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Tears prick my eyes, and before I can blink them back they’re streaming down my face, hot and fast. I bury my head in the blankets over my mother’s frail body, sobbing like a little child. I don’t want this, I don’t want to be the thing that apparently I am, that I’ve always been. I can’t even say the word. How am I supposed to go through life knowing this?
“You can’t just tell me this and then leave me! What if other people find out? What will happen to me?” I think of the dour portrait of Mary Hale Preston downstairs, her shrewd eyes boring into me. Warning me. And then her visit to tell me as much. The last public hanging on Boston Common was only a couple of years ago, and though it was on a charge of larceny, I can’t help but imagining myself as the swinging corpse.
“You’re strong, Lydia. And is it any wonder? I haven’t been any kind of mother to you. You don’t need me. You’ve been strong this whole time.”
But she doesn’t know that I’m not strong. She doesn’t know that I’m empty and weak, that I’ve taken the easy way out of our problems by giving Cyrus what he wants.
She lets me exhaust my tears against her chest, gently stroking my head. “There’s something I want you to have.” She nods toward the chest at the end of the bed. “In there, under the quilt. There should be a book.”
My heart jumps. The book that Mary Preston told me about, the one that supposedly holds all the answers to my questions. The book that may well be the key to giving Emeline the peace she so badly needs. Perhaps I should be mad that Mother has kept it from me this long, but how can I be angry at her when all she wanted for me was the best?
I slowly scrape back the chair and make my way to the chest. The faint scent of dried lavender wafts up from the quilt as I lift it with trembling hands, and sure enough, underneath is a worn, leather-bound book. It fits snugly in the palm of my hand, the warm, mellowed cover speaking to years of use.
I close the chest and place the book in Mother’s hands. A wisp of a smile plays at the corner of her lips as she lovingly opens the little volume.
“What is it?”
She gingerly turns a page and I catch a glimpse of a black-and-white engraving. The image is crudely drawn, but the subject is unmistakable. A woman in Puritan dress hovers above a kitchen floor, a cat watching her from the corner. The margins are crawling with handwritten notes and marginalia in several different hands, no doubt the additions of generations of women in my family. The inscription under the engraving proclaimsVVITCH.
She closes the cover but the word burns itself inside my eyelids and, no matter how hard I try to push it away, it taunts me, mocks me.Didn’t I always know, even that day with the Bishop boy? Didn’t I know that I wasn’t normal? How could I not?
The darkness that has lurked at the edge of my mind since we came here, the dreams that have plagued me. Visits from Emeline, Moses and all the other spirits that sought me out. The way my herbs sprang up under my fingertips, growing and growing in their uncanny way. My scream that caused the trees to bend in the wind, the placid water in the pond to churn and swell. Even sending Cyrus flying back through the air. This place has brought to the surface what I’ve always had inside of me.
“This belonged to your great-great-grandmother, Mehitable Hale, Mary Preston’s mother.” She closes the book and gives it back to me. “You don’t have to read it now, but someday. Someday soon. It will help explain everything that I can’t.”
“Mother, I—”
But before I can tell her that I would rather not know, a coughing fit seizes her. When it passes she’s red and wheezing, a yellowish glaze settling over her eyes.
“Should I send for Father and Catherine?”
Her eyes close and her lips curl into that small wisp of a smile again. “No, not yet. I just need to rest. I promise.”
The strange little book and what it means for me is quickly forgotten as I watch for the rise and fall of her chest, and I only exhale when I see she’s done the same. When her breaths become slow and steady the knot in my stomach loosens a little.
Quietly, I gather up the book, brush my mother’s feverish temple with a kiss and leave her to rest.
31
ADA BRINGS MEdinner in the parlor, but the broiled chicken and green beans grow cold as I stare at my hands in my lap. My nails are bitten and ragged, my knuckles still chapped from the journey. Is it possible that some latent power lies within these hands? If it were true, couldn’t I run them over Mother’s body, heal it and force her spirit to stay? Do some secret words rest deep inside me that I could call forth to recite? But I was unable to save Emeline, what makes me think that I could save Mother? If I truly am what Mother claims I am, then I must be the most useless specimen that ever existed; all I am good for is rages and storms, not healing.
My thoughts are interrupted by voices at the door. Snip yelps in delight, his boundless joy anathema to the dark veil that clings so tightly around our house. I run to the hall to scoop him up so that he won’t wake Mother with his barking.
I stop short when Ada steps back from the door.
Mr. Barrett appears in front of me, stomping snow from his boots. He must hear my sharp intake of breath, because he looks up to find me staring at him, his lips turning down in not quite pleased surprise. I’ll never grow used to the way my insides go all light and fluttery when he turns his intense sea green gaze on me, even now as I know his heart belongs to someone else.
Something in his face darkens, but he nods a polite greeting. “Miss Montrose,” he says, as Ada relieves him of his coat. “I didn’t realize you were back in New Oldbury.”
There’s an accusatory edge to his tone and I take a little step back, Snip squirming in my arms to be let down. “Only just today. My mother is ill.”
His face softens and the darkness passes. He thanks Ada and moves farther into the hall, closing the distance between us, stopping just short of me. It takes every fiber of my being not to throw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his lean, muscled frame and pouring out all the sadness that has built up in me these past weeks. “Yes, of course. I’m so sorry. I... I just came to see your father, to see if there was anything I could do.”
Just then Catherine comes trudging down the steps, a basin under her arm. Her face brightens when she sees him. “Mr. Barrett,” she says as she hands the basin off to Ada. “It was so kind of you to come. I know how busy you must be with the new mill. Have you started construction yet?”
“Not until the spring when the ground can be worked.” He carefully avoids my eyes as he speaks; I suppose this is just as awkward for him as it is for me.
“Of course,” Catherine says. While Mr. Barrett and I tiptoe on eggshells, she blithely dances forward without a care in the world for our mutual discomfort.