The pounding in Willow’s head had risen to a crescendo. “I’m sorry. Would you mind if I went upstairs to lie down for just a bit?”
Tory went on. “Having you here will do us all good. You’re more stressed than you know, but we won’t make any far-reaching plans. Spend the summer, in the fall you can decide if it still suits you.”
I wasn’t surprised by Willow’s relief. She watched her aunt’s hands, the thin needle suturing. Each stitch seeming to punctuate the benefits of staying: no rent, food, and childcare expenses. Relief from those, for even a couple of months, would help her pay off some bills. Prairie remained the biggest concern, though, and Willow’s mind kept circling around that. Even if Mary had driven to Greenburr to gloat over the impending funeral, she wasn’t likely to come every day, cruising by as she’d started doing in Omaha. “You’re sure? Maybe over the summer, Red will find proof that Mary killed Papa, and she’ll be locked away for good.”
“I’ll call movers,” Tory said. “My expense. And in the fall, if you decide to stay, Briarwood is an excellent university.”
Sleep, Willow thought, but after Tory’s kindness, movers doing the work, and Tory paying the bills, how could she get up and leave the table? “Dr. Hartford seems nice.”
With a practiced motion, Tory rolled the end of her thread between her thumb and index finger, snagging it into a knot. “You’ll see plenty of him this summer, he’s going to be working here in the library.”
“Here?”
“Is there a better place to write Mom’s biography? The journals and notes are here. I’ve never let anyone cart off artifacts, and I won’t start now. Those papers are likely worth money. I hope, when his book comes out, the university will want to buy them. I’ve told him none of Mom’s papers are to leave the premises, under any circumstances.”
“I’m glad I’m staying.” Dr. Hartford would be another, younger set of eyes to warn of Mary.
Tory’s stitches slowed and then stopped as she rounded a muslin toe. “He’s seven or eight years older than you and already through all his schooling.”
“I didn’t mean I was looking for a man.” The age difference didn’t bother her, though. She fingered the handle of her pansy cup. She was sick of boys with shiny faces, errant pimples, and in stupors over what puberty had done to their penises. “I’ve escaped earning one PHT. I’m not looking to earn another.”
“A PHT?”
She sipped her tea, Jonah’s honey sweet on her tongue. “A ‘Put Husband Through’ college.” Still, she had no interest in someone like Clay Hartford. Beautiful people like him, like Derrick, were of one world, she another. Though she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life alone, raising Prairie the way she’d been raised—with only a single parent—at the moment, she didn’t need to add a male to her list of troubles. “Actually,” she said, “when the day comes, if it ever comes, I’ll be looking for a mud face. Much less trouble. I just want to steal long looks at the guy, material for fantasies when I can’t sleep.”
Tory’s needle bobbed. When she spoke again, Willow was surprised by the turn of her thoughts. “I’m not sure why Mom left you so little. Maybe she thought by the time I died, Farthest House would be an albatross.”
33
Willow tossed most of the night and rose in the morning with her head still pounding and her stomach rolling. She thought it odd to still be sick, because she was seldom ever ill. She took two aspirin, dressed Prairie, and they went down to the kitchen. By midmorning, she felt no better, and sitting where Mable rattled pans and cracked eggs by whacking them on the rim of her glass bowl wasn’t helping. Fresh air might. More urgently, she’d yet to see Jonah.
With Prairie in her arms, she started across the yard. The bright sunlight and even Prairie’s eighteen pounds made her doubt her decision, but Jonah was working to clear a raised flowerbed toward the back of the yard. She hurried.
He didn’t see their approach, and when they’d come to within ten yards, Willow stopped to watch. She noticed his slumped posture at the funeral, but only in passing. Grief kept her focused on the casket. Now, she saw his back had become a bow, and his forward lean made his overalls hang from his chest, creating a sling, a place she wished she could crawl into, close to his heart.
“Poor old fool,” Mable had said in the kitchen. “That man sees about as much as this egg in my hand.”
