How could you?
And I understood, in those blurry seconds, that there are no secrets from the dead.
chapter two
Ethel O’Shay Monroe
June 8, 1929
Lanesborough, New Hampshire
I have a sparrow egg tucked against my breast, softly resting there, a strange secret.
I am a great keeper of secrets, have been since I was a little girl. Oh, the secrets I kept then! The things I dreamed! I was a princess in a fairy tale. I was Sleeping Beauty waiting for the prince to come and wake me with a glorious kiss.
There were other secrets I kept. Terrible things I saw in the dark but knew better than to speak of. Sometimes, to make them go away, I’d scratch myself with a pin. Seeing the little red line, the tiny drops of blood, was a way to ward off evil. The scratches on my skin, hidden under dresses, they were secrets, too.
“You hold things close to your chest,” my friend Myrtle says. “It makes you a fine card player. But at times, a difficult friend.”
Myrtle’s a good deal older than me, and the person I am closest to here in town, the person I share the most with besides Will.
My darling Will. I watch him walk around the Lanesborough town picnic. It’s a picture-perfect day. The children are just out of school for the year, and summer has begun; summer, with all its promise and possibility. Everyone has gathered on the green in the center of town: a colorful patchwork of blankets and quilts laid out across the grass, scattered with baskets full of sandwiches, fried chicken, jars of lemonade and sweet tea. Over in the corner, the brass band is setting up to play on the bandstand, as they will do each Saturday night until September. The whole town comes out to picnic, listen to the music, and dance until midnight. Bootleg rum gets passed around, along with Chester Miller’s hard cider and bottles of beer snuck down from Canada.
I watch Will, and my heart aches a little. He is organizing all the children in a three-legged race, putting them in pairs, binding their legs together, and he has them all giggling. He’s making silly faces, pretending he’s forgotten how to tie a knot, pretending he’s going to tie his own two legs together. The children love him. “Hello, darling wife!” he shouts. I wave back. The children coo and plead for his attention; “Dr. Monroe, Dr. Monroe,” they call, pulling at the untucked tail of his shirt, and he pretends to trip and fall. Children pile on top of him in fits of laughter.
I turn away and nearly run into Jane Parsons, whom I play bridge with each Thursday. “I was looking for Anna, but I see she’s in good hands,” Jane says, nodding at the pile of children tickling Will, her daughter Anna on top. “He’s simply marvelous with them.” And I’m sure I catch the question in her eyes: When will you give him a child?
“Yes, he is,” I agree. “Excuse me, I must check on the raffle.”
I walk away, carefully pulling out the little pin I have hidden in the folds of my dress, just below the waistband. I hold the head between two fingers like a magician palming a coin and make a fist, pricking myself once, twice, three times.
I have been married for a little over a year. I was thirty-six, an old maid, when we married, and Will was thirty-nine.
“Some flowers bloom late,” Myrtle says with a wink, “but the late ones, they always smell the sweetest.”
I am the oldest of four girls, and our mother died young. It fell on me to make a good home for my sisters and father, and I did not mind one bit. I took to the role quite well, donning Mother’s apron to cook dinners each night, mending clothes, getting them to school on time. I have always loved to be busy. After my sisters—first Bernice, then Mary, and finally our willful baby sister, Constance—got married and went off to start families of their own, it was only Father I was caring for. He was perfectly capable, but his responsibility as the town doctor made it hard for him to find the time to keep house, cook meals. And I didn’t mind. I helped him in his office, too, keeping track of his appointments, organizing his books. I have always been good at math; working columns of numbers calms my mind.
Father introduced me to Will. They’d met at a medical symposium in Boston. Will soon became a regular visitor at our home, talking medicine with Father and playing cards with me. We’d play hearts for hours in our little parlor, sipping coffee and eating spice cake or molasses cookies. Every week I’d bake something new for him. He had his own medical practice in Lanesborough. He’d never married. Too busy, he’d said. Will’s own father had died, leaving him a great sum of money made in the railroads, and Will had a lovely house, a new car, crisply tailored clothes. My father encouraged our courtship, was overjoyed when we got engaged. I suggested a small, simple wedding, but Father and Will would hear none of it and enlisted my sisters’ help in planning an enormous, elaborate affair. My father gave me away and said it was the proudest moment of his life and that he only wished my mother were there to share in our joy. Sadly, he died in his sleep soon after. His heart. I blamed myself for his death, which is silly, I know, but I couldn’t help thinking that if I had still been there, things might have turned out differently. I still have the scar on the inside of my left thigh from the night he died; usually, I am more careful—but that night, I drew the blade too deep. It was one of my father’s razor blades, taken from his medicine cabinet. I have it still, tucked in a little tin at the bottom of my sewing basket.
My own heart is thumping hard, beating against the little egg inside the lacy front of my brassiere, as I slip the pin back into my dress and walk over to the table set up in front of the Methodist Church where the quilt made by several of the ladies—myself included—is being raffled. It’s the latest fund-raiser for the Ladies Auxiliary. The money we raise will go to help the needy in our community. I stare at the squares of the nine-patch quilt: Its vivid summer colors seem too bright, too cheerful. “How are ticket sales?” I ask Catherine Delaney, our secretary.
“Excellent,” she tells me.
I’ve already bought a dozen, but I buy a dozen more, checking my palm as I reach into my patent leather clutch purse to retrieve the money. No blood, just three little red dots. Three is a magic number. Ruth Edsell approaches with her daughter Hannah, who must be around sixteen now. She’s the perfect image of her mother. Ruth is a dressmaker and tailor, and Hannah has learned the trade from her. They’re both members of the ladies’ sewing circle I attend on Mondays; I keep busy here in my new life in Lanesborough. There are always fund-raisers and food drives, finding speakers for our monthly lecture series—last month we had an expert talk about growing roses.
“Lovely to see you, Mrs. Monroe,” Hannah says. Such a polite girl. Rosy cheeked, always smiling. She and her mother are so alike, so close. They walk the same way, hold their heads at the same angle, even their smiles match.
“You ladies have outdone yourselves with this quilt,” Ruth says. “It’s positively divine!”
I turn, see that the three-legged race has begun, and Will is wildly cheering the children on. When it’s over, he gives them each a sweet as a prize and pats them on the head, job well done, then bounds over to me as though I’m the biggest prize of all. He takes my hand, kissing each of my knuckles, then leads me over to where we’ve set up our picnic blanket. We settle in, and I open the wicker basket, pull out the plates and cups and all the food I’ve prepared: little sandwiches, pickled beet salad (Will’s favorite), cold lemonade in mason jars, lemon chiffon pie. He leans over and kisses me. “You have outdone yourself, darling wife,” he says. His face is sweaty, his shirt grass-stained. He runs his hand over his oiled hair, brushing it back into place. I watch the way his eyes wander back to the children, and my stomach goes hard and cold.