The Island of Doves (13 page)

Tiny giggled, then threw her head back to laugh. She swept a handkerchief out of the top of her corset and dabbed her eyes. “Wives. They bear the brunt of it, don’t they? At least I get paid to put up with these men. I’m willing to bet that weasel’s wife is at home this minute, up to her elbows in flour or waddling around with a ripe belly.”

“We’re blessed then, aren’t we?” Susannah said softly. “Not to be wives.”

Tiny regarded her, then nodded. “You saved my life, Susannah. That man could have killed me.”

“I’ve settled my debt to you, then.”

Tiny shook her head. “Wait here.” She went up the stairs and down the hall. Susannah heard a door open and close. She pressed her cheek against the ornate wallpaper that lined the stairwell, no longer tired—the man with a knife had seen to that—but merely stunned by all that had taken place since she found Sister Mary Genevieve’s feather waiting on her table in the greenhouse. She thought about Mackinac and whether she would ever see it, wondered what kind of wildflowers grew there, wondered whether they were different from those she found in Buffalo. The fall might come earlier there, the ice crunching underfoot before the last leaves had drifted to the ground.

Tiny came back down the stairs and pressed a wad of notes into Susannah’s hand. “
These
are authentic, to be sure.”

Susannah glanced at the money. It was enough to purchase a ticket to the island and a few meals besides. But when she thought about what Tiny had been forced to do to earn it, Susannah felt her stomach turn. “This is too much,” she said, trying to hand some of the money back to Tiny.

“Don’t waste my time refusing. I can make it back in one night.”

Susannah clutched her hand. “Thank you, Clementine.”

“Easy come, easy go,” she said, smiling. “Now, I’ve got to get some sleep. If you’d like to stay I can set up one of the empty rooms for you.”

“Thank you,” Susannah said. “But I have a ticket to buy.”

She rolled the money into her sleeve and opened the row house door. The morning was bright and cool, and she felt a little astonished to be seeing it at all after what she had endured in the last two days. If she had known how hard she would have to fight for her own escape, she might have stayed right where she was in Buffalo, tiptoeing around Edward Fraser until he killed her. But instead of exhaustion or fear she felt a little trill of hope in her chest. For the first time in her life Susannah had found a way to take care of herself—she wasn’t waiting on anyone else to do it for her. She was so much sturdier than she had known.

Back at the port she purchased her ticket and a mug of hot, black coffee, along with some bread and cured meat. The boat to Mackinac would depart in an hour, a smaller vessel than the
Thomas Jefferson
, but one that, she hoped, did not contain anyone who knew Susannah Fraser. Still, she wasn’t going to take any chances this time. As soon as she was on board she would find a quiet corner and stay there, out of sight, until she reached her destination.

When the deckhands slid the gangway into place and started letting new passengers board, Susannah returned the empty mug to the vendor and started toward the boat. Just then she felt a hand on her elbow and gasped. But she spun around to find, not Edward, but Father Milani.

“Miss Dove! Thank heavens,” he said. “I have been looking for you all night long. Why on earth did you leave the boat?”

He looked peaked, sick from either drink or worry, or both. So perhaps he hadn’t spent the
entire
night searching, she thought with a smile. Still, she regretted any trouble she had caused him. “I saw a man I know, an employee of my husband’s, and realized he had been on the boat with us since Buffalo. I didn’t stop to think—I just ran.”

Father Milani nodded. “I saw you running, and I rushed off to follow you, but you disappeared into the city. Do you think the man on the boat recognized you?”

“I don’t know.” Susannah prayed that she had looked to Wendell like merely one more immigrant in the crowd. If he had seen her, though, Edward would soon be on his way to Detroit. “But I certainly don’t plan to wait here and find out.”

“Of course,” Father Milani said. “Let me just buy our tickets.” He turned toward the ticket window.

“You need buy only one,” she called to him. “I have paid my own way.”

A
fter two weeks of searching for Susannah’s body with his men, Nathaniel returned to Hawkshill as the sun was setting. He found Edward standing at the window in his study noticing the change in the angle of light, now that spring was upon them. Soon, the leaves would burst out of their buds.

