The Island of Doves (25 page)

At the house she found Susannah and Raph asleep together in the big chair in front of the window. The baby clutched a lock of her red hair in his fist.

Susannah opened her eyes. “Welcome home,” she whispered. She shifted Raph in her arms so that she could lift him without waking him up and set him gently on his bed of pillows, near but not too near the fire. He stirred and tossed his head from one side to the other before he found his thumb and settled back to sleep.

Magdelaine gazed at him. “It seems impossible but he has changed so much, in just a few days.”

“He will be happy to see you when he wakes up.”

“Where are his parents?”

“Gone to the port to meet the boat,” Susannah smiled. “Today might be their wedding day.”

Anticipation fluttered in Magdelaine’s chest, but she tried to tamp it down. Father Adler might have been detained, might have to delay his journey, for a dozen reasons. She didn’t want to let herself believe just yet that he really might arrive.

“Have you heard any more from Mr. Corliss while I was away?”

“More of the same,” Susannah said, her voice plainly sad. “But I have not replied.”

Magdelaine followed her gaze to the cage beside her chair. Inside, the listless dove stared back at them. Jean-Henri had told her the bird would be a good-luck charm—a dove to help them in their efforts to save Miss Dove—and perhaps he had been right. Here was Miss Dove, safe beside the fire. If the dove was a charm, it had worked its magic. And yet the cage still seemed like a cruel home.

Susannah seemed to share her thoughts. “Magdelaine,” she said. “Have you ever thought about releasing that poor bird?”

“Nearly every time I see it,” she said.

“Well, if that is the case,” Susannah said, her voice nearly angry, “then I wonder why you don’t do it.”

“I suppose I worried about what might happen to it. It was born wild, but it has been in this cage a long time now—what if it doesn’t know how to survive?”

Susanna shook her head and Magdelaine saw that tears were welling in the corners of her eyes. She swallowed, then tried to steady her voice as she said, “It should have the chance, though, to try. Shouldn’t it?”

“Yes, indeed, it should.” Magdelaine looked at Susannah with concern. It seemed very important to her that the dove should have its freedom, just as she finally had hers. And yet it was clear that freedom had not brought Susannah happiness. Magdelaine felt again how much she longed for Susannah to stay.

“
You
should do it, Susannah. You should let the dove go.”

She straightened in her chair. “Are you certain?”

“Yes,” Magdelaine said. “Absolutely certain.” She opened the box on the floor where Esmee kept the sack of cracked corn they fed the dove and when the bird heard the rustle of the grain, it snapped to attention. Magdelaine shook the bag again and the dove leapt from its perch inside the cage.

Moving slowly so as not to startle the bird, Susannah lifted the latch on the door and swung it open. The dove stared at her, then hopped to the end of the perch and paused again, perhaps wondering whether the invitation was a trick. At last the dove hopped onto the back of Susannah’s waiting hand and allowed her to touch its head with her fingertip.

Susannah glanced at Magdelaine, who nodded, and together they walked into the front hall and opened the door. Magdelaine cast a handful of grain on the front steps and the dove fluttered down to it. They watched together as it picked at the corn, then lifted its head to look around. The breeze off the lake lifted the feathers on the bird’s back. A long moment passed as it seemed to survey the house where it had come from and the long forgotten wider world beyond. Then all at once the dove opened its wings and sailed off, around the side of the house and out of sight.

Magdelaine moved to follow it, but Susannah put out a hand to stop her.

“Don’t you want to make sure it’s all right?” Magdelaine asked.

Susannah shook her head. “I can’t really bear to know, either way. If it is killed, I will feel responsible. If it survives, I will envy it.” They stood in front of the open door on the front steps staring out at the lake, at the empty air the dove had flown through.

“Susannah,” Magdelaine said. “Do you
want
to go to Detroit?”

She thought for a moment before she spoke. “I want . . . to be of use.”

Magdelaine nodded. “I know that feeling well. It has organized my life, really. Seeking out what there is to
do
and seeing that it is done.”

