by Everly Frost
“What are you painting?”
“It’s my project. Rebecca would want me to finish it.”
In the weeks since the funeral, the trees sprouted new leaves, the flowers in the garden bloomed, but summer would scorch everything once it arrived and that felt more fitting to me than all this new life after my sister’s death.
The whole world should be scorched. I wanted it to be as brittle as tree stumps after a bushfire.
I thought Aunt Alice watched me from beneath her lashes, but when I turned she studied her painting. I tried to emulate Rebecca, swishing paint around in airy-fairy strokes, hoping that it would come together to form something—anything—recognizable.
The side doors stood open, but the room was as black as our clothing. Something took shape on my canvas. Slashed across chaotic purple and dark blue, was a thin, red line. It grew into a cut and I dropped the paintbrush. My hand shot to my cheek.
Aunt Alice stared from my painting to me. She wiped her hands and reached for me, stamping her feet and muttering about pins and needles.
With a sad smile, she said, “Come with me, Caroline.”
I looked away from the ruined painting and left it behind. We exited the living room and headed upstairs, but I hesitated at the door of her room.
“You can come in,” she said. “I know I’ve never invited you in before, but it’s okay. Really. Come and sit.”
She patted a white chair in the pale lilac room. Deep purple curtains formed a dark backdrop. She drew them open and pushed on the windows so that the room filled with the cawing of crows.
As she went to her dresser and pulled open a drawer, I caught a glimpse of silk handkerchiefs and a bottle of lavender perfume. In her hand was a small pot. She put her hands on my shoulders and turned me to face her, and then she dabbed at my cheek. She gestured to the mirror.
The scar was gone.
“No, don’t touch or it will rub off.” She closed the pot. “I should have given this to you much sooner, but I don’t want you to think you should cover it up.”
She pressed the pot into my hand and my fingers closed around the glass container. Then she busied herself fixing her hair. “I can order you more if you want it, although goodness knows when your father will arrange the Internet access he keeps promising me. Mail order is inconceivable in this day and age.”
“Probably never.” My lips tugged up, and I realized that it was the first smile in a long time.
She suddenly touched my face, looking into my eyes. “Oh, Caroline, you look just like Meredith when you’re happy.”
“Do I? I wish I’d known her.”
She turned me into the mirror again. “All you have to do is look and you’ll see her.”
I gazed into the mirror at my blue eyes and black hair, the small chin and high cheekbones. “What was she like?”
“Full of life, Caroline. Not as wild as me, mind—she toed the line—but there wasn’t a boy who didn’t trail after her—or a girl who didn’t wish her dead.” Behind me, my aunt’s figure slumped. “She hated me in the end. I suppose I don’t blame her. I ruined all her choices.”
I frowned and my image frowned. “You mean she didn’t want to marry Dad?”
“No, no, they were already engaged. He was her choice, but it was because of me that they were forced to come out here. There wasn’t email back then and I only got a few letters from her. She didn’t even write when Edith was born. But, she must have forgiven me a bit by the time Rebecca came along.”
My eyes in the mirror questioned, assessed. “Aunt Alice, I don’t understand… why did you decide to visit us now? Mom’s been gone for so long.”
Aunt Alice hugged herself. “My mother—your grandmother—passed away a year ago and without her, my father, well, he wasted away.”
She turned to the window as the cawing crows fell silent. “When they were gone, it was as though I was finally given the chance to start again. At last, I could make up for all my mistakes.”
Her blue eyes pierced me. “I never dreamed I would see the death of my niece. I’m glad Meredith isn’t here to see what’s happened.”
My reflection swam as I thought about my dearest one.
I wiped at my eyes, but when I looked up, the face in the mirror snarled. Lips drawn back, turned blue with cold, the girl looking back at me wanted to rip out the glass and smash it to shards.
I pushed at the dresser, away from the curled lip and flashing eyes, and tumbled backward, knocking over the chair.
At the same time, there was a crash and a shout from downstairs.
