The House on Primrose Pond

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “Is this all information you got from your mother? I’m impressed.”

  “Well, I did a little brushing up last night. I wanted to be prepared.”

  “That’s very sweet of you.”

  He smiled and squeezed her hand a little more tightly. “I’m genuinely interested too. I think your project has a lot of potential.”

  “You do?”

  “You seem surprised.”

  “My editor is not so sure. I’m trying to win her over to the idea.”

  “I think you will.”

  They had reached the barn now, a simple structure whose red paint had faded to a warm and mellow coral. A rooster-shaped weather vane sat perched on the roof. Corbin let her hand drop to punch in the code so they could enter; Susannah felt a momentary disappointment when their connection was broken. But she was here to work, wasn’t she? Better get to it, then. Inside, the place was filled not with animals, but with three looms of differing sizes and a few large plastic shipping crates filled with various kinds of yarn.

  “He’s a weaver?” asked Susannah.

  “His wife is. She started out as a hobbyist but recently she’s started selling. She makes scarves, shawls, blankets—things like that.”

  Susannah began to wander around the cavernous space. Up in the hayloft, she spied a desk, a computer, and a few chairs—an office area of sorts. The floor seemed to be old wide pine planks the color of ripe apricots whose surface was pitted and scarred from centuries of use—a nice detail, and she made a note of it.

  She liked the feeling of being in here. Pale winter light filtered through the barn’s high, ice-encrusted windows. The place had a contemplative and even sacred feeling. Churchlike, but in a secular way. She tried to imagine it on a day in June, filled with hay and the pungent smell of animals. She stopped, took some notes, then used her iPhone to snap a few pictures.

  “So this is good?” Corbin had come up so quietly she had not even heard him.

  “Very good,” she said. “Perfect, in fact.” He was so close he could have put his arms around her—and she was disappointed when he didn’t. They prowled around a little more as she told him about how she envisioned the moment when Betsey Pettingill found the baby.

  “I’d like to read it,” he said.

  “Maybe when it’s a little more polished.” She wasn’t ready to show her work to anyone yet.

  Back outside, Susannah took photographs of the exterior and then they walked back across the field to the house, a mustard yellow saltbox with a black door and black trim. She began to circle it, snapping more photographs as she went. Soon she began to get cold and her stomach rumbled; the muffins had little staying power.

  “What do you say we stop for lunch before heading to Concord?” He put a hand on her shoulder.

  She was instantly aware of the pressure of his fingers right through her parka, sweater, and shirt. “I say that would be great.”

  • • •

  They reached the state archive—a squat, bunkerlike brick building—a little after two. Corbin walked her in and said he’d leave her there for a couple of hours. That would be enough time for her to read the documents and absorb whatever resonant details she could. And without the distraction of his presence, she could really focus on what she’d come to find.

  Susannah approached the counter behind which several state employees sat. She told the clerk what she was looking for and in a few minutes was handed a thick sheaf of papers contained by a transparent plastic sleeve. “Here you go.” She looked down at the material he’d given her, a little surprised by how nonchalant he seemed about it. She’d worked in other places, particularly libraries, where she’d had to fill out forms, show her driver’s license, and surrender her iPhone and any pens she might have been carrying. Obviously, the material held by the state archive wasn’t considered so rare or valuable.

  She sat down with the sheaf of documents and carefully extracted them from their sleeve. The thin, brittle sheets were covered in ink that may have once been black but had now faded to muddy brown. The governor’s wax seal, with its horse and lions, was attached to some of them. On others, it had been lost, the only evidence of its former presence the ghostly tobacco-colored circles that marked the spot.

