The House on Primrose Pond

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “There was a little rise and that’s where they erected the gallows; Gallows Hill, it was called. That’s where the cart stopped. When they put the noose round her neck, a little cry went up—there were many who believed her innocent, you see—and people kept turning toward Governor Wentworth’s grand house on Pleasant Street. He’d granted her reprieves twice before. But not that day.

  “There was a minister there too—I don’t recall his name—and together they said a short prayer. She looked worn to the bone, the poor girl did. But like a bone, she had been scoured and bleached, everything stripped away. She was a walking spirit. Then there was a moment when she seemed to revive, like she was waking from a horrible dream. The color came into her face and she looked around her wildly and began begging for a few more moments to live. The minister laid his hand on her shoulder and shook his head. The order was given and the cart took off.” Prudence’s face was wet with tears. As was my own. “Her eyes closed, and then opened, which is how they stayed. I wish I could say it was quick. But it was not.” She sniffed loudly and used the corner of her apron to wipe her nose. “There was no justice on that day,” she said. “No justice at all.”

  Susannah looked at the clock. It was nine thirty. Corbin would be here in an hour or so. She could have stopped typing and looked over what she’d done, made some preliminary edits as she read; that was how she usually worked. But not tonight. She was on fire and she had to keep going, just to get it down. She’d edit later.

  After that conversation, the past came rushing back at me with the force of a stallion gone wild. I started having nightmares again, the kind I had not had for years, and I’d bolt awake, sweat beading my face, heart like a wagon wheel racing down a hill.

  “What is it?” Joel would ask, drawing me into the safe circle of his loving arms. “You were moaning in your sleep.”

  “Nothing,” I always told him. “Night fancies.”

  “Night terrors, from the sound of it.” But he’d settle back into slumber, and when he was breathing steadily again, I’d slip from his arms and out of bed. I’d wander the house—a different and less welcoming place in dead of night—and check on my two older children. Betsey was in the cradle near our bed, so I already knew she was safe. Then I would go downstairs and into the kitchen, where I’d tucked the little bottle of Prudence’s elderberry wine on a shelf behind some of my earthenware bowls. I was the only one who used them, so I knew my secret was safe.

  I poured a little of the wine in a small cup—if Joel should happen to wake, I did not want to be seen drinking a glass of wine—and sipped it slowly. The bottle was nearly empty. I would have to ask Prudence for more. Or try to make it myself, once the fruit was in season again. After finishing my cup, I was calm enough to sleep again, so I crept back into bed, beside my lightly snoring husband. He would not have to wonder or ask where I’d gone.

  I cannot say why I did not tell him my story. We were frank with each other about most things, and he had a tolerant and forgiving nature. But this secret was too heinous to reveal. All of the terrible events Prudence had recounted? I had helped set each and every one of them in motion. I had not meant to, and I certainly had not wanted to. But I had done it just the same. God did not judge us by our intentions, but by our actions. This much I knew.

  If only we had not stopped at the Curriers’ on that day. Or if it had been raining, which would have kept us from the meadow and the barn. Or if it had been one of the other girls who had found the baby. Or one of those boys. But no. It had been me, only me. And nothing would ever change that.

  A couple of weeks later—it had already turned sharply colder and the leaves dropped from the trees as if all on cue—Prudence stopped by my house carrying one of her breads, a jar of honey, and a bundle. I thanked her for the bread and honey; though my appetite was better now, I still had a special hankering for the loaves she brought. She said nothing about the bundle and left it by her feet as we sat and visited. While we sipped our tea, we chatted of the usual things: a neighbor’s cow had died, Prudence’s youngest boy had an earache, there was to be a new minister at the church come spring. But when we had exhausted all these topics, she drew the bundle onto her lap and opened it.

  “This belonged to her,” she said. “It was there when my Josiah went to clean out the cell.”

  I looked down at the dark blue linsey-woolsey Prudence held. It was expertly crafted, with tightly rendered quilting in a lovely looping pattern. “Did she make it herself?”

  “Yes.” Prudence nodded. “I remember when her mother brought it to her; it may have helped keep her warm in that cell.”

  “Her mother didn’t want it—after?” I asked.

  “She never came for it. Josiah said I might keep it, but of course if she had ever asked for it back, I would have gladly given it to her. She’d been a sempstress, you know. And she’d taught her daughter well.” We both looked admiringly at Ruth’s cunning handiwork. “I just thought you might want to see it,” Prudence said. “Given what we talked about and all.”

  “Thank you for showing it to me.” I reached over the increasing swell of my middle to touch the fabric and in that moment remembered the woman I’d seen sitting in the cart and being taken away. I had not believed her guilty then. I did not believe it now. Then I asked Prudence if she would like some more tea, and when she said yes, I rose, with some difficulty, to pour it.

  “Let me,” she said, and she refilled my cup as well. I thanked her and sank back down. I was carrying low, and the weight of the child inside me seemed always to be pulling me toward the ground. I would be glad when my time came around.

