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“Do you know her?” Edward asked Martin, as they sat together with Agnes now. He sat back in his chair and the sun whispered through his hair. Agnes sat forward, poised to hear him answer.
“You are intrigued,” Martin said to Agnes, “but alas sitting forward will not help me remember any quicker.”
“Why— how did you know I had sat forward? It was not even a conscious thing that I was doing,” Agnes said, in amazement.
“May I?” Edward said, his appetite whet to provide an answer when so many questions encumbered their progress.
“Go on,” Martin said, a smile occupying his face.
“Did her voice become suddenly louder, so that you knew she was closer?”
“Ah, you are becoming good at this!” Martin said, pleased with Edward's deduction.
“And I know what else, my chair must have squeaked, because yours has just done so now,” Agnes said, clapping her hands together in delight, like a young girl playing a game.
“Correct,” Martin said, sitting back in his own chair now.
“Well, I did not hear the squeak and so I was not at liberty to know that,” Edward said, in playful jest to his cousin. His face was awash in the merriment of the gathered company, but something ignited in Edward at the mention of the squeak. How had he been able to hear the tiny bird's chirp from two stories below when he could not, half a year later with his hearing improving rather than deteriorating, hear the squeak of a chair within reaching distance? A shiver trembled over Edward. Was he going crazy? He asked himself the question that plagued his mind once again. But if he were truly crazy, wouldn't he think he were sane? But then, what of the moments like those this morning spent in solitude with the painted lady when he felt such uncharacteristic and unexpected fondness for her?
“I don't think I know her, to answer your question. I only saw her through your eyes the once, Edward.”
So enraptured was Edward in his thoughts of the painted lady that, for a moment, fear gripped his heart as he heard Martin's answer.
How do you even know about her?
He was on the verge of saying it aloud, until Agnes cut across his thoughts and returned him to reality.
“Frederick, the man who was digging the grave, said her name was Clara and that she needed our help. I'm terribly confused, though. If none of us know her, how are we to help?” Consumed in their thoughts, silence settled over them.
“Perhaps, he was just distraught. He did seem rather shaken,” Agnes said. Martin sat forward suddenly.
“What is it?” Agnes asked.
“I know who she is! Clara is that girl who was in the Silvertown explosion and got amnesia.”
“Who?” Edward said, rejoining the conversation.
“You know, the girl who lost her memory.”
Edward looked at Agnes inquisitively, but her face looked just as blank as his own felt.
“I don't think we know about her,” Agnes said now.
“No? I was sure I told you. Well, no matter. As I said, she was in the explosion in Silvertown and lost her memory. The way I hear it, she's utterly alone in the world with no living relations.”
“How very sad,” Agnes said, her face clouding; she too was separated from those dear to her.
“So, how do you know all this?”
“Harold, the man who brought her into the country from the hospital, knew her grandfather. He stops by occasionally to talk with me.”
“Well, then we must get word to this Harold. He would want to know,” Agnes said, the teacher in her taking control and devising a solution.
“Quite right!” Martin said, “I have his address here.” He paused momentarily to retrieve it from his pocket. “He left it for me, if ever I should need him. Perhaps—”
“Yes, yes. We'll go at once,” Agnes said, before he had time to make his suggestion. Though she was considerably shorter than her cousin, her presence and strength resulted in indulging her whims and she pulled Edward by the arm to his feet.
“Goodbye, Martin,” Edward called over his shoulder, a moment later. He had barely had time to stand and somehow Agnes had already pocketed the address and was hurrying away from the house.
Must be a family trait, running headlong into problems we know nothing about.
“What do you make of it?” Agnes asked now, not slowing her brisk pace.
“What do I what?” he asked, losing some of her words in their haste.
She slowed her pace, though only by a fraction. They were still walking fast enough that, when they neared the ground the birds were walking on they scattered into a great swell of a black cloud. Their wings gathered now, as they soared above Agnes and Edward, leading them on like a steady arrow on their path.
“What do you make of it? What do you think happened?” Agnes repeated, being sure to turn her head toward Edward as she spoke, though her feet continued to carry her swiftly along the path.
“I don't know, but she lost her memory Martin said. We don't know how lucid she is, perhaps she did something without realizing.”
A heaviness lodged itself in his heart at the thought of the girl in the sunshine being whipped into an undertow of darkness. Why were the women of his life perpetually drawn from the shadows, harbored in secrets, and lost to all others?
“Here, let's stop beside the brook for a moment,” Agnes said, tossing herself onto a fallen log and leaning against a branching oak for support. Edward, ducking his head to avoid the low overhang of the branches, sat beside her. Here, so close to the earth with the grasses and shrubbery enclosing them in a herbaceous fence, his mind wandered to the forests of home. He had stood beneath the mighty redwoods with their massive trunks, wider than the span of his parents' arms and his own spread wide touching fingertip to fingertip to encircle the tree. Awestruck Edward raised his eyes higher and higher, first tens then hundreds of feet into the air to observe such magnificence.
“We have places like this at home,” his mother had said.
