The Endless Forest (62 page)

The path grew very steep and narrow, and so for the next part of the walk they were too busy staying on their feet to talk.

The woods gave way gradually until they were surrounded by speckled alder, silver maples, and elm. The ground got wetter and wetter underfoot and then they stood in the clear, on the edge of the swamp.

It should have been very familiar, but it was not. The storm had come down hard and the shoreline and water were littered with debris from the flood. Shattered trees piled together like a game of pickup sticks, boulders, and uprooted bushes.

“Look.” Birdie pointed to the remnants of a canoe hanging from a maple limb. “Gabriel’s.”

In spite of the damage, there was some comfort to be taken here in the certainty of another growing season. Human beings were the only ones who seemed to hold on to disaster. Birdie wondered why she hadn’t thought to come to the lake to watch the birds. It was her favorite
thing about this time of year, to keep an eye out for mallards, white-winged scoters and all-black ones, teals and buffleheads and loons.

A black-winged duck was moving across the water with a dozen ducklings fanned out behind her. There would be nests tucked out of sight, but many of the birds they saw today would be gone very soon, continuing on their way north.

Hannah and Birdie went on, moving carefully over or around deadfall toward the sound of the beaver at work, great flat tails thumping the water. The debris and marsh stopped them just short of the point where the large stream that came off Hidden Wolf joined the lake.

The beaver were hard at work putting their world back together, though some of the younger ones seemed more interested in the large supply of food that had been deposited all around them. Hannah saw more than one lounging on its back in the water, nibbling the soft inner bark from a branch.

Birdie said, “Is Jennet well?”

The question startled Hannah so that she couldn’t find her voice for a moment.

“Yes,” she said finally. “I think she is. Why do you ask?”

The girl lifted both shoulders and let them drop.

“Something is worrying you. Tell me.”

Birdie looked at Hannah over her shoulder. “She just seems tired all the time. More tired than you were when you were going to have Simon.”

After a long minute in which Hannah thought very seriously about Jennet, Birdie said, “What’s that?”

“What?”

“That. I thought at first it was just a log, there on the end of the dam. But there’s something blue caught on it.” And then, her tone calm and even: “Sister, I think that’s a body.”

Elizabeth was in the trading post to see if there had been mail when the door flew open and her youngest came bounding in, red-faced and out of breath. Hannah was just behind her, looking serious.

“Ma!” Birdie flung her arms around Elizabeth’s waist.

“Is there something wrong with Daniel?” Her voice creaked and broke.

Birdie’s expression was almost comical. “Daniel? There’s nothing wrong with Daniel. But something awful—”

Almost of their own volition Elizabeth’s hands touched the girl’s head and back, searching for some hidden wound but finding only the rapid beat of her heart.

“A body,” Birdie said. “At the beaver dams.”

There were a lot of people close by, as was always the case when the post rider was expected. Even those who rarely got a letter wanted to know who had, and what news there might be. And now there was something much more interesting to tell at the dinner table.

The questions came from all over the room. Had Hannah seen the body too? Did she recognize it? Was it a local? How long had it been in the lake? Why hadn’t she brought it back with her?

Hannah looked at Elizabeth, who inclined her head toward the counter where Magistrate Bookman and Uz Brodie were standing. Brodie served as a kind of sheriff and a substitute for Bookman when he was away on business. “We couldn’t get very close,” Hannah told them. “You’ll need a canoe.”

Baldy O’Brien snorted. “And where would they get a canoe?”

Before the flood there were close to a dozen canoes on the lake; the only one to survive had been up at the Ames place waiting to have a hole in its side fixed.

“What about Runs-from-Bears?” asked Brodie. “He started on a new canoe the day after the flood.”

“Not finished yet,” Hannah said.

John Mayfair said, “There’s the raft. We took it out of the water once the bridge was done, but we never broke it up. It’s right out back.”

“Well, then,” said Bookman. “The raft will have to do.”

“I want to go back with them,” Birdie said. “There’s room on the raft. Please, Ma, can I go back with them?”

“Of course not,” Elizabeth said, her tone more severe than she had meant it to be.

Tobias Mayfair raised his voice to be heard above the noise. “Friends, has anybody gone missing over the last few days?”

The sudden silence lasted only as long as it took for people to take inventory of their family and neighbors.

“We’ll have to go around and ask,” Brodie said.

The crowd shifted and in that moment Elizabeth saw her grandson
Adam and young Nicholas Wilde standing near the door. Nicholas looked intrigued but confused, while Adam seemed to be worried.

Birdie made straight for them, with Elizabeth and Hannah close behind.

Hannah crouched down a little so she could look the boys in the eye.

“Is someone missing?”

“You had best speak up,” Birdie said to the boys, and Elizabeth put a hand on her shoulder and pressed. Birdie gave her an insulted look, but she held her tongue.

“You aren’t in any trouble,” Hannah was saying. “But we need to know if someone has gone missing.”

“Harper,” Adam said softly.

Nicholas looked at Adam with surprise. “Harper wouldn’t go away,” he said. “He just goes exploring sometimes. He’ll be back.”

“Harper?” Elizabeth asked.

“Harper Washington,” Birdie explained. “One of the servants the Fochts left behind.”

Hannah said, “When did you see him last?”

“I see him all the time,” Nicholas said. He was growing agitated.

“Early this morning,” Adam said.

“Nicholas,” Elizabeth said. “Does Harper like to swim?”

This time the boy’s face lit up. “He’s going to teach me,” Nicholas said. “He promised to teach me. But Ma says swimming is for fish, and I had best stay far away from the water.”

Lily was reading to Curiosity when Adam came to stand in the door. The older children had gone into the woods with Simon and Luke to haul timber, but Adam had stayed behind with Nicholas, who had been forbidden such outings by Lorena.

