The Stills

by Jess Montgomery

  Going up with Aunt Nell, though, would give Klara a chance to tell George that Fiona and Aunt Nell had talked far away from the farmhouse—where Klara couldn’t overhear. Of course, Fiona could talk her way around that: Oh, George, I knew I could soften Aunt Nell up better away from the house.…

  Better yet, though, is to leave both Aunt Nell and Klara behind in the dining room.

  Fiona smiled, imagining the awkwardness that would fall over the room. Then she gave that smile a sympathetic twist and said, Both women have worked so hard on this meal, dear. Let them rest down here, while I tend to Elias. I’ll be back in time to enjoy dessert with you.

  Now Elias sighs. “I’m an idiot, forgetting my pills in Cincinnati. But then, stress can make a person forgetful about the most ordinary things.”

  Fiona pulls the chair closer, leans in as if inviting confidences. “Working for my husband is stressful?” She asks this with a small smile, as if she’s trying to be light, help Elias relax, rather than just slowly sliding a spade into the conversation to dig for truth—maybe something about the day he and George had visited her aunt and uncle.

  Elias returns a flickering smile. “George has big plans.”

  Fiona nods. Easy, easy. Don’t arouse suspicion. “Yes, he is an ambitious man. I admit, that is one reason I love George.”

  Elias’s eyebrows lift, as if the notions of George and love in the same sentence are discordantly surprising.

  Fiona clears her throat, widens her eyes. “I’m sorry, if you need to rest…”

  “No, I think it’s better if someone is with me right now. And you’re a lovely distraction. Someone from Kinship, to remind me of better days.”

  Fiona forces her gentle smile to linger. “I also like having people around from home. It can feel so foreign, otherwise.” She thinks of Leon, at the boarding school in Philadelphia, and her heart pangs. “I admit I’m curious as to why you left Kinship in the first place, and how you came to work for George?”

  “We, Luther and I, left Kinship because Luther, well, he got into a bit of trouble. Over a girl that he shouldn’t have been seeing.”

  “Oh!” Fiona widens her eyes, as if this kind of trouble is a new concept. “How did you find George?”

  “Through my other nephew, Daniel. But we didn’t stay in touch after … after Daniel’s death. We went to Chicago, looking to establish a life there. I find that city overwhelming, but Luther loves it. Or should I say—he finds it exciting.…” Elias pauses, perhaps, Fiona thinks, also reconsidering the notion of Luther and love in the same sentence. “He ran through the money we’d gotten—from me selling my house, him selling the mining company—pretty fast. So he started working for a man on various … assignments … and quickly realized that the man was one of George’s employees. From there … well, George decided we could both be useful.”

  “Elias, right before you had your attack, Luther was talking about men getting sick in Kinship this weekend.” Elias closes his eyes, but Fiona presses on, even takes Elias’s hand in hers. Let him think of her as an ally, a comforter. “It seemed to distress you so much. If you told me more about it, maybe I could do something about it. Something that might bring you ease?”

  “I—I may not make it through to tomorrow and I can’t have this on my conscience, too.…” His voice fades.

  “In case … in case you meet our Maker?”

  Elias goes stiffly still again. Has she pressed too hard after all? But then he licks his lips. He opens his eyes as she gives him another sip of water.

  “If I tell you,” he whispers, “will you promise to help stop it?”

  “Of course.”

  “George isn’t building a warehouse here. He’s set up a plan for his own trucks of legal alcohol, for his tonic, to be hijacked, supposedly by bootleggers, but really by his own men. He’ll collect the insurance, but bring the alcohol here. Reconstitute it with sugar syrup, other bootleg gin or whiskey, water, flavorings, rebottle it, and distribute it,” Elias says. “More money to be made in that than in Vogel’s Tonic—though he’ll continue that business of course.”

  Fiona turns this over. It’s brilliant. And she doesn’t have to ask, Why here? It’s remote. Hard to pursue. Revenuers from the Bureau of Prohibition are focused on the big cities, or the country’s coasts. And here there are backwoods moonshiners and miners and farmers aplenty who wouldn’t mind extra dollars, wherever they might come from.

  “I see,” Fiona says softly. “But … what does that have to do with Kinship Inn?”

