The Endless Forest (4 page)

All the way across the ocean she had imagined coming home by sleigh, gliding over a winter’s worth of hard-packed snow, tucked into a cocoon of furs. The way she and Simon had once come home to Paradise from Montreal, in the deep of winter, traveling fast and quiet because of the war and the troops that patrolled the border. Now she had to laugh at herself for such girlish fantasies, for her steadfast refusal to consider the unpredictability of spring weather. The snow was going, and the rain was rapidly turning the roads to mud.

Yesterday the men had gone about the business of arranging for oxen and wagons suitable for the transport of women and children, and for the storage of the sleighs over the summer. More delay.

Lily thought of setting out for home on foot, how good it would be to simply walk. Simon would laugh at such an idea, but he wasn’t here to tease her into a better mood. He was rolled into a blanket, asleep in the barn along with the rest of the men and Jennet’s two boys. Where they would all be sleeping at this moment, if Ma hadn’t managed to talk the landlady into letting them have these tiny rooms under the eaves.

They had been lucky to get them, as Johnstown was overrun with people who had come to see a hanging. A thief, well known and widely admired for his style if not his morals, was going to the gallows today—just over the meadow behind Mrs. Kummer’s garden, if they cared to join the crowd.

Not an auspicious beginning to this last leg of the journey home. Lily closed her eyes and brought up other images: the brother and sisters waiting in Paradise. Old friends, and Curiosity.

Then Lily realized that she was being studied.

“What are you thinking about?”

She turned on her side to talk to her niece.

“Curiosity.”

The wide mouth split into a smile minus two bottom teeth. “I was thinking about her too. Did you miss her while you were gone?”

“Every day,” Lily said.

“More than your ma and da? More than Birdie and Gabriel and Daniel and Hannah and—”

“Not more,” Lily interrupted. “Just as much.”

“Then why did you stay away so long?”

Jennet’s daughters were as direct and unflinching as their mother. The only way to deal with any of them was to offer the truth.

“There were things I needed to do. Things I thought were important.”

“And were they? Important?”

“Yes,” Lily said. “They were.”

The girl considered for a moment. “More important than having babies?”

Every day since she stepped off the ship Lily had expected this question. The first time she was alone with her mother, when the women sat down to tea together in her aunt Spencer’s parlor, when she saw Jennet at the door and recognized the curve of her belly for what it was. But none of them had raised the subject. Curiosity would ask, of that she was very sure. And by that time she might be ready to answer.

“Not more important, no. But babies are born in Italy, you know. Every day.”

“You didn’t have one,” Isabel said.

“No,” Lily agreed. “I didn’t. Tell me what you like best about going to Paradise.”

Isabel wiggled with happiness as she talked about her Savard cousins. They were wild as ponies, full of life and noise and mischief, and fearless, too, in a way that made the uncles laugh and the aunts go very still.

As young as Amelie and Eliza were, Lily had no doubt that they had already discovered some of the secret places on the mountain and in the village. From Curiosity’s letters and her mother’s, it was clear that Hannah’s daughters had no interest in dolls or quiet games played in the parlor, but they could run and climb as well as their brothers. And while the boys might be older and bigger, the girls had a powerful ally in their aunt Birdie.

“Birdie is ten,” Isabel announced. “She is the boss of us all because
she’s the aunt. Even Nathan pays her mind, though he’s only five months and sixteen days younger and he’s already a head taller.”

She ran the numbers all together, as if she announced the exact age difference with great regularity. Fivemonthsandsixteendays.

“Well of course he does,” said Mariah, awake now. “She’s Da’s sister, ten years old or a hundred. If you bother her too much she makes you call her Dearest Auntie Caroline Curiosity instead of Birdie.” She brightened. “Do you know
why
she’s called Birdie?”

“I’m not sure I do,” Lily said, trying not to smile. She had still been at home in Paradise when Birdie got her nickname, but she didn’t want to discourage the twins from talking to her. “You go ahead and tell me the story.”

“Well,” Mariah said, spreading her hands over the covers. “When she wasn’t even a whole year old, she looked out the window and saw a wren—”

“It wasn’t a wren, it was a robin,” her sister said.

