The Evening Spider (31 page)

“I'd never thought about it that much. It seemed rather a silly case to begin with. Though I suppose I've felt sorry for that poor old lady.”

“And probably I'm not the first person to think that Matthew was responsible for the forgery,” I continued. “Maybe people were whispering about that around town. That maybe Matthew Barnett wasn't exactly a man of justice. Maybe that's why he switched to another form of law. But maybe, meanwhile, it was all too much for Frederick Baines.”

“Maybe,” said Wallace. “Maybe it was a trigger for him. Am I using that word right? I hear all of this talk of ‘triggering' these days, and I'm never quite—”

“And if Matthew Barnett was willing to forge something for a case like that, a theft case, he might've forged other things as well?”

Wallace ripped open the take-out bag. “Like what, Abby?”

“Like a journal entry that makes her look like she's capable of something terrible. Something that would justify putting her away.”

Wallace abandoned the paper bag and stepped into the living room with me. “Something unspeakable.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Wallace sank onto the loveseat. I sat next to him. We were both quiet. Even Lucy observed the silence for a few moments,
glancing from me to Wallace and smiling vaguely, as if anticipating a punch line.

“What a creep,” Wallace said after a while.

“I wonder if she got a divorce?”

Wallace shrugged. “Well. That wasn't easy in those days. But perhaps she managed it. It doesn't appear she returned to Haverton.”

I considered this—and realized what unsettled me about Frances's note to Tessa. It didn't mention Martha at all.

Lucy's lips twitched as her eyes began to close. She hadn't really gotten enough sleep today, and she was giving up on us. We had grown silent and boring.

“You know,” I said. “I think it was easier to think Frances was crazy and homicidal than to consider the other possibilities. Because if she wasn't, then . . .”

I didn't finish my sentence for fear my chin might start wobbling.

Please don't take me away! Who is going to take care of the baby?

Wallace nodded. “I know what you mean.”

I was eager to change the subject slightly—to keep from spontaneously blubbering as I had with Fonda. “If Tessa was ‘instrumental' to her freedom . . . I wonder what that's about.”

“Perhaps she told someone about something she had observed while in Matthew's employ,” Wallace said. “Something that brought his story—or at least his reasons for institutionalizing his wife—into question. Perhaps she used the information she had from her husband—Edward—to help leverage some kind of release for Frances. Perhaps they were closer
than her journal indicates. Or perhaps Tessa simply had a conscience.”

“Is there any other correspondence from Frances to Tessa Cowan?”

“I asked Ralph that, of course. He said not that he knew of. Not that he could find.”

“Uh huh.” I steadied Lucy's head, which was flopping onto my chest as she dozed.

“Would you like to lay her down somewhere? In the bedroom, where it's quiet? So you can eat?” Wallace asked.

“That would be nice,” I admitted.

Wallace led me to the apartment's one bedroom. Across from the queen-size bed, there was a single dresser that might've been an antique—with a television sitting on top of it. The only other furniture in the room was a little table by the bed with a lamp and a single book—a Tony Hillerman mystery with a bookmark stuck in the very beginning.

“Shall we put pillows on the floor?” Wallace asked as I positioned Lucy right in the middle. “In case she rolls?”

I hesitated. I didn't want to impose, and Lucy rarely moved much once she was deep in sleep. On the other hand—

“Yes,” Wallace answered for me. “Let's.”

Wallace arranged the pillows around the bed and then cushioned the remaining space with a blanket from his closet.

“You are welcome to my couch tonight,” he said, “if you don't want to go to the trouble of getting her in the car and whatnot. You said you have Lucy's portable crib in your trunk, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “And I appreciate the offer. But—”

The invitation was tempting. Wallace's place felt so warm and tidy.

But there was no hiding in warm and tidy places. I would dream of Wendy again eventually. Wherever I slept, or whenever I woke, or however long it had been since the last time I'd thought of her, she would always, ultimately, be waiting for me—in small, dark rooms with twisted bedsheets. In motel rooms and hospital rooms. In the dorm room where I'd drop Lucy off for college. She simply
would
be.

“But what?” Wallace asked.