  Here was the indictment, dated June 14, 1768, with its grave accusations: . . . contrary to our law, Crown and Dignity . . . burial and concealment of her Bastard Child at South Hampton . . . There was a subpoena, from September 15 of that same year, with the names of the women who’d closed ranks against her—Abigail Cooper, Loveday Brown, Mary Rogers, Olive Clough—and the verdict: it appears to us of the Jury that the child came to its death by violence. How could the jury have been so sure that whatever they saw was evidence of intentional violence, and not just the violence of a difficult, solitary birth and the four days during which the body had been hidden away from view? Ruth had written of the bedding and baby clothes she’d made for her child, the work of months. Would she have gone to such trouble for an infant she intended to murder? It made no sense to Susannah. But concealing an illegitimate child carried the same death sentence as murder.

  Susannah next came to one of Governor Wentworth’s reprieves, in which he postponed Blay’s hanging until December 8, so that she may have better opportunity to prepare for her death . . . expressing a sorrowful, penitent sense of her crime. Yet she had never confessed, and maintained her innocence until the very end. How easy it would have been to pardon Blay. There was historical precedent; it had been done before.

  But Susannah knew that Wentworth, appointed by the British government, was a man standing on the steep, alarming precipice of revolution. And he must have known it too. The unrest that was brewing in the colonies must have terrified him; if British rule crumbled, he’d go down with it. And who knew what kind of chaos that would bring? The law that would hang Ruth Blay was British law, and given England’s shaky hold in the colonies, Wentworth must have felt an even stronger desire to uphold it. So in a way, Ruth had been sacrificed less for a crime, and more as an example—a sickening thought.

  Having already learned that photographs were allowed, Susannah used her iPhone to take pictures of all the documents before putting them back in their transparent holder and returning them to the clerk.

  When she stepped outside, she saw Corbin’s car pull into the lot, and when he stopped, she opened the door to get in. “How did it go?” he asked. “Find anything groundbreaking?”

  Actually, what she’d found was only the evidence of an old, old story. It would be up to her to make it new. She opened her mouth to say this to him, but no words came out. Instead, she was momentarily silenced by the unreasonable happiness she felt at simply being in his company. And all she could think about on the drive back to Eastwood was that, in a few days, she’d be seeing him again.

  TWENTY

  On Sunday morning, Corbin stood at Susannah’s door with a big burlap sack slung across his back. “Skates.” He stomped on the mat to shake the snow from his boots before coming inside.

  “So many?”

  “I didn’t know your size.” He knelt and opened the sack. Inside were numerous pairs of figure skates, some elegant and pristine, others scuffed and dirty, utilitarian hockey skates and even a pair with double blades.

  “Where did you get all these?” asked Susannah.

  “I organize a skate swap at the store every year. These are the leftovers. I’ll give them to charity eventually, but I thought you and the kids could pick out what you needed first.”

  “Kid,” she said. “Calista won’t be joining us.”

  “Too bad.” He sounded genuinely regretful. “I wanted to meet her.”

  “Maybe another time.” Susannah walked to the stairs and called up, “Jack, Corbin’s here.”

  “Coming,” called Jack, and in seconds he was clattering down. Had he grown in this past month or even
week? He suddenly seemed taller.

  “Dude,” said Corbin, extending his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you too.” Jack’s eyes strayed to the pile of skates. “Did you invite the whole town?”

  Corbin smiled. “Just the three of us. I understand your sister can’t join in.”

  “She’s busy. Or something.” Jack was pawing through the skates. “My friend Gilda was going to come. Only she’s sick and her mom said no.”

  “Bummer.” Corbin began going through the pile. “What size are you?” He eyed Jack’s feet and then handed him a black pair that had a wide red stripe running diagonally across the side. “How about these?”

  “They’re cool,” said Jack. “Thanks.” He unlaced his sneakers so he could try them on. “Hey, they fit!”

  Appreciating how he’d found a way to connect with her boy, Susannah reached into the pile to find skates for herself. Here were some made of white leather, with only a small smudge on one toe. She slipped them on and tried to stand. “These work. Now I just have to manage to stay upright.”

  “I’ll stick close,” Corbin said. “But if you’ve skated before, you’ll get back into the rhythm of it.”

  “Do you skate a lot?” Jack asked.

