That vision fixed itself to Adeline’s face every time he saw her, which was frequent now that Thomas had died. She seemed to accept him when he could not accept himself. She welcomed him when he came. He worked alongside Shaver, mending fences and sharpening tools. Sometimes, he scrounged the woods for wild strawberries, which the three of them ate with a bit of cream from her one remaining cow. Whatever he did there, Mason was plagued by the absence of her sons. Belinda, too, was gone now, holding on to her delusions of the past.
Mason studied his half-dug trench. The location was good. The ground sloped out from the barn and so would be fertile from the residue of manure. The southwest sun would be good. A rain barrel stood handy at the corner. Below the slope Mason would mound a row for potatoes, put in tomato seeds, preserved from last year. He had not decided where to plant peas and he had no seeds for okra, unless some neighbor gifted him. Not likely with the war. He would nail twine to the siding to hold pole beans, and between them he would plant sunflowers, for beauty and for the seeds he would roast on the hearth come winter. He imagined the crunch between his teeth, the arc of the shell as he spit it into the fire.
Mason wiped his brow on his sleeve and resumed digging. Tomorrow, the seeds would be in the ground. He would haul water along the two long rows before he saddled his horse and rode to the jail. He would leave his badge on the desk; then he would go to Adeline. He would beg her forgiveness.
* * *
Adeline balanced herself on the handle of her hoe, working at a speckled gray stone lodged in the sole of her boot. When it did not budge, she let the hoe fall and sat on the ground. She pried a small, pointed rock out of the plowed dirt and used it to gouge the stone from her boot. She lay back on the cool earth, fitting her long body into the furrow. Loose hair dangled in her face. Digging a kerchief out of her pocket, she wiped her forehead and pushed the hair from her eyes. Using her fingers like a comb, she readjusted her hair and lay with her forearm shading her eyes.
From her sanctuary between the rows, she could see the tips of the picket fence, the angle of the weathered plow handles, the golden tops of seed corn poking from her basket, and a few fallen grains on the dark earth. She fingered the handle of the hoe lying beside her, the smooth wood seasoned by the work of her hands. Adeline inhaled the heavy, promising scent of the soil. Above her head lay her trove of seed packets, ordered over winter from Ferry-Morse. The soft-colored illustrations on the packets pleased her: baskets of squash, red beets, and little blond girls with aprons full of flowers. She pasted those images inside her chifferobe and her cupboard doors, so that when she dressed and when she made biscuits, they greeted her. She loved the names as much as the drawings: Scarlet Runner, Bluebell, Four O’Clock, Ruby Chard, Snap Dragon, Yellow Crookneck, Rutabaga, Lupine. Beyond the Ferry-Morse packets in the furrow lay her own thin envelopes of saved seed from last year’s harvest: tomato, lettuce, mustard and turnips, dried Kentucky Wonder, and lady peas. Late-morning sun glinted off the blade of the hoe, reflected bits of sky glimmering on its sharpened edge. No jewel I ever saw that bright, she thought.
After another peaceful minute, Adeline reached for the hoe. Her back arched, her eyes closed against the sun, her hands pushed hard against the loose earth. And then she settled, her body fitting itself to the earth. Mason found her there, a packet of mustard seed beside her stiff fingers. It was he who brought the news.
* * *
Lambert massaged the back of his weathered neck, kneading the stiff muscles. Looking over his shoulder, he noticed a rake left with the tines up. He took a deep breath, held it, let it out. Shaking his head, he pulled the latch. At the threshold he scraped the dirt from the soles of his boots and entered the house.
“Lambert?” Emily called from the front room. Her voice was bright.
“It’s me, Emme.” His feet felt leaden.
As she came through the hallway, Lambert half turned away.
“Are you all right, Lambert? It’s early. Are you ill?”
He took Emily by the hand and led her through the house to a chair beside the fireplace. He pulled up another chair and adjusted its leg on an uneven floorboard.
“What is it?” Her voice became tight and fearful.
“Emme,” he said, taking time to find his voice. “Adeline is dead.”
Emily’s face blanched, her hands clenched the arms of the chair.
