DOMINIK PARISIEN
Here there are no historical associations, no legendary tales of those that came before us. Fancy would starve for lack of marvellous food to keep her alive in the backwoods. We have neither fay nor fairy, ghost nor bogle, satyr nor wood-nymph; our very forests disdain to shelter dryad or hamadryad. No naiad haunts the rushy margin of our lakes, or hallows with her presence our forest-rills. No Druid claims our oaks…
Catharine Parr Traill, from The Backwoods of Canada, 1836.
Dear Annie,
How pleasant it must be for you in Montreal, to live on an island where it is so easy to forget that you are surrounded by rivers. Here it feels as though all is running water. Such noise. Even the voices of your thrice-damned French neighbours were not so grating.
The inhabitants of this place are of a disquieting disposition, Annie. The people are stunted, rough in appearance – they are weathered, resilient, but dull-witted and move as beasts do, with single-minded purpose like the golems of rabbinical tradition. In contrast, others – no doubt new arrivals like myself – appear perfectly smooth as though they have washed up like polished stones from the rivers. This is a paradoxical place – the overwhelming sense is of the crispness of youth intertwined with terrible age. My own room smells of fresh-cut pine, but the furniture is ancient and everything creaks.
On the subject of the new, Grant has begun calling me his Little Birch Tree. I feel he means this affectionately, but I find it is rarely said with kindness. It is because I am so pale and thin. I would not be so elsewhere, I am certain. The trip was long and arduous, but there is more involved than that – Peterborough does not agree with me. Grant knows this, and still he insists we stay. I cannot believe this place is conducive to his health either. At night I lie awake next to Grant and I can scarcely hear him breathe. There are times I place my hand on his chest just to remind myself he lives. He never stirs at my touch like he did back in Exeter. Perhaps I have already become too light in this place.
Winston’s health has taken a turn for the worse, and there is little doubt Grant will soon be the sole proprietor of the general store. I feel as though I ought to be sad for Grant, but I cannot help but resent his brother for forcing us to move here. It is no fault of his own, of course – if anything his misfortune may alleviate the financial strain Grant and I have suffered these past few years. Still, were Winston not of ill health, Grant and I might have continued to eke out our meagre, if tolerable, living back in Exeter. A difficult prospect, but a familiar one, at least.
Please do not judge me for my apparent coldness, sister – it is terribly petty, I know, but Grant himself almost seems unmoved by Winston’s condition, and I know so little of the man. Grant keeps him confined to his room, and he will not allow me to see him, for fear his illness will strike me. It is difficult to care for a stranger, even one whose house you inhabit.
But the store does profit, and Grant seems happier than he has been. I feel that can only serve to strengthen us.
Your loving sister,
Abigail
P.S. Grant told me of an incident at one of the lumber mills today. Apparently, some plots of land that workers claimed to have cleared were completely intact, not a twig displaced. I know the lives of lumbermen are often short, that their work is treacherous, and that, every day, men are swallowed up by the woods and the rivers. And yet. There are fewer and fewer honest folk in the world. I wish you would visit.
Dear Annie,
Despite the insectile swarms and the interminable saw-songs and river whispers, these backwoods do offer one peculiar marvel, a woman of singular quality who had a queer influence on our youth: Catharine Parr Traill. Do you recall those nights we lay awake reading The Young Emigrants, how those idealistic sketches fashioned our early fascination with the Canadas? Grant informed me that she is its author, a fact known to a few here. And stranger still – few books have ever occasioned the bitter disappointment that The Backwoods of Canada did with the cruel reality and terrible hardships the author described. That is also one of Catharine’s. Oh, Annie, I had never been so conflicted in meeting someone in my life.
Catharine, it turns out, is a long-time friend of Winston’s, and his illness has been particularly difficult on her. I hardly knew what to make of her at first. Yesterday this strange little woman came knocking at our door, and after some heated words with Grant, she left just as suddenly. He later told me whom she was and asked that I meet with her at her home, to bring her news of Winston. Tell her the man is frail, and his countenance could not bear the taxing company of others at this time, Grant said. Imagine, Annie, facing such a woman as Catharine, responsible for some of my wildest and most terrible dreams of this landscape, armed only with such scant information.
