by Vicki Delany
“At first?”
“The lady came to me. I could see her, even though it was dark. She wore a long dress just like that one.” Lily’s finger stabbed the page. “She had the same sort of hat tied under her chin. She didn’t smell good, like she hadn’t washed in a long time. She wasn’t pretty, like a fairy, just an ordinary lady. She was nice. She told me I wasn’t to be afraid. She said I was safe. And then I wasn’t scared any more.”
I realized that I’d stopped breathing. A cold chill reached down my spine. I stroked Lily’s hair. “I’m assuming you got out of the root cellar eventually.”
“Stupid Mike gave up and went into the house. The lady told me I could leave now, and I did.”
“Did you tell your mother?”
“I told Dad. He said I was imaging things, that there wasn’t any lady living in the root cellar. He got mad at Mike, though and sent him to bed early.”
“Have you seen her again, Lily, this lady?”
She shook her head. “I heard music once, when I went down there with Mom. As if a woman was singing. I asked Mom what it was, and she said I needed to have my ears checked. That was the last time. I forgot about her. Until now. I was wondering if you’d seen her, if that was why Mom said you shouldn’t go there.”
Children and idiots see ghosts where no one else can.
Had Lily seen a ghost, heard a ghost, down in the dark, dank root cellar? Clearly she believed she had, and the memory hadn’t faded like a childish dream. I remembered icy wind against my legs, the stench of unwashed clothes, wood smoke, and drifting fog. Images where no one stood and voices coming out of the mist.
I fell back against the pillows, heart pounding. Lily’d seen something she didn’t understand.
As had I.
Did that mean I wasn’t going crazy?
Or had Lily’s childish brain simply interpreted a set of information in exactly the same way my damaged one had? Perhaps she’d been studying the Loyalists in school before the incident, in the same way I’d been reading up on them. In a frightening situation we’d both sought solace by dragging up images.
I didn’t know what I wanted more. To believe we’d imagined things. Or that someone…something…was down in the root cellar.
I didn’t answer Lily’s original question. Instead I said, “Off you go. Bed time.”
She kissed my cheek. “Night, Aunt Hannah.”
“Sleep well.”
Memories forgotten, she bounced off the bed and ran out the door. Lily was a great deal deeper than she appeared, I suspected, and things bothered her intently. Having me living here, clearly not quite normal, the increasing tension between her parents, the death of Hila hanging over everything.
I didn’t switch my book back on. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, deep in thought.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Talk at lunch on Thursday was all about the break-in at the Harrisons’ home. Reporters and TV people had been in town after Hila’s funeral, and they’d salivated when word of the break-in began to spread. Liz told us she’d been in a bar with a group of friends when a man approached her and offered to buy her a drink.
Jake growled before she could finish her sentence. “I hope I made myself clear that anyone found talking to reporters or spreading gossip about what goes on at this farm, or at the neighbors, will be out of a job.”
“Give me some credit, will you. Besides,” Liz wiggled her eyebrows at Allison, “he was old and fat. A newspaper reporter, not a TV guy.”
A tall fan stood in the corner, stirring the humid air, trying to cool the room down a fraction. They were calling for record temperatures again today, but no rain.
“So,” Allison said, as if she didn’t really care, “What did happen at the Harrisons?”
“A break-in,” Jake said. “Vandalism, nothing stolen, but lots of damage.”
“I’ve heard of that happening,” Liz said. “People read the obits to find out when funerals are, then raid the house when everyone’s out. I can’t image much lower scum-balls than that.”
I picked at the salad on my plate. I’d called Maude this morning to check up on her. Grant had answered and said she was resting. He sounded tired himself, tired and worn down.
“Any more gossip in town about what happened to Hila?” I asked.
“Consensus is home-grown terrorists,” Connor replied. “They’ve done what they came here to do and slipped away into the night, back to their dens of iniquity in the big cities.”
“Least that’s what the shop-owners and property developers want everyone to think,” Liz added. “It’s perfectly safe here. Nothing to worry about.”