“She died this morning. Mason found her a while ago lying between two furrows in a fresh-plowed row. He sent Shaver to Belinda’s and came to find me out in the field.”
The struggle to absorb the news, to believe it even, played across Emily’s face.
“I am sorry, Emme. I cannot imagine how this—”
Emily rose. She raised her hands as if to ward off his words. Lambert gripped her arms, as her body went slack. A painful cry escaped her and then she wept, her head against his shoulder. He held her through the tears and the choking breaths until they finally stopped.
As Emily’s last sobs subsided, Lambert saw Ginny in the doorway, waiting, her dark face glistening with tears. He knew that his throbbing inadequacy was plain to her. His voice failed him. Together, the two of them guided Emily to the bed in the back room. Lambert lifted her feet and unlaced her boots. He could hear Ginny humming as she stroked Emily’s hair. When he stood, Ginny pulled the rocking chair close to the bed for him. She patted his shoulder as she turned to leave the room.
When Emily opened her eyes, Lambert was sitting like that, watching her, waiting for her life to transcend yet another death. Hers and the new life within her.
* * *
On a Friday morning in late April 1865, in the wake of a doomed cause and a slain president, Adeline was buried next to Hammond. From the quiet cover of the woods, Emily cried without a sound, Lambert beside her, his arm around her. In the distance, Belinda wept beside the grave, held up by her husband, George, as three black men, one young and two older, lowered the coffin of finely varnished oak into the ground. On the other side of the grave, separated from Belinda by its chasm, Ginny stood with Rosa Claire and Lonso. Each child held one of her hands. Belinda ignored them. She turned to George without speaking. He took her arm and walked her to the carriage waiting in the pathway. One of the black men held the horse while George helped Belinda up and mounted after her. The servant took the reins and flicked them. The sleek black horse tossed its head and snorted.
Ginny stood with the children. When the carriage pulled away, she bent and spoke softly, glancing from one child to the other. Rosa Claire leaned over the grave and released her grip on the handful of flowers she carried. Lonso hid his face in Ginny’s skirts. She lifted him onto her hip and held out her other hand to Rosa Claire. The girl’s narrow shoulders shook, though the sobs were inaudible to her mother until the little group reentered the edge of the woods.
Emily reached for Rosa Claire’s hand, but she shrugged away. Together, the five of them trudged back through the undergrowth to the road, where their mule and wagon waited. No one spoke during the ride home. Emily rode in the rear between her children, an arm around each. Rosa Claire sat stiff and unbending under her mother’s embrace.
Arriving home, it was to Ginny that Rosa Claire reached for assistance from the wagon. She did not look at her mother. At dinner, the girl ate half her piece of cornbread and drank her milk, then asked to be excused. Ginny helped the child unlace her boots and climb up onto her big bed, the one that had been Emily’s, built and carved by her great-grandfather Matthews before the family migrated South. There the little girl stayed until long past her normal naptime. When Emily looked in, she was sure Rosa Claire was pretending to sleep.
Later, Emily returned to find the bed empty. She wandered through the house searching and found her daughter on the edge of the porch, legs dangling, propped against the wall, her back to the door. Emily sat on the ledge beside her and reached for her hand. Rosa Claire stuck it in her pocket.
“I’m so sorry,” Emily said. “I know—”
/> “No, you’re not. And you don’t know!”
“I know you are upset, but it is not acceptable to—”
“Don’t talk to me, Mama. Don’t tell me ‘not acceptable.’ ”
“Rosa Claire, what has taken hold of you? Being upset that your grandmother Adeline died does not account for your speaking to me like this.”
“She was my grammy. My grammy. You don’t know anything!”
“I know a great deal about death and losing someone—”
“You don’t even know who Grammy was! You wouldn’t even let me see her!”
“There are reasons—”
“But she came anyway! And you didn’t know it. Ever. She loved us!”
“She came?”
“Yes, she came. A lot! She brought us stuff from her garden and jelly and fig preserves and little dolls she made herself. And you never noticed. You thought it was Ginny all the time, but it was Grammy and I loved her. And you didn’t!”
Emily turned away, stunned. It took her some minutes to speak again. Rosa Claire was crying.
