The Endless Forest (21 page)

She cleared her throat. “How many did you lose?”

Callie held herself very still. “Too many. Do you remember what Cookie used to call you and me? Working fools.”

Martha smiled. “I dream about Cookie sometimes.”

Callie drew in a deep breath. “Me and Levi, we talk about her a lot and I dream about her almost every night,” she said. “Mostly about the way she talked to my ma, like there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with her. Other folks were afraid of Ma, but not Cookie.”

“She knew how to talk so your ma heard her. She took care of all of you.”

Cookie had died in the same blizzard that killed Callie’s mother. In Martha’s view of things, Cookie was the greater loss. Not that she could say such a thing out loud, but it was true. Cookie had been an irritable and prickly old woman, an emancipated slave with no good opinion of white people, with the exception of the Wildes. She ran the household and kept an eye on Dolly, who would wander off if not watched. It was Cookie who had raised Callie.

“She deserved better than she got.” Callie’s voice had taken on an edge.

“They both did,” Martha said.

Martha wondered if they would start up the old conversation again, the one they had had so many times. How Cookie had died, if she had fallen from the icy bridge by accident, or if she had been pushed. Whether she had gone out to find Callie’s ma before she got lost in the storm, and how Dolly had slipped away in the first place.

They had been young girls and ready to buckle under the weight of what they dare not tell the adults. And if they had come across solid proof that Jemima had pushed Cookie to her death, they still would have been silent. They had only each other at that point, and in their minds and hearts they believed that if Jemima were to go to the gallows, Martha would be sent to a workhouse, or worse.

I couldn’t bear it
, Callie had said.
I can’t lose you too
.

How frightened they had been, and how foolish.

In the end the court had dismissed the charges against Jemima for lack of evidence, and the two girls had cried themselves to sleep out of anger and relief.

“We should have told,” Martha said. “If we had told—”

“She wouldn’t have come back again,” Callie finished for her.

Martha said, “If I could empty out the half of my blood that comes from Jemima, I would do it right here, on this spot.”

“Cut it out, bad from good.”

“Just so,” Martha said.

“There’s things I’d cut away too, if I could. Did you know my ma’s grandma was just as mad as Ma? It comes down through the bloodline. Sometimes I feel it in my brain, like a seed waiting for rain so it can come up out of the ground and bear fruit.”

Martha drew in a shocked breath. “Do you really believe that, that you could turn out like your ma?”

“Yes,” Callie said. “I do believe it.”

For a long moment Martha listened to the sound of the axe meeting wood, the steady
thunk thunk thunk
and then the pause before it started again. The wind was rising cool on her hot cheeks. At this moment, standing next to Callie, she was overcome with regret and sorrow. She had left Callie behind, in the end.

“I wish I had never gone to Manhattan,” Martha said.

To which Callie said nothing, and rightly so. It did no good to worry about things long gone. Things she couldn’t change. Martha cleared her throat.

“Where are you going to build?”

Callie had taken a few steps forward, and she looked back at Martha over her shoulder. “I’m not sure yet. Why do you ask?”

“Because,” Martha said. “I can’t stay with the Bonners forever. I shouldn’t even be there now. If I left, there would be room for Lily and Simon. Nobody has said as much to me, but I know Elizabeth thinks about it.”

Callie’s arms were crossed against her waist, her head lowered as though she saw something crucially important in the mud in which she stood. “I can’t build yet,” she said. “It will be a good while before I can get enough money saved up. What little savings I had went with everything else.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Martha said.

As children they had often read each other’s thoughts, and Callie still had the knack. She said, “I couldn’t take money from you.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” Martha said. “You supply the land, and I build a house big enough for the both of us.”

Callie went still, her whole body stiff and wary. Martha wanted to apologize for giving offense, but Callie cut her off with a movement of her hand.

“Tell me this,” she said. “When you want to get married and start a family of your own, what then?”

“I could ask the same of you,” Martha countered.

Callie looked up sharply. “I’m never going to get married.”

She was so vehement that Martha was taken aback.

“Don’t look at me like that. If you think it through you’ll know that it’s the only reasonable thing for me to do. Ma didn’t lose her mind until I was born. I don’t want children, not if it means turning into—that.”

Martha hesitated. “You won’t be lonely?”

Callie grimaced. “No,” she said sharply. “I’m far too busy to be lonely.”

When Martha had disappeared from sight, Callie walked slowly down to the farm where she had been born and worked for all of her life, past the cider house to the new nursery. A small plot of land with a new-woven fence of beech saplings eight feet high all around it, as close as was possible to deer-proof.

On the other side of the fence was the single Bleeding Heart Levi had found and brought back, along with five new grafts from that same tree. Whatever other chores he turned his hand to, Levi was always within sight of the nursery. Every day he wove new wood into the fence that surrounded it; he had closed the gate with a complicated twisting of wires that were not easily undone. Levi’s vigilance was the difference between success and failure. They bore the burden together, and told no one about the Bleeding Heart.

M
artha was on her way back to the Bonners for supper, lost in her thoughts, when a hand tugged at her mantle from behind and she let out a small cry in surprise.

“Birdie,” she said. “You startled me.”

The girl had been running, and she took a moment to catch her breath. She said, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

Birdie had the same dark and unruly hair as her brothers and sisters, and some of it had escaped the plaits to dance around her face. She was flushed with running and her eyes—an odd mixture of green and brown—seemed almost to glow. Birdie wouldn’t be called pretty, but there was an energy about her that drew a person in. As tired as Martha was and as preoccupied by her conversation with Callie, she stopped to listen to what Birdie had to say.