  We had a mild winter that year, not much snow at all. The woods around the house were alive with rabbits and deer; Joel went hunting with our son sometimes, and though the bloody carcasses they hauled home pained me, I was grateful for the food they put in my pot and on our table. I had now entered that phase of constant and ravening hunger, and could be found up late at night not tippling but consuming whole meals: chunks of cold stew eaten with my fingers straight from the pot, or the legs of fowl that I chewed on like an animal, my face greasy, my lips slick. Morsels of Prudence’s bread that I did not slice but tore, scones or jam tarts I had made for the children, the sweetness cramming my mouth, making me want more, more, more. Joel was amused by my insatiable appetite. “You’re carrying a giant,” he’d say, fondling my taut belly, my ripe breasts, “or maybe a pair of giants.” And then he’d pull me close for a kiss.

  It was late December and I was home when my water gave way, soaking my dress, wetting the new Turkey carpet Joel had bought me as a Christmas gift. But I was not alarmed; I had been through this before and knew what to expect. I sent Pettingill over to get Prudence and she brought the other women to help prepare the groaning cake and beer for my lying in.

  The labor was swift and fierce. I thrashed, I screamed, and once or twice I even cursed. Prudence kept the children and Joel away and she ministered to me herself, as tender as any mother. Finally, the baby came in a great, hot rush of blood and wet and pain. Not the pair of giants that Joel had teased about. Not even one giant. Only a tiny, dark-eyed girl who did not even cry when she came forth. “Her name is Ruth,” I said when she had been wiped, wrapped, and placed at my breast. I saw Prudence look over at me sharply, but I did not hesitate. “Ruth Blay Eastman.”

  “Betsey, are you sure—?” Prudence began.

  “Very sure,” I said. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

  I was tired then. So tired from travail. So after suckling little Ruth for a bit, I handed her to Prudence and went to sleep. When I awoke, perhaps an hour or two later, little Ruth was asleep in her cradle and everyone else but Prudence was gone. I could tell from her steady look that it was no coincidence that she was still there: she was waiting for me. And when she opened her mouth to speak, I knew I was right.

  “Why?” she said.r />
  “I had to.” I did not pretend not to know what she meant; it would have been an insult to her memory to have done that.

  “Why give her that burden? What if someone remembers? What will they think? And what if it brings her bad luck? Did you ever think of that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” My eyes strayed to the tiny infant in her swaddling. “I owed it to Ruth, because I am responsible for her death.”

  “What are you talking about? Have you gone mad? I’d say you’d been drinking too much of that elderberry wine, but I’ve been here the whole time, so I know you haven’t.”

  “I haven’t gone mad, and no, I’m not drunk. I know what I know. And though I have never spoken of this since my parents died—not to Joel, not to anyone—I will tell you because I think you deserve to know. And when you do, you will understand.” I told her then, the story unspooling from my lips just the way it did here, in these pages. The day in June, the barn, the floorboards—and what I found beneath them. “If I hadn’t come upon that infant, Ruth Blay never would have been indicted, tried, or convicted. So I’m the one responsible for her death, just as sure as if I’d tied the noose myself.”

  “Don’t ever say such a thing! Don’t even think it!” The sharp sound of Prudence’s words woke little Ruth and she hurried over to rock the cradle. When the child slept again, she turned to me. “You couldn’t have known. No one could. The Lord works in mysterious ways that we’ll never understand. But He guided you into that barn and He was there when you lifted the floorboards. It’s not our place to question why.”

  I had not thought about it in this way before, but it brought me no comfort, no peace. This was not a Divine plan, because if it were, I could have no business with the Lord ever again. No, this was the Devil’s work, pure and simple. “You may be right,” I said finally, “though I cannot for the life of me see how. But at the very least I will name my child for her, the one I wronged, albeit unwittingly. For I believe to this day that she was more sinned against than sinning. And I’ll believe that until the day I die.”

  Susannah actually let out a sigh when she typed those words, a long, audible exhalation. There, she had done it, what she’d set out to do. Now she could only hope that Tasha would respond enthusiastically and allow her to fill in the blanks. She saved the document and turned off the laptop. Outside the room where she sat, the sun shone on Primrose Pond and the trees that encircled it had started to come into leaf: tentative, shiny, green. The long winter was finally over.

  When she had started delving into Ruth’s story, Susannah had no idea that her mother had also given birth to a child who was technically illegitimate. But the differences in the two narratives outweighed any superficial similarities.

  Claire had had the protection of her husband, and hid the secret of Susannah’s parentage quite well. Even if her husband had known, he seemed to have been willing to maintain the fiction. And if that fiction had been exposed, Claire’s options would have been far from bleak. Had Warren left her, she could have raised her daughter on her own. Or Dave Renfew might have acknowledged paternity. So many things would have been possible.

  Yet despite all that, Susannah could not help but see the two stories as linked, at least in the winking constellation that made up her firmament. Was Claire frightened when she first learned she was pregnant? Did she ever consider having an abortion? Or telling Warren? And was it hard to pretend that the child she carried belonged to the man she had betrayed? Susannah knew that she would never have answers to these questions. But they would never stop circling, round and round, in her mind.