The emotion in Mable’s voice, a cross between frustration and kindness, had made Willow smile. The way Mable kept looking up from her work to glance out the window, her hands going still while her gaze followed Jonah, made Willow feel hope. They were family here.
“Jonah?” Willow said coming up on him, “hello.”
He stopped raking and at the edge of the bed turned slowly, using the rake for support and cranking his stiff body around to face her. He’d spent her years away working in the sun and hilltop wind. He looked even more the basset hound, and she imagined one day, his rheumy eyes would not open at all, and he’d simply dream his way into eternity.
He wore three shirts under his work-worn Key overalls, each adding a different color of frayed thread to hang at his wrists. “Willow,” he said, one tremulous hand reaching out for her.
She grabbed his knotty hand as Prairie in her arms tipped her head away from Jonah into Willow’s neck. “This is my little girl, Prairie. Papa’s dead,” she heard herself say, the words sounding shamefully like help me.
Jonah nodded. “Yup. Your daddy was a good man. Your grandmother was always proud of that one.”
“Thanks for coming to the funeral. I don’t know how we’ll get along without him.” A wave of nausea rolled through her stomach, and she hoped she wasn’t going to be sick in front of him. “Tory’s asked me to live here for a while, and I’ve accepted her offer.”
Jonah’s gaze lowered, and he looked down to his shoes or the tines of the rake. He lifted the tool an inch off the ground and punched it back down.
His reaction surprised her. Was his hearing as bad as his sight? Had he misunderstood?
A bee buzzed by her ear and landed on Jonah’s hand. Looking like a drop of gold, the insect moved, dipping the upper part of its body into the shadow between two of Jonah’s thick black fingers. It walked across the bridge of one finger and dipped again.
“I see you’re still keeping as many bees,” she said.
“Can’t say for certain. Counting ‘em is hard. Tory asked you to stay here?”
He had heard correctly. “Does that surprise you? It did me at first.”
“Why you want to be here?”
His attitude felt bruising. “I love Farthest House.”
“No reason you need to be here.”
He only reached her shoulders, but his words felt towering. “I have reasons.”
“You best go back home.”
On Willow’s hip, Prairie was growing heavy. “Tory has more than enough room, and she’s family. Right now, Prairie and I need—”
“Ain’t you got a job? Ain’t no work around here for young folks.”
What could she say? He’d been glad to see her, and now he was telling her to pack her bags. She watched the bee on his hand.
“That baby too?” he asked. “She staying?”
She shifted Prairie to her other hip, her eyes narrowing. How could he even ask that?
“Ain’t no reason to have a baby here. Just us old fools here.”
There was no point in continuing the conversation. He didn’t want them there, and because he was half the magic of Farthest House, half her reason for staying felt gone. The other half wasn’t: she needed to stay where Prairie was safest. She glanced back at the house and the cobblestone walk she had to travel to get there. If she could just get back inside and lie down, then later, with a cleared head, she’d try and make sense of Jonah’s rejection. “Give us a few weeks, at least, and don’t worry, we’ll try and stay out of your way.”
She shifted Prairie again, not realizing a bee had landed in the crook
of her arm. With a yelp, she flung the free arm down, and the bee dropped and spun in the grass. She felt doubly betrayed. During the four years she spent weekends at Farthest House, often helping with the hives, she was never stung. Didn’t she have a special relationship with the bees? She’d thought the same of her relationship with Jonah, too, but she was wrong.
34
Three rows of bookshelves flanked each side of Luessy’s library. Moving down the aisle with Willow, I spied books I had read, colored spines, snatches of titles, many in French, ideas picked up and put down. Worlds. They had an equally spellbinding effect on Willow. She not only longed to read each one, for her the worlds of reading and painting were as connected as the two sides of the brain, thick with ropy links and nerve fibers firing impulses. She loved line, color, shading, and negative space. And she loved words.
When she thought of summer’s passing, April and May already gone while she tossed in bed with headaches or leaned over the toilet heaving, it depressed her. But she was up now and having a much better day, even managing to shower and come downstairs. Still in her bathrobe, she’d stopped to rest a moment in the wide arboreal foyer, and the door to the library had caught her up and pulled her in.