Edward had always believed that drink was ruinous, that it was foolish for a man to dull his ability to perceive, to react. But he had poured himself one glass of scotch after another since his wife disappeared and by now had come to understand its appeal. He hadn’t expected the way drink would put him at arm’s length from himself, give him a rest.

When Marjorie led Nathaniel into the room, Edward could see immediately from his posture that he had nothing new to report. And what did it matter? he wondered in the bare room of his drunkenness. The girl had been nothing but trouble to him since he had met her. First there was the shock of her father’s debts, then the realization that she was not a typical woman, content with parties and gowns. Instead she spent hours alone in the woods gathering flowers and writing about them in her little books. He had wanted a showpiece, a wife who would relish being on his arm, but Susannah seemed indifferent to status and wealth. He had thought many times of simply disowning her—she had no family left to challenge him, and it could be easily done with a claim of infidelity or, better yet, insanity. Divorce was unseemly, but a man of his connections and station could find a judge who would dispense with a wife quietly. Susannah could go back to Manhattan City, or wherever she pleased, for all it mattered to him. And he would have been free to begin again with someone new.

And yet the idea of pursuing divorce had unsettled him. It had felt a little too much like admitting a mistake, a defeat. Susannah would be destitute, at the mercy of strangers, but Edward got the idea that the prospect of poverty didn’t bother her as much as it should. The
unfairness
of that shocked him. He had given her so much—yards and yards of silk and taffeta, a home full of the finest crystal and mahogany and lace, that damned greenhouse—and all he asked for in return was her compliance. It seemed like such a small thing.

“Edward.” Nathaniel stood in the doorway of the study, only the toes of his soiled boots touching the ivory carpet. “Our crew has searched the perimeter of Squaw Island and everything in the vicinity north of Black Rock. We haven’t seen a sign of her.”

Edward felt he was peering at Nathaniel from behind a haze, and his mind wandered to the notion that he detested Nathaniel’s appearance. The young man was, regularly, a careless dresser, creased and rumpled, his jackets badly tailored. He and his foolish wife had once told Edward and Susannah that they cared little for fashion, as if one could simply choose not to enter the contests that determined everything.

Nathaniel took a step into the room, his face full of fear. “I’m sorry, Edward, but I think we can only conclude that she is lost.”

Dead
, Edward thought, the syllable plunking down like a bass note. He stood very still. Edward had vowed to conquer Susannah, and now she was certainly conquered. What relief he would feel now, he thought, careful not to let any evidence of his thoughts creep onto his face. And yet, as he waited for that relief to take hold, it did not come.

Nathaniel stood before him, anxious to provide friendship in his time of grief. He glanced at Edward’s empty glass and quickly refilled it from the decanter on the sideboard. Nathaniel was a
good
man, in the most tiresome way, Edward reflected. He believed that laws—man’s and God’s—could save men from themselves. As if that were what every man wanted at the last, to be saved.

Edward took a step back and sat down on the sofa.
So I am free of her.
But instead of relief, he felt the irritation of a man bested in competition. It felt unfair to be robbed of the chance to keep up his efforts to reform his wife. He had believed that in time she would yield to him. And now she was gone.

Nathaniel was eyeing him cautiously, clearly trying to assess his mind. It occurred to Edward that Nathaniel was afraid of him, the way Wendell feared him, the way men at the bank, the men who worked in his brickyard, the nun, his own wife—the way they all feared him. He had not spoken since Nathaniel said the words, and he searched himself for what he felt just now, knowing that Susannah would not return home. It wasn’t grief but instead something like a cousin to grief. Disappointment. Loss.

Nathaniel sat down beside him and put his hand on Edward’s shoulder. “Forgive me. This is very difficult for me to say. The pools at the base of the falls are quite deep. The currents strong and competing. There’s little chance—” He stammered here, afraid to go through with it. “Edward, I believe we should conclude the search and move forward with a . . . a service at the church.”