Ah, you must be the wife of that brutish fellow, she said by way of greeting when I arrived at her door. It is one of the peculiarities of nature that such a dear as Winston should be kin with a man of his disposition. Come in, come in.
She was, of course, quite cross with Grant when I informed her of the impossibility of seeing Winston at this time. As you can imagine, we did not make the best of impressions upon each other. Still, I cannot begrudge her her frustration in this regard, what with Winston being her friend. Grant was also not as courteous as he might have been, which has tended to be his manner since we arrived here.
Truthfully, I half expected her to turn me out of her home, but instead she served me a very good tea and we spoke.
Have you been married long? she asked. I suspected she was only making polite conversation and I welcomed it. I had interacted with so few people since we arrived here, and I was most eager for it.
Four years, I said. We lived in Exeter, behind the shop my husband ran for an acquaintance.
There must have been something to my tone for next she asked, And if I may be so bold, how receptive was your family to this union?
At first I feared this life of penury has wracked me so that even a stranger can read the want there, but then I noticed a discerning gleam to her eye, which ought not to come as a surprise, given her writing.
Forgive me if I am too forward, my dear. One naturally develops a certain rough manner here in the bush. I ask only because I know the look – I myself am in a match looked upon unfavourably by much of my family. As you are no doubt aware, following one’s heart can lead to certain, shall we say, challenges.
I nodded, thinking of mine and Grant’s financial woes before his work here in Peterborough, of Mama and Papa’s many unkind words at his expense, of the pitiable sums they provided us before our departure. I fear they were quite content to have us out of their sights.
But I am most fortunate. Thomas is a good man, she said. A good man, but from what Grant has told me, it is Catharine herself who supports their family with her writing.
Grant is also a good man, I told her. He moved us across the ocean when he learned of his brother’s illness. Now he cares for the man’s business, putting every ounce of his energy in it. Because he must if we are to live, I might have added, but what good would that have accomplished? It might have led to questions about the dismal state of our affairs in Exeter, at the shop, and I had no intention of sharing such miserable details with a woman like Catharine.
Yes, well. Remember to make your own path in things as well. When I frowned she asked, Do you have family, here in the Canadas?
I told her about you, Annie, of how you and your husband welcomed Grant and I into your house upon our arrival in the New World, before our trek to Peterborough.
That is good to hear. My sister, Susanna, has been a staunch supporter of my marriage. Her husband is a good friend of my husband’s, and we are fortunate to have them near us. I hope that, come what may, your sister can be a similar pillar in your life.
We then spoke at length of your home of Montreal, that beacon of light in this terrible Canadian landscape. Catharine is a strange woman. She would rather the natural desolation of open fields or green forests and raging rivers than be in the bosom of a metropolis. One can commune with nature there in the many parks and still enjoy the comforts of civilization, I told her. But she would hear none of it.
Her disregard for the city is all a front. No one can truly love the pregnant emptiness of the bush, no matter their words. When Catharine speaks of this place her blue eyes are animated, yes, but mostly cold it seems to me, and the voice is that of the author, and not of the woman Catharine. Of that I am almost certain.
I told her the author of The Backwoods of Canada had many a dire warning to those who would seek to tame the Canadian landscape and make it their own, but she shrugged away my criticism. Of course I wrote of hardship. You will find that in great supply here. I also wrote of the many beauties, and how hardships borne with perseverance, hope, and faith may bear fruit.
I have learned that she frequently has newly arrived women at her home, and that many come to see the author when they learn her identity. Myself, I care more to know my neighbour, and make a true friend.
Yours,
Abigail
Dear Annie,
I have been thinking of Montreal, how there must be a great dark lake within Mount Royal, at the heart of the mountain, beneath the roots of all the trees. I imagine it is quiet there, peaceful. Peterborough has no heart; it is all veins and arteries pumping furiously, enough to drive one mad.
Grant says the Aboriginals who live near here are all mad, that they speak to animals and think that lightning is a bird. Catherine was quite displeased with Grant when I told her that today. She appears better inclined now toward these people than in her earlier writings. She handed me a few chapters from her new book and told me to have Grant read them. Grant will not, of course. Here he has no time for books, and he no longer makes attempts at poetry.