Susannah shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder whether you have ever in your life hesitated, whether you’ve ever had a moment of doubt. You are so sure of yourself. I’ve never known that feeling.”

Magdelaine pressed her lips into an amused smile. “Just because I am skilled at hiding my doubts doesn’t mean I don’t have them.” She folded her hands in front of her. “I doubt whether I have really helped you at all—you seem so unhappy. I wonder why you feel you must go to Detroit to be of use, as you say.”

“To begin again,” Susannah said. “To make a fresh start.”

“And
there
you will not feel compelled to lie about your past?”

Susannah looked at her and then sighed. “I don’t know.”

“We take ourselves with us, wherever we go. I learn this anew each year when I try to escape to my sugar camp with Ani. I think we are going alone, but everyone is there in my mind, in my memories and fears and dreams—my sisters, my husband, my son. Some things you cannot run from.”

Susannah’s eyes were welling again. She could not speak, merely shook her head.

“Mr. Corliss would certainly be disappointed if you left the island.”

An exasperated laugh burst from Susannah’s lungs. “Him again? I’ve told you—what he wants, I cannot give him.”

“All right,” Magdelaine said, patting the back of Susannah’s hand. “Let’s leave Mr. Corliss out of it. Let me tell you what
I
wish.” Magdelaine took a breath before she pressed on. A year ago she would not have admitted to loneliness. She would not have been brave enough to take the risk. “I wish you would think about staying. For good, I mean.”

Susannah looked at Magdelaine in surprise.

“Stay and live here with me,” she went on. “Jean-Henri and Esmee will need a home of their own, and I don’t want to live in this big house by myself. We could take on more students, make this into a real school. You would certainly be of use then, to those girls.” Magdelaine forced herself to say the last part. “And to me.”

A smile slowly took hold of Susannah’s face. “I would like that very much,” she said. Just then she saw Jean-Henri and Esmee coming around the curve in the lane with a woman wearing a black cloak.

Susannah drew in a sharp breath. “Magdelaine, there’s something I have to tell you. About Father Adler.”

Magdelaine looked again at the three people walking toward the house. She nodded. “I know,” she said, feeling her shoulders sink with disappointment. “I can see that he isn’t coming.”

Susannah shook her head. “No.” She took Magdelaine’s hands. “He is not. But there is something else.”

“Mother!” Jean-Henri broke into a run when he saw them standing in front of the house. “Something’s happened—you won’t believe it!”

Esmee kept pace with the newcomer and as they drew closer, step by step, Magdelaine felt her lungs begin to constrict, as if someone were squeezing them. She tried to breathe. She could not tear her eyes from the face of the woman who walked beside Esmee.

Inside the house Raph began to cry, and Susannah went in and brought him out to the porch. Jean-Henri reached them then, panting from the run. Joy spread across his face like an open flower. “It’s a miracle,” he said.

Esmee held the woman’s hand. As they approached the front steps they slowed down, then stopped.

Though the woman smiled at her, Magdelaine continued to stare. Time moved in reverse across the woman’s face. She felt her whole field of vision fill with it until the familiar brown iris expanded and subsumed her completely. It was too much for her. Magdelaine, the woman who had faced her husband’s murderer and his musket, who could skin a buck and paddle three miles without stopping to take a breath, fainted on the front steps of her house, right at the feet of her dead sister Therese.

W
hen Magdelaine awoke they were standing over her. She blinked, her eyes darting among their faces, anxious to see whether the ghost remained.

“Are you all right, Mother?” Jean-Henri said, crouching down, his hand clutching her shoulder and shaking it. “Can you move?”

Magdelaine brushed his arm away. “Of course I can move.”

She wrenched herself into a sitting position and waited for the room to steady. There was a humming in her ears not unlike the sound of church bells ringing from far away, and she took a deep breath. Here was her son, Esmee, Raphael, Susannah—and, yes, here was Therese Savard, back from the dead, transformed into a middle-aged woman.

