by Blythe Baker
Abigail handed me a knife, handle first, and we all sat down at the table with a bag of apples on one side and a bowl on the other. We peeled, cored, and sliced the apples, being sure to save the scraps to be composted for the garden.
“You never actually answered my question,” I said after a particularly long stretch of silence.
“Huh?” Margaret asked, tongue between her teeth while she focused on peeling her apple in one cut. She and Abigail had been challenging each other to see who could have the longest unbroken stretch of peel. My attempts were laughable, but Abigail had nearly peeled an entire apple without lifting her knife once.
“Are there any spirits attached to me?”
Both women set down their apples immediately, their competition forgotten, and looked at me. Their attention made my neck tingle, and I lowered my knife, too.
“You aren’t as open to it as your sister,” Margaret said. “You are a charming young woman, but your energy is suspicious.”
“There is nothing wrong with that,” Abigail cut in.
“Especially since Abigail is the same way,” Margaret smiled, pointing a thumb towards her sister. “No, there is nothing wrong with being hesitant. It is wise. But it does not mean you are safe. There are shadows around you. Vague and hazy, but present.”
I looked around my head, feeling foolish. “Do you mean actual shadows?”
“No, but wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy?” Margaret laughed.
“It just means you have been touched by death.” Abigail pressed a finger to her chest, just above her heart. “Here.”
Before I could get a grip on my emotions, moisture sprang to my eyes. Immediately, I blinked away the tears and went back to peeling my apples. A few moments later, the Wilds did the same.
Once I had my emotions under control, I asked the other question that had been weighing heavily on my mind. “You two knew Nurse Gray before she came to work for my sister and brother-in-law, correct?”
“Right,” Margaret said, laying down her stretch of peel next to Abigail’s and wrinkling her nose in disappointment when it was a few finger widths short. “It was many years ago when she was still only a midwife.”
I frowned, and Margaret understood my confusion before I could even voice the question. “Neither of us have children, but our sister did.”
“There were once three of us,” Abigail added. “Dorothea was the youngest.”
Apple peeling forgotten, I leaned forward onto my elbows. “What happened to her?”
Margaret opened her mouth to answer, but Abigail cut her off. “She died. Nurse Gray was tending to her before it happened. We recommended her to Charles before Catherine even gave birth in case he would need to call on a nurse. Luckily, she has been able to be there for Catherine while she has been ill.”
“How is Catherine doing?” Margaret asked. “Charles doesn’t talk about her much, and we don’t want to press.”
“Catherine is…” I didn’t know how to answer. I could lie, which was what Charles, and maybe even Catherine, would want me to do, but I wanted to reveal the truth. If only so I could ask the Wilds outright whether Nurse Gray could be trusted. In the end, I settled on an answer similar to the one Charles had given me. “Catherine is doing physically well.”
“Good, good,” Margaret breathed, nodding. “When we found her out on the moors, I couldn’t believe it was her. She was covered in mud and blood and…it was a horrible sight.”
The information took a few seconds to settle over me. I froze, repeating the words in my mind to be sure I’d understood. “You found Catherine?”
“Did you not know that?” Abigail held her apple bowl under the rim of the table and swiped a large pile of apples into it with her forearm. “This time of year, the astronomical alignment brings us closer to the ghostly realm than any other time, so we are often out on the moors.”
“In fact, there is a full moon coming later this week. Sunday, I believe,” Margaret added.
Abigail nodded in agreement and continued. “Catherine had been out there for an hour or more by the time we found her. Luckily, it wasn’t as cold as it is now.”
“Charles would have found her if we hadn’t,” Margaret said. “By the time we got Catherine to the house, he’d already been growing nervous and was restless to go and find her.”
Abigail stood up and walked around the table, dumping all of the apple slices into one large pot, while Margaret brought out a woven basket full of mismatched glass jars with different lids. Abigail motioned for me to stand and join them at the end of the table, and she showed me how to fill a jar with apple slices. When I was done with the first one, I slid the jar to Margaret, who ladled in hot sugar syrup to cover the apples.
My mind worked as quickly as my hands.
Catherine claimed to see spirits and to have been attacked by a ghost while, next door, her neighbors believed they communicated with the dead. It seemed too strange to be a coincidence, which led me to believe it wasn’t.
Maybe one visit to the Wilds’ home had been enough to make Catherine paranoid and convince her that ghosts existed and she was surrounded by them.
“Screw the lids on as tight as you can,” Abigail instructed for the third time. Once it became clear I was not paying attention to her commands, she sent me over to the fireplace to watch the jars boiling over the fire. The boiling water pressurized the jars, and when they were done, the metal lid popped up with a firm clicking sound. My only job was to pull the jars from the water once this was done.
The job was simple, and when Margaret and Abigail got into an argument about how high to fill the jars with apples, I let my mind wander.
I stepped away from the hearth and studied the shelves and picture frames that hung on the walls of the crumbling house. Much like everything else in the home, the shelves and frames needed a good dusting, but they gave me a look into exactly how eccentric the two women really were.