Aunt Alice dashed over and pulled me upright. “Caroline! Are you okay?”
I tried to rise. “What was that noise?”
Alice tugged at my sleeve and raced from the room. As I scrambled after her, angry voices hurtled from the dining room. As fast as I could, I ran downstairs and through the hall.
I stopped in the doorway. “What…?”
Edith tensed in the corner of the room. One arm protruded into the light, hand clenched. The side of her mouth was drawn down.
Timothy railed next to a broken chair. “You can’t tell me what to do!”
“Timothy.” Dad grabbed Tim’s arm, muscles bunching and the blood pulsing at his temple. “You will stop. Right now. Or I will send her away.”
The blood left Timothy’s face, but he rallied. “If you send her away, I’ll go with her.”
Dark with anger, my father’s fist slammed into Timothy’s cheek, knocking him down. Timothy struggled to stand. His nose bled, his eyes wept, but his lips twisted in rebellion.
Aunt Alice froze beside me as I grabbed the wall. I wanted to yell at them to stop, but my throat closed.
“You will listen to me, boy. You will stop carrying on with her, before it’s too late. Do you hear me?”
My father grabbed up Timothy’s collar, pressing his face close. His chest expanded like a bull’s. “Do you hear me?”
I could see the thoughts racing through Timothy’s head. Would he hit back? Would he shout? Protest? Instead, he went limp as Dad pulled him close and whispered something to him.
Timothy’s eyes became wide. He looked confused, then sullen. “Yes, sir.”
Dad’s voice was so quiet that I barely heard it. “Do you hear me, son?”
“Yes, sir. I hear you.”
Aunt Alice finally recovered. “Harry, what on earth is going on here?”
Dad’s voice was like a whip. “I’m disciplining my son, Alice, and I’ll thank you to keep out of it.”
Aunt Alice pushed back against the wall, recoiling against the verbal lash. Her mouth trembled against more words, but she bit her lip.
“Get yourself down to the west paddock, boy,” Dad said to Timothy. “There are cattle coming in a week, and Jack needs help with the fences.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Clean up your nose first.”
“Yes, sir.”
Timothy didn’t look at us as he scrambled past.
Dad lurched at Edith. “You. Get out of here. You’ve done enough.” He wrenched his head toward the door, and Edith rushed to obey, swirling past me on her way out.
I didn’t want to stick around, so I raced after Timothy, finding him bent over the kitchen sink. Mrs. Drew fluttered around him with a white towel splotched with blood.
“Timothy. Are you okay?”
He wrenched his sleeve over his dripping nose and snatched the towel from Mrs. Drew. “Go away, Caroline. Get away from me.”
I retreated, stung. I looked to the housekeeper, but she avoided my eyes, leaving the towel on the sink and turning back to her chopping.
I ran into Aunt Alice at the door. She pulled me into the nearest room, closing the door behind us. “Caroline, do you know anything about what just happened?”
I scrubbed at my forehead. “I have no idea why they were fighting.”
Aunt Alice dropped into a chair, rubbing at her eyes, heaving out a sigh. “It will be a good thing when t
he cattle arrive. It will keep them busy. Stop the bickering.” She breathed deeply. The expression on her face changed. “Why don’t you read a book for the rest of the day, dear?”
I looked around. “Oh. Um, actually I wondered if you wouldn’t mind teaching me some piano?”
Her eyebrows rose into her hair. “You? Piano? I’d love to, but I thought you weren’t interested.”
I shrugged. “I miss the music.”
Her eyes met mine. “Well, then, yes.”
I perched on the edge of the piano seat, my stiff fingers refusing to obey, but Aunt Alice didn’t raise her voice or cajole. The tune was clunky and the keys struck back at me. I gritted my teeth and persisted.
A glance through the side doors reminded me of the day the Bucklands arrived and I tried to follow Nathan to the stables. Even Rebecca was angry with me that day. I remembered her hand twitching in her lap and she’d said something that I didn’t remember now. I hadn’t paid any attention but, somehow, now it seemed important.