  “It’s practically a requirement for living in the state,” said Corbin.

  Skates looped over their shoulders, Susannah, Jack, and Corbin trooped down to the pond. Susannah still wished Calista had come, and she glanced regretfully back at the house. But the day was bright and not too cold, and the surface of the pond, frozen into a slick, cloudy surface, beckoned. So she sat down on a large tree stump to shed her boots and lace up the skates. She had made it clear to Cally—Calista—that she was welcome to join them; there was nothing else she could do.

  Susannah was just making her first tentative foray onto the ice when Jack, who’d managed to lace up more quickly, whizzed by. “Hey, Mom!” he called. She watched as he skated in a wide, embracing circle and then glided his way back to her.

  “Since when are you such a good skater?” Susannah remembered how tentative Jack had been when she and Charlie had taken the kids skating at the rink in Prospect Park; Calista had been the fearless one.

  “I don’t know. I just grew up or something. Anyway, it’s so much cooler to skate here. The rink was so crowded. And boring. But this”—he spread out his arms to include the wooded shoreline where bare trees, their branches sinuous against the sky, mingled with fragrant pines—“is awesome.”

  Susannah nodded and then refocused her energy on trying to stay upright. She’d been an adequate skater, but it had been a long time and she was shaky. Too fearful to take the long, swooping strides that Jack and Corbin did, she inched along, hoping her confidence would improve.

  “Need an escort?” Susannah turned. There was Corbin, reaching out to her.

  “Sure.” She took his hand and, even through her mitten, felt the small but perceptible jolt. It was a relief to have his support.

  “Did you skate much as a kid?” he asked.

  “A little. I was okay—not great, not terrible. But now that I’m living here, I guess I should try to improve my game.”

  “It’ll come back. You’ll see.” And he gently guided her along until she started feeling more confident and they skated easily together, with Jack weaving around them, along the perimeter of the pond. Jack was right—it was a totally different sensation than that of skating in a rink.

  Bolder now, Susannah let go of Corbin’s hand and expanded her stride. Soon she was covering the ice in long, swooping arcs, urged on by the unfolding of the shoreline and the shifting perspectives created by the ring of houses and trees that enclosed them. In the house, in town, or driving on the snowbanked roads, the winter felt relentless and oppressive. But out here on the pond, she felt a sense, if not of happiness, at least of possibility. Ahead of her, Jack and Corbin skated around each other or raced. Corbin was a natural on the ice; it figured.

  The pond began to fill up and they passed a family with three girls in identical pink parkas, and an older couple who skated sedately, hand in hand. When one of the little girls veered off course and crashed into Corbin, he didn’t even seem rattled; he just scooped her up and handed her, dazed but unhurt, to her father.

  When they had gotten halfway around, Jack pointed to a brown and yellow house. “That’s where Gilda lives,” he told Susannah. “Maybe if I yell, she’ll come to the window.” He raised his voice. “Gilda!”

  “Jack, don’t—” Susannah tried to stop him, but then Corbin joined in, and after a minute or two Gilda’s blond head appeared at the window. She waved frantically, and even from where she stood, Susannah could see the girl’s wide smile.

  “She’s pretty,” Corbin said.

  “Isn’t she?” Jack was waving back. “And she’s really nice too.” He skated closer to the house and then clomped onto the snowy ground until he was right beneath her. Gilda opened the window enough so that they could talk.

  “Young love,” Corbin murmured to Susannah. She turned to him. He wore a blue watch cap that covered his hair but brought out the blue of his eyes, and his face was pink from the cold. He looked so . . . alive, and suddenly the thought was like a slap. He was alive, she was alive, and Charlie—Charlie was dead. She turned away, overcome with tears she didn’t want Corbin to see. It happened this way sometimes, the grief covert and silent as a stealth bomber, ambushing her when she least expected it.

  “You okay?” Corbin was looking down at her, concern and—what, tenderness?—in his expression.