Small picture frames were filled with hand drawings of the moon and its different cycles, portraits of the sisters with colorful auras painted around their heads, and bits of poetry written out in ink that spoke of nature. One of them I recognized. It was a poem by Robert Frost. I remembered my mother fawning over him when he won some award when I was just a little girl. I still didn’t have much of an appreciation for poetry, but it seemed the Wilds did. Every other part of their life was self-reliant and separate from society, except for their contemporary tastes in poetry.
The quartet was drawn in the center of a white piece of paper with hand-painted leaves falling from the branches of a tree and gathering on the ground. The quartet read:
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Just next to the poem in a matching frame was a formal portrait of a young woman.
When I first saw the picture, I shook my head, not understanding what I was looking at. The girl had long blonde hair that was pinned back over her ears, and the artist had given her piercing blue eyes. She had a pointed chin, rosy cheeks, and a sly smile pulled up to one side that made the viewer feel as though the woman knew a secret she had not revealed.
The woman in the picture, as far as I could tell, was my sister, Catherine.
I stepped back and opened my mouth to say something to Margaret and Abigail, to get some kind of explanation, when I looked at the bottom of the picture and saw the name written there: Dorothea.
The woman in the painting was Dorothea Wilds.
I could see now that the painting was yellowed with age and spotted from water damage. It was probably older than my sister, so therefore could not be her.
And yet…the likeness was shocking.
“Alice,” Margaret said just over my shoulder.
I jumped, bumping into the woman. She grabbed my shoulders and steadied me.
“Sorry, dear, but the jars.” She pointed to the fireplace, and I could
hear a few of the lids popping up.
I rushed over and pulled them from the water with the tongs, but I didn’t put any more into the water. I had other things to deal with.
“I’m sorry, but—” I pointed at the picture frame. “I saw this picture, and your sister looked so much like Catherine.”
Abigail stiffened behind us where she was filling jars. Margaret frowned. “Does she?”
I looked at her, mouth agape. “Yes. They could be twins.”
“I’m not sure I see it,” Abigail said, wiping her sticky hands on a towel that was thrown over her shoulder.
“Maybe I can,” Margaret said. “It has been so long since I’ve seen Catherine that I’m not sure, but perhaps.”
“Perhaps?” I stared at the painting and shook my head. To me, the resemblance was exact.
“I actually think we can take the rest of the preserving from here,” Abigail said, dropping new jars into the boiling water. “There isn’t much else to do, and after this, us old women will likely go to bed.”
I looked out the window and realized the sun was starting to sink below the horizon. I’d eaten so many apples while slicing them that I hadn’t even thought about lunch, and now it was nearly time for dinner.
“I set out for a walk and never returned,” I said, hurrying to grab my coat from the hook behind the door. “My sister will be worried about me. Thank you both so much for letting me help, but I really should be going.”
“Of course,” Margaret said, holding open the front door. “But please do come back anytime.”
I made no promises and set out for the walk home.
By the time I made it back, the sky was dark. Charles looked surprised when I walked through the door. The rest of the house was business as usual. Catherine was asleep, Camellia and the nanny were in the nursery, and the rest of the household staff were going about their duties preparing dinner.
No one had realized I’d been gone at all.
8
Camellia didn’t come down for dinner the night I came back from the Wilds’ home, and she didn’t join us for breakfast, either.
“Where is Camellia?” Catherine asked.
We had very little to talk about as a group since Charles wanted to avoid all conversation of Catherine’s illness, Catherine wanted to avoid all conversation of the Wilds, and I wanted to talk about both of those things simultaneously.
I did not especially want to talk about Camellia, though.
She glared at me whenever we were in the same room, and I knew she was counting the days until I returned to London. That was not even a guess on my part. She had outright asked me when I would be returning so she could mark it on her calendar. When I told her I wasn’t sure, she let out a forlorn sigh and then claimed it was because she hadn’t slept much again due to Hazel’s crying.
I, for one, never heard any crying in the night.
My room was on the opposite side of the hallway, but I would still have heard a baby crying.
“My sister is in the nursery, I think,” Charles said.
Catherine’s brow lifted slightly, and then she nodded. “She has been helping Molly a great deal with Hazel’s care.”
“She enjoys it. I think it helps her.” Charles gave Catherine a knowing look that I did not understand.
As soon as breakfast was over, Catherine went back up to her room to rest, and I tried to stay in the sitting room and read. I tried to keep myself occupied and out of trouble. But life in the country was rather dull, and I had two options: walk the two miles to visit Margaret and Abigail Wilds again or stay at the house.
As much as the two women next door entertained me, there had been a strange energy there when I’d left the day before, and I did not want to overwhelm them with my company.
Anyway, I had things I needed to do in my sister’s home.
Namely, speak with Charles.
My brother-in-law was stooped over a letter on his desk, his hand pressed to his forehead in concentration when I knocked on the door. He looked up, and I could see the disappointment on his face.
He and I had never been close.
