Nathaniel (29 page)

She stared at the album for several seconds, wondering what could have happened to the pictures. Should she take it downstairs and ask Laura about it? Then, before she could make up her mind, she heard Buck’s voice, his furious tones carrying clearly into the attic.

“She’s up there? By herself? For God’s sake, Laura, what are you thinking of?”

Startled, Janet closed the album and hurriedly slipped it back in the dresser drawer. Then she moved quickly toward the attic door, opened it a crack, and listened. Now she could hear nothing except indistinct mutterings, muffled by the closed door to the master bedroom. Janet reached up and pulled the light cord, plunging the attic into darkness, then started down the steep stairs to the second floor. Only when she reached the landing, though, could she hear Buck’s voice once again.

“But what if she does see it? What if she wants to know where it came from, and why it’s there?”

“She won’t,” Laura’s terrified voice replied. “It’s way back in the corner, and there’s so much other stuff, she won’t even notice it. And even if she does, I’ll just say we’re storing it for someone. Ione—I’ll say we’re storing it for Ione Simpson. She has a little girl.”

“I told you to get rid of it.” There was a silence; then, again: “Didn’t I tell you to get rid of it?”

“Y-yes.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“I—I couldn’t.”

“You will,” Buck said, his voice holding an implacability Janet had never realized was in him before. “As soon as you’re strong enough, you’ll bring all that stuff down from the attic, take it out back, and burn it.”

“Buck, don’t make me—”

“It has to be done,” Buck said. “Not today. Not until you’re well again. But you have to get rid of that stuff. Do you understand?”

Then, as Janet shrank back against the wall, the door to the bedroom opened, and Buck emerged, his face set with determination. Without seeing Janet, he turned the other way and disappeared down the front stairs. A moment later she heard the front door slam.

For a long time, Janet stood where she was, wondering what to do. At last, forcing herself into a composure she didn’t feel, she returned to the bedroom, where Laura, still on the bed, was blotting her face with a Kleenex.

“Was Buck here?” Janet asked. “I thought I heard his voice.”

Laura nodded. “He just came by to see how I was doing. Wasn’t that sweet of him?”

“Yes,” Janet agreed. Then: “The china’s all different from what I found, and so’s the silver. But I found some stuff in the corner. Some nursery furniture.” She watched as Laura swallowed hard, then seemed to search for words.

“It—it’s Ione Simpson’s,” she said at last. “It’s been there for a couple of years now. She didn’t have any room to store it.”

Janet hesitated only a moment, then nodded. Laura had lied, just as she’d told Buck she would.

Michael woke up, and for a moment couldn’t remember where he was. Then the room came into focus, and he recognized his grandmother’s parlor. Drifting in from the kitchen, he could smell the aroma of fresh-baked cookies. Tentatively, he sat up and lowered his bandaged foot to the floor. The throbbing had eased, and when he tried to stand up, he found that the pain wasn’t bad at all as long as he kept his weight on his heel. Slowly, he began hobbling toward the door that would take him into the hall and then back toward the kitchen. But when he came to the dining room, he heard his grandfather’s voice, and stopped. His grandfather was talking about him.

“There’s something about him, Anna. Something in his eyes. I’m sure of it.”

There was silence for a moment, and then his grandmother spoke. “Don’t, Amos. Don’t start. Not on Michael.”

“But what about the headaches? He’s having ’em, you know. Just like Mark did. And this morning—”

“What about this morning?” Anna demanded, when Amos showed no sign of going on.

“It was in his eyes,” Amos finished. “The same look I saw in Mark’s eyes. It’s Nathaniel. There’s the mark of Nathaniel on that child. They told me when I was a boy—”

Suddenly his grandmother’s voice grew loud and angry. “They told you a bunch of lies and stories. They ruined your life and my life and Laura’s life. The only one who got away was Mark, and now all those old stories have killed him, too!”

“What happened to Mark was an accident.”

“If that’s what you believe, then believe it. But I don’t believe it. I believe you might as well have killed him with your own hands.”