“Esmee,” Jean-Henri said. “Let’s get her up to her bed.”

Raphael began to bawl, and Susannah swayed with the boy in her arms while the rest of them helped Magdelaine to her feet and up the stairs to her room. They settled her against the pillows, and Esmee took the whimpering baby from Susannah’s arms and walked him over to the window. Jean-Henri stood on one side of the bed, and Therese and Susannah on the other.

“Susannah,” Magdelaine whispered. If she was having visions, if she had lost her mind, she trusted Susannah the most of all of them to tell her. “Do you see this woman standing here among us?”

Susannah reached over and put her hand on top of Magdelaine’s, rubbing the knuckles. “Yes, I do, Magdelaine.” Susannah grasped the newcomer’s fingers with her other hand. “She is the nun who helped me get out of Buffalo. I didn’t know it then, but now I understand—she is your sister.”

Magdelaine felt her disbelief well up again and flood her eyes with color. This time, though, she held on to consciousness. She swallowed, nodded, allowed herself, finally, to meet Therese’s gaze. Her voice came out in a whisper. “I always knew you were alive.”

Therese’s eyes searched Magdelaine’s face. “You did?” She wore a black wool gown and a plain black bonnet, beneath which her hair was coiled in a tight bun. Her jaw was the same stern bone that had rarely allowed her mouth to smile as a girl. Two deep vertical lines marked her brow.

Magdelaine shook her head. “Well, I wasn’t sure
what
to believe. But I hoped.”

Therese sat down on the edge of the bed, then hesitated and reached for Magdelaine’s elbow. Her hand trembled. “Yes, I am alive. But also full of regret.”

Emotions marched one after another across Magdelaine’s heart: first shock, then gratitude, then confusion. “All this time, you have been—where? And you never wrote to us? Never let us know that you were all right?” She felt anger begin to take over. “How could you let this go on so long?”

“I can hardly believe that I can finally say it now,” Therese said, glancing at Susannah, who nodded. She turned back to Magdelaine and cleared her throat, placed both hands on top of her sister’s. “What I have longed to say for so many years. I am sorry. I am so very sorry for what happened to Josette. I am sorry that I was too afraid to face you, to tell you that she died because of me.”

Magdelaine struggled to keep up with Therese’s words. “But how could
you
be responsible? It was Paul’s knife, and when my men confronted him he confessed.”

Therese shook her head. “Yes, he killed her. But only because I told him where she was. I was jealous of the attention he gave her. I wanted her to pay a price for having what I could not have.” She tried to steady her ragged voice. “I didn’t know, though, what he would do—I hope you can believe me.”

“Oh, Therese,” Magdelaine said. She pictured her forlorn sister the last time she had seen her, the October before Josette died and everything changed. Therese had been so serious, so timid. But bitter too. She was just twenty-seven years old, but somehow life had passed her by. Inaction had seized her and she could not plot a course in the world. Magdelaine thought of how many times she had criticized her son for the same behavior. They were alike in many ways. “Of course, you didn’t know what he would do.
That
is why you stayed away all these years, and let me believe that you were dead? Because you thought I would blame
you
?”

“I blamed myself enough for us both. But you must have blamed me too. Didn’t you?” Tears spilled down Therese’s cheeks.

Magdelaine took a breath, hesitating before she spoke. She couldn’t lie. Not now. “Yes, for a while. But I was only angry with myself, that I was not there to try to stop it, that I could not stop you from taking your life.”

Jean-Henri gave Therese a handkerchief. “Thank you,
neveu
,” she said.

Magdelaine looked at her son. He was a nephew again, after all this time.

Raph began to whimper, and Esmee brought him over to meet his great-aunt. Jean-Henri introduced them and Therese brushed her finger along the baby’s cheeks before Esmee took him out of the room and downstairs for some milk.

Susannah stepped toward the door. “I should go too. So that you can catch up.”