“No, Rosa Claire, I loved her dearly once. She was a second mother to me. She supported me, took care of me, when I could not take care of myself or of you or Lonso. No, Rosa Claire, you are wrong. I have loved her very much.”
“Then why did you be mad at her and not let her visit and not let me go see her? Why did it have to be secret when she came?”
Emily lay back on the hard boards of the porch floor, her hands above her head.
“I don’t know how to tell you. I don’t know how to explain so that you could understand. When you are older—”
“No, Mama. Now. Tell me now!”
“Sometimes, grown-ups make mistakes. We don’t mean to, just like you don’t mean to, but sometimes we do. And when we do, sometimes they are very big.” Emily rolled her head toward the child. “When did Grammy come?”
“I don’t know. All the time. And sometimes she didn’t. And I would miss her.” The little girl stared out across the field, but her narrow shoulders softened.
“Where was I?”
“Gone. I don’t know. In the field, I reckon.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you would be mad at me. Or mad at Grammy.”
“I might have been.”
“Why, Mama?”
“Your grammy and I had a misunderstanding. I thought she knew—some things that maybe she didn’t really know. Things I couldn’t—”
“What things, Mama?”
“Things maybe none of us can know. But whether she did or not, the uncertainty of it all was too hard for me. I blamed her.”
Rosa Claire turned toward her mother, who was crying now.
“Are you sad, too, Mama?”
“So very sad.”
“Can we be sad together?” Rosa Claire laid her head in Emily’s lap, her fierce little hands brushing at the wrinkles in her mother’s skirt. The girl shifted her body into a ball and pushed her feet against the side of the house. Emily remembered that day when she had decided to live, remembered how she had found Rosa Claire on Adeline’s porch, in a ball like this, and had wrapped herself around this child. She wrapped her arms around her now.
When the children settled for the night, Emily found Ginny out back, gathering kindling for the next morning. Ginny deposited her load and brushed her hands.
“Ain’t you plumb wore out now, honey?”
“Yes, Ginny. I’m ‘wore out’ with too many things.”
“Yes’m. I expect you is.”
“Come sit with me and talk, please. There seems to be a great deal I do not know.”
Together in the gathering dark, the women sat on the back steps, their history holding them close. Emily asked, and Ginny answered: how Adeline had come, whenever possible, with vegetables and Black-eyed Susans, and tiny dolls or bears made from scraps, stuffed with scavenged cotton and wood shavings, small enough for Rosa Claire’s pocketed hand. Ginny confessed to sending Adeline word by Lucian when she knew Emily would be gone into town for the day. She told Emily how she had helped plan secret picnics and berry pickings. Ginny knew she’d taken chances, feared that both Belinda and Emily would be furious had they suspected. When Emily shook her head, Ginny confessed that she knew it was Belinda who would be most furious, knew it was Belinda whom both Adeline and Emily feared. In truth, whom even Ginny feared.
“I suppose it is time I paid Belinda a visit, Ginny. Tomorrow. I have a lot to think about tonight.” Emily held Ginny’s hand.
“You sure you want to go seeing Miss Belinda? I mean, real sure?”
Emily nodded.
“You don’t know what you getting into, honey. Ain’t no telling. That woman is unexpected. She unhinged.”
“I know how unexpected, Ginny. Now go to bed. I am not the only one here who is ‘plumb wore out.’ ”
* * *
The house was dark. Lambert had banked the fire, secured it with the screen, and was standing by the mantel when she entered. A momentary vision of her father there assailed her. She went straight to Lambert and put her arms around him. With one hand he stroked the even part in her hair, twirled his finger around her ear, and bent to kiss her. She pressed herself against his warm chest. In his hand, as he drew it down from the mantel, was a book. She felt it against her back as he embraced her.
“There is something you need to see,” he said, holding the slender volume, one finger marking a place. “You’ll need a lamp.”
Puzzled, she ignited a broom straw in the embers and lit the lamp. He opened the book, handed it to her, and motioned for her to sit. He resumed his stance at the hearth, watching her.
