The Abandoned Heart

by Laura Benedict

  “Odette? The woman who was so scary?”

  When she was younger, Faye had considered anyone who didn’t respond immediately to her charms as scary or mean.

  Lucy had raised her head on the bank of pillows, but let it fall back. “I’ll look at it later. Just leave it on the table. I’m too tired.” The mention of Odette made her sad. She found so many things sad now. Just when she and Michael Searle had begun to feel happy. Even Terrance had begun to look slightly less grim. Josiah had said the medicine might make her emotional, and he had been right. But it did help so very much with the pain.

  Faye put the letter down and made Lucy sit up a little again so she could fluff her pillows.

  “Poor Lucy. Poor, dear Lucy. It will all be better soon.”

  When Lucy woke the sun was setting. Michael Searle had replaced Faye and was sitting beside the bed reading a book. Foggy as her head was, she remembered the envelope and asked for it after she had a drink of water.

  “Shall I read it to you? I don’t mind.”

  He looked tired himself. She didn’t know what was in the letter, but something told her that he should not be the one to read it.

  “Maybe you could bring me a bit of supper? Some toasted bread with bacon, and some soup. Soup always cheers me up.” She wasn’t very hungry, but knew he would be glad to have something to do.

  “Of course. Iced tea, too. I’ll bring some dinner up for myself, as well, if you don’t mind.”

  When he was out of the room, she carefully slid her finger under the lip of the envelope.

  You look out, Miss Lucy. Don’t be a stupid woman. Don’t be blind, like he wanted you to be. Like you have pretended to be sometimes.

  It had been those words that made her reluctant to look in the envelope right after Odette died. The envelope had been in that drawer, but she hadn’t seen it, hadn’t wanted to see it the dozen times she’d opened the drawer in the previous three years. She had made it invisible.

  “I’m sorry, Odette,” she whispered.

  She opened the envelope and pulled out several crisp, yellowed sheets. One sheet was slightly smaller than the others, and it was covered with Odette’s hand.

  Dear Missus Lucy Bliss,

  It was wrong of me to keep this letter for so long, but I did what I felt was right. Mason agreed with me.

  It bears some hard truths that you will have to endure. Now that Mister Bliss is dead, and I am dead, you can know them.

  This letter arrived in the days after Missus Amelia Bliss jumped out the window and died. They say that Mister Bliss was not near her when it happened, but you and I both know that he drove people to do things that were surely against their nature. He did not have to have his hand on her to kill her.

  Harriet Rinehart was the woman who took care of Tamora. As you will read, she ran away on the day that poor child was found dead in the woods. When I saw the letter in the mail, and who it was from, I stole it. Missus Amelia Bliss was dead, and it didn’t seem right that whatever it said should be told to that evil, evil man. I ask for no forgiveness.

  Please do not worry for me. I pray that I am with Mason and Jesus now. I need nothing more.

  Your friend,

  Odette Goodbody

  As Lucy read the other, longer letter, she learned that everything she thought she knew about her own life was most likely a lie.

  Chapter 43

  February 1879

  Chesapeake, February 6th 1879

  Dear Missus Bliss,

  I tried to write this letter before I left, but I had to depart in haste. Yes, I saw you on the road as you returned, but I begged Clayton Poole to drive on because I could not bear to speak to you. I am sorry that your poor daughter has died. You will want to find fault with someone, and I pray that you will not decide that I must be that person.

  The events of my last night at Bliss House are burned forever in my mind. I know you were reluctant to accept the services of the night nurse, Missus Williams, that Doctor Cyrus Beard acquired for Tamora. It is not my business to know what drove you from this house in such haste, but I could see that it was an urgent thing, and that you were determined to go. I saw no immediate fault in Missus Williams, or I would certainly have warned you. You have been generous to me despite my many and varied sins. If you are willing, I would be grateful for a good reference from you because I’m certain that I will not get one from Mister Bliss.