“You have trees this big in England?” Edward asked, his five-year-old mind not quite sure how to picture the land of his mother's birth.
“Not so tall, but just as beautiful.”
“Well, I think these trees are nicer. They must be the biggest trees in all the world and that makes them the best!” he said with childhood logic.
“When I was a child, I thought as a child—” The verse ran through the adult Edward's mind now. In that moment of declaring his trees as best he had been blissfully unaware of the tears that would follow so shortly after.
“Come and look at this fern,” his mother said, holding out her hand to Edward and beckoning for him to crouch low and see.
“I don't want to see any tiny fern. I want to be as big and mighty as those trees!” he said, his eyes still high in the heavens.
His father joined Edward's mother beneath the canopy of fern as Edward twirled through the trees, content only in finding a larger and therefore better tree than the last.
“Crunch!” a loud crack bellowed under Edward's foot. Ignoring the noise he took another step forward but his foot became ensnared in a tree root and tripped him, landing him in a thud hard on his stomach. His twirling had caused him to fall in the direction he had just come from and he came face-to-face with the cause of the loud noise.
Horrified Edward saw a tiny frog, unable to move because its leg was crushed. Forgetting his own fall, he scooped up the frog that in its fear wildly tried to break free of Edward's grasp but was restrained by the injury that he caused.
“Fix him! Fix him!” he cried in anguish, running toward his parents.
“Edward, whatever is the matter?” his mother asked alarmed, rushing to her feet to come to her son's aid.
“Fix it! Fix him!” Edward said again in desperation, as he thrust the crippled frog toward his father.
“What have we here?” he said, looking closely at the specimen Edward had deposited into his much larger hands.
“I'm afraid I can't fix him,” he said, bending to the ground and placing the frog under the cool shelter of the fern. Edward let out a whimper at the diagnosis. His mother put a protective arm around him and he buried his face against the folds of her skirt. He could picture it still, a navy dotted with tiny flowers. As his man-sized tears rolled down his boy-sized face he had felt as if he were watering the flowers of her dress.
“I'm sorry, Edward about the frog. I am glad that you stopped looking up long enough to see some of the treasures of the ground as well.” What she had meant as words of comfort only intensified his tears. Their saltiness clung to his cheeks, burning their filthy imprint into him.
“But, I didn't stop,” he said between his sobs.
Gently, she pulled him away from her skirt so that she could hear him better. She bent down, so that she was eye level with him.
“Now, suppose you tell me what happened.”
“I was running through the...the...forest,” his words were muffled through his tears, “and I—I—trr...tripped and then I saw that...” Edward's sobs were making it near impossible for him to speak now.
“What did you see?” his father said, sternly. His mother looked at his father harshly, one of the very few times he could remember her doing so.
“We both know what happened,” she said, over Edward's head.
“I want Edward to say it. I want him to face up to what he's done.”
Mustering all the bravery he could, Edward turned away from his mother's embrace. He stood as tall as he could, not wanting his father to be cross with him any longer.
“I was running too fast and I wasn't watching. I hurt the frog.” His voice wavered ever so slightly, as he said it.
“Good. Now, I don't want you to allow this poor creature to suffer any longer.”
“Oh Henry, he's just a boy,” his mother protested, at what she knew was coming next.
“Alice, it's the lessons we learn as children that make us into good citizens. Children not as privileged must hunt and fish for their own food in many places. Edward has never had to see such realities. He needs to learn to fix things and to pay attention to all around him, even when he thinks it's not interesting or important.”
“Fine,” Alice said, “but, I'm not watching. I don't agree, but it's clear I won't change your mind.” With that she departed the two persons whom she loved most, to avoid becoming a witness.
“Edward, I am not doing this to be mean. I want you to be concerned about those less fortunate than you. Do you know what I mean by less fortunate?”
Edward looked up at the man towering over him who always held the answers, but was asking him for them now.
“No,” Edward said, shaking his head and hoping he had not disappointed his father.
“It means that some don't have life as easy or as nice as we do.”
“Like the frog?” he asked trying to understand, his nose scrunching in the sunlight to aid his thoughts.
“Yes,” Henry said and, for a moment, he saw such innocence in Edward's face that he hesitated at what he had intended doing. Resolved in his decision, despite knowing that Edward's innocence would shatter like a broken dish, he said now,
“Edward, if you were older, I'd have you shoot the frog, but you are too small to hold the gun.” He stooped low beneath the fern.
“Come,” he said, without any of the welcome in his voice that Alice had when she had spoken the words before. This time Edward did not turn away, but turned toward his father. Helpless, the frog sat beneath the fern where Henry had placed him. He lifted a stone, larger than the frog but not too big for Edward's hands.
“I want you to put this over him, so he won't suffer anymore.” Edward looked at his father, shocked by what he had heard but feeling the weight of the stone in his hands now and having no choice but to do as his father said.
“Look Edward,” Agnes said now, breaking into his thoughts. He followed her finger to the grassy area beneath the shadow of the log they sat on. Unsure of why he said what he did, she heard Edward whisper,
“I'll fix it,” to the frog she pointed at.