  “Yes, I mean—not exactly, but I will be.” She sniffed and took off her mitten to grope in her pocket for a tissue; when her hand came up empty, Corbin supplied her with a clean white handkerchief he’d extracted from his back pocket. Their fingers brushed as she took it—he wore no gloves—and again she felt the intense, almost alarming physical reaction she had to this man, a reaction that seemed as if it had never changed, only gone dormant in the years since she’d seen him.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” she blurted out. “What do you want from me anyway?” Now why had she said that? They’d been having such a good time and she’d gone and ruined things.

  “I like you,” he said simply. “I liked you back when we were kids and I like you now. Does it have to be any more complicated than that?”

  “I guess not.” She was utterly disarmed; maybe she was overthinking this. She looked over to see Jack clomping back across the snowy yard; when he reached the spot where Susannah and Corbin stood, he waved to Gilda one last time. Then he turned to Susannah. “I’m getting cold. Maybe we should go back.”

  “We might as well keep going,” Corbin said. “We’re more than halfway around already.” He skated close to Jack, and Susannah could hear little bits of their conversation—sports, music—eddying around her. She was grateful that he’d let her be for a while; her attraction to him, and the guilt it caused her, was exhausting.

  Back at the house, Susannah made them all hot chocolate; she sat across from Corbin with a mug warming her chilled hands. Calista was not home and Jack wanted to bring his cocoa upstairs so he could text Gilda. Before he left, Corbin said, “You’re a demon on the ice, dude.” Jack grinned and accepted Corbin’s high five on his way out of the room. Susannah realized she and Corbin were alone. It was a slightly unsettling thought. “Thanks for doing this with us,” she said. “Jack really had a good time.”

  “How about you?” he asked. “Did you have a good time too?”

  “I did.” She met his gaze over the rim of her mug.

  “You seemed upset out there.”

  “It passed.”

  “Can you say what it was?”

  She looked down; wisps of melted marshmallow formed a delicate pattern on the surface of the chocolate. “I’d
rather not.”

  He nodded, seeming to accept that. “We’re getting some pushback from the people at Wingate. The CEO is pretty chummy with the governor and that could affect the outcome.”

  “I heard.” Susannah was grateful the conversation was moving in a less personal direction.

  “You did?” He seemed angry. “Who told you?”

  “I don’t remember.” She remembered quite well—Janet Durbin had mentioned it the night of the meeting—but wasn’t sure she should reveal that now.

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter how you found out.” The anger had lifted right off of him. “What matters is what the governor does—or doesn’t do.”

  “Is he going to make a decision soon?”

  “That depends.” Corbin set his mug down on the table. “First the issue has to get put on the calendar and then—”

  The sound of a key turning in the lock distracted them both and then there was Calista, in her zebra-striped coat, standing in the center of the room.

  “Here you are.” Susannah abruptly stood and walked over to the stove. “I just made us some hot chocolate; can I make you a cup?” Calista was silent and Susannah realized she had not even introduced her daughter to Corbin. “Cally—I mean Calista—this is Corbin Bailey. He owns the hardware store in town and—”

  “Hi.” Calista barely looked in his direction. To her mother she said, “I’ve got homework. And you do want me to do my homework, right?” The question was lobbed like a challenge. Ignoring the offer of hot chocolate, Calista marched to the fridge, pulled out an apple, and closed the door with unnecessary force. Then she headed for the stairs, her purple Doc Martens making an accusatory thump-thump-thump as she went.

  “Ouch,” said Corbin when they were alone again. “I guess she’s not too keen on my being here with you.”

  “I’m sorry she was so rude.” Susannah had not sat back down again but remained standing, smoothing the front of her apron—made of patchwork calico that Calista had sewn in happier times—over and over again. “I don’t know what gets into her.” But she did. Of course she did. She could just imagine how the scene looked to her daughter—mom cozying up to a hunky stranger in their own kitchen, a kitchen she hated and wouldn’t even be in had her father not been killed. The situation was replete with possibilities for recrimination and blame.