“No, Susannah,” Magdelaine said. “I want you to say. You know that you are much more than just a guest here now. In fact, you really are the reason Therese is here. Jean, bring her a chair.” He pulled a chair from the hallway and one from the corner of the room for Susannah and himself. Therese stayed where she was, perched on the side of the bed. She tried to give Jean-Henri his handkerchief back, but he waved it away.

“I still cannot believe you are here,” he said. “I
saw
you. I saw you go into the water. But perhaps I only imagined it—I was so young.”

Therese shook her head. “You did not imagine it.”

“Tell us, Therese,” Magdelaine said. “Tell us what happened.”

She took a breath. Magdelaine could see her gathering all her strength before she began.

“After I discovered Josette, I was wild with grief. I hardly remember any of it, except the running. I know I stayed off the lane. I ran through the woods—I remember that. I surprised a wild dog eating his kill, but he must have sensed how far out of my mind I was because he let me be. It took all afternoon but I made it to the back half of the island. There was no one in sight—Jean-Henri, of course, I didn’t know you were following me. I walked straight out into the water. It was freezing. I kept walking until I couldn’t feel the sand beneath me and then just let myself sink. The water rushing in was like fire behind my eyes, and it took everything I had not to struggle against it. Finally everything went dark and I felt victorious. I wasn’t going to have to live in the world alongside what I had done, how I had failed my sisters.”

Jean-Henri nodded. “That’s when I ran to get help. But when I came back, you were gone.”

“A while after I blacked out—I don’t know how long—I opened my eyes to find that I was lying on the rocks next to an overturned canoe. My whole body was numb, but I was alive. I couldn’t believe that I had failed even at ending my life. I should have seen it for what it was, a miracle of survival, God’s hand keeping death at bay, but all I could think was that I could never face you again. I did not know who owned the canoe and whether he had helped fish me out of the waves, but when I looked around there wasn’t a soul in sight. I didn’t think—I had no money, no food, no change of clothes, but I pushed the vessel into the water and began to paddle. I was never as fast as you, Magdelaine, but eventually I made it across to St. Ignace.”

Therese explained how, once she had made up her mind to live, the world seemed to open to her. In the village at St. Ignace she met a man who had organized a party planning to travel to Quebec City—planning, in fact, to set off just as she was coming up the beach. She told him that she had nearly drowned and that, when she came to, she remembered nothing of her past but saw only visions of the Virgin Mary calling to her from across the water. He could see from her ice-crusted hair and blue fingertips that she was not lying, at least not about the cold-water plunge. She could pay him nothing, but if he was a man of faith—and indeed, he nodded, he was—he could help her get to a convent where she could put her calling to use. And he would be rewarded for his good deed in the afterlife.

He did not need much convincing and shouted to the men that their departure would be delayed by a few hours. He took Therese home to his wife, who shrieked when she saw the shivering young woman and ushered her inside the rude cabin and close to the fire. She sent the men out and ordered Therese out of her sodden clothes. Wrapped in a coarse wool blanket she crouched on the floor and rocked on her heels so she would not give over to the cold while the woman heated water for a bath. A while later, dressed in borrowed leggings and a woolen cloak over her dry dress, Therese departed with the men.

She braced herself for cruelty—perhaps the men would not share their food—or a frightening encounter with a drunk who might try to take liberties with her, but she needn’t have worried. The men believed her to be a woman who had had visions and was perhaps herself a conduit of holiness. They felt it was their duty to see her safely to Quebec, and they took that duty seriously.

Six weeks later, Therese explained, she arrived at the Convent Ursuline in Quebec City. Again, she prepared herself to be cast out, her lie uncovered, and sent back to Mackinac to face Magdelaine and what the world would be like without Josette. But again, this reckoning did not come. The Ursuline sisters welcomed her into their world. They clothed and fed her. They took Therese at her word that she had seen a vision of her calling. They did not ask where she came from nor what she was leaving behind.