“She saw a bird,” Mariah said pointedly. “On the windowsill. And she stood up—she couldn’t really walk yet, but she stood up because she was so excited, and she yelled
Burtie!”

“Just like that,” said Isabel.

“And the bird flew away,” Mariah said.

“Oh, she was awful mad at the bird,” said Isabel. “Kept yelling at it to come back.
Burtie! Burtie! Burtie!”

“And that’s when everybody started calling her Birdie.”

“Except when she says not to,” Isabel amended.

Lily pushed a curl out of Mariah’s eyes. “So you don’t mind this long journey every year?”

“Oh, no. Summer in Paradise is like—heaven.” Mariah looked surprised at her own turn of phrase.

“I remember that,” Lily said, mostly to herself. “I remember that feeling.”

Jennet sat up and slowly stretched her arms overhead. “As do I. Though I never had so many fine playmates. A whole crackle of cousins.”

“Do you think we’ll get there today?” Isabel asked, climbing into her mother’s lap like a much younger child.

“Not if we loll about in bed we won’t.”

Someone was knocking at the door.

“Maybe it’s Uncle Simon, come to wish you a good morning,” Mariah said, grinning at Lily.

But when Lily opened the door, she found her father standing there with an expression that did not promise good news.

“Tell me,” Jennet said behind her. “What have my lads been up to now?”

In the earliest morning, in the fragile moment between sleep and not-sleep, Elizabeth Bonner heard the sound of children laughing and immediately time rolled away and gave up everything to her: the children she had raised, and those she had lost too young. All of them in the next room, laughing together.

For that brief moment it made perfect sense that they should all be together, and then her waking mind took over, and she recognized her granddaughters’ voices.

She lay for a moment listening. Next to her Martha Kirby was still curled into a ball, determined even in sleep. The shadows under her eyes made her seem older than her years, but in a happy mood—as she had been just ten days ago—she was the liveliest of young women, one who drew attention to herself without trying to, and seemed to be unaware of the effect she had. It was her smile that drew people to her, more than her regular features or high color. Martha had her father’s hair: straight and heavy, but where Liam had been coppery redhead, Martha’s color deepened over time to a deep rich hue that worked brown in some lights and red in others. In the sun it burned a hundred shades, from copper to gold.

Elizabeth studied Martha’s face, looking for some trace of her mother, some feature that she could recognize as Jemima. Others did see the connection, in the height of her brow and the line of her nose, but Elizabeth could not.

“They are mother and daughter, I’m not denying that,” Elizabeth had said to her husband. “But they are no more alike than chalk and cheese.”

“Boots, you see it that way because you like the girl,” Nathaniel said. “You don’t want to see Jemima Southern in her, so you don’t.”

That much was true. Elizabeth could not find any charity in her heart for the woman who had cheated a good man out of his property and abandoned her only daughter at the tender age of eleven.

Still asleep, Martha drew in a hiccupping breath, much as a very young child would when coming to the end of a long cry. She moved a little deeper into the covers and Elizabeth saw that she had been sleeping with a ring clutched in her right hand.

A beautiful ring held so tightly that there would be a bruise there, a faint stigmata. She had tried to give the ring back to her young man when he broke off their engagement, but he had refused. A silly, ignorant boy who was too easily persuaded by an overbearing mother. He was not worthy of Martha, though the girl could not see that, not now. Perhaps not for a long time.

There was a light tapping at the door. Elizabeth draped a shawl around herself and slipped out into the hall, where her husband leaned with one shoulder against the wall.

“Boots.” He reached out and pulled her in to him, lowered his head to kiss her just under the ear. He had slept in the stable and the sweet warm smells clung to him.

Better not to think about Nathaniel in a barn; things could still get out of hand when they found themselves alone in one. She rubbed her forehead against his shoulder and sighed a little, suddenly sleepy. She should have slept beside him, and left Jennet and Lily to cope with Martha.

“How is she?” Her husband read her mind, a habit she had never been able to break him of.

“Melancholy,” Elizabeth said. “But she is trying.”

Nathaniel cleared his throat. “We’ve got a problem, Boots.”

She closed her eyes. “Please do not tell me we don’t have wagons and oxen enough. I don’t know if I can cope with one more delay.”