Now his grandfather sounded as angry as his grandmother. “Don’t say that, Anna. I’ve always done what I had to do, and nothing more.”

“And look at me,” Michael heard his grandmother say. Her voice was trembling now, as if she were starting to cry. “Just look at me. Five babies, and all I have left is Laura. And look at her—she’s going to wind up just the way I am, and it’s going to be on your head. So help me, if you start trying to see your unholy family curse in Michael, I’ll see to it that Janet takes him and goes right back to New York. They’re stories, Amos! None of it is anything but stories.”

“Abby Randolph was no story. And neither was Nathaniel. It won’t end, unless I end it.”

“Leave it alone, Amos,” his grandmother said after another long silence. “There’s nothing wrong with Michael.”

“We’ll see,” his grandfather replied. “When Janet’s baby comes, we’ll see.”

Slowly, Michael backed away from the kitchen door, then turned and made his way back to the parlor. With his heart pounding, he lay down on the sofa again and carefully propped his foot back up on the cushion. Then he closed his eyes and tried to make his breathing come evenly, but he couldn’t control the terror in his soul:
He knows
, Michael thought.
Grandpa knows about Nathaniel, and he knows about me
.

Janet sat in the small living room, staring apprehensively at the last box remaining to be opened, knowing that its contents were going to be the most difficult for her. Everything else had long since been put away—as spring had given way to stifling summer, she and Michael had spent the long still evenings sorting through the remnants of their lives in New York, putting some things away, consigning others to the trash barrel. Finally there had been nothing left, except this single box which Janet had been assiduously avoiding. It was Mark’s box, the remnants of his life, all the things that had been retrieved from his desks—both at home and at the university. Janet had been putting off opening it, working around it, moving it constantly farther into the corner of the room, but now it sat there, conspicuously alone, and there were no more excuses for ignoring it. Unless she put it in the tiny attic, consigned it to that easily forgettable storage room where it might lie undisturbed through several generations.

Like Abby’s
diary
.

She turned the idea over in her mind as she sat enjoying the peace of the midsummer evening. The day’s heat had finally broken, and a gentle breeze drifted over the plains. The soft chirping of crickets seemed to fill up the vast emptiness of the landscape, lulling Janet into a sense of peace she hadn’t felt in the months since Mark had died. But tonight, with Michael asleep upstairs—apparently peacefully asleep—she began to wonder if she really needed to open that box at all. Perhaps she shouldn’t. Perhaps she should simply put it away, as someone had long ago put Abby’s diary away, and forget about it.

But Abby’s diary had not remained forgotten, nor had Abby herself.

And, Janet was sure, it would be the same with Mark. To her, the plain cardboard container had become a Pandora’s box. Despite all logic, she had the distinct feeling that when she opened it, serpents were going to spew forth, devouring what was left of her faith in her husband. And yet, no matter how long she argued with herself, she knew that in the end she would open it. She sighed, and began.

On top, she found all the things she remembered from his desk in the apartment—even the too-short stubs of pencils and the bent paperclips had been packed. She went through things quickly, only glancing at the stacks of canceled checks, the financial records of their life together, the scribbled notes Mark had often made to himself during the course of an evening, only to tuck them away in the desk and forget them.

Only when she came to the contents of his desk at the university did she slow down, pausing to read the files—the notes on his students, the notes on the various studies he always had in mind but never seemed to get around to. And then, at the bottom of the box, she found a large sealed envelope with her name written across it in Mark’s distinctive scrawl.

With trembling hands, she ripped the envelope open and let its contents slide onto her lap. There wasn’t much there: a copy of Mark’s will—the same will that had been on file with their lawyer—and another envelope, again with its flap sealed and her name written on it.

She stared at this envelope a long time, still toying with the idea of putting it away unread, but in the end, she opened it, too. Inside, she found a note in Mark’s choppy hand, and yet a third envelope, which had been opened and resealed with tape, this one postmarked Prairie Bend, but with no return address.