She walked slowly with no more desire than to be in the space, another space, where Mémé found inspiration. Two mahogany arm chairs in antique leather still flanked a small reading table in front of a wall of French windows. The windows framed a view of the garden where Jonah worked at one of his endless tasks, and the willow tree Papa used as inspiration for her name sat stately and much larger than she remembered. At the front of the library was the desk where Mémé’s will was read so many years before. Willow felt she’d never understand what happened that morning: Papa so angry and stunned by the raven. Mémé’s death, though he grieved her, hadn’t done that. Something else crippled him that winter morning.
The Luessy Starmore Mysteries occupied a prominent place in the first bookcase, middle shelf, and eye level. Like the rest of the library, everything looked in its proper place but spiritless with Mémé and Papa gone.
Willow moved around the desk, sank into the chair, and her hands fanned out over the broad and polished desktop. Mémé had touched and palmed the wood all through her adult life, and Willow felt starved for connection.
I felt a deep ache, too. As Willow’s illness drug on, I was losing hope. My worst fears were unfolding.
“Why am I so sick?” she asked of the space. On good days, she managed a few minutes outside, sitting on the portico with Prairie, until a bee, sometimes two or three, came circling. At other times, she found the strength to duck through the low door in the wall of Mémé’s bedroom and climb the narrow and crooked attic steps. There she sat and stared at her paintings. Kahlo, she knew, found ways to paint while in pain, the bright primary colors full of blood and heartache, but how?
On her worst days, Willow lay in Mémé’s old bed, drifting in and out of fitful sleep, the wall paneling, windows, and the door to the attic winging around her, and the lines of day and night bleeding together or entirely erased.
“Mom read in here every day,” Tory said from just outside the door, her voice reaching like one of her long fingers into the library. “But when it came to her writing, she preferred the attic, believing all the books were a distraction.”
As Tory appeared, Prairie on one gaunt hip, and behind her Clay Hartford, Willow drew in a quick and frustrated breath. She ran her hands through her damp hair and clutched closed the deep vee of her robe. “Hello,” and then, “I’m here. So sorry, Tory, nowhere to hide.”
At the sound of her mother’s voice, Prairie leaned forward, trying to squirm out of Tory’s grasp, her small arms stretching for Willow.
“There’s my baby girl,” Willow said. She stood too fast, a swoosh of dizziness slamming her head. She dropped back down.
The hems of Tory’s black, wide-legged pants fluttered around her thin ankles, and she brought Prairie forward. “I haven’t seen anyone sitting behind that desk since Mom died. How strange to see you there. You remember Professor Hartford?”
He reached his hand across the desk. “It’s good to see you again. And please, it’s just Clay.”
His coat was off, and he carried it swung over his shoulder on the hook of a finger. He’d also loosened his tie and rolled his shirtsleeves back from his wrists. Tall, Willow thought. Taller than me, and kill-me-now handsome. She reached for his hand, trying to keep Prairie balanced on her lap and her robe closed. “I bet I wouldn’t find Clay in the Catholic Book of Saint’s Names.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he looked amused. “Is that important?” Then after a pause, “Tory tells me you’ve been sick. I hope this means you’re recovering.”
Tory stood closer to him than Willow thought necessary. “Dr. Mahoney has left instructions: Willow is to get plenty of bed rest, but she’s also to get up and get busy.”
The comment made Willow cringe, and she hoped her face wasn’t coloring. She disliked the town’s old physician and his condescending recommendations. Only for Prairie, who needed a healthy mother, had she allowed him to examine her not once, but twice. Both times he repeated the same diagnosis: “Probably a virus.” The second time though, his voice held a thinner, slightly tighter note: “I suspect you’ve let yourself get depressed. Just the sort of thing viruses like. You need to get over that, now.”
She’d stared at him. Get over Papa’s death? Get over caring that Mary murdered him and is still free? Get over worrying about Prairie’s safety?