“But I've already paid for that room,” I said. “I may as well sleep in it.”

Northampton Lunatic Hospital

Northampton, Massachusetts

December 21, 1885

Y
es, Harry. I
did
write about that. I wrote every moment of that memory that I could manage to describe. A year and a few months separated the experiencing of it from the writing of it, but I did my best—to lift the more definite details from the fog of memory.

You say that he showed you my journal? Well, he did not show you the entire thing, then. Or he was selective about what he showed you—if you didn't see this memory described. Aside from that, was there anything more that Matthew could accuse me of other than eccentricity? And perhaps a peculiar lack of certain elements of femininity? Both were unsettling to Matthew, always, but were either of those characteristics a crime?

What?
What?
What else did you read in that journal? Of what could you have suspected me? To think me deserving of this fate? To leave me here for more than a thousand lonely days.

You,
Harry? You who are made of such similar substance as your sister? How could you have believed it? Clara was blinded by her wish to mother a child—any child, perhaps. But you?
Matthew made such a compelling case, did he? Martha's vomiting, and arsenic in my hope chest, and a conversation I had with Louise, even? Did you offer that to him yourself? Or did Louise betray me as well? Believe me, Brother, she was not as shocked by that conversation as she might have pretended to be for your sake.

And now you are not so convinced of Matthew's claims, because why? Because my old house girl came to you and told you a secret? Told you that in light of that secret—her husband's secret, come by way of his cousin Frederick—she thought you should consider your sister's fate more thoroughly?

You needed that mousy little maid to tell you to think again, think more carefully, about your dear sister?

You poor dear. What agony it must have been, to think such things of your sister, for five long years.

You poor dear.

Get me out of this place in the name of all that is holy, Harry.

You will say you are my keeper, and you will have them release me to your care. Brother, husband, cousin—they don't care—as long as you are a man. You'll see. Wave down a nurse and say whatever you wish. Your words will be like magic to them—as Matthew's were the bitter day we arrived. Go ahead now, Harry. There shall be no talk of forgiveness until after it is done.

Haverton, Connecticut

December 21, 2014

I
must have slept, even though I did not sleep well. It was one of those nights when you see the hours and minutes ticking away slowly on the digital clock, but when the sun rises, and you look back on it, it didn't feel like six hours, so you must've slept for part of it, or maybe even for several very brief and unsatisfying parts.

The sun—but not Lucy—was up when Chad called. He was at the airport, he said. Where was I? He'd called the land line twice already. He'd convinced his boss to let him come home a day early. He'd be home in an hour.

I'd check out and meet him at the house when Lucy woke up, I told him. And I did.

He was already in the living room when I arrived.

“You left the tree lights on,” he said.

“Oh. Well, that probably made things cozy for Monty, at least.”

Chad didn't say anything about wasted electricity or fire hazards. Nor did we say much about the window—just stood together in front of the duct tape crisscross for a minute or two.

“They say some mothers get superhuman strength if their
child is in danger. Like, they can lift a car up to get a trapped kid, or whatever.”

“This didn't require superhuman strength,” I admitted. “Just plain old-fashioned crazy.”

“Well. I think it was probably in the same sort of category, though.”

“If you say so.”

“I wasn't sure I should mention this,” Chad said. “But Patty called me yesterday and said she was worried. She saw the broken window. Luckily, that was after you and I talked. Or I would've freaked out.”

“Luckily,” I repeated.

“You know what I was thinking I might like to do?” Chad said, turning from the window as if to dismiss it and lifting Lucy out of the car seat. “Get Lucy's picture with Santa Claus.”

“Uh . . . I don't think I can handle the mall today.”

“I'll bring her. Then swing by the Home Depot for glass on the way home. Get some new hinges for that door while I'm there, maybe? Give you a chance to rest.”

“Okay.” I shrugged.

I couldn't visualize what this rest was to look like, but I was happy enough not to be a part of this phonily seminal moment in Lucy's life—her first time in the sweaty lap of a department store Santa. Maybe this could be—officially and forever—Chad's parental territory.