I see so little of Grant. At times I worry he is purposely avoiding me. His days are divided between the store and conversing – at times dicing or even drinking – by fires and makeshift tents on the shore with the lumbermen and the raftsmen. He has even returned with scrapes and bruises from confrontations. What little time he has left is mine to grasp at. Some days he snarls at me at meal times, then consumes his meals with crude abandon. This place has made him rude and rough, Annie. It is the tavern all over again, only worse. All the ways he buries his many disappointments, amplified by this terrible landscape and these crude people.
I feel someday he may simply be joined to a raftsmen’s barge like a felled pine and disappear down the Otonabee River.
This is not how I imagined my life – my marriage – would be, spending my days in this land of green and blue, listening to the wrenching coughs of a dying man. But then, when have we ever recaptured the aura of those blessed days before our elopement, before that shameful return home to Mama and Papa and the move to that dank room behind Mr. Whitehall’s pathetic store.
No.
I will leave off here for now, I do not like the turn of my thoughts.
Yours,
Abigail
PS: I want you to know, I give thanks to the Almighty each day for your presence here in the Canadas. Though you are far – so very far, dear Annie – I take some small comfort in knowing that the roots underfoot may extend underground, entwine with others all the way to you. That the rivers here, maddening as they are, may at least flow out to those surrounding you in ways never possible when I resided across the ocean.
PPS: There appears to have been a second incident at the lumber mill over another uncleared plot of land. Some workers claimed to have done the work, had sent the wood downriver by raftsmen, but when the land was checked all the trees were there. Accusations of theft were bandied about by other workers, which led to fisticuffs. I do wish Grant would take us away from this bush full of scoundrels and thieves.
Annie,
I have a confession to make, dear sister. I was quite startled at first by Grant’s new name for me, his Little Birch Tree. For you see, there is a tree in my head. A white tree, a birch tree, with many trunks growing from the same base. I know this tree, even better than the back of my hand. I do not care for my hands, especially now that they are so pale. But the tree, when I close my eyes the tree is there, perfectly formed. I know each line in its papery bark. When a leaf falls, I know which branch it came from.
You remember the great stone in the forest near Mama and Papa’s in Exeter, the one so covered in moss it looked more a grassy hill than a rock? I know you will recall I brought you there when I was ten to look for the white shawl you gifted me. I never did lose that shawl. It was the birch tree I meant for you to see. I had come upon it earlier that day, quite by chance, as one can only come upon things of great portent. I held the trunk to my bosom, ran my cheek across the bark, put a leaf or three in my mouth to taste my dream. My ear to the tree’s base, I heard the sap flowing through it, like the sound of rushing water. I remained in that blissful state for such a time, breathing with the tree. But I needed you to share in that, to prove how a dream can be made manifest, though I knew you would doubt. Thus, armed with the subterfuge of the shawl I left, though it was with great reluctance.
You were so furious when I arrived home. You had thought me lost, and you were certain you would be blamed for my disappearance. But you were so kind when you saw my feigned distress, and together we rushed into the woods to retrieve my “lost” shawl. You cannot imagine my shock, sister, at the tree’s absence. Or, perhaps you can, since my despondency then was not feigned in the least. It is only a shawl, you told me as I wept. But no, it was the tree, my tree, and there was no way to make you understand what its disappearance meant. After we searched the forest in vain, you carried me home on your back while I wailed. Oh, how I blamed you for the absence of my tree, Annie. I wrapped my arms so tight around your neck while you carried me, and still you bore your burden without complaint.
That night I cut my white shawl with scissors in my room, and buried the ribbons in the backyard. Reading this, you may think it was for spite. But, dear sister, in truth it was so you would not find it and think me false. Absurd as that is, at the time I could not think to act otherwise.
I am sorry and I love you,
Abigail
Dear Annie,
I have been to the post office today. Still you do not write. You are cruel to deprive me of your letters. Have I angered you with my talk of the tree and the shawl? Have Mama and Papa written and finally turned you against Grant, and by extension, me? I know you and he did not always see eye to eye during our visit, but, please, do not forsake me as Mama and Papa have. I still hold hope they will learn to love Grant in time, but you I cannot bear to lose, not even for a moment.