Lily held up her finger to ask him to wait, and finished the paragraph.

Curiosity turned then and saw him there. “Good God, Adam. What is wrong?”

“Where’s my ma?” Adam said.

“Taking a nap with the littlest three. Come on over here and talk to us.”

He hesitated for just a moment before he came into the room to stand between Curiosity’s chair and Lily’s divan. In Lily’s experience
Adam was an even-tempered child, slow to anger and always willing to listen to reason. She had never seen him upset like this.

Curiosity was saying, “Come on, now, and tell us what’s wrong. Where’s Nicholas?”

The story came tumbling out at the mention of Nicholas’s name. Hannah and Birdie had come into the trading post to say there was a drowned body in the lake and it turned out that Harper Washington was missing, gone from the Red Dog since early morning, didn’t even come home for his dinner.

“And he’s always hungry,” Adam finished. “Lorena—she looked like she was going to faint when Hannah told her there was a drowned man in the lake. And now the magician and Mr. Brody have gone off on the raft to bring it back.”

“Magistrate,” Lily corrected him, fighting back the urge to laugh. “It might not be Harper,” she heard herself saying. “A trapper might have got caught in the flood and washed up there.”

Adam’s head bobbed, as if he wanted to believe her but didn’t dare.

“Where’s Nicholas?” Curiosity wanted to know. “And where have your grandma and auntie got to?”

“I’m supposed to tell you,” Adam said. “Auntie Hannah is waiting for the body to come back so she can look at it and Grandma is with Lorena and Nicholas at the Red Dog. Why do they want Auntie Hannah to look at a dead body?”

Lily gestured and he came close enough that she could put an arm around his shoulder. “Doctors look at dead bodies because sometimes by looking they can tell how a person died.”

Adam looked even more distressed. “But dead is dead,” he said. “What difference does it make, how it happens?”

Curiosity made a clicking sound, the one that said she saw trouble coming. To Adam she said, “You know there are bad people in the world.”

Understanding came over Adam’s face. “Do you think the dead man in the lake was killed on purpose?”

“We don’t know that,” Lily said, pulling him closer. “Most likely he just got caught up in the flood.”

“Why would anybody want to kill Harper?” Adam said. He was shaking.

Curiosity said, “Come set here on my lap a bit, little boy.”

He went willingly enough and climbed up to that safe place. Some of Lily’s most vivid and comforting childhood memories had to do with sitting on Curiosity’s lap, and she saw now that Adam was glad to be there.

“You just set,” Curiosity said to him, one hand resting on his back. “You set here with me and when you feel a little better, we’ll have a talk, you and me.”

Lily said, “Hannah won’t need your help?”

“Your sister and mama can handle things just fine without me,” Curiosity said. Her gaze was fixed on Adam. “We got other work right here.”

“I want Mama,” Adam said.

“I know you do,” Curiosity said gently. “But your ma has got to get some rest. When she wake up, we’ll fetch her right down here to sit with us.”

“I feel bad for him,” Adam said. “I don’t understand why his ma would go off and leave him in a strange place. My ma wouldn’t ever leave us like that.”

Lily didn’t think it would be a good idea to get into a discussion of Jemima’s motivations with a nine-year-old boy, but neither could she ignore the real concern he was showing.

“Does Nicholas talk about his ma very much?”

Adam’s mouth worked for a moment, and then he shook his head. “He never does. Not once. It don’t seem right.”

“Sometimes when people are very angry they tuck it all away and never let on,” Lily said. “In my experience, that only makes things worse.”

“I don’t think Nicholas is mad,” Adam said thoughtfully. “He likes it here better than anywhere else he ever lived, he told me that. And he likes Lorena and Harper—” He broke off to clear his throat.

“Let’s not borrow trouble,” Curiosity said.

Adam pressed his mouth together and nodded. He blinked once and then twice, like a much younger child in need of a nap.

Curiosity shook her head gently at Lily.

Such a beautiful, perfectly made child and with such fragile sensibilities. It was hard for someone so young to see things so clearly. To understand and not understand all at once.

Lily closed her eyes and tried to see her own child at nine years old.
A boy or a girl, long-legged, skin browned by the sun. A child who was free to run and explore, as she had been, as Adam and all the others were.

She had the sense that this would be her only baby, a thought that would have filled her with sorrow a few months ago. But here in Paradise it wasn’t as hard to think about. There was no lack of family or playmates here.

And just that simply Lily realized that she had come home to Paradise for good. There was nowhere else in the world she would ever be able to raise a child as she meant to raise this one.

H
annah’s strict instructions were that Daniel was to rest for a full hour after the treatment.

“Alone.” Hannah’s tone was pointed, but she was smiling too.

On the porch Martha said, “What is the most we could hope for?”

The question clearly surprised Hannah. After a moment she said, “He will never have full use of his arm, but if we are lucky the pain will be more manageable.”

“Isn’t it better now than it used to be?”

Birdie had gone off to play with Hopper, but Hannah still looked around herself to be sure they couldn’t be overheard.

“Yes,” she said. “It is better. Every year it is a little better, though it can flare up now and then, if he’s not careful. You’ll know when it does because he will go to ground. Daniel doesn’t want anyone nearby when that happens, even those who could do him some good.”

“Including me,” Martha said. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Yes.” Hannah looked away over the strawberry fields. She said, “His spirits seem high.”

Martha coughed a laugh. “I should say so. He’s a terrible tease.”

Hannah smiled openly. “I’m glad to hear it. For his sake and yours too. You are blushing, but what I mean to say is that you are good for him. Better than any treatment any doctor might suggest.”

“I’m not so sure I deserve such praise. I have been—unreasonable at times.”

At that Hannah laughed. “I never said you were a saint. That’s not what Daniel needs, anyway.”