Back before we had Lucy, Chad and I discussed Santa a great deal. We'd discussed it with the same intensity that some might religious upbringing, or public versus private school.

Is it appropriate for parents to trick their children into believing something that would ultimately be revealed as a big fat
fake? Was that the kind of relationship one wanted with one's child?

Well, if that's how you feel about it, then why do anything nice with the kid at all?
Chad had said.
Why give them a night-light, when eventually they're going to have to get used to the dark? Why let a kid have a dog or a cat, if you knew it was eventually going to die one day or another?

That is totally
not
the same thing,
I had argued.

Now I remembered the discussion as a comical sort of black hole from which I'd since been mercifully released.

“What's so funny?” Chad wanted to know.

I smiled. “Just be sure to get pictures. I'm sure all the grandparents will want one.”

I climbed straight up the stairs the moment after I heard the car pull away from the driveway.

The house felt cold—even gutted, somehow—without Lucy in it. I did not wish to wander its untidy rooms and recall the troubled moments of the last few days, or speculate about what Lucy's infant mind made of them.

Still, on my way to the bedroom, I stepped into Lucy's room and gazed into the crib for a moment. Scattered across the rosebudded sheet were a few rattles and stuffed animals I'd dropped in there for her a few days ago—before I'd set her up in our bedroom.

I was glad that the room had no mirror. I could think of no more terrifying specter than that of myself—so disheveled and depleted, and staring at an empty crib.

“Frances?” I whispered. “How do I endure this?”

I turned from the crib, stumbled down the hall, and fell onto
my bed. I closed my eyes. I had no choice now. It was sleep or death. My body was shutting down on animal instinct. As I curled up on the bed, I felt a little corner stick into my hipbone. Wendy's note, still folded up in yesterday's jeans. I made myself a silent promise not to forget it and run it through the washer by mistake. I'd find a place for it. But where? Back in the banana box, buried in
Rights of Man
? Under my pillow? In my bra? My wallet? Would there ever be a right place for it?

Shhhhh.

My ears heard it, but my eyes didn't have the energy to open. I felt fear deep in my chest, but since Lucy was out of the house, it didn't seem significant enough.

Shhhhh.

It didn't matter that Lucy wasn't here.

I don't think she's all that concerned about the baby.

Of course. I understood now.

Shhhhh.

This voice would always be here, gusting in my ears—offering me its uneasy comfort—the only kind of comfort I would ever have again. Even after Lucy—and whoever came after her—was grown and gone from my arms, gone from my sight. Long after we were both gone from this house.

Neither my brain nor my body could lift itself out of the exhaustion that had overtaken both.

And then there was one last hushing, so soft it might've just been my mind repeating something it had already heard some time ago, and wanted to hear again. Either way, it drowned in the sound of my own breath, surrendering itself to sleep.

Windsor, Connecticut

September 13, 1886

T
hey are coming to see us on Saturday? They will stay a night, I presume? Or two? Or three?

Shall I cook up a goose? Or a turkey? I caught a large trout in the river the other day. I wonder if there's a chance I could catch one again? Does Martha like fish?

And might you know what sweet things she enjoys best? Does Clara ever make her ginger snaps? Hers never did have enough snap to them, in my opinion. Neither in flavor or consistency.

Yes. Of course I'm perfectly well. I'm joyous, in fact. I've said it many times already. You may as well put me back in the asylum if you are going to ask me to live without seeing her—to live completely outside the light of her spirit.

So I understand the conditions you put forth to Clara in your letter. It is for the best. Martha now knows another mother—and perhaps Clara was always destined to be a better one than I. I would have liked to have had more of a chance at it, but—no. I won't dwell on that. And no, Harry, I do not need your soggy handkerchief. I never cry. I never engage in any behavior
that might be mistaken for womanly hysteria. I know better than that.

And what shall we have Martha call me? Frances Winter is how the locals know me. But for Martha—perhaps Aunt Franny? Aunt Frances? Mrs. Winter? Whatever you think fitting, I suppose. I will be anything you and Clara want me to be. It doesn't matter, as long as Martha comes.

I will be fine.

I will even be well, Harry, as long I can once again—and again—see the evergreen of her eyes.