“It is perfectly safe here,” Joanne snapped. “Everyone needs to get a fucking grip.”
We finished lunch in silence.
Disturbed only by a knock on the door to announce the arrival of Rick Brecken and Sergeant McNeil.
***
Fortunately the cops hadn’t stayed for long. They wanted Joanne and me to go over what happened last night. As we hadn’t arrived until long after the break-in, and had done nothing but look around and suggest Maude phone the police, we didn’t have much to tell them and they soon ran out of questions. As usual, Brecken had little to say, stood in the corner with his arms crossed, watching. Sergeant McNeil had edged toward the fan and tried unobtrusively to allow some of the blowing air into her dark blouse and jacket. Joanne did not offer them tea or cookies. When they left, she’d sighed and said, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
I watched her head back to work, knowing I could do nothing to help.
I’d promised Lily I’d check on the horses in the early afternoon. She was worried they’d run out of water in the heat. Their heads were down in their paddock, searching for some leaves or tough grass they might have overlooked, tails constantly moving and muscles twitching against the onslaught of deer flies. They came to the fence to greet me, but only Beauty stayed for a pat and a scratch after I’d filled the trough. Tigger, I was beginning to suspect, did not like me.
I crossed the yard, heading back to the house. A minivan pulled up, and a family—Mom, Dad, three sunburned children—got out and went into the shop. At least Mom and Dad went into the shop. The children began chasing chickens.
Not wanting to have to make conversation, I detoured by way of the back of the equipment shed. The wall was lined with hooks on which were hung a myriad of farm implements—shovels, pitchforks, rakes, hand tools, garden hoses. Connor was bent over the sink, T-shirt tossed to one side, pants slung low on slim hips. He had a hose in his right hand and sprayed his head and neck. He straightened up, leaned back, and shook a head full of wet curls. His bare chest was slick with water and sweat, thick with muscle. A tattoo of a snake curled around a bulging bicep. He sensed me watching and turned with a grin. “Hot enough for you?”
Something moved, low in my belly. Something I’d thought had died on a roadside in Afghanistan. I mumbled words of agreement, said it looked like I had customers to attend to, and hurried away, the hot feel of Connor’s eyes following me.
Or perhaps they weren’t, because when I glanced back, he was gone, the hose was hung up and the parched ground was soaking up water.
Chapter Thirty
“Hannah Manning might present a problem.”
“Nah.”
“She’s a journalist. A reporter. A good one, I’ve heard. Can’t keep her nose out of everyone else’s business.”
“Don’t worry about her. Her mind’s not all there. She has blackouts, whole periods of time when she doesn’t know what the hell’s going on. It frightens her so much, she’ll believe whatever anyone tells her. She’s as malleable as a kitten.”
“Even kittens have claws.”
“Not this one. Forget about Manning, will you? Let’s get t
his done. I’m sick and tired of all this waiting, watching.”
“Patience, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend, and I’m running out of patience. I’m ready to move, and if you’re not, too bad.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I don’t care if you like it or not. It’s time.”
“Very well.”
Chapter Thirty-one
After the children were in bed, Jake and Joanne put a movie into the DVD player. It was something of Jake’s, and the cover promised guns shooting and cars exploding. I made my excuses, pretending not to notice the look of relief on Jake’s face, and went upstairs.
The house was hot from the heat of the day, and I wanted to have a shower to cool down. I tilted my face and held it under the water for a long time, allowing the streaming water to stroke and caress and carry away my worries. Then I slipped into my nightgown and crawled into bed. The shower had refreshed me, physically, but my worries had not swirled down the drain with the water as I’d hoped. Rick Brecken had stood in our kitchen, watching me, hoping I’d…do what? Crack, break down, confess to murdering a lovely young woman?
There were times I got facts muddled, times when I could scarcely tell up from down. Times when I saw a woman in the root cellar or thought papers cracking with age were speaking directly to me.
But I knew, I knew, I had killed no one.
No matter what happened. No matter how Rick Brecken looked at me, or Gary Wolfe taunted me, I had that to cling to.
