She had directed her question to Elizabeth, but Mary blurted, “Of course she’s going to get better! What a stupid thing to say. She’s just tired from having a baby.”
Stung, Frances was about to retort when Levi said somberly, “Mama isn’t just tired. Papa wouldn’t call Mrs. Leuba and two doctors if she was only tired. He would just let her sleep.”
“She has a fever,” said Frances, knotting her fingers together in her lap. “I heard Mrs. Leuba tell Mammy Sally. A fever took baby Robert—”
“That’s different,” said Mary. “That was a baby sickness. Mothers don’t get baby sicknesses.”
“Sometimes they do,” countered Frances. “Anyway, I’m not saying Mama has what took Robert, just that a high fever is very bad—”
“Let’s not talk about it,” Elizabeth interrupted, giving Frances a pointed look and tilting her head toward Ann, and then ever so slightly toward Mary, who had risen from her chair, face flushed, chin trembling, glaring at Frances as if daring her to speak another horrid word.
Resigned, Frances said nothing more about the terrible, cold, sinking fear in her stomach that seemed to spread throughout her chest and into her limbs as the day passed. By midafternoon, as she sat on the blanket minding Ann while Elizabeth distracted Mary with games and Levi wandered off to find some mischief, a third doctor had replaced the second—Dr. Richardson, a standoffish fellow less popular in Lexington than Dr. Warfield and Dr. Dudley, but a specialist in midwifery and women’s ailments.
At least that was what Grandmother Parker told them when she arrived to look after them while their mother was subjected to complicated medical treatments they were too young to know about. But Frances knew something of this forbidden knowledge, for she had surreptitiously read a book Mrs. Leuba had left for Mama when she entered her confinement. She wondered if they had given Mama calomel for purging, or laudanum to reduce cramping, or if they would perhaps try bloodletting. The descriptions hadn’t bothered Frances when she had read the words on the page, but when she imagined the treatments being inflicted upon her mother, she felt sick and wanted to sob. She couldn’t seek comfort from anyone, however, because she wasn’t supposed to have read that book and it was her own fault for doing it on the sly.
Grandmother Parker sent them to bed early, even Elizabeth, who crept from her own bed into Mary’s when the younger girl began weeping into her pillow. Eventually Elizabeth was able to calm her, and to the sound of her younger sister’s sniffling, Frances drifted off to sleep.
In the morning she woke to an unsettling silence. As she sat up in bed, Elizabeth stirred, one arm still around Mary’s shoulders as she slept. Their eyes met, and they both knew that something was terribly wrong.
Slowly they washed and dressed, delaying the blow to come, then crept quietly from their room rather than wake their sisters. The door to their parents’ bedchamber was closed, and from behind it came the sound of low, muffled weeping. Papa? Frances had heard him weep only once before, when baby Robert—
A chill swept over her, so cold she could scarcely breathe. She felt Elizabeth take her hand. “We must be brave for the little ones,” her elder sister choked out in a whisper.
Frances’s first contrary instinct was to think that maybe they wouldn’t have to, maybe it wasn’t what they feared. Her next thought was, Who will be brave for me?
They descended to the kitchen, where they found Auntie Chaney fighting back tears as she sliced and buttered bread for their breakfast as if it were an ordinary day and not the worst of all their lives. She and Mammy Sally abruptly broke off their hushed conversation when the children entered. “Poor little lambs,” Mammy Sally said and held out her arms. They ran to her embrace, but Frances couldn’t hear her words of comfort over the roaring in her ears. She didn’t want to hear them. Until she did, she could cling to the hope that everyone was sad only because Mama was very ill, nothing worse than that, and in time she would get better and no one would need to be sad anymore.
But Grandmother Parker entered then, ashen-faced and trembling, George in his swaddling blanket in the crook of one arm. She grasped the back of a chair for support, inhaled deeply, and told them that their mother had passed away in the night.
Frances stumbled through the hours that followed in a daze, numbly looking on as Levi and then Mary joined them in the kitchen and absorbed the terrible news. Before long Ann’s plaintive cry drifted downstairs to them, and since Elizabeth was holding Mary, tears streaming down her own face as she tried to soothe her younger sister, Frances was sent upstairs to get Ann. “Mama is gone,” Frances told her as she changed her diaper and washed her face and hands, but Ann only blinked at her, uncomprehending. Lucky Ann, Frances thought, but immediately realized how wrong she was. Ann would have no memories of their beloved mother in the years to come. Even sad memories were better than none.
Frances carried Ann downstairs and fed her some bread and butter. Soon thereafter Papa appeared, eyes bloodshot, face pale and haggard, and told them in a husky, unfamiliar voice that they must all come upstairs and say good-bye to their mother. For a moment Frances felt a rush of hope: they could not say good-bye if Mama had already left them. But when her father and grandmother took them upstairs and arranged them around the bed and she saw her mother lying in repose on the pillows, her laughing eyes closed forever, her graceful hands folded upon her chest, Frances understood, and she felt a terrible surge of rage toward her father for unwittingly deceiving her.
The children said their hesitant good-byes, all save Ann, who frowned and repeated, “Mama? Mama?” as she looked from the still, silent figure on the bed to the faces of her father and siblings, uncomprehending. She dutifully kissed their mother’s cheek when Frances held her near, but then her brow furrowed and she began to cry because everyone else was crying.
Papa’s voice broke as he handed baby George to Mammy Sally and told her to take the children away. As soon as she led them from the room, Levi bolted down the stairs and out the back door, while the sisters went to the parlor, waiting for whatever would happen next, dreading it.
Sick at heart, Frances longed to rest her head on Elizabeth’s shoulder and find comfort in her soothing words and gentle embrace, but Mary had gotten there first, scrambling onto Elizabeth’s lap the moment she sat down, wailing and shrieking with grief so that Frances could barely hear herself think. There was nothing for Frances to do but find herself a place on the sofa opposite and cuddle Ann on her lap, since she absolutely refused to be put down. Frances glowered at Mary as she waited for her sister to calm herself and take a breath so that she could have her turn in Elizabeth’s arms, but Mary would not be consoled. That was the moment when Frances knew that Mary would always—always—need Elizabeth more than she did, and that Elizabeth would always be there for her, trusting that Frances would be fine on her own.
She would have to be, Frances realized, hugging Ann a little tighter as she burned with grief and resentment. Mary would always come first.
3
May 1875
Ann
Ann did not quite know what to make of the note that Elizabeth’s messenger delivered two days after Mary’s trial. The elegant handwriting on the thick, creamy ivory paper was clear enough, but not her rationale for summoning the Todd sisters—those who lived in Springfield at least—to discuss what was to be done about Mary. What was to be done? According to the reports Ann had read in the papers, there was only one thing to be done, and their nephew Robert had done it.