Still, Dr. Mahoney had drawn blood on her second visit, and when the tests came back, his white brows tangled over his dark eyes, and he scolded: “There’s nothing medically wrong with you. When a woman spends her time in bed like you’re doing, I tell her she needs to find something useful to occupy her mind.”
In the library, Clay stepped back from the desk and to the long line of Luessy’s mysteries. “Do the two of you have a favorite?”
Tory’s shoulders lifted. “I’ve never read them. Oh, I’ve thumbed through some of them, but it wasn’t much fun having a mother preoccupied with her work.”
Willow swallowed, forcing herself to stay quiet. Mémé always gave her plenty of attention, and Papa never complained about neglect. The criticism seemed as unfair as it was surprising. Even if Tory believed she’d been neglected, she needed to be careful what she said in front of Mémé’s biographer.
“I’m interested in her writing habits,” Clay said.
“Completely compulsive,” Tory said. “The writing always came first.”
Clay acknowledged her comment and nodded toward Mémé’s titles. “One is missing.”
Gazing around, indicating the whole of the library, Tory smiled. “It must be misfiled. You’re welcome to try and find it.” She turned back to Willow, “Mable is fixing tea, and we’re taking it outside. Do you feel up to joining us?”
The bees! How many times had she been stung? The furry little monsters in her face seemed like extensions of Jonah, telling her over and over that she wasn’t wanted. “I don’t think so, and I’m not dressed. You two go on ahead. Prairie and I will stay inside.”
“I wish you would,” Clay said. He looked solid and comfortable as he took the few steps back to the desk, light from the nearest window layering a thin sheen over his jaw. “It’s a beautiful afternoon, and I’d like to hear your stories of your grandmother.”
Was she staring at him?
He looked down at Prairie. “You want your mom to come outside?”
Prairie nodded up and down.
Smart, Willow thought, use the kid. Spending more time with him though and being outside with Mémé’s roses and Prairie did sound wonderful. She was starved for company other than that of the two sixty-something women who prattled on about the weather or gossiped ceaselessly about folks she didn’t know or served up churchy platitudes about how she’d certainly feel better soon. But did she have the strength to climb back up the stairs, g
et dressed, and make the trek outside? Only to face the bees?
“Having you join us would be a treat,” Tory said.
They waited for an answer, but Willow continued to hesitate. “I wish the porch were screened in.”
“Nonsense,” Tory said. “We’re going first to see the attic. Dress and join us outside.”
They turned to leave, and Prairie squealed and squirmed in Willow’s lap. Clay stopped. “You want to come with us?”
He dropped his jacket onto the desk and lifted his palms in invitation. She leaned for him.
The three left the library, and Willow marveled at how Prairie went so easily to Clay, and how Clay hadn’t considered himself too busy or too important to reach out and take her. Considering how Prairie had only women in her life now, Clay’s kindness was appreciated. The flip-side though made Willow’s throat tighten. Prairie was likely to reach for any stranger who smiled at her.
Dressed and feeling gratitude just for having found the strength to do so, Willow stepped onto the covered portico and stopped, breathing in deeply. The air smelled of fading peonies, and new roses. The sky was a clear, liquid blue, maybe cerulean, cobalt light, and titanium. Across the lawn, Jonah worked with pruning shears. Behind him, farther still, stood his hives.
She hadn’t spoken to him since their first conversation, and knowing he didn’t want her, or Prairie, around still hurt. There had to be some misunderstanding. She’d get well, start helping out in the garden, doing the heaviest jobs, and they’d get things straightened out. He’d come to love Prairie.
She noticed Clay then, sitting alone at the patio table and looking out in the direction of the graves. He’d rolled his blue shirtsleeves up to his elbows, and for a moment, her eyes rested on his bare forearms. She wondered if he remembered he left his coat on the library desk. Hopefully not. If he left the prize behind, she’d wrap herself up and—Reason thumped her on the head. You’re losing it. Might as well bare your breast to an asp as trust a male again.
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