  She heard a car pull up and stop, then a door slam. Corbin. She’d given him a key, to let himself in. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to see him. She hurried down the stairs so she could meet him halfway.

  FORTY

  Loaded down with wallpaper and fabric samples, Susannah followed Alice into her house. It was May, and the woods around the house were raucous with twittering birds; in the last week or so, Susannah had seen mushrooms dotting the damp earth under the trees, gray rabbits and tawny chipmunks scurrying by, and this morning she saw a deep blue butterfly with a thin white border around its wings hovering right outside the kitchen window. Spring had finally come to Primrose Pond.

  Alice glanced around the room, nodding. “It looks very good, don’t you think?” The contractors had finished the repair work and she was moving back home. The samples Susannah toted were to be used in Alice’s ever expanding redecoration scheme; she now planned to redo the entire first floor.

  “Very good,” Susannah said. She actually felt a little sad that Alice was leaving. She’d gotten used to having her there, and both of the kids loved her—a kind of grandmotherly figure, if not an actual grandmother. For Susannah, she was not a mother, though. But she was the connection to Dave. Her father. The words still did not quite gel.

  “Here, let me take all that.” Alice set the swatches of material and rolls of patterned paper on a marble-topped table near the door. “There’s something I want to show you.” She led Susannah through the kitchen to a door; beyond that door was what looked like a waiting room. Dr. Dave’s office. “After he died, I never could bring myself to touch any of this,” she said.

  Susannah looked around at the small sofa, basket of toys, and Norman Rockwell prints, all featuring children, hanging on the walls. A wooden dollhouse sat on a low table in one corner. There was a short hallway with two open doorways and she walked toward them—examination rooms, she supposed, though they seemed pretty empty now.

  “His office was back here,” said Alice. Susannah followed her toward the end of the hallway. The door was shut, but Alice opened it and led her inside. Susannah began to hear a small whirring or even roaring in her ears. Dr. Dave’s space. Her father’s space. Dave Renfew was not her father in any sense of the word that truly mattered. Except that he was. She took in the oak desk and swivel chair, the medical tomes that lined one wall, the diplomas that hung on the other. There were photos too, lots of them. In one of them he wore that red bow tie. Notes and drawings, presumably from his young patients, were on that wall as well, an outpouring of affection and gratitude, rendered in brightly colored Crayolas.

  She walked over to the chair. “May I?” she asked. Alice nodded and she sat down. A brass holder held several sharpened pencils and a couple of black pens.

  A leather-trimmed blotter, a bulging Rolodex, and a prescription pad whose edges had curled and browned. Nothing had been moved or changed. Susannah reached out to touch the swirling, jewel-like colors of a glass paperweight. It seemed to be lit from within.

  “I bought him that in Venice one year. All the children loved it,” Alice said. “He’d let them hold it while he was talking to their parents.”

  “I imagine it was very soothing.”

  “That desk—that’s where I found the poem.”

  “Were there any more?”

  “Not that I found. Before he died, he shredded most everything, I think. Somehow he missed that.”

  “Do you think he wanted you to find it?”

  Alice looked like she was considering the question. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “He loved me, I do know that. And he wouldn’t have wanted to hurt me.”

  “No, he didn’t. I’m sure of that.” Susannah thought of the note that had been tucked into the pages of the book that she had happened upon back in January. “Because I found something he wrote to my mother that said as much. He loved you, Alice. And my mother loved my father.”

  Alice bowed her head and clasped her hands. Then she looked up. “Is it possible to love two people at the same time?”

  Now it was Susannah who paused. What if she’d met Corbin again while Charlie was still alive? Would she have succumbed to her feelings for him? “I’m not sure,” she said finally. “I’ve never been tested that way.” She wanted to open a drawer, but that didn’t feel right, so s
he picked up the prescription pad. There was something written on it, and she realized that she recognized the writing, the same writing that she’d seen in the note. Seeing it was another small shock, but one that helped confirm her new understanding. “What are you planning to do with this space?”

  “I thought I would just leave it,” she said. “I’ve got plenty of room in the house, and I don’t need it. But now I’ve changed my mind. Time to let it go.”

  “Or transform it,” said Susannah. “Turn it into something new.”

  Alice was nodding. “Yes, that’s a better way to look at it.”

  “I think so too.” Susannah’s hand returned to the paperweight. “I’m wondering . . . maybe you’d let me have something that was his . . . a keepsake of some kind.”

  “I’ll give you some photos,” Alice said. “And take the paperweight. I can see that you like it.”

  “I like it very much.” She ran a finger over the wavy pattern. “But you gave it to him.”

  “And now I’m giving it to you.”

  Susannah picked it up, the smooth weight of it pleasing in her hand. “I’m going to tell them about you. About us, really. I just need to find the right time.”

  “You’ll know when it’s right.” Alice did not ask what she meant; she seemed to understand right away. “There’s no rush.”

  Susannah was ready to leave the office when Alice put a hand on her arm. “There is one more thing I think I should say to you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Susannah was confused.

  “For how I behaved with Calista. I was wrong to step in between the two of you. I told myself it was because I wanted what was best for her. And that wasn’t untrue. It just wasn’t the whole story.”