The Endless Forest (54 page)

The boy said, “A visitor comes and goes away again. I don’t think we are going away.”

Martha turned because she couldn’t govern her expression. She could only hope that the boy was mistaken; the idea of Jemima settling permanently in Paradise was more than she could face, just now. She reminded herself that to do so, Jemima would have to purchase land, which required more than money.

Unless, of course, she was assuming she had the right to make a home for herself at the orchards.

All Callie’s attention and concentration were on the boy. For one moment Martha imagined Callie striking out; she would use her fist like a hammer. The image was so strong that she shifted, but only Ethan turned to look at her.

Callie’s eyes were fever bright. She was saying, “Do you know who I am? Does the name Callie mean anything to you?”

That angelic smile spread across his face. “My sister?”

“That’s right,” Callie said. Her voice wavered and caught. “That is exactly right.”

B
irdie stood in the open doorway of the classroom and hoped no one would send her away. This was far too important and interesting a meeting and the details needed to be recorded. Grown-ups always got things wrong when it fell to them to tell such stories, and so it was up to her. Strangely enough, it seemed as though Callie took one look at Jemima’s son and knew right off who he was. All the worry and doubt of the last few days, people wondering out loud what kind of trick Jemima was trying to play, and then this simple end because Callie looked at Nicholas and saw her father.

Birdie had asked both her ma and da if there was a resemblance, and neither of them had been sure enough to say. Curiosity had been a little clearer. She raised a shoulder and let it fall.

“Could be,” she said. “Might not be.”

And so Birdie had gone to Lily, who had the best memory for faces of all of them.

Lily said, “I have more than one drawing of Nicholas Wilde in a box somewhere.”

“Could you draw him again, without the old pictures?”

She looked surprised. “You want me to draw him now?”

“I thought you’d have his face by heart.”

That made Lily smile. She caught up her little sister’s hand and pulled her down so she could kiss her cheek. “There is only room for so many faces on a person’s heart.”

“But Hannah says you were sweet on Nicholas when you were my age. You wanted to marry him. Why are you laughing?”

Lily bit her lip and then tried to govern her expression. “I’m sorry, Birdie. I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing to hear that Hannah still recalls that conversation. She was so irritated with me for going on about Nicholas Wilde.”

“But didn’t you love him?”

“In a small way, I suppose I did. But it was a love without foundation and so it couldn’t grow.”

“And then he married Jemima.”

“Yes,” Lily said. “I was very insulted at the time, but not for any good reason. Tell me again why you are so interested in my drawings of Nicholas. Does it have to do with Jemima’s son?”

Birdie plopped down on the stool beside the divan and let out a deep breath. “I thought maybe we could see if the boy looks like Nicholas. If he does, maybe the gossip and talking will stop.”

“You feel bad for the boy?”

“Yes,” Birdie said. “Hardly anybody has even spoke a word to him and they’re taking him apart already like a Christmas turkey.”

“You do realize,” Lily said slowly, “that even if there is a strong resemblance, people might not admit to seeing it.”

“But we’ll never know one way or the other without the drawing.”

“And I suppose the drawings I gave to Callie were lost in the flood.”

“With everything else.”

Lily said, “I tell you what, let me talk to some other people and see what they think. If everyone agrees the drawings would be some help, I’ll give you leave to sort through all my boxes to find them. What will you do if it turns out the boy looks nothing like Nicholas Wilde?”

Birdie said, “I don’t know.”

“Exactly,” said her sister. “Exactly that is the problem.”

Birdie had thought about that for a long time. She tried to imagine what Callie would see when she looked at the boy who was supposed to be her half brother. If she was capable of seeing him at all. Martha was less of a worry to her. Martha would take her time making up her mind, because that was her way.

And then at recess she had come out to play with her head full of algebra, and there he was, playing with the other boys as if he had grown up right here in Paradise. They had worked Hopper into such a frenzy that the pup had finally collapsed, and now he slept tucked into Nicholas Wilde’s shirt.

Birdie said, “You’ve got a way with animals, Nicholas.”

He stopped just where he was and smiled at her. “Do I? I like them. Would you like to play?” And without waiting for an answer he threw her the ball. This was a good sign; the boys tended to be possessive about such things and reluctant to include girls.

She caught it with one hand—she was a Bonner, after all—and for the last five minutes of recess they talked while they threw the ball back and forth. By the time the bell rang Birdie hadn’t discovered anything that might help understand what Jemima wanted or why she had sent the boy to school, but she did know something important about the boy himself. He was what Curiosity called a gentle soul, someone who lived in the world but was not really part of it. Someone without the ability to see danger coming, and even lacking the most basic instincts to protect himself.

“Like an egg come out with no shell,” Curiosity had said. “A body got no way to give that egg what God saw fit to hold back. His ways are mysterious to behold.”

“Ma says weak shells come from not feeding the chickens right.”

Curiosity had put her head back and laughed. “That too.”

So now there was Callie, crouched down next to Nicholas, and he was smiling at her. For her part, Birdie didn’t like it when strangers came so close. You could smell what they had been eating on their skin, and sometimes worse. Clearly Nicholas wasn’t as fussy as she was, because his smile just got bigger.

From the corner of her eye Birdie saw the little people waiting on the porch, trying to gather the courage to come in and stand beside her so
they could hear what was going on. It had to do with them too, now that Ethan and Callie were married.

Mariah slipped her hand into Birdie’s and leaned against her.

“Why does that boy have Daniel’s new puppy? Is it because he’s our cousin?” she whispered.

“No,” Birdie said. “He just likes dogs, and they like him.”

“Everybody likes him. Callie too, because he’s her brother.”

