I found the little creek and filled the container with clear water. The first swallow lifted my drooping spirits. By now, it was nearly time to help Hettie with dinner. This was all foreign and uncomfortable, but there was no denying that the grueling day had started with excellent food, and I had hopes all the farm fare would be as delicious. My steps quickened, as if I could hurry the day along by moving through it faster.
I rounded a bend in the path, dried grass crunching under my boots. At the sound of Hettie’s angry voice, I paused.
“That’s where you were this morning when I found your bed empty?”
No, not angry. She was worried.
I ducked behind a pink-flowered dogwood and took in the tense scene. Big Tom had turned a stormy expression on Abel, who leaned against the wagon, staring down at the brittle earth. Hettie paced before him. “For pity’s sake, Abel, why didn’t you tell us before? We’re family.”
“I wanted to.” Abel’s voice cut over hers, high and strained. He rubbed at the back of his neck. “But this isn’t y’all’s burden to bear.”
Big Tom spoke up. “I know you feel obligated to help, but there’s a better way to go about it.” He exhaled heavily, as if what he was about to say wearied him to the bone. “When’s the baby coming?”
I felt my eyebrows climb. I swiped away a rivulet of sweat from my forehead.
“Soon. She keeps talking about marriage, but that’s not going to happen.” The derision in Abel’s voice sent a streak of anger skittering through my stomach. “We need money, but I didn’t want you two to feel bound to pitch in, so we kept it quiet as long as we could.”
“I bet your mama is fit to be tied,” Hettie said. “Guess this explains why she’s been scarce lately. Didn’t want me to suspicion something was wrong.” Even the mention of his mother’s distress didn’t soften Abel’s stony glare.
I’d heard enough. I stepped back onto the trail and made my approach with loud, deliberate footfalls. When the three turned my way, I gave the canteen a little shake. “Anyone thirsty?” I tried to assume the guileless look of a person who had certainly not been eavesdropping a minute before.
Big Tom took the water from my hand without drinking it and climbed into the wagon. “Time to head on back.” Hettie joined him on the bench seat. Abel perched on the edge of the tall side panels, staring darkly at the field, lips pressed tight.
I chose a lumpy seat on the corn in the wagon’s bed. I couldn’t help sliding a look at Abel. To my surprise, Hettie swiveled to squeeze his shoulder. “We’ll get through this rough patch,” she said quietly.
I scraped dirt from beneath my fingernails, trying to decide if it was admirable or not that family love allowed them to sympathize with Abel when he was so clearly in the wrong. The girl carrying his child, the one he refused to marry, would need that kindness as she faced an uncertain future. Blood was thicker than water, they said.
Perhaps I was a little jealous of Abel.
I knew it was no fault of their own, but the people I was meant to lean on in times of trouble were nowhere to be found.
She walked for hours, over fields and valleys gone blank with snow. A jagged wind sliced through her thin nightgown, whipping her auburn hair into a noose around her neck. Bare toes, corpse-pale with creeping frostbite, crunched through a brittle crust of snow. All day she saw nothing but glittering white, felt nothing but black and broken loss.
The snow had stopped at some point. She’d blinked crystalline flakes from her lashes, uncaring, and walked on to nowhere. Under a sky bruised purple with dusk, she sank to her knees, ready to sleep and wake no more. The relief was immeasurable.
Then the woods called her. She felt a tug behind her crippled heart, a marrow-deep summons that pulled her attention to the copse of dark trees. Certainty settled over her. Perfect oblivion waited in the woods.
She forced herself up, stumbling on until she crossed into the forest.
Bare branches crooked black fingers to the sky, calling the night down. She moved in a dreamlike trance through the silent trees, until at last she found what had beckoned her.
At the heart of the woods, a circle of stones crouched in a clearing, toad-gray and splotched with peeling moss.
She trailed her fingers along the cold rock and looked into its shining black eye. A feeling of rightness swept over her like a warm sigh.
Gripping the crumbling edge, she pulled herself up onto the knee-high lip of rock. Blood traced its way down her leg, dropping onto the stone in a shocking red reminder of what had sent her into the storm.
She closed her eyes and thought of the baby girl. And of him. Then she stepped out into the welcoming void.
5
After we left the cornfield, I spent the remains of the day hoeing the vegetable garden and digging potatoes. “She’s give plumb out,” Big Tom muttered to Hettie when I at last made my slow way upstairs to the stifling attic. I collapsed into bed, a wispy concern for Lilah drifting by as sleep dragged me under.
Sometime during the night, every muscle in my body joined a union to protest the unfair labor conditions foisted upon them. I hobbled down to breakfast the next morning, the sorest I’d ever been. Wincing my way onto my seat, I glanced at Abel’s empty chair.
“Abel had some family matters to attend to,” Hettie said, placing a skillet of sizzling fried potatoes before me.
I stuffed my mouth with a steaming forkful. They tasted like bacon grease, an ingredient in strong contention for the prize of the most wonderful thing on the planet. “I hope nothing too serious,” I said carefully.
“Time will tell, I suppose.” Hettie fiddled with her apron strings, then rallied to do what she did best: dole out work. “I’ve got your day’s chores lined out.” She reeled off a list that made my aching back want to riot in advance.
“After we’ve mended the east fence, you can run into town,” Hettie said. “There’s a shipment of flour and salt in at the dry-goods store. Get me ten pounds each. Then you can go to the schoolhouse and see your sister, long as it’s fine with Miss Maeve.”
I forgot my aches and pains in a split second. “Thank you, Hettie.” The emotion in my voice surprised me. I trailed off, closing my eyes for a moment to trap the welling tears.
Hettie gave a curt nod. I suspected she was as unused to accepting gratitude as I was to expressing it. “It’ll be faster if you ride Lady May. She’s real gentle and she knows the way.” She frowned, adding, “Just make sure you don’t leave the road, hear?”
I agreed, wondering why she’d felt the warning necessary.
I helped mend the barbed-wire fence and, looking like I’d just wrestled a wildcat and lost, followed Big Tom and Hettie to the barn.
I rubbed at my scratched arms and warily eyed the palomino mare Big Tom saddled for me.
At home, I’d walked almost everywhere. The last time I’d been this close to a horse was at a friend’s sixth-birthday party, when a pony repaid my attempt to pat its nose by sneezing in my face. The experience had been both damp and startling, and I’d distrusted the entire equine species ever since. With a boost from Big Tom, I managed a shaky sidesaddle position. My perch atop Lady May’s broad back seemed a shocking distance from the ground. I shouted a goodbye, too afraid to release my death grip on the reins for a farewell wave as I left the farm behind.