I’d gotten bored with the audio book and had brought a book of Joanne’s with me to bed. A Scandinavian bestseller that I thought I’d enjoy, but once again I couldn’t follow the story. The letters lined up in formation; they blended into words and the words grouped themselves into sentences with a capital letter at the beginning and a period at the end and a handful of commas in between.
None of which made any sense to me.
I threw the book against the wall, swallowing a cry of frustration. Yes, yes, a consequence of my brain trauma. Give it time, give it time. I’d always been a voracious reader, and over the years when I’d been so busy with the job, I’d missed having time and leisure to get lost in a good book. Now here I was with all the time and leisure in the world and I couldn’t read the blasted thing. I would have screamed, had I not been aware of Jake and Joanne below and the two children sleeping nearby.
I switched off the bedside light and threw myself back into my pillows. My duvet was bundled at the bottom of the bed, but it was too hot to pull it up. The ceiling fan turned.
As I lay there, I gradually felt a deep cold seep across my exposed chest and neck, reaching under my thin white cotton nightgown. I scrambled to pull the duvet up to my chin. I shivered. Only a short while ago it had been hot. A sultry summer night.
Deep inside my damaged head it felt as if something was moving. I braced myself for a visit from Omar, but there was no pain, not even the threat of pain. How strange, I thought, to be able to feel the brain healing itself.
I lay on my back, eyes wide open. Thoughts jumped around in my head, unbidden. Memories that were not mine. People I had never known.
Traces of white mist formed patterns in front of my eyes. I blinked. They were still there. I’d shut my door and the room should have been completely dark. Yet I could see tendrils of white, stirred by the fan, dripping along the walls, curling across the floor. I shuddered in the cold.
***
August 20, 1786
An itinerant preacher arrived in Fifth Town, and everyone gathered for services with as much excitement, if not more, at the opportunity to socialize with neighbors as to hear the word of God. A building to house a church had not yet been built, so one of the settlers offered his yard for the purpose. The sermon was long and boring, and it was stifling hot in the strong sun. Children shifted, their mothers shushed them, and the occasional sound of a slap could be heard. Women fanned themselves with hats and whatever else came to hand, and men wiped sweat off their brow with shirt sleeves. Young men eyed young women, young women peeked out from under their lashes, and old men snored until their wives delivered a sharp elbow to the ribs.
After the service, a picnic was served on the rocks at the edge of the lake. The men talked about farming while those lucky enough to have tobacco smoked their pipes, and women sat in the shade of big oaks and gossiped. Children ran and played and splashed in the water, and everyone was delighted to have the chance to stop work for a few hours.
Maggie leaned back. The bark of a tree was solid against her back, the sun warm on her face, and the light breeze off the water stirred her hair. It felt so wonderful not be working. All around her women chatted.
“Everyone knows she’s simple,” said Mrs. vanden Hovel, an older woman known to have a vicious tongue. “I suppose as long as she can keep house and bear children nothing else matters.”
“She’s very young,” someone replied.
Maggie kept her eyes closed and tried to shut out the woman’s voices.
“Sixteen’s not young. I was fourteen when I married my Gerrit. God bless his soul.”
“It’s a good match,” another woman said. “He’s going to do well, everyone says so. With six strapping sons they’re clearing their land so such faster than any of the rest of us can. Why he even came into possession of a new calf recently.”
Maggie opened her eyes. “Who are you talking about?”
Mrs. vanden Hovel opened her mouth to answer but Marie got in first. Her eyes glittered with malice. “Mr. Mann, of course. He’s been looking for a wife with that pack of sons to feed. I’m not surprised he decided to favor a young woman.”
So, I now know my worth, Maggie thought. One calf.
***
December 22, 1786
It had snowed in the night, and this snow looked as though it intended to stay. Maggie had risen twice to stoke the embers of the fire back to a flame, put on more wood, and to check that sleeping Emily was well wrapped. The logs that made up their house didn’t fit perfectly together and the dirt and straw used for chinking was coming loose in places. Snowflakes had drifted in on icy winds to settle on top of Jacob and Caleb’s blankets, but nothing ever seemed to disturb their sleep.