  I did hate to leave you, Missus Bliss, as you have been so kind to me. Now that Tamora, bless her dear soul, has been taken from us, I would be of no more use to you. But I must tell you what I have seen and heard or I will die an unconfessed woman. Please know that I could not stop what I saw. May you and God forgive me.

  In your absence, Doctor Cyrus Beard advised a kind of treatment for Tamora. Mister Bliss told me not to ready Tamora for bed two nights ago, but to leave her dressed for when Missus Williams came on duty. In the first two days after you left, Tamora was much better behaved in your absence than either you or I anticipated. She was a good girl, Missus Bliss. I do believe she loved you more than anyone else. She still could not bear to be around Mister Bliss, though. If he chanced to come into the nursery, she would begin to scream. He treated it as a great joke, as he does so many things. It worsened with each day that you were gone, with each night that she spent with Missus Williams. I do not believe that Tamora slept much during those nights. In the morning, she was dead asleep on her bed, with circles under her eyes.

  I must confess to you, Missus Bliss, that Mister Bliss encouraged me to engage with evil drink while you were away. He was like Satan himself in the garden, bringing me brandy each night. He sat with me and we drank and I was much flattered at first. I have tried so hard to stay away from evil drink. You know how I have tried.

  The drink made me tired. I confess it was a relief to feel the comfort of the brandy. I have often thought that a small drink in the evening might help you, Missus Bliss, to forget the difficulty of the day. It is a mission from God what you tried to do for your poor child, and I was happy to try to help you in that. I swear to you.

  I slept too heavily. One night I woke to evil sounds coming from somewhere in the house, but they frightened me. Now I know that those sounds were the sounds of your beloved child screaming. But they were like sounds from Hell, and I was afraid to leave my bed. I’m sure I heard an animal roaring, though I now believe that it was Mister Bliss, trying to frighten the child to death.

  I was weak. God will please forgive me. I pray that you will forgive me. I knew I could not leave the child there alone with Mister Bliss and Missus Williams, but neither could I do anything to stop them. After the first night I heard the screams, I drank until I could drink no more. Mister Bliss put a new bottle on the table outside my door each night. It was like a gift from Hell Itself. There was nothing on earth that could make me reject it.

  Then Missus Williams came to see me. She was afraid, as I had been afraid. Or I thought she was afraid, but now I believe that she wanted to show off. She was that sort of woman.

  I had not yet drunk enough to fall asleep, and she came into my room. I’m certain that she had been given drink as well, though I know she told you that she didn’t believe in drink. Never believe a person who tells you that, Missus Bliss. For those who appear resolute are often the weakest. They draw a line and dare themselves to cross it. Once they cross the line, they know no limits. They are the most dangerous people.

  What she told me and what she showed me made me cross myself like a Papist.

  According to Missus Williams, Doctor Beard advised that the child should be restrained in ways that I know you would have prevented. She told me that he had given Mister Bliss a straitjacket to keep her attention, and advised that she be struck, but not in ways to leave marks. Doctor Beard said that in order for her to be forced to pay attention to what Mister Bliss was saying to her, that she might be restrained in the ballroom by means of ropes hanging from the ceiling. The ropes would keep her from
lying down, or kneeling, or running away.

  I tried to stop them. I begged Mister Bliss to let the child go. It will not do you any good for me to describe her unhappy state. She was, indeed, like a little animal. A pitiful little animal. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen, and I pray I never see the like.

  Mister Bliss was angry that she had brought me to see him, and when she threatened to go to the police, he struck her. The little one was looking away when Missus Williams fell to the ground. He told me to untie Tamora and take her away back to the nursery. She was a pitiful thing, and did not weigh any more than a dog.

  If Doctor Beard’s advice was to make her more compliant, I am ashamed to say that in some ways it worked. She was not the child you knew, Missus Bliss. In a few short days she had a look in her eyes that was as distant as the moon.

  I don’t know what happened to Missus Williams. She surely left, but I did not see her again after Mister Bliss struck her that terrible night.