Emily stared at Charles’s orderly handwriting. She began to read, puzzling over the journal: a trip into town, brief comments on the day’s patients, a purchase list of medications, a reminder to himself to speak to Benjamin about repairs to the shed door. Then a break. A smudge of ink spilled on the page. A growing unsteadiness to the writing. And the words:
My inexperience has betrayed me. No, more to the point—my arrogance. I have failed my wife and my sister. Belinda is left with almost nothing. Not quite true, a hell of a lot more than we had coming up, but not as much as she should have as Will’s widow. I must make amends to her. The judge blames me for his death, thinks I poisoned him, and in a way, I did. I should have stopped. Should have been less proud, less cocksure of myself. Had I at least listened to Mama. I should have defied Belinda. Will might have died, regardless. But at least not by my doing, not by digitalis poison. Then I would be the one to blame myself—not Emily, not her father. I want so much to lay it all on Belinda. So tempting, but I dare not. She was so furious. Insisted. But she didn’t know. Hell, I didn’t, either, though I should have. Such a fragile balance. She said what I wanted to hear. I wanted to be the hero. Wanted the judge’s approval. No, more than that. I wanted praise and gratitude and reward. Like Belinda, I wanted belonging. Now I must make this up to her. I must convince the judge to give her the land.
Emily folded the book in her lap; her fingers gripped its edges.
Lambert squatted beside her and took her hand. “At least now you can be sure,” he said.
Morning came after the long exhaustion of the night. She had slept briefly and had dreamed. Adeline was there, had smiled at her and handed her a knife. Above them Charles’s body twisted from the tree. They held the knife together and cut him down, his body falling into her arms. She struggled against the weight of it and gagged at the blood pouring from invisible wounds. Her mouth was full of it and she strangled. Somehow she swallowed and as she did, a miraculous peace fell upon her. A disembodied voice said one word: Communion.
As Emily left the house, she also left behind her the hilarity of the boys as Rosa Claire and Aimee teased them with waving spoonfuls of grits. Emily clasped the ties of her bonnet as she descended into the unexpected chill of the wind. She thought how the weather these past years was as unreliable as life. Lambert wa
ited at the foot of the steps, his face restrained and grave, his head bare.
“Emme,” he said. His voice blew toward her in the wind, quiet, intimate. Her name was like a prayer, the kind offered when knowing how to pray is lost.
The green bonnet took flight in a gust of wind and Lambert leaped to retrieve it. He slipped it over her head, grappling with the wind, holding the brim while Emily tied the bow. When it was secure, he put his arms around her, feeling the swelling of her waist against him. He rocked her side to side.
“I am going with you, Emme. I’ll stop whenever you say and let you walk the rest. And then I’ll wait.”
Emme pressed her hand to Remnant’s muzzle as she passed. The old mule turned his nose into her palm and snuffled. After Lambert settled her in the wagon, he opened a worn, gray blanket across her lap and tucked it under the sides of her skirts. They rode in silence, his hand over hers. When they neared the Gattaway place, he helped her down. Without speaking, Emily walked away. She did not look back.
The road crunched in precarious ruts, dried hard after the early-spring deluge. Emily struggled along the uneven ground, her side vision limited by the brim of her hat. Like blinders on a horse, she thought. Like invisible blinders that have hampered me all my life.
Around a curve, the cedar-lined allée to the house rose up. Emily was unprepared. She studied the brick Greek revival that George and Belinda Gattaway shared, its imposing height and entablature supported by enormous Doric columns. She walked up the immaculate brick path and onto the wide verandah. Allowing her finger to trace the faux marble surface, Emily half-circled one of the enameled columns. Behind her the wind whirled a few orphaned leaves, left behind from the other side of winter, across the path.
Before her stood the door with its tall inserted panels, its knocker a grim lion’s head, holding the heavy ring in its mouth. No one came to the clang when she lifted the ring and let it fall. She scanned the unplowed fields, scraggly still with bits of last year’s harvest. Inside her the baby moved and Emily lay her hand across her abdomen. She lifted the heavy knocker again. The door opened and there was Belinda. Neither woman spoke. Belinda made as if to close the door, but then stepped out, pulling it partially shut behind her.
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