The sleeping quarters in the girls’ dormitory was a tiny ten-by-ten room with a hard bed and a window the size of an open prayer book. There was no fire, but the other postulants pooled their yarn and knitted a thick pair of stockings for her to wear beneath the black wool garb the convent had issued her. There was a small library in the building, and she conquered her shame to admit to them that she could not read or write. The next day, they began to teach her.

Some of the other postulants had been sent to the convent by angry fathers, and they felt trapped in the life of sacrifice. For Therese, though, the convent did not feel like a prison. Instead, it offered the very sort of escape she had prayed for as she’d walked into the icy waves off the island. She could begin again in this quiet space, buffeted by four walls and the space for contemplation of anything other than the life she had left behind. If it was devotion the Ursuline sisters wanted, she would give it to them. She would devote herself to whatever they asked, as long as she could stay there forever.

“You wanted to forget us,” Magdelaine said. It was an accusation, but her voice was soft with sympathy.

Therese shook her head. “I wanted to forget myself.”

And for a while, she told them, it worked. She studied and after a few years took her orders and became Sister Mary Genevieve. Somewhere along the way the story she had invented to persuade the man in St. Ignace to help her get to Quebec became the truth. She began to feel a sense of calling to the life of sacrifice and service. She taught classes to students. She read. She prayed. And, with time, she was almost able to forget.

But then, she said, she started to dream about Josette. Josette as a little girl and Therese as a grown woman. They walked together around the island, sometimes through the snow with a stoic gray dog loping beside them, and other times in the heat of summer, the smell of fish wafting up from the beach. Josette held Therese’s hand and they did not speak, but when Therese looked down to catch her sister’s gaze, the girl’s eyes were always focused on something else, never seeing Therese. They walked with purpose, unsmiling, as if they were headed somewhere important, but they never reached the destination before Therese bolted up, shivering, in her bed. She knew Josette was trying to show her something, to take her somewhere, but Therese refused to be reached. She wouldn’t let herself be sucked back into the past.

“But Josette would not let me go so easily,” Therese said.

The following fall, a woman arrived at the Ursuline convent, a frail young waif in a fine yellow dress. Her face was drawn but pretty, and as she came into the sunlight pouring through the room’s one window, Therese saw that her left cheek was yellowed with a bruise. A man wearing a snow-white silk cravat held her elbow and led her into the room, then quietly described his predicament to the Mother Superior.

“Lucretia becomes hysterical, has visions,” he said. “She invents awful things, then harms herself and accuses me of having done them. Last week she threw herself down the stairs.” The nun wrote as he spoke, nodding. “And said that I had—” Here he hesitated, as if the words were too awful to say aloud. “That I had
pushed
her.”

“Yes,” the nun said. “Please do not let her accusations trouble you. They are obviously the product of a deranged mind. We have seen this before, cases of spiritual or mental vexation so severe they lead a woman to see a thing that isn’t there.”

“You must do something with her,” the husband said. “You must compel her to tell the truth. I will be back for her in a month’s time, and I expect she will be changed.”

Therese offered to help Lucretia get settled in her room. As they walked the long hallway together, she nodded toward the bruise on her cheek. “That looks bad,” Therese said. “Does it hurt?”

“Not too much anymore,” she said. “My husband did it. No one believes me.”

Therese stopped in the hallway and took Lucretia’s hands. “I believe you.”

It was as if Josette herself had sent the woman to the convent, and Therese said she knew then precisely what she would do to begin a kind of penance.

When Lucretia’s husband came back for her at the end of the month, his impertinent young wife was gone.

“You were right, sir,” Therese told him. “She was deranged. A few days ago she ran out and down the road and before I could catch her, she threw herself in the river. We have no hope that she will be recovered.”

He seemed surprised to hear of this terrible turn of events, of course, even blamed the sisters for carelessness, but he believed the story. As he packed his wife’s clothes and stepped up onto the carriage that would take him back home, Lucretia was on her way to Montreal, where Therese had found work for her in a laundry. She had a new name and a new life. The successful thwarting of that awful husband was a bittersweet victory. Therese had intervened and saved Lucretia from a terrible fate.