  Elias opens his eyes, looks at her. “Luther came early, to convince locals to help. But—he hasn’t been particularly successful. I love my nephew like a son, but he tends to rub people the wrong way.” Elias looks down, and again, Fiona senses he is not telling the whole truth. “It seems, well, Lily Ross and I parted with hard hearts.”

  Fiona startles at that revelation.

  He gives a sad smile. “She found Luther’s—management style—at Ross Mining too … harsh. Anyway, Luther has followed through on a plan of George’s and Abe’s I never agreed to—substituting the local brew at the speakeasy for methanol. That’s why I reacted so strongly, when Luther said he’d done as asked.”

  Fiona stares at him.

  “Methanol is wood alcohol,” he explains.

  She’s still unsure of the import.

  He sighs. “Drinking that would cause serious illness. Maybe death. The idea is to show the people of the town and county George’s power and reach. Work for him if asked—or don’t, at your own peril.”

  Now the horror of what Elias has described strikes Fiona. Her hand goes to her mouth. She knows her husband is ruthless, but this is beyond anything she’d imagined him capable of. Who knows who could be hurt or killed? Men, or women, whom yes, Fiona had been happy to leave behind. But they were also people who had patronized her first husband’s shoe repair shop, whose children had been Leon’s childhood friends.

  “Can you convince George to stop it?” Elias asks anxiously. “Reason with him?”

  For a second, the image returns of battered Eugenia, who’d come to her breakfast table the morning after the wedding to apologize for mocking her accent, followed quickly by another flashing image, of Aunt Nell expressing her suspicion that George had conspired to have Uncle Henry killed when he wouldn’t sell his land to George—a suspicion that seems all the more well-founded now that Fiona knows why George wants this particular patch of Bronwyn County under his control.

  Reason with George?

  If the situation weren’t so dire, if it wouldn’t break the trust she’s building with Elias, she’d laugh.

  “I will do my best … but first, I have to ask you something.”

  “Anything, my dear.”

  “You know something of heart trouble, of course, and I’m sorry you’re having it now. Funny thing, my dear uncle Henry. He never had a bit of it. Was as hearty as could be. Now that you’ve confided in me, I’m sure I can confide in you and that you won’t tell George that my aunt Nell says that you and George came to visit a few weeks ago. Just before Uncle Henry died. Tell me—did he look ill to you? It’s just so strange to think he had a stroke.”

  For a long moment, Elias stares back at her. Something shifts and hardens in his eyes, though his expression stays slack, pale. Fiona swallows nervously. Maybe she’s miscalculated. She’d thought of him as somewhat soft, easily manipulated by her much more savvy husband. The flinty look in his gaze now tells her that he is capable of stone-cold action.

  His voice is thin but unwavering when he finally replies. “I came with George mainly to assess the property, check the various outbuildings, see what might be suitable, or at least quick to modify, for the operation George wants to install. There are inherent dangers—fire, explosion—in the art of brewing. It is a delicate process. I know a lot about chemistry—that’s why I’m useful.…” Elias pauses, closes his eyes again, whether from weariness or to keep her from reading his expression she isn’t cert
ain. “When George asked about your uncle and aunt’s health, I did advise that they both looked fit, likely to live for many years.”

  Fiona freezes as cold questions run their cruel and tingly fingers over her skin.

  What else had he advised George? About when and what time of day Uncle Henry would be out—by himself—plowing under the fields? Elias, who had been a gentleman farmer, would know that, whereas George, who had never farmed, would not. About the best way to have hired guns surprise and attack Uncle Henry?

  Fiona takes a deep breath, forces herself to focus.

  She cannot get distracted—not even by this.

  Now, before anything else, she must stay the poisoning that’s set up to take place at the Kinship Inn. Get word to Lily, somehow?

  And then … after she gets George’s assets in her name—for the sake of their child, of course—she can somehow get his tax records into the Bureau of Prohibition’s hands. And if there’s any blowback on her, she can take credit for having saved the townspeople from George’s plot with tainted alcohol.

  Tricky.

  She will figure it out.

  Somehow, later, she’ll find out the truth about Uncle Henry’s death—and deal with Elias if she must. For now, Elias must remain an ally.

