“Yes, I know.” He set the Journal aside and reached across the table to clasp her cold and trembling hand. “It’s terrible, but she’s safe, unharmed. No doubt she’s being watched very closely so that she won’t be able to repeat the attempt.”
“She was being watched very closely before, and yet she evaded her guards.” Elizabeth shook her head, fumbled for her water glass with both hands, raised it to her lips, and carefully drank, wishing it was the herb woman’s elixir. “How could a woman of her age and infirmity slip past her guards in broad daylight? How do we know she won’t manage it again?”
“We both know how clever she is. Her guards underestimated her yesterday, but surely now they will be more vigilant.” Shaking his head, Ninian took up Elizabeth’s newspaper and scanned its version of events. “Your sister insists that she is sane, but this desperate act proves she is not. Thank God she was stopped before she harmed herself.”
“Thank God,” Elizabeth echoed. Sick at heart, she fervently hoped that those entrusted with Mary’s safety would take their jobs far more seriously than they apparently had thus far.
Mary’s suicide attempt confirmed the jury’s verdict, or so Ninian believed. Elizabeth could not dispute the reasonableness of his conclusion, and yet she felt a stirring of doubt.
Was her sister’s attempt to take her own life truly the impulse of a deranged mind, or was it the desperate act of a sane woman horrified to be confined to an insane asylum against her will?
How had Mary come to this?
Once they had been the Todd sisters, the belles of Lexington and Springfield. In the years that had unfolded since those bright seasons full of promise, they had all endured tragedy. Some of the sisters had lost homes, others fortunes, or husbands, or children. None but Mary had tried to take her own life.
But none of the Todd sisters had risen higher or endured more tragedy than Mary.
Could she be saved by the bonds of sisterhood, worn thin yet still enduring?
2
July 1825
Frances
Frances had not expected to spend the Fourth of July in her family’s own garden, disconsolate, watching over her little sister Ann while she dozed on a quilt spread on the soft grass. Nearby, Elizabeth and Mary played Graces, tossing a hoop back and forth from a stick held in one hand, their laughter and playful teasing sounding forced, even from Mary, who reveled in merriment and fun. Like their brother Levi, who had gone off somewhere on his own after their plans were canceled, the sisters had expected to spend the warm, sunny day at the glorious Independence Day celebration now well under way at Fowler’s Garden on the outskirts of Lexington. Nearly everyone planned to turn out for it, including all of Frances’s school friends, wearing their prettiest summer frocks and hats, with their hair neatly brushed and curled or braided and adorned with ribbons of red, white, and blue. Roast pig and great haunches of beef would be sizzling on spits over a fire, and there would be pies bursting with fruit, sweet lemonade for the children, and whiskey by the keg for the grown-ups. There would be speeches and music, games and gossip, flags and bunting and fireworks. Best of all, Frances would have been free to run off with her girlfriends for the entire day, putting as much distance between herself and her little sisters as possible without leaving the fairgrounds.
She felt a pang of guilt for the disloyal thought. Little Ann wasn’t so bad; it wasn’t her fault she was still toddling around in diapers, a responsibility rather than a playmate. Six-and-a-half-year-old Mary, on the other hand, was insufferable. Pretty and charming, with a dimpled smile, clear, wide-set blue eyes framed by dark lashes, an abundance of cleverness and funny jokes, and an easy grace and daintiness that eluded Frances, she won the admiration of nearly everyone, from Mama and Papa and Grandma Parker to their neighbors and teachers. Even Frances’s own best friends didn’t mind if Mary tagged along after them, though she was two years younger. Mary made them laugh and invented the most amusing games, entertaining her friends until Frances felt quite forgotten.
It was exactly the same at home. Mary enchanted everyone so completely that they seemed not to mind, or even to notice, her determination to have everything her own way exactly when she wanted it. If Mammy Sally was braiding Frances’s hair, Mary would dart over with her brush and wheedle and beg until Sally hastily finished with Frances so she could devote herself to Mary’s long, silky locks of rich chestnut brown with flecks of gold. If Mama was reading Frances a story, Mary would squeeze in between them on the sofa and ask her to start over from the beginning, and of course Mama would smile and comply. If Auntie Chaney asked the children if they would prefer cornbread or beaten biscuits for breakfast, Mary would quickly call out her own choice and plead for it so sweetly that the temperamental but exceptionally talented cook would nod and get to work as if no one else had spoken. If Frances was confiding quietly in Elizabeth, their much-admired eldest sister, Mary would dart over to shoehorn herself into the conversation, even if Frances was in the middle of sharing a very private secret, which Mary would soon blab all over the neighborhood. Later she would feign surprise when Frances, furious and embarrassed, reproached her. “She didn’t mean to hurt you,” Elizabeth would say, excusing her when Mary grew tearful and begged forgiveness, as if Frances were the one at fault.
Frances struggled to forgive Mary when her younger sister wronged her, to be as tolerant and patient as Mama and Elizabeth, but Mammy Sally wasn’t fooled. “You best snuff out that jealousy before it make you sour and mean,” she warned Frances once, an amused glint in her eye. “You was the center of attention when you was the baby sister. Now it’s Miss Mary’s turn.”
All Frances could do was nod and promise to try, but honestly, how was that admonition supposed to make her feel any better? What good did it do her now to know that she had once been the center of attention if she didn’t remember how lovely it had been?
Anyway, Mary wasn’t the baby sister anymore; Ann was, and newborn brother George Rogers Clark Todd was younger still. Sometimes Frances guiltily hoped that Mary too would soon find herself overlooked and forgotten as attention shifted to her younger siblings. Recently, as if sensing that possibility, Mary had taken to pretending that Ann did not exist—except when the younger girl wailed, impossible to ignore. Then Mary would grimace and stuff her fingers in her ears.
Frances smiled smugly to herself whenever she observed signs that Mary was becoming anxious about her place in the family, but almost immediately she would feel ashamed of herself. Mary was oblivious to her ugly thoughts, but even so, Frances would try to make up for them by inviting her to play dolls together or offering to read her a favorite story. Mary was unimpressed by Frances’s generosity. “You hate dolls,” she would reply, or, “I can read it myself.” The rebuffs were insulting, but they made Frances feel vindicated for her unsisterly thoughts, so it wasn’t all bad.
Still, no matter how much Mary provoked her, Frances knew it was a sin to take pleasure in a sibling’s unhappiness. Brothers and sisters were precious. Accidents or illnesses could snatch away any of them at any moment, just as a fever had taken baby brother Robert three years before. Mama had been terribly sad for a very long time, until Frances had almost forgotten the sound of her merry laugh, once as clear and light as a silver bell. Blessedly, Ann had come along about two years later, and their cheerful, smiling Mama had returned to them from wherever she had gone, no longer lost to them. Surely, Frances and Elizabeth privately agreed, the new baby’s arrival would drive any lingering sadness from the household.