“My da says it’s best to be straightforward when you’ve got a favor to ask. So I’m asking.” She hesitated anyway, as if waiting for permission.

“Go on,” Martha said. She couldn’t think what Birdie might want, unless it had to do with the trunk of books she had brought with her
from Manhattan. The girl loved to read, and was always looking for new stories.

“I think you would make a very good teacher,” Birdie said. “And I’d like you to think about teaching at the Paradise school.”

This request was so unexpected that Martha stopped where she was. Birdie reached out and tugged Martha’s cuff.

“You don’t have to answer now,” she said. “Just think about it.”

Martha would have preferred to put such a nonsensical suggestion out of her mind completely, but it stayed with her until the adults were all gathered around the supper table. And of course Lily and Simon weren’t here, but Hannah and Ben had come over so all in all there were the three married couples, each sitting side by side. Daniel and Ethan sat at one end of the long table, and Martha and Birdie at the other.

It was Birdie’s first time at the adult supper table. She had been campaigning for a place for months, Elizabeth told Martha.

“She’s not even six months older than her eldest nephew,” Elizabeth said. “But she claims precedence because she’s of his father’s generation.”

“And how did that go over with Nathan?” Martha asked. The Bonner grandchildren were the source of many dramas every day, many of them oddly compelling.

Nathan was a sensible boy, she was told, and he knew better than to take on Birdie on such a matter as this. He had gone off to bed with the rest of the grandchildren without a fuss and now Birdie sat next to Martha, looking around herself as if she had landed in Aladdin’s cave.

Surely, Martha consoled herself, surely Birdie would not raise the topic of teaching at this supper table.

The LeBlanc girls came in with platters and bowls until the sideboard was filled, and then the long process of passing plates began. There was a lot of small talk around the table, Jennet and Hannah had their heads together about something, while Luke was telling Ben something complicated in a combination of French and English. A living French, nothing like the parlor language she had learned. She could discuss painting and music and the health of relatives, but the language she had been taught had been stripped down and, in the process, crippled. She found herself listening. Birdie was just as interested, her head swiveling back and forth between the two men, as if she needed to see the mouths making the words to understand their meaning.

Then came the small silence that always preceded the very first topic
of discussion. The question that had no answer, and Martha herself was the cause. She could taste it on the air.

“You look tired, Ma,” Daniel said from the other end of the table. “Not sleeping well?”

Elizabeth smiled at Daniel in the hope that he would let the subject go, but Nathaniel answered for her.

“Hardly sleeping at all.”

“Lily really is doing well,” Hannah said. “If it’s her health that’s keeping you awake at night.”

“I am satisfied that Lily is well,” Elizabeth said.

“Curiosity?” Jennet asked.

“She may outlive us all.” Hannah said this in a perfectly serious tone. Elizabeth’s stepdaughter could laugh and joke when the mood was on her, but never when she talked about her work.

She could trust Hannah; Elizabeth knew that. Lily was being well looked after, and she seemed in high good spirits when Elizabeth sat with her. And still she lay awake at night, wondering what more could be done. The truth was, she felt Lily’s absence like a burn, but it was something she had to keep to herself. Short of building an extension onto the house, something she could not in good conscience ask Nathaniel to do, she saw no immediate solution. Not while so many families were still living rough after the flood.

“Today Lily drew Mrs. Thicke’s likeness,” Birdie was saying. “But she left the big mole with three hairs out. She meant it as a kindness, I think. But Mrs. Thicke asked about it straight away.”

“And what did Lily say to that?” Nathaniel encouraged Birdie, which was probably not the best strategy, to Elizabeth’s way of thinking.

“She said, ‘Give it back and I’ll add it in,’ but Mrs. Thicke clutched it to her bosom and scuttled away to the kitchen like a beetle.”

“Birdie,” Elizabeth said. One word of warning that the girl understood immediately.

“I like Mrs. Thicke,” she said, as if she must explain herself. “She’s very friendly and she makes jellies every day because she thinks they’re good for Lily. But mostly Simon eats them.”

“With your help,” Hannah prompted.

“Yes,” Birdie said. “I like jellies too.” Not a hint of embarrassment.

“An admirable lack of artifice,” Ethan said.

“Don’t encourage her,” Daniel said, but he winked at his little sister.

Elizabeth had been so concerned about Lily that she hadn’t been paying Birdie the attention she needed and deserved. For weeks now she had been running wild. Elizabeth was thinking back over that period of time, trying to remember where Birdie had been and what she had done, so deep in her thoughts that it took her some time to realize that Martha was answering questions about Callie Wilde and her plans for rebuilding.

“That won’t happen anytime soon,” Nathaniel said. “She’s short on cash.”

“You know Ethan will lend her what she needs,” Hannah said.

“Or I will,” Martha said.

All heads turned toward her and her color rose.

“Why should I not?”

Nathaniel cleared his throat. “You just took us by surprise. It’s a fine thing if you can help Callie out. That’s a hardworking young woman.”

Daniel was watching Martha thoughtfully. He said, “Did she ask, or did you offer?”

Martha seemed confused by the question at first. “I’m not sure. Does it matter?”

“Of course not,” Elizabeth said, irritated with Daniel.

“A day out in the open air agrees with you,” Luke told Martha.

“It does,” said Ben. “Your skin glows.”

Martha put the back of her hand to her cheek in surprise and unease.

“Stop,” Jennet said, but she was grinning. “You’re embarrassing the puir thing. Never mind them, Martha.”

Into the silence that followed came Birdie’s voice again, this time directed to Daniel at the other end of the table.