  Fiona gives Elias’s pillow a gentle fluffing.

  “I will,” she whispers, “do as you’ve asked. And maybe … if you would like to find a way for you and Luther to get out from under working for George, I could help with that, too.…”

  Elias does not open his eyes, but a thin smile lifts his lips.

  Good. He thinks she’s his ally.

  Fiona rises quietly. She needs a break from him. “I’m just going to get you some broth. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  She steps out in the hallway.

  “Oh!” she cries.

  For there is George, leaning against the wall just to the left of the door.

  His unreadable yet sharp gaze stills her in her tracks.

  CHAPTER 7

  LILY

  Thursday, November 24, 1927

  4:00 p.m.

  Daisy, Lily’s mule, comes to a sudden stop at the foot of a sharp rise. As Lily’d expected, the road to Ruth’s home isn’t much more than a rutted dirt footpath, now covered over in a wintry mix of snow and ice. Both fall fast and slant, stinging Lily’s face.

  Lily gives Daisy a quick flick, enough to send them jolting up the rise after all and then come skidding into a bit of flatland. Now clear of the hovering branches in the woods, Lily notes that the sky is a sodden mass of thick gray clouds, laden barges ready to overflow with more ice and snow. Behind those clouds the sun will soon set, and there will be no moonlight to guide their return journey. Lily glances behind her, double-checks that she has a coal-oil lantern in the foot well by Dr. Goshen.

  When she turns forward again, they’re already upon a stone two-story farmhouse harkening back a hundred years. A porch wraps around from the front and along the east side, ending at a door into a white clapboard addition at the back of the house—a kitchen, appended probably thirty years before. Porch corners are embellished with wooden lattice curlicues, a bit of fanciness on an otherwise sternly practical house, like a dollop of just-churned butter on hard bread. Warm light flickers through both up- and downstairs windows, yet coldness seems to swirl from inside the house as much as around it outside.

  Nearby, the open doors to a dull red barn reveal great stalks of tobacco hung upside down along the rafters, a disconcerting sight in this weather, at this time of year. By now, the tobacco, harvested back in August or September, is surely cured and ready for market. Such neglect is a sign of how desperate the Harkinses’ situation must be.

  “Go on,” Lily tells Ruth. “Let your folks know we’re here.”

  The girl scrambles down and dashes up the front porch steps.

  Lily hops off and unhitches Daisy, ignoring Dr. Goshen’s yelp as the wagon shifts back just a few feet. By the time she’s tied Daisy to a pole in the yard and thrown a spare rough wool blanket over the beast’s back, Dr. Goshen is by her side, giving her a dark look.

  “You could have warned me about the wagon backsliding,” he grumbles.

  He’d been fairly helpful on another case a year before; Lily wonders what has turned him to precious uppityness. As with her questions for Marvena, now is not the time to worry about such.

  Lily hurries up the steps, so fast she nearly trips on a cement planter at the top of the porch. The planter is filled with dead flowers, zinnias that would have been cheerily resplendent in summer. Seed pods droop, unharvested. Another sign of the grimness that awaits inside—no farmwife, especially one who has carefully taught her daughter to can apples, would let those seeds go to waste. She’d gather them, keep them in a jar in a dry cupboard, think about them in flitting moments over the long dark winter, find comfort in the anticipation of planting them in soft, yielding spring earth. Faith the seeds will last the winter; hope in the notion of yellow and red and pink summer blooms.

  As Lily is about to knock on the kitchen door, it swings open to reveal Mrs. Harkins, her robe and nightgown hanging loose over her gaunt frame. Her feet are bare. Loose, greasy strings of hair hang from her bun; her skin is sallow and dry; her shoulders scoop forward. Her scent is vinegary like old sweat.

