“Such a lovely day,” Helen Hennessey said as she looked up from her knitting on a warm spring afternoon. She loved to sit on the front veranda looking across her husband’s fields, waving at neighbours driving up and down the road in front of the house.
“Yes,” agreed Beatrice, who was sitting next to her, embroidering a pillowcase.
“Glad to be home, dear?”
Yes, very much. Although I do miss the busyness of the city. It can be dull here by times. But it’s so nice to see you and Father again.”
“And Ann? Do you think she’s glad to be home?”
The Hennessey girls were both slim and fair, with green eyes. As teenagers they’d had an outdoor freshness about them. Helen had schooled them first around the kitchen table and then, later on, in the small library that Patrick had built onto the house. The girls loved their reading, their church charity work, and helping their father manage the financial end of the many family interests.
When Beatrice was nineteen and Ann seventeen, they were escorted from Halifax by Mrs. Cora Hill, a distant relative, to the Litchfield School for Young Ladies in Boston. Letters home were filled with accounts of the books they’d been reading, the theatricals they’d seen, sleigh rides and socials. Both girls scorned dances and card parties as frivolous pastimes, preferring the poetry evenings and lectures held near their Beacon Hill lodgings.
Now, they had returned to Merigomish, their schooling completed, but Helen was concerned about Ann.
“She seemed moody and out of sorts this morning. Do you know what’s wrong with her?”
“We just got in yesterday, she’s likely still tired out from the long journey. I know I am.”
“You’re sure nothing’s wrong?”
Beatrice shook her head without meeting her mother’s eyes.
“Well, please ask her if everything is all right and let me know.”
***
“Patrick, have you noticed a change in Ann?” Helen asked as they prepared for bed.
“She seemed very quiet this evening, almost sad.”
“I think something might have happened but Beatrice doesn’t seem to know.”
“Cora never struck me as a good choice to accompany the girls down there,” Patrick said, taking off his socks. He paused for a minute then added, “She was always too casual for my liking. I remember her as a girl back in Truro. I never should have hired her to go to Boston with the girls.”
“I’ll keep after Beatrice to tell me what she knows, if anything.”
***
Weeks passed and Helen became more alarmed.
“She’s lost flesh since she’s been home and looks drawn, don’t you think, dear? Although she never complains about anything.”
“She’s taken to staring into space most of the time, and she can’t seem to concentrate. I gave her last month’s ledger to add up and had to do it over myself. She had her figures all wrong.” Patrick shook his head.
Across the hall in Ann’s bedroom, the sisters were having their own discussion.
“Where were you off to last night?” Beatrice asked Ann, who was lying on her bed with her face turned to the wall. “I know you left the house about 2:30, it’s no use denying it.”
“Just went for a little walk to the wharf. I needed to clear my head. There’s no law against that, as far as I know.”
“You’ve been going for a lot of walks lately. You looking for more excitement? Wasn’t the States enough for you? God knows who you’d meet down at the wharf that time of night. Morning, I should say.”
“Go to bed, Bea, and leave me alone, please. I’m fine.”
“Well, you don’t look it and I’m getting tired of Mother quizzing me about Boston every day. I wish she’d ask you herself and leave me out of it.”
***
One rainy afternoon shortly afterward, when Helen brought tea into the library for her daughters, she confronted Ann.
“You just don’t seem to be yourself since you got back from Boston. Did anything happen there to upset you?”
Ann met her mother’s eyes. “No, why do you ask?”
“Well, your father and I are worried something’s wrong. How did you get along with Mrs. Hill?”
“Mrs. Hill showed us around Boston and we got to know it quite well,” Beatrice replied for her sister. “But she never took us anywhere that was unsuitable. And the two of us always travelled together.”
“And you never encountered any unsuitable company or incidents?”
Ann looked down at her book. “Of course not, Mother. And Mrs. Hill was always very kind to us.”
Helen sighed. “Well, for the life of me, I can’t imagine what’s wrong with you.”
“There’s nothing wrong, Mother,” Ann said, rising from the couch. “Now please excuse me. I think I’ll lie down for a bit.”