Maggie wrapped herself in her shawl and made her way toward the chicken coop. The nights came early and the mornings late and chickens wouldn’t lay well for many months to come, but they had to be fed if the family was to eat eggs in the spring and enjoy a treat of roast chicken for a special dinner.
She was almost at the henhouse, the cold ground biting through the soles of her boots, when she remembered that she hadn’t hung the kettle back on the hook above the fire. Better do that if she wanted a warming drink later.
She didn’t intend to be quiet, but the snow muffled her footsteps. The door opened and Maggie saw Marie, still in her nightgown although the pale winter sun was rising in the east, in the corner where Maggie and Emily slept, bending over the shelf where she, Maggie, kept her few possessions.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Marie leapt back. “Nothing. I can’t find my best candlestick. Have you taken it?”
“It’s on the mantle. Where it is always kept.” Maggie placed her hands on her hips. She stared Marie down.
The woman had the grace to flush. “Oh, I must have missed it. Thank you, Maggie.” She scurried back to her alcove and pulled the blanket to.
Maggie waited, while Marie dressed and went outside, head down, shoulders hunched, to use the privy. Then, heart pounding in fear, Maggie dove into her small bundle of possessions. The earrings, the most precious things she owned, were still tucked safely into the pocket of her Sunday dress. Maggie let out a long breath. She kept them hidden and rarely took the jewels out. She stroked them sometimes, through the cloth, but dared not look at them. If Nat
hanial and Marie knew she had such things, they would take them. And no one would help her get them back. Didn’t everything she had belong to Nathanial, her “guardian”?
She slipped the earrings into her pocket and went to the root cellar on the pretext of getting potatoes.
The cellar had been dug out of the forest floor, rocks (they had plenty of those) piled around the sides to make the walls, small stones packed into the cracks, and dirt pounded down to make a floor. Maggie pried a loose stone out of a fissure between two large rocks. She’d brought a knife which she used to cut the pocket from her dress, and then she wrapped the earrings in the cloth. She stuffed the precious packet into the crevice and tapped the stone into place. Leaning back on her heels, she inspected her handiwork. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. It was so gloomy down here, even in the flickering light from the poor tallow candle, no one would notice that anything had been moved. She marked the exact spot in her mind, collected the potatoes in a bowl of her apron, and went back to work.
***
March 28, 1788
After a poor supper of stew made with dried fish and sprouting potatoes, Maggie walked to the Ostrander house, their nearest neighbors, to trade the last of her carrots for a bit of butter. Mrs. Ostrander, a red-faced cheerful woman not yet twenty, lifted the kettle from where it hung over the roaring fire. She’d been quite plump, Martha Ostrander, when they arrived in Lachine. Now she was almost as thin as Maggie herself. Young Mr. Ostrander, all knees and elbows and bobbing Adam’s apple, gave Maggie a shy nod, lit his pipe, and headed out to the barn to check on his cow.
They’d nearly starved that winter. Some people had starved, and a few died of it. The government stopped giving the settlers rations and supplies in the summer of 1787. They were now on their own. But with so much land still to be cleared, so few crops planted, so little put aside for the long cold winter, the settlers had suffered greatly. The Macgregor family among them.
When the children complained that they wanted milk, Maggie thought it too bad they no longer had a cow. The skinny calf Nathanial had given to Rudolph Mann as payment for not marrying Maggie had grown into a good-sized beast, and its meat had gone a long way toward keeping the large family fed over the winter. In late summer, the Macgregors’ cow had broken through the flimsy fence and disappeared. Taken by a wolf, likely, or one of the less honest of the neighbors. As the family’s fortunes declined, Nathanial Macgregor sought someone to blame. His sons, Maggie. Soon Caleb and Jacob were avoiding their father wherever they could, and Maggie’s face became accustomed to receiving a sharp slap if she didn’t dodge fast enough.