“Oh, we’re fine as far as wagons and such go. We could get on the road right after breakfast—” He shook his head, unwilling to put whatever it was into words.

“Nathaniel.”

“The boys,” he said, rubbing his nose with a knuckle.

“Oh, Nathaniel,” Elizabeth said. “They didn’t—”

A door opened and Jennet was there, settling her cloak around her shoulders. “They did,” she said. “The wee buggers ran off. And sorry they’ll be when we’ve got them back again, I can promise ye that.”

“But where?” Elizabeth asked.

Nathaniel said, “I’d wager they want to see the hanging and they’ll stay hid until they do.”

“If it’s hanging they want I’m mair than happy tae oblige,” Jennet said grimly. “Just as soon as I get ma hands on them.”

Breakfast was a sorry affair with all the men gone off and no Jennet to keep them amused. Even the twins were subdued as they dutifully spooned up the watery and tasteless porridge.

Lily had no idea how to lift the mood at the table, as her own mood was quite low. The girls kept turning to look out of the dining room window, and for once they seemed to have no questions for Lily or Rachel or even their grandmother.

It was no surprise to Lily that her mother was a favorite with the twins. Children had always come to her classroom without a fuss. Her mother had been a strict teacher but scrupulously fair. Most of all, she was willing to listen to stories and to tell her own in turn. She handled her grandchildren in much the same way.

But right now she seemed distracted, her gaze unfocused and her brow furrowed. It was the expression she wore when she was trying to work through some challenge. In this state she could let milk boil over and simply not hear a knock at the door or even her name, spoken clearly. As Martha was trying to speak to her now.

“Mrs. Bonner?”

Lily’s mother jerked out of her thoughts and turned to Martha. She said, “I know it is hard to break a habit, but I hope you will try to remember to call me Elizabeth.”

Martha looked surprised. “I don’t know—”

“You called me Miss Elizabeth in school, after all. Will you try?”

Just that suddenly it came back to Lily, how frustrated she had sometimes been with her mother, who would insist on her understanding of democracy even to the discomfort of others.

Martha was saying, “I will try.”

Lily decided to rescue the girl. She said, “Martha, do you plan to have a house built in Paradise?”

The younger woman looked startled at this question. Her spoon hung frozen in the air.

“You could afford to build a grand house,” Isabel said. “I heard Da say so.”

“You weren’t supposed to be listening,” Mariah reminded her.

Isabel wrinkled her nose in annoyance and ignored her sister in favor of instructing Martha. “We stay with Grandpa and Grandma Bonner.”

“And so will Martha,” Elizabeth said. “Until she decides for herself what she’d like to do. I mean to say, if that will suit you, Martha. Unless you had other plans?”

A small muscle jumped in the girl’s jaw. “That’s very kind of you. I shouldn’t like to put anybody out.”

The girl was angry, all right. Lily could feel it radiating off her like a fever. She was angry but she had lived too long with the Spencers, and she would not sacrifice good manners to give vent to her emotions. Lily knew this because she had felt this way herself many times.

“You aren’t putting us out,” Elizabeth said. “But if you’d rather stay elsewhere you certainly may. What were you thinking?”

Martha’s color rose a notch. “I don’t know. Maybe I could stay with Callie at the orchard. If she has room.”

“I’m sure she’d love to have you,” Elizabeth said. “I know she has missed you very much. Have you written to her to say you were coming home to Paradise?”

“I should have, but … I am looking forward to seeing her. Mrs. Bonner—Elizabeth—” she started, and broke off. “Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate all your help very much.”

“I think you have a great deal to look forward to, though it might not feel that way right at this moment.”

Lily watched Martha struggle with a landslide of emotions: sadness, anger, regret, hope. Finally she managed a small smile.

She said, “You are very good. I have no idea what I would have done without you.”

“I
know,” Isabel offered with great seriousness. “You could become an actress. I think an actress is a very good thing to be. Far better than a wife.” And she turned up her nose with such conviction that even Martha laughed.

Martha had started this day as she did the last seven: with a lecture to herself. It would get easier. She would stop thinking all day long about Teddy. She would be attentive to those good people who had taken her away from an untenable position and thus rescued what was left of her reputation.