  “Sheriff Lily.” Her voice is a thin thread struggling to pull along each word. “Please help. Our boy—”

  “Dora!” Leroy rushes to the door, gazing at his wife, not seeming to notice Lily at all. “What are you doing—you’re gonna catch cold—”

  “The sheriff is here. I’m hoping she and the doctor are here to take Zeb—”

  “No, sweetheart, we gotta get you back in bed, keep you warm—”

  Lily clears her throat. “Mr. Harkins, I can get Zebediah to the help he needs. Based on what Ruth told us, Zebediah has ingested tainted alcohol. The sooner we c-can—”

  Lily stutters to a stop. Whereas at her farm Leroy often removes his hat and lowers his eyes when addressing her, now his gaze is straight and sharp as a finely honed stone arrowhead. This is his turf, his land. “You need to pull my boy in for drinking, so be it.” As he starts to pull his wife from the cold door, his voice softens. “Come on, honey.”

  Lily’s fists clench. Damn that it’s the man’s legal right to run his family as he sees fit. She relaxes her hands, tries to speak gently. “I’m not pulling him in. We just want Zebediah to be all right.”

  Dora jerks away from her husband, and the look on his face is as if she has shot him through the heart. “Please, Leroy! Just let the doctor in—”

  “Didn’t do nothing for you,” Leroy mutters. “Just like that fool church didn’t do nothing.”

  Lily’s heart crackles, sorrowful for the man’s loss of faith. He’s already lost so much.

  But not his love for his wife. As he gently turns her away from the door, Leroy says over his shoulder, “Come in then. Shut the door behind you!”

  Inside the tiny kitchen, there are no scents or signs of Thanksgiving. Ruth is already busy at a small worktable, assembling bread and butter sandwiches, handing them to two toddlers, a boy and a girl. Fraternal twins.

  Lily’s heart flinches as Dora walks gingerly over to Ruth. She folds her arms around the girl and rests her cheek against Ruth’s. Dora is past mothering, except for this: relief that her daughter is fine, wanting the boy upstairs to be fine, wanting all her young ones to be fine.

  Dora says to Lily, “You’ll find him in the bedroom at the top of the back staircase.”

  Lily rushes up, Dr. Goshen following. At the top, Lily stops, beset by the lingering smell of sick, and bleachy attempts to scour it away, and, underlying that, the scent of something herbal, vaguely mint-like. Perhaps Dora or Ruth had tried to make a healing tea for Zebediah.

  The boy is curled up in the bottom of one of two bunk beds that nearly fill the room, barely space for a wardrobe to one side and a washbowl under the window.

  Zeb
ediah somehow looks both older and younger than Lily recollects. The small bed seems to be slowly swallowing him. His face is pale, waxen, his lips flecked with dried spittle.

  A quilt has slid to the floor, revealing his bare feet and his pants, too short for him. The brown wool pant legs have been cut jaggedly, as if with a knife. How odd. Lily makes a mental note.

  Dr. Goshen crosses swiftly to the boy, kneels, pulls a stethoscope from his doctor’s bag, checks the boy’s heart rate. Then leans forward and sniffs the thin breath rasping from the child’s gaping mouth.

  “His breath is too sweet,” Dr. Goshen says. “Fruity. I think he has diabetes. That—combined with alcohol—could put him into diabetic ketoacidosis. The vomiting, abdominal pains, loss of consciousness, all fit.”

  Diabetes—she had, during the war, worked with her husband’s uncle, Elias Ross, who was the town doctor then, to help patients during the flu epidemic. One had diabetes—a woman in her twenties. She couldn’t keep food down and the flu seemed to affect her more rapidly, more severely, than others. She fell into a state similar to this—the shuddery breathing, the waxy appearance. And she passed away.

  Lily shudders at the memory. She is also—God help her—relieved that even if the alcohol from Marvena’s still hadn’t helped the boy’s situation, it hadn’t been the culprit.

  “So you’ll be able to treat him, then?” Surely some fluids, or some tincture pulled out and compounded from the doctor’s medicine bag, would be sufficient to bring the boy around.

  But he is shaking his head. “He needs insulin, and he’ll need it for the rest of his life. He’s lucky—commercial insulin has been available for the past few years. He will need to go to the hospital in Chillicothe.”

  “I ain’t taking him all the way over to Chillicothe.” Leroy’s voice is so low that it sounds like it’s scraping the floor, as if it had dragged itself reluctantly up with him and wished it could be back downstairs, offering soothing platitudes to his wife. “He done this to hisself—he can rally out of it.”