The Endless Forest (77 page)

Elizabeth said, “Curiosity. are you familiar with this?”

The older woman rocked forward, her arms crossed on her belly. “I never saw a case,” she said. “But I heard about it. That’s the way John Glove’s mother Ebby died. I never met her, but they say she had a problem with drink. Do you get the sense Jemima’s been drinking hard, Hannah?”

“I asked her,” Hannah said. “She denies it.”

Callie’s face was twitching almost convulsively. Elizabeth thought she would burst out in laughter or tears, that she would have done so already, if not for Martha beside her.

Martha said, “Is there any treatment?”

“Death,” Curiosity said. “Death will put an end to it.”

Martha flinched ever so slightly.

“So now we know,” Callie said. She began pacing the room again. “Jemima’s dying. I don’t expect any of us will mourn her for long.”

“Except Nicholas,” Curiosity said, and Callie turned on her heel in surprise.

“He hardly knows her. He never met her until six months ago.”

“Don’t matter,” Curiosity said. “She’s his ma, and he’s a tenderhearted thing. Harper dying took him real low.”

Callie’s mouth pressed itself into a tight and disapproving line.

To Hannah Martha said, “What now?”

That was the question, the one that Hannah had been dreading. Elizabeth knew her stepdaughter’s face, and she thought she knew what she was going to say.

“That’s where things get complicated,” Hannah said.

“Send her home,” Callie said. “Could anything be simpler?”

“There’s no place to send her. I’m not sure the man she had with her last time was even her husband, and she says she has nowhere to go.”

Callie shook her head slowly. “She came here to die, is that it? She wants us to watch her die. Or, wait—” She looked at Hannah. “She wants Martha to nurse her.”

Hannah gave a sharp nod of her head.

Everyone’s gaze shifted to Martha, who had lost all her color.

“You are not to even consider that seriously,” Elizabeth said in a firm
voice. “If she has nowhere else to go, she must stay at the Red Dog. She can pay one of the LeBlanc girls to look out for her, and Hannah—”

“Not Hannah,” Curiosity said. “If Jemima needs doctoring, she will get it from me. I’ll sit right there and do what needs be done until she’s gone, and then we’ll bury her and we’ll be shut of her, once and for all.”

Martha said, “Why would you do that for Jemima?”

“I wouldn’t,” Curiosity said. “I’ma do it for you.”

Martha was surprised to come out of the shack and into sunshine. It seemed that much more time must have passed; she had come here one person and now she was another, and how could such a thing come to be in a matter of minutes?

Callie touched her arm and started to ask a question, but Daniel was walking toward them. She shook Callie off and went to him, her pace picking up until they met there in the middle of the pasture. Martha put her face to his shoulder and began to shake. She didn’t want this; she didn’t want Callie or anyone to see her like this, but she could not control it. Daniel’s hand cradled her head and he was whispering to her, soft nonsense things that began to work, somehow.

She was aware of other people passing but she stayed as she was. Daniel was shaking his head now and then, telling people to stay away for now.

Then he led her to the springhouse and they went inside.

She leaned against the wall, cool and damp, and made herself breathe. Once, twice, three times she drew in air until her lungs were close to bursting before letting it go.

Daniel was concerned, there was no hiding it. But he would wait. He would wait until she could find the words to tell him that her mother had come back, as Martha had always known she would, to stay. Jemima would be here until she died, and there was no way to escape that fact.

She took a step toward him and he held out his arm, drew her to him, and tucked her up against his good side, and then they settled on the bench. A small bench like any other you’d see in a dairy or woodshed, the plank worn smooth with use. Martha saw now that Daniel’s initials were carved into the corner, and she thought of him as a boy, bent over his work. It gave her comfort for a reason she didn’t understand.

“Can you talk?”

To her own surprise Martha found that she could. Once she started the words ran like a flood. She was shaking again, and in one part of her mind she wondered if she might simply break into pieces.

When she was finished, Daniel said, “Tell me the rest of it.”

She paused and tried to gather her thoughts. There was more, and he knew that without being told.

“I’ve never told anybody,” she said.

He waited, nothing of tension in his body.

“When I was younger,” Martha said, “I had a dream almost every night. Always the same dream. I come into the kitchen at the old mill house, and my mother looks up at me. She’s sitting at a table. And I walk up to her and I hit her in the head with a hammer. That dream was always so real to me, I felt the force of the blow travel up my arm and shoulder to my own skull. And then I woke up. It didn’t stop until I had been in Manhattan for at least a year.”

“Martha,” Daniel said evenly. “I don’t think you’re the only person who has dreams about killing Jemima.”

A laugh caught in her throat and turned to a sob. “But she’s my mother.”

“She gave birth to you, but I wouldn’t call her your mother.”

“That’s what Curiosity said.”

“Whatever is wrong with her now,” Daniel went on, “whatever is coming, she brought that on herself. You have no obligation to nurse her or even to visit her.”

“It doesn’t feel that way,” Martha said.

She might have said the things that were in her mind, but Daniel knew them already, and she disliked herself for them.

What will people think of me turning my back on her now?

He would tell her that it didn’t matter, and he was right and wrong all at once.

Daniel said, “I want you to tell me the truth, Martha. Do you want to take her in? If you feel you must, then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll see to it that she has good care, and otherwise we’ll stay clear of her.”

She shook her head. “You cannot mean that.”

“Of course I mean it. If you feel strongly that you must do this thing she is asking of you, then we’ll do it together.”

“No,” Martha said. “I don’t want to do it. I don’t want her anywhere
near our home. I’m not even sure I could be in the same room with her. It doesn’t matter how sick she is, I’ve still got that hammer in my fist, and I can’t put it down.”