Her voice echoed back at me, clear and sudden. Do you really not see what’s happening?
“Caroline. That was lovely.”
“What?”
“That tune you just played.”
I jolted back to the present as Alice wiped her eyes with a purple handkerchief. The edge of her nose was red. Her handkerchief fluttered above her chest as she threw a kiss onto my cheek. “You sounded just like your mother.”
I snatched my hands away from the keys and wrestled with them in my lap. “Did she play?”
“Yes, dear, every day. Well, when she was a girl, that is. I don’t suppose she played here, given that you didn’t have a piano before I arrived.”
“I think I might make that do for today.” I shoved the seat back. “I don’t want to overdo it.”
“Of course, Caroline. Again tomorrow, then?”
There was a tie at the back of my dress, and I slipped my hand into the noose it formed. “May I be excused?”
When Aunt Alice let me go, I roamed the house and garden, trying to shake the feeling of dread that invaded my stomach, but it followed me.
Around the garden where Robert West had trimmed the hedge, Samuel lurked with a make-believe weapon. When he jumped out at me, I pretended to be surprised—a moment of normality—before the wind whipped my cheeks with the scent of spring gone wrong.
That night, the same murky wind howled a reminder of winter, and I couldn’t stand listening to it anymore. I threw on my coat and crept down to the stables, knowing I was taking a risk. But the cattle were coming and then the ranch would be teeming with men and beasts, and my chances of seeing Nathan would flicker away until the cattlemen left—and who knew when that would be.
I was sure I could come up with an excuse if Jack was there. I used to come down to the stables all the time and nobody noticed. Worse than the fear of being discovered was the fear of finding the stables empty and dark.
I ran to the light that shone under the doors and pushed on them, not daring to knock. They opened a moment later and Nathan regarded me with amazement.
“You must be freezing to death in that.” He pulled me into the warm stables, shutting out the wind.
“It’s not that bad,” I said. “This is warmer than it looks.” I patted the coat and sat on a bail of hay. A kerosene lamp burned on a box a little way away. It sent warm beams around the room.
“I had to see you. The wind… it reminds me of that night; the storm.”
In one of the stalls, a horse shuffled and nickered. I wrapped my arms around myself. For a long time, we sat in silence and I was comfortable with that, with the silence and the calming scent of hay.
Then Nathan knelt in front of me and folded a hand around one of my ankles, stroking the soft spot at the top of my foot.
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
He was silent.
“Yes?”
He let go of my ankle and brushed my cheek. “You’re beautiful.”
Nathan’s forefinger traced the outline of my lips. His fingers fanned out over my cheek and the side of my throat. He bent forward and laid his cheek next to mine, his lips beside my ear, his breath warm against my skin. “I love you.”
I floated in a strange, sad bubble. He kissed the outline of my jaw, and his fingers caressed my neck and shoulders. When he reached the point of my chin, he raised his head. His gaze fell to my lips and he lowered his head. For an agonizing moment he didn’t move, while his lips remained close to mine.
I stayed very still, not realizing that I’d started to cry, until he brushed my cheek and I tasted salty tears as he kissed me.
“I miss her. She’s gone, and she’s never coming back, and I don’t have anyone to make my toes warm anymore.” I gasped against the sobs constricting my chest: the old broken ribs. Had they ever really healed?
“I don’t understand. Why is she dead? Why did she die and not me? Why did she have to go back for that silly purse? Why didn’t she just stay the night in town?” The words tumbled out of my mouth, incoherent, and Nathan wrapped his arms around me and let me say them. He let me cry and talk until I was empty and silent.
There was one more thing inside me that came out, and it made him freeze. “Why was Kenneth Buckland so afraid of you?”
His face became bleak. “Because he knew I’d kill him, just like I said.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Caroline.”
He dropped his head to my chest, and I sat there, frozen and wondering what could possibly make Nathan break, while the animals moved in their stalls and the heady scent of hay and chaff filled my head.
