him to me and move away from this man whose eyes flicker with the fire.

  “I want to stay with Amos,” Toby says.

  “You were too close. You could get burnt.”

  I move toward Lionel, who stands with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “I almost fell,” Toby tells him.

  Lionel glances at him. “But you’re all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mmm.”

  My eyes catch on something at the bottom of the bonfire. I can just make out the charred corners and spines of Alice’s journals.

  “You’re burning them.” I look at Lionel. “You took them from Brawders House and now you’re burning them. I wanted them.”

  He squints at me, then blinks when the smoke and heat twist our way. “You should have asked sooner.”

  I drop down close by the flames. Lionel’s used the journals as kindling. The paper burns and curls, each page blackening to ash.

  The stench of smoke lingers in my hair. The air is oily and tastes of soot.

  Cathy wanted a view; but now there’s scars in the ground where the boathouse and glass house once stood, and the wide-open space makes the pond seem too big, as if it’s been given the freedom to creep closer. The water is black as ink and slips between the bulrushes. The katydids scratch out a song that crescendos and then dips to a silence that is broken only by the lap of the water.

  By spring the ground will be filled with new growth, whether water reeds or garden flowers, who’s to know? Either way, Cathy will have erased another bit of the past and decorated it to her tastes.

  Once there was a boathouse and a rowboat painted white with red stripes. Lionel fished and I dozed in the bow, head to the sun.

  Come along, he’d shout to Alice on the shore. Come along.

  But she’d just wave and return to her drawing pad. Sometimes she sat, still as a statue, only her eyes casting along with the twists and turns of the little boat in the breeze. And other times she took to the glass house for the day, not minding the heaving heat of the sun beating the windows. Once I found her there in a faint, red cheeked and sodden with sweat, a trowel and the shards of a shattered pot by her head. Soil scattered and the seedlings too fragile to replant. It was my birthday. My twenty-seventh. Benjamin had come to call, and he sat with Father and Lionel in the dining room while the candles dripped wax on the ginger cake.

  I stood and gave my apologies. “I’ll find her.”

  Father gave a puff of annoyance. “She’s too old for this.”

  “Yes,” I said and took my leave to find the spoiled eighteen-year-old child.

  “Get up.” I toed her leg and kept my fists to myself.

  She sat then, eyes glazed, hair matted and tangled in its torn hairnet.

  “Why do you do this?” I jerked forward. Grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “You’re my prison. Everything I’ve wanted has been ruined by you. You’ve taken it all.”

  I yanked her to her feet. All the while she kept silent, just a high, strange wheeze she stopped with a clamp of her mouth.

  Then her fingers were on my cheeks, her palms pressed along my jaw, and she kissed me on the ridge of my brow, her ch
apped lips against the skin. She stepped past me, head down and hands holding her skirts, docile and alone as she walked the path. Slowed at the stairs and waited for me. Took my hand in hers as we walked up. She sat in her chair and ate a piece of cake. Smiled at Benjamin when he stood and blustered on. Raised her glass of sherry when Father toasted my health and Benjamin’s and our soon-to-be married life. Then she stood without warning and walked from the room, her arm slipping away as I reached for her to stay.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. But she made no motion she’d heard.

  That night, she didn’t crawl into bed with me. She returned to the glass house. And then, when we’d all moved to the cottage, she kept to her own bed in the room with the robins that wanted so much to be free.

  I turn from my window. There should be the tick of the mantel clock. But it is still, the hands at three and twenty. I pace from one corner to another. Pick at the ties on the splint.

  The cotton cover smells of lavender; earlier, Saoirse slipped some in the cotton rolls and padding before tying the whole together. “Good as new in a few weeks,” she said.

  The room is lit now only with the one oil lamp on my desk. I stare at the box I’ve stolen from Cathy’s secretary. The top is a burnt image of a sleigh. Two horses, a man and woman, the White Mountains behind them and a scatter of pines.

  I struggle with the latch, the box slipping from under my splinted arm and clattering to the floor. I reach for it and pinch it between my knees. Dig my thumbnail to the top to open it and lift out the velvet pouch. I clasp the satin string in my mouth, working the knot until it loosens and I can dig my finger into the bag. The sharp tip of a pin pokes my skin. With a quick glance at the door—locked, is it locked?—turn the pouch and let the jewelry slide to my lap.

  It is a brooch. A peacock of scrolled rose gold. Obsidian eyes. A shellac of blue at the breast. Chips of glass dyed garnet and emerald for the tail. I turn it over, looking for an inscription, find nothing but a cheaply set clasp.

  It is familiar, in the way of something seen once, perhaps commented on, and then forgotten. Not mine. Not Alice’s. Certainly not Cathy’s, whose gems were real.