A harsh sound left her throat. “But she’s going to drag it out. She’ll make us all watch, and wait. She’ll hold on to every minute just to make us suffer with her. You don’t believe me, but I know it. I know she can do it. That’s why she’s here.”

Daniel’s chest rose and fell with his breathing. She pulled away to look at him, his familiar face. His beloved face. What she saw there was understanding and sympathy and concern and nothing of censure or disgust. He pulled her closer and kissed her, a sweet kiss that lingered no longer than a heartbeat. Then he pressed his mouth to her temple and he took a deep breath.

He said, “Martha Bonner, I swear to you, I’ll do everything in my power to protect you. Because I love you, and your happiness is the most important thing in the world to me. Now, can we go home, if you’re feeling up to it?”

How long had she been hoping to hear him say these things? She had imagined it happening in a dozen different ways, but certainly not like this, hiding away from everyone so she could weep in privacy.

“It’s odd,” she said. “But there is one good turn my mother did me. She didn’t realize it at the time, of course. She just wanted to get me away from Teddy so he couldn’t get control of my money, and so I came home to Paradise—”

She broke off, thinking of what might have been. The full truth was that if she had married Teddy and settled into Manhattan society as the wife of one of the sons of the founding families, she might have been happy. Or better said, she might have believed herself happy. She might have gone through the years attending receptions and giving teas, knitting for the poor and volunteering at the hospital, making sure that the cook remembered that Teddy had wanted ham for his dinner, or interviewing nurses who would see more of her children than she would herself.

If she was fortunate she might never have realized what was missing and counted herself fortunate to live as well as she did with a husband who never raised his voice to her. In time she would have become to Teddy what his mother was: a figurehead to be obeyed. Not a wife, not really.

And it was because of her mother that she had escaped that fate.

Martha shook herself and stood. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

They had come down from the mountain on foot, and they would have to go back the same way.

“But can we go the long way around? I couldn’t bear to talk to anybody about this, and word will be out already.”

“We can,” Daniel said. “I was going to suggest that anyway, because I need to take you to Eagle Rock.”

His expression was sober, his color high. As if he had been weeping too.

“Eagle Rock?”

He touched her lower lip with two fingers. “I have dreams about your mother too, and I think it’s time I told you about them.”

I
t was well past six, but Ethan’s parlor was flooded with light so intense Hannah’s eyes watered.

Ethan was saying, “How do you think this could possibly work? Nicholas is sure to hear that she’s in the village. There’s no way to avoid that unless you want to lock him up until she dies. And then he’ll find out anyway, and he’ll be hurt and angry. Hannah?”

This was one of the reasons that Hannah had walked home with Callie and Ethan, to be of help to them as they tried to sort out this very complex situation.

Callie’s color was high and uneven, and she looked as though she might vomit any moment. “Hannah will agree with you,” she said. “You may even be right, both of you, but it doesn’t feel right to me.”

“You want to protect your brother,” Hannah said. “That is understandable. But what you are suggesting will do more harm than good, in the long run.”

“I don’t want to see her,” Callie said. “I refuse to see her. And I don’t
want him to go alone. Ethan, it is cowardly of me to ask it of you, but would you take—”

“No,” Hannah said. “I would rather do it, if you have no objection.”

Callie’s brow rose in surprise, but Ethan’s expression was harder to read. Callie said, “But you needn’t. Curiosity—”

“I have to go see Jemima again, at least once,” Hannah interrupted her gently. “I promised her more laudanum. After that Curiosity can take over, and I’ll be glad of it.” Hannah was not good at lying, but she did her very best, and Callie seemed to take her at her word.

“When are you going? Could we get it over with today?”

Ethan frowned, but he held back whatever objection he had.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Hannah said. “I’ll go find Nicholas now and explain to him what’s happening, and then afterward I’ll bring him home to you.”

She felt Ethan’s gaze on her, but she knew better than to look at him directly. Not now. Not yet.

“Yes,” Callie said. “All right. Ethan, will you go with her to find Nicholas? He might be alarmed otherwise.”

Hannah’s understanding of Nicholas was so far different from Callie’s that they might have been talking about different boys. In her experience he was not easily upset or frightened, and if he knew and liked someone, that person could ask the moon of him and he’d climb a tree to see if he could reach it. But this was not the time to discuss the boy or Callie, and certainly not Callie’s grasp of the facts.

Ethan got ready to go, and Martha sat in silence for a moment. Hannah rose from her chair and hesitated.

“Do you have any other questions, before I go?”

Callie shook her head. “Just promise me you’ll take care of Nicholas.”

“Of course,” Hannah said. “Of course I will look out for his best interests.”

Though it was early evening the brilliant summer day showed no signs of giving way to twilight as Hannah and Ethan left the house. The seed of a pain that had been sitting between Hannah’s brows twisted and turned and blossomed into a headache. Elizabeth had always warned her about the dangers of going about bareheaded in the sun, and now it
turned out she was right. It had just taken much longer than anyone would have guessed.

Willow bark tea and a quarter hour in the shade would be enough to set her right. With that thought Hannah realized that she had left her bag … where exactly? At home? She tried to remember when she had last had it, and in response the headache dug in its claws.

Ethan would go look for her, if she asked him. She could sit in the shade of the beech trees up ahead, and maybe she would sleep for ten minutes or twenty while he retrieved it. She needed some time to sort things through before she told Ethan the things she thought he needed to know. She knew Ethan as well as she knew anyone in her family, but she was unsure how he would react to Jemima’s threats.