“No.” I kissed the top of his head and stroked his back. “No more talking.”
As the cattle returned home, I stood at the edge of the garden in a black dress, watching the dust billow. The sound of braying beasts stifled my senses. Nathan was down in the paddocks somewhere in the thick of it all. Dad and Timothy would be herding and separating. Jack would be wrestling the heifers.
The cattlemen cursed and called and the dogs yapped. It filled my head with memories of sitting on top of the white fence when I was a little girl, my bare legs swinging, high above the milling beasts.
Aunt Alice appeared beside me. Her black shoes peeked from beneath her skirt as she handed me a hat.
“I didn’t know it would be this loud,” she said. “I tried to paint, but I really can’t concentrate.”
“The branding starts later this afternoon and continues tomorrow. It gets even louder then.” I put on the hat and felt relief against the glare of the sun. “You’ll get used to the noise.”
She made a disbelieving sound that twisted away into the thick air.
Samuel stood a short distance away, leaning over the top of the fledgling hedge, craning to see the beasts and men.
“No doubt he wishes he were down there with them. I don’t understand why he isn’t.” Aunt Alice’s pensive expression disappeared. She took my arm. “Walk with me.”
She lowered her voice, and it was swallowed by the sound of the throng. I inclined my head to hear her.
She said, “I’ve found a school for Samuel in the city. Your father has agreed to let him go.”
“Really?” I glanced at my brother. He prowled along the edge of the garden, never taking his eyes from the paddocks. “Does Sam know?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure if he’ll want to go anymore. It had been my intention to send him once Rebecca was living there, so he’d have family close by. But now… I’m not so certain.”
We stopped under the cherry tree. Edith knelt in the shade of the aged branches and pulled up weeds. She wasn’t wearing her pearls, just jeans and a dark green shirt that contrasted with her brown eyes and the earth on her fingers.
Robert West dug and planted nearby while Edith pushed her fingers into the earth and plucked the weeds where they were soft. My fingers ached. I would welcome the sting of a barb on my fingertips
. “Old habits die so hard.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Alice. I was thinking that if it were me, I wouldn’t want to go, either.”
Aunt Alice wore an intense expression on her face. “Actually, Caroline, that’s why I want to speak to you. You know that your father has several houses in the city, don’t you?”
“Yes, but aren’t they being rented?”
“Not all of them, dearest. There’s one that’s between tenants.” She took my hand. “Your father’s given me permission to move into it on a permanent basis. I can’t stay here with you forever, but since my parents passed, I have nothing left in England, no reason to return. They had a tidy estate, and I can sell it and live quite comfortably. I did ask him to rent it to me, but he’s refused any kind of payment.”
She pressed my hands. “Samuel’s new school is close by, so he won’t have to board, but I think it would make a world of difference to him if he had other family there.”
“You want me to come with you?”
She nodded.
I looked away. “What about Dad and Timothy?”
“Your father will never return to the city, Caroline. I’ve asked him so many times that I’m exhausted with badgering him. I don’t understand his stubbornness… perhaps it’s because of Meredith, I don’t know. Timothy hasn’t made up his mind yet, either.”
“And Edith?”
“She will stay with your father.” Aunt Alice paused. She spoke carefully. “Caroline, I’m not sure what you—”
“Aunt Alice.” Samuel ran toward us, a letter flapping in his hand. “Meggy brought this. It’s for you.”
I waved across the distance to the postal lady. She raised her hand in response and headed back across the veranda.
Beside me, Aunt Alice studied the stiff envelope.
“What is it?” I asked.
She frowned. “I thought it might be from my attorney—about the estate—but…” She turned it over and her face cleared. “Excuse me, Caroline, I need to read this right away.”
I caught a flicker of movement—a prickly weed thrown onto the pile—as Edith watched our aunt ascend the stairs. At the corner of Edith’s mouth was a ticking muscle. She stretched upward, brushing down her jeans. Some of her hair had come loose, and I noticed what a glossy shade of red it was.