She read Mark’s note first:

Dearest Janet
,

I can’t really imagine circumstances under which you would be reading this, but still, I think I’d better write it down. While I’m in Chicago next week, I’m going back to Prairie Bend. There’s something that’s been bothering me—it goes back many years, and since it’s probably nothing, I won’t go into it now. There’s a lot I’ve never told you, but I’ve had my reasons. Anyway, if anything should happen to me, I want you to know that I love you very much, and would never do anything to hurt you. Also, there’s something I’d like you to do. I have a sister—Laura—and I’d like you to take care of her. She might not even know she needs help, but I think she does. If you read this, then you’ll be reading her letter, too, and perhaps you’ll understand. Do whatever you can. I know this note doesn’t shed much light on anything, but until I know more, I won’t say more

All my love forever
,

Mark

Janet read the note again, then once more. With each reading the tension inside her increased until she felt as if she’d been tied in knots.

“Damn you,” she whispered at last. “Damn you for telling me just enough to make me wonder about everything, but not enough for me to
know
anything.”

Finally, she picked up the letter from Laura, and feeling as if she were somehow invading her sister-in-law’s privacy, she reluctantly pulled it out of its envelope and unfolded it. It was written in a shaky scrawl, and the signature at the bottom was totally illegible. And yet, in spite of the agitation reflected in the penmanship, Janet recognized it as coming from someone closely related to Mark.

Dear Mark
,

I know I haven’t written to you for ages, and I know you probably won’t answer this, but I have to ask you a question. If I don’t, I think I’ll go crazy. I’m going to have another baby, and after what happened last time, I’m so frightened I don’t know what to do. I think they killed my baby. They said it was born dead, but for some reason, I know it wasn’t. Mark, I
know
it wasn’t born dead!

I keep thinking about that night—the night you ran away while I was in the storm cellar. I keep thinking I remember something about that night, but I can’t quite remember what. Do I sound crazy? Maybe I do. Anyway, I need to know about that night, Mark. I need to know what happened. I keep thinking the same thing is happening to me that happened to Mother. Did they kill her baby? For some reason, I think they did, but I was in the storm cellar the whole night, so how could I remember? Anyway, did you run away because you saw what happened that night? Please, Mark, if you did, tell me. I don’t care what you saw, or think you saw—I just need to
know. I
need to know I’m not going crazy
.

As she had with Mark’s letter, Janet reread the note from Laura.

There was nothing really new in the note—it was filled with the same illogical speculations Laura had made after her miscarriage, the speculations Janet had attributed to Laura’s grief over losing the baby.

Except that when Laura had written this note, she had not yet lost her baby.

But she had lost another one, a little girl, a little girl named Rebecca—Becky? But that didn’t make sense either. Becky had lived, at least for a while—there had been pictures of her, neatly mounted in an album and captioned, only to be torn out later, after the child had died. Laura must have torn them out herself, unable to handle the memories of her lost daughter.

And what was there in the note that had brought Mark back to Prairie Bend after all his years away? He could have answered Laura’s questions with a letter, however long or short. But he hadn’t—instead, he’d come back to Prairie Bend himself, intent on looking for something.

Something, Janet was sure, that was related to the night he’d run away.

Had he found it?

Was that what the letters meant? That if Janet read the letters, it would mean he’d found what he was looking for, and it had cost him his life?

The idea was barely beginning to take hold in her mind when, upstairs, Michael began to scream.

Janet opened the door to Michael’s room, and the first thing she heard was Shadow’s soft growl. He was next to Michael’s bed, his teeth bared, his hackles bristling, and his yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness. But then, as she spoke to him and he recognized her, his fur settled down and his snarl gave way to a soft whimper. A moment later Janet gathered her son into her arms, rocking him gently until his sobbing eased. “What is it, honey? Is it the pain? Do you want one of the pills?”

Michael shook his head, his eyes wide with fear.

“It isn’t your foot?” Janet asked. The foot had been slow to heal, and even after eight weeks Michael still had a slight limp. Sometimes, when he was tired, it still ached.

But again Michael shook his head.

“Then what is it, sweetheart? Can’t you tell me?”