“It looks that way,” Birdie agreed.

“So she got a husband and a brother all at once. But does it mean that she’ll have to let Jemima be her ma again?”

A flush of gooseflesh ran up Birdie’s spine. “I don’t want to talk about Jemima,” she said. “And it’s time we went home.”

They trooped home up the hill together, and there was nothing Birdie could think to do to distract the boys from the one topic that interested them.

“You knew Callie’s father,” Adam said to her. “Does Nicholas take after him?”

“Nicholas Wilde went away before I was born. And anyway, not all children resemble their parents.”

“I sure don’t,” Adam said. Adam with his skin the color of burnt sugar and his dark eyes.

“You look like one of us,” Henry said. “You look like a Savard.”

“Well, why not?” Nathan said. “We’re cousins.”

The truth was, Adam had been raised to be as much a Bonner as any of them. She doubted he ever thought about the family he had been born into. It occurred to Birdie now that Adam knew exactly who he was and where he belonged, but someday he might be curious about what might have been. If he asked, no doubt Jennet would tell him, and how would he feel about that?

“Bonner is as Bonner does.” That was the way Curiosity always answered questions about Adam.

Birdie broke into a slow trot, and the others followed her lead.

Curiosity said, “Slow down and start from the beginning. What is it troubling you?”

Nathan cleared his throat. “I think I know what Birdie means. If Nicholas does stay here in Paradise, sooner or later he’s going to hear some stories about his ma he won’t much like.”

Curiosity looked at Birdie closely. “Is that it?”

That was it, or at least part of it. She didn’t know how to say the rest, and so she simply nodded.

“You little people, listen to me now. All of you, go on out in the sunshine, you going to turn pale as slugs if you stay in this kitchen much longer.” It was the tone Curiosity used when she wasn’t in the mood to argue and every child recognized it. When the door closed behind a scowling Amelie, Curiosity said, “Come on out with it, little girl. You got something else on your mind.”

Finally she said, “It’s about Callie. It’s about the way Callie looked at Nicholas. It wasn’t—it didn’t feel right.”

“She mad?”

“No.”

“Unhappy?”

“No, not unhappy at all. Eager, maybe. But not in a good way eager.”

Curiosity’s hands stilled. “Go on.”

“Like she had a fever on the mind,” Birdie said. “But that’s not right either.”

“But as close as anybody likely to come,” Curiosity said. She stared at nothing for a long moment, and then she sighed.

“Callie has had some hard times. Harder times than most twice her age. She strong, no doubt about that, but everybody got a breaking point. I think for right now we got to trust Ethan to help her come through.”

“Because he’s her husband now.”

“Because he her friend, mostly,” Curiosity said. “The two of them, they understand each other best. But we’ll keep an eye on her anyhow. Do that put your mind to rest?”

“I’m not sure,” Birdie said. She might have simply lied, but Curiosity would have seen it in her face.

“Lord have mercy,” Curiosity said. “Me neither.”

Martha said, “Callie, we have to let him go back to the Red Dog. Otherwise someone will come looking for him.”

They were standing in the hall, talking in low voices while Nicholas played with Hopper in the classroom. He was dragging a bit of string along the floor while the puppy stumbled all over himself trying to catch it. Young children often mishandled puppies out of pure excitement, but Nicholas seemed to have no such problems. Maybe he was slow when it came to some kinds of learning, but he was quick to understand other things.

Nicholas looked up and caught Daniel’s eye. When he laughed, he had a kind of beauty.

“Really, that would be the worst way to open up a conversation,” Martha was saying. “If you want to keep the boy here.”

“What do you mean, ‘if’?” Callie frowned. “Of course we need to keep him here. He’s your half brother as well as mine. Surely you can see that.”

Martha started to say something, but Daniel put a light hand on her shoulder.

Ethan said, “If we try to hold him back now and fail—and I think we would have to fail—we might never see him again.”

Callie had on her most stubborn expression. She said, “We can’t leave him with her. God knows what kind of monster she’d make out of him.”

Daniel felt Martha startle, but Callie didn’t notice, or maybe, Daniel had to admit, maybe she meant to strike out.

“I think we could give him a good home,” Ethan said. “But it will take some planning to make that happen. As strongly as you feel about this, it’s plain reasoning we need right now.”

Daniel resisted the urge to ask Callie if she was seriously considering kidnapping the boy, because he could see the answer on her face, and it unsettled him. He was tempted to say as much to Martha as they made their way up Hidden Wolf, but then his own common sense got the upper hand.

Instead he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to set out for home.”

That got him a smile. “It would be nice to just stay put for a while, but I don’t suppose that will be possible. We’ll have to fetch my things up from the village sooner or later.”

“My da took care of that already,” Daniel said. “He’s got a couple more loads. Maybe you were too distracted to notice him going by.”

“That is a relief,” Martha said. “Did you ask him?”

The question surprised him, but he took a moment to look at it from her perspective. Then he said, “He didn’t need to be asked, Martha. He saw what needed to be done and he did it. He would have done the same for any of his daughters.”

He saw the emotion rise up in her face, and then settle again, slowly.

“I see I’ll have to remind you where you married into once in a while,” Daniel said.

She gave a strangled half laugh. “And Callie will remind me where I came from. Who I came from.”

“Do you think she meant to be unkind?”

“Yes,” Martha said without hesitation. “I do.”

“I’ve got a suggestion. Let’s not talk about any of that until tomorrow evening when we sit down at Ma’s. Just let it go.”

After a moment she said, “We’ll have to leave the horses with Ben tomorrow.”

“Do you mind?”

“Not really. I like the walk.”

“You may well change your mind in January. I’ve been meaning to put up a stable, anyway.”