Edward jerked his head in Nathaniel’s direction. He hadn’t said the word
f
uneral
because there would be no body to bless and bury.

“When the Middleton boy went missing last year, Reverend Webster held a sort of remembrance for the family.”

Edward felt his fingers touch his forehead. His hand seemed to move of its own volition.

“Is there anyone to whom I may write?” Nathaniel asked. “You’ve said her parents have passed. Has she any family at all?”

“None,” Edward said, his mind coming into focus. “I suppose we should send word to Eliza Beals. Then we can count on all of Buffalo knowing by the morning.”

“And there are no friends of Mrs. Fraser’s to whom you’d like me to write?” When Edward shook his head, Nathaniel said, “How curious. She was such a lively girl and yet so alone—” He clamped his mouth shut when something a little wild flashed across Edward’s eyes, then tried to soften his words. “Of course, you haven’t been in Buffalo long.”

Edward turned a cold gaze on Nathaniel. “Some men allow their wives to roam about, doing as they please.” He thought of Nathaniel’s wife, Sylvia, her incessant talking and infuriating presumption that her mind was exceptional. “But in my opinion that reflects poorly on the wife
and
her husband. Susannah knew her place.”

Nathaniel nodded, accepting the slight. “I will go to Reverend Webster’s office directly and see that preparations are made. You have only to send for me if there is anything else I can do for you.”

Nathaniel stood and turned to go, but stopped him. “Root, before you leave. Would you pour me another drink?”

•   •   •

N
ot long after, Edward called Marjorie in to give her the news. She reacted with a wail, a little theatrical in Edward’s opinion, since the news couldn’t have come as a complete shock. Hadn’t they known for days that this was how it would turn out, since the nun, that harbinger of doom, had appeared dripping wet at the door? He eyed Marjorie a moment, then told her to go home to her husband.

By the time Edward realized he was drunk, he was very drunk indeed. The room swam before his eyes and he swam in it; the house seemed to rock gently, like an immense cradle of brick and beam. He moved into the hallway with his hands gripping the doorframe to his study, then set his sights on the stairs. He thought he’d like to have a drink of cool water from the pitcher beside his bed, then lie down.

As he leaned into the banister, Edward thought of his mother, long dead, and the way she always pinned her dark hair away from her face to reveal her clenched Calvinist jaw. The house pitched left and Edward sank onto the stair. Suddenly, he was six years old, clutching his mother’s hand as they hurried across the square of the Ulster town of Ballymena toward the church. He noticed a man sitting on the ground in front of the pub, propped up against a pole, his hands folded in his lap and his head hanging to the side in sleep. A line of drool shone through his blond whiskers.

“Mother,” Edward had asked her. “Why does that man sleep on the ground?”

She yanked Edward so close to her that his cheek rubbed the coarse wool of her cloak. “That’s what a man looks like when God has gone out of him,” she muttered. “When God goes out, the Devil comes in.”

Her words had frightened and confused him. As he watched the man’s chest rise and fall with his breath he wondered if there was a cavity there, somewhere beneath the man’s lungs, where an ethereal presence like God or the Devil or a ghost could enter and leave at will. Edward had touched his own sternum with his child’s starfish hand and shuddered at the thought. Was there anyone there, inside him?

With his cheek pressed now against the plaster that lined that staircase at Hawkshill, Edward touched that same place on his chest, his fingers long now, his knuckles shadowed with dark hair. The memory shifted something inside him. For decades, so many carefully constructed layers had hardened him against recollections like these: anger and distance and time and wealth. But the drink had somehow sliced through them all. A knife going right to the bone. For a moment he felt his mother’s harrowing eyes set their gaze upon his life as it was today. What she saw appalled her heart. He was a thief, a covetous, malicious man bound for the inferno.

Edward sat on the stair, blinking. He was unraveling now because he had lost control of Susannah, and controlling her kept everything else in its place. He could choose to give in to defeat and come clean, or he could summon up the hardness that had so long sustained him.