Honestly, there hadn’t been much opportunity for a relationship to form between us. When he’d first met Catherine in New York City, I was a young girl, hardly worth his time or energy. More than that, I hadn’t wanted to know him. I’d been far too busy chasing after boys.
Then, he and Catherine got married and stayed in New York City while I lived with my parents in London. When they did return to England, they settled in Yorkshire, where I had only briefly visited them.
So, no, Charles and I were not friends by any stretch. But he was my sister’s husband, and I needed to speak with him.
“I was hoping to talk with you for a few minutes.”
He winced. “I’m actually rather busy. Do you think it could wait until—”
“Thanks, I’ll come on in.” I stepped into his study and pulled the door closed behind me.
“Alice,” Charles warned, his tone deep and somber. “I’m starting to think this was all a mistake. Catherine wanted you here, but it seems like things are getting worse. I don’t blame you by any means, but—”
“That is good,” I said, interrupting him again. “Because none of this is my fault. It is yours.”
Charles opened and closed his mouth several times, looking for the words to respond to me. Whatever he’d thought I wanted to talk about, he clearly didn’t think I’d be so forthright. But based on what I’d seen going on in his house thus far, there wasn’t time for anything less than brutal honesty.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve noticed some troubling things, and I have a hard time thinking you haven’t noticed them, too.”
“Of course, I’ve noticed,” he snapped. “My wife is unwell. How could I not notice?”
I shook my head and dropped down into the chair opposite him. “It isn’t just about Catherine. It’s about the way this house is running. It’s about…Nurse Gray keeping watch over Catherine like she is a prisoner. It is about your sister playing mother to your daughter. It is about you hiding away in this study and doing nothing to help any of it.”
“Nothing?” Charles’ eyes were wide, his pupils expanded and dark. An angry red leaked into his cheeks. “I feel like all I’ve done for months is worry about everyone around me, Alice. I’m barely eating or sleeping. I’m stretched as thin as I possibly can be, and it still isn’t enough.”
“Catherine isn’t ill enough to warrant that kind of response,” I started. “I’m not sure why you—”
“It’s Camellia, too.”
I frowned. “Camellia is unwell?”
“Something like it.” Charles folded his hands on the desk in front of him and leaned forward, sagging in his chair. “She doesn’t like to speak of it, and neither do I, honestly. I’m not a very emotional man, and I don’t like to dwell on things I cannot fix. And I certainly cannot fix Camellia’s problems.”
I sat perfectly still and silent, desperate to know what he was going to say next.
Finally, Charles sighed. “Her husband and child died. One day after Hazel was born.”
“No.” I clapped a hand over my mouth and shook my head.
I’d asked Camellia whether she missed her family, and her response had been strange. At the time, I’d assumed she was painting herself as the victim of an ungrateful husband. Now, I knew better.
I’m afraid I miss them far more than they miss me.
“How did it happen?”
“A fire.” Charles took a steadying breath and shook his head. “Camellia was pregnant for part of Catherine’s pregnancy. She gave birth four months before Hazel was born. Though Camellia is older than me by several years, Grace was her first child. One conceived after many failures before. She was more precious to my sister than anything.”
I felt tears pressing at the backs of my eyes. My opinion of Camellia had been so low since my arrival because of her surly demeanor and ownership over Hazel, but now it all m
ade sense. Though it did not make her behavior acceptable, it did make it understandable.
“The day of the fire, Camellia left the house for a walk,” he said. “It was the first time she’d left since having Grace. The baby wasn’t sleeping well, and she cried for hours after eating, only to eat and have the cycle begin again. It was exhausting for them, as you can imagine, and Camellia wanted a break. So, she fed Grace, left her with George, and then went for a walk around town. She walked for almost two hours, stopping in at a few places to pick up another bonnet for Grace and cigars for George. Then, she headed home. She saw the smoke from the edge of town.”
I pressed my hand over my mouth and closed my eyes.
“Neighbors were pouring water on the flames by the time the house came into view, but Camellia said it was like throwing pebbles at a dragon. The flames were so high they blotted out the sky. She couldn’t see anything beyond them.” Charles cleared his throat, fighting through his own emotion. “She searched the crowd for George and Grace, but every person she met told her that they were both still inside the house. ‘What house?’ she’d asked. The structure was just a crumbling wooden frame by that point. They found the bodies once the embers cooled.”
It felt as though someone had hollowed my insides. I had never known George or Grace or seen the house where they lived, but it was all so clear in my mind. I imagined it like my parents house, large and stately, hidden behind a metal gate that would survive the blaze. I could see myself walking down the street, see the neighbors I’d grown up with gathered on the sidewalks. I could picture the stomach dropping horror that would overwhelm me when I saw the flames lashing out of windows and doors, devouring the life I’d known from the inside out.
“I can’t imagine,” I said, though I already was. “How is she doing?”
Charles leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “As good as can be expected. Being with Hazel helps her. It reminds her of Grace.”
His comment to Catherine at breakfast that morning made more sense now. He’d been right. I did understand the dynamic of the house better. Though, to Charles’ disappointment, I was sure, my understanding did not mean agreement.