  You will forgive me, I hope, for giving Tamora her medicine to help her sleep without dreams. God help me, I thought to give her enough to make her sleep and never wake up until the Lord Jesus brings us all to him on the Glory Day. Mister Bliss will not be there on that day. Of that I am certain. Not Doctor Beard either. They are evil, evil men, and God Will Punish Them.

  My distress was such that I laid Tamora down in bed in her clothes after I gave her the medicine. There was no heart in me for undressing her.

  I do not know how or when she left the house. When I woke in the morning, her bed was empty. I was certain that I had given her enough medicine to keep her asleep until the late morning. God knows she needed the respite that sleep might bring.

  It was Mister Aaron who brought her back with Mister Bliss. No one would tell me where they found her, but I saw them carry her out of the woods on the other side of the garden. Mason walked behind them. Mister Bliss would not let me see Tamora. He told me that if I was not gone before you returned home that he would make sure that I was held responsible for her death.

  Please forgive me, Missus Bliss. I did the best that I could in the face of evil. I understand that you had to go away. I know that Mister Bliss is not the man that he appears to be. You have done the best that you could as well.

  You have lost your angel, but she is with God now. She no longer knows pain or unhappiness. I pray that you will find peace on earth without her.

  Yours, Most Sincerely,

  Harriet Rinehart

  Post Script: I would not bring you more pain, but I think you must know. Missus Searle, the Reverend Searle’s wife, was here several times when you were not at home, soon after we came from New York. I don’t want to be a gossip, but as she came here also the very afternoon that you left for North Carolina , I cannot stay silent. It is well known in Old Gate—please forgive me because it is gossip, which I know is a sin—that Mister Bliss has been known to pay a certain kind of attention to women who are not his wife. Women besides the poor child in the cottage in the woods. I chanced to be in the hallway outside the library when Missus Searle was with him, and I heard her weeping. He was very angry with her, and I felt almost as though I should go inside, but I was afraid I might lose my position if he knew I was there. Missus Searle said that the Reverend Searle suspected that the child of which she was soon to be delivered was not his child at all. She said he did not know who the father might be, but that he was determined to find out, and would Mister Bliss protect her because she knew it might be his child, and did he not care for her any longer. It was a tragic, but evil state of affairs, and I confess I felt sorry for Missus Searle even though she had done wrong. Mister Bliss laughed, and accused her of being a woman of loose morals, and said that the child could be anyone’s. He said he did not believe it was possible that it was his, and that she should go back to her husband and never bother him again. I had to hide when she soon ran out of the library in a terrible state, and if Mister Bliss had come right after her, he might have seen me. It wasn’t to be, thank goodness. I was able to escape into the kitchen. And so I write to tell you this in my constant sorrow. I wish you only good things, Missus Bliss, and pray you find some comfort in this knowledge of your husband and faithless friend. —H. R.

  Chapter 44

  KIKU

  February 1879

  “Please tell me you’ve changed your mind.”

  Aaron returned late the next day, as he had promised he would, but Kiku could not have told him what she had been doing. The fever had stolen all sense of time passing.

  She recognized him and knew she had charged him with something terribly important that concerned her son. It meant that she would soon be with her son, and that was all that mattered.

  Sometime in the night her son had come to her, grown now, and looking like a tall, Americanized version of her father. He wore riding clothes, a wedding ring on his finger, and eyeglasses. She wondered at the eyeglasses, and would have asked about them, but when she held out her hand to take his, he was no longer there. She had sunk back onto the pillow, her heart filled with a sense of cruel loss.

  “The fire has died. Will you take me away now?”

  Aaron cast a look at the low fire, which had not quite truly died, and could not understand how she had kept it going since he had built it up the previous afternoon. She looked as though lifting only two fingers might pain her grievously.

  “It’s all ready for you.”

  Kiku smiled. “You are my husband. You are a good man.”

  Aaron brought the horse to a stop behind the springhouse. It was dark enough now that they couldn’t be seen from Bliss House, but he wanted to be certain. He slid off the horse, careful to keep one hand on Kiku, who had ridden slumped in front of him on the saddle. Even bundled in her coat and boots and another quilt, she was as small as a child.