In a moment he was on his feet, moving toward Susannah’s bedroom. His head was suddenly clear. A pile of a dozen dresses was draped across the bed, shimmering fabric of pink and green and peach, like the feathers of an exotic bird, and they mocked him. They had been delivered two days ago by the girl from Madame Martineau’s shop. When he saw the glint of Susannah’s shears resting on the lid of her sewing basket, he laughed. In a moment the shears were in his hands. The hems feathered out as he sliced through each layer of fabric, cut through the lace sleeves, split the bone buttons with a sharp pop. The massacred dresses rustled as they fell to the floor in pieces, confetti of stiff satin and taffeta and slippery silk.

But Edward wasn’t appeased. He yanked the feather bed off its wood frame then, casting it against the wall and knocking the lamp to the floor. The glass globe broke and oil seeped out into the carpet. Edward felt the thrill of destruction, crossing the room to the wardrobe. He threw the clothes on the floor one armful at a time, tore the ribbons off all the bonnets. With his elbow, Edward shoved her mother’s jewelry box to the floor. Its hinge popped off and the contents spilled out, a sparkling metallic wave sluicing across the floor.

When he paused to catch his breath, he glanced again at the jewelry. A laugh bubbled up in his lungs. Susannah had an astonishing quantity of it for a woman of her age, most of it, aside from a few pieces Edward had given her, inherited from her feeble-minded mother. Phillip Brownell had been a fool in all things, Edward thought, but mostly in his boundless generosity. Edward shook his head, the obvious thing to do so plain before him. He would sell it all, each and every piece, and get a small shard of recompense. Yes, that was what he would do. But not right now. For now he would lie down for just a moment, to stop the room from spinning.

Hours later the scent of lilac soap roused Edward from a frantic dream that had him tightening his hands into fists beneath the pillow. He pried open his swollen eyes, took in the pale pink and yellow quilt. He was in her bed but her bed was on the floor. And she wasn’t there.

The sunlight coming through the window was bright, and he realized he had slept very late. Edward propped himself up on his elbow and gazed about the room. The truth of it all rushed Edward’s mind, and he exhaled.
This is one of those moments that tests a man’s mettle.
Would he allow meekness and grief to gain footing within him? Hardly. Nothing but a nuisance, this was, and it would soon be past. He decided that if there was any scotch left in the decanter, he would pour it out. What he needed was a plate of eggs.

He stood up and crossed the room to the basin and splashed cool water on his face. He wondered if Marjorie had been into the room and seen the mess, then remembered he had sent her home. He checked his watch. Noon already. She would be downstairs, fixing some food, too afraid to approach him. He sniffed the air. Bread.

As he stepped over the mess toward the hallway, Edward remembered his vow to sell the jewelry. He forced himself to smile, knowing that that smile could freeze the remorse that oozed within him and demanded to be acknowledged. He could act in opposition to his conscience—he had done it many times before. It was merely a little game, finding ways to outsmart that tiresome urge toward guilt, shame. He knew how to lock it up and throw away the key. Of course, he would have to be careful, so soon after his wife’s death, lest people judge him callous. But he could begin the preparations now.

In the rubble next to the bureau he found a tablet of paper and an ink pen. Edward sat on the floor and began to sift through the twisted mass of necklaces, bracelets, brooches, and earbobs. He pulled the most valuable pieces out first—a string of pearls with a gold clasp and matching pearl earbobs—then made a note of their size on the tablet. He appraised the enamelwork on a string of coral flowers but decided they weren’t worth the effort. There was a bracelet of carved ivory he had always admired, and he set that aside with the pearls. The real prize, he knew, was the string of garnets. Susannah refused to wear them. They were enormously conspicuous, the sort of piece that demanded attention and courted disdain from women of lesser means. When he asked her why she never wore it, she told him that she preferred more modest pieces. But Edward knew too that the necklace was precious to her, having been her mother’s favorite.

It had to be somewhere in the clutter, but as he dug and sifted he didn’t find it. He went about the room righting the furniture and returning the feather bed to its frame. He searched each drawer of the bureau, looking among the folded clothes and pressing his hand into the fabric to feel for the hard shape of the jewels. Nothing.