  As she leaned into him, her feet nominally on the ground, he used his free hand to untie the bag he’d roped to the saddle, and let the bag fall. Slapping the horse on the rump, it galloped off, back toward the warm stable. The house was full of people, but none of the visiting footmen or grooms had remarked on him taking the horse. He had ridden into the woods behind the stables and made his way well south, into the orchards, before crossing over to the woods that surrounded Kiku’s cottage.

  Sliding the bag onto one arm, he picked up Kiku, whose eyes were glassy with fever. She weighed almost nothing. She turned her head to watch the horse disappear into the darkness.

  “I have ridden a horse. I must tell my mother. She will not believe me.”

  “You did well on the horse. I’m very proud of you.” Aaron kissed her hair. “Are you cold, my darling?”

  Kiku responded at length in Japanese, which he did not understand, but he did not think she was suffering.

  Earlier in the day, he had lighted a few of the lanterns along the passage leading from the springhouse to the underground rooms. Randolph was too busy with his guests to notice his comings and goings, and Aaron had been careful. It pained him to see Randolph as the center of attention, feigning grief for his “dear Amelia.” Aaron knew the truth of Randolph’s deep betrayal of his wife, while understanding that he had not treated her much better. But now that Amelia was at peace, perhaps she knew how horribly sorry he was.

  What kind of person had he become? What he was doing now was tantamount to murder. The woman in his arms was dying. Left in the cottage, she would have died, alone, before morning, and he would have remained blameless. He should have gone for the doctor, as Odette had wanted, but it had not been what Kiku wanted. For once in her short life she would have what she wanted, and he would be with her, in the place she was so desperate to be.

  When they reached the first room, the one just beyond the enormous door at the end of the passage, Aaron laid Kiku on a long cushion that he’d placed against a bare wall, and she was able to unwind slowly from the blanket.

  “You’ve made this room bright for me. Will you stay?” Her eyes shone. Her fever was com
ing in waves that grew hotter and hotter.

  Aaron smiled. He had done nothing but light the lamp in the passage. Its weak glow barely reached to the far end of the room and the partially built brick wall he had constructed the previous night. A bucket of mortar covered with a wet cloth sat opposite them, along with the stacks of bricks that he would use to close the hole he had left. All Randolph would know was that the room’s crumbling outer wall had been repaired and shorn up with the brick.

  The space behind the wall was just shy of three feet deep. Big enough. It was Kiku’s wish to be placed behind it when she was dead, so she could be a part of the house, a part of her son’s life forever.

  “Will you stay with me for a while?”

  “I won’t leave you. Here.” He brought the bag close and sat down on the cushion beside her. “Lie down, my love.” He lifted her head to his lap and stroked her hair. “Are you thirsty?”

  She was weak from the fever, but nodded. He picked up the cup of water he had poured from the canteen and held her so she could sip. When she turned her head away slightly, he put the cup down. Her breathing had changed to a shallow rasp.

  He rested his head against the cold wall and closed his eyes. Her skin burned beneath his fingertips. He could do nothing more.

  If he had been brave, and had taken her away while she was still pregnant, she would have delivered the child without incident. There was no proof that it belonged to Randolph, but they also had no defense against him. They had no proof that he had bought Kiku from a brothel and kept her prisoner for months. If they had run, Randolph might have sent the police after him, and Kiku would have been once again at his mercy.

  Always, Randolph won.

  With her eyes closed, Kiku floated.

  Tamora and Amelia were in the garden. Amelia sat on a bench watching her daughter, who sat beneath a tall statue of a woman holding a peacock that struggled to fly away. Kiku’s son sat beside Tamora, playing in the broken white shells spread over the ground. The girl was dropping daisy petals into his hair, and as they bounced from his hair to his face and onto his pudgy little arms, he giggled as only a small child can giggle, delighted. Tamora giggled as well, and Amelia smiled to hear them.