But perhaps I am being unkind. It may be the French have rejected the union of the Canadas after all, that rebels have been seizing the mail? They were well-behaved when I visited you, but one can never know with the French. I pray that is not the case, I do not wish for another rebellion. Especially with you so very far away.
Catherine’s husband, a veteran, believes peace will be lasting, both in Upper and Lower Canada – I must remember to call these the Province of Canada now – but I have my doubts. Much as I love Montreal, I do wish you would move somewhere the French could not overwhelm you. Something like Toronto. Here would be best though – I cannot trust a town that had that rebel, William Lyon Mackenzie, for a mayor.
I continue to visit Catharine, and she is lovely, but she does not have the ear of a sister. She also remains inquisitive regarding Winston, and I fear she is growing irritated with me for my lack of information in his regard.
Your worried sister,
Abigail
PS. Yet another incident at the lumber mill. One man was stabbed and the culprit has not been apprehended. We were told Peterborough was a welcoming community, the thriving lumber trade a cornerstone of its dedication to good, civilized living, and king and country. What lies these Canadians tell. I asked Grant for more details – I know he has been with the lumbermen again – but he would tell me nothing.
Annie,
We have had torrential rains, and the rush of water is deafening. It fills my head so. I hear it flowing in my very veins. Yesterday I went to Grant at the store, even though he does not like me visiting him at work, and I am told I was quite insensate, screaming for quiet. Grant had his assistant carry me home and put me to bed. Robert is his name. On our way home, he told me that all of Peterborough is in turmoil! They have closed down a lumber mill, and there is talk of closing others. The lumbermen are rioting. It is terribly bad for business, according to Robert, all these unemployed men. Grant has been quite preoccupied with it all apparently, though he shared none of his concerns with me.
Robert says his brother has been to one of the work sites. He said the site, a good plot of cleared land, was overrun with trees! I felt myself become faint at that, and when Robert reached for me his skin was rough as bark. Upon closer examination I saw the fingers slowly elongate, take on the consistency of oak branches. Poor Robert looked positively unfazed by his unnatural affliction. Fortunately, the transformation ceased and reversed quickly. I fear for his well-being. What sort of hold does this place possess over its people? Is this also the nature of the terrible illness affecting Winston?
I cannot help but think of my tree. I am a little birch myself. My dreams have set root in the earth and are feeding off the horrid waters here. Annie, my dreams are bringing forth the trees!
Later.
I am relieved I did not send you my letter upon writing it. I was feverish, delirious from lack of sleep. I enclose it for your perusal, but you may rest assured I am much improved, though the rivers remain distracting in their intensity.
The local doctor has recommended a rest cure in the nearby drumlins, but Grant refused. He cannot leave the store, especially now with the turmoil with the lumbermen, he cannot leave Winston, and he will not allow me to be sent away from him. I am to remain inside. I have begged him to take me on his evening walks at least, but he refuses. In moments such as these I cannot fathom how this Grant and the Grant I married are the same man for whom I soiled my reputation. But then, on nights when I lie in bed and silently curse his name a thousand-fold as he enters the room, he tiptoes to my bedside, drawn like some uncanny spell, and bends to kiss my forehead, my closed eyelids, the bridge of my nose. On those nights he does not always hold me as he sleeps, but when he does, oh, then it is hard to imagine the past is not here with us, somehow superimposed on this strange present.
Catharine visited again. She believes good company will do me wonders in ways a rest cure never would. Though I must have looked disconsolate for she took me in confidence.
She is growing wary of the backwoods. I knew it. Even she cannot endure it, Annie. The Traills have previously moved within the area, and she means to do so again, soon. Perhaps far away. I am not surprised – a woman of her insight cannot fail to recognize the power of this peculiar place on the mind.
I also inquired about that situation in the village, but Catharine refused to enlighten me. I scarcely know what to make of that myself. I have met a few lumbermen and raftsmen, and those I spoke with were kind, honest fellows. This business with them affects us all. But you cannot burden yourself with such matters. You must rest.
I heard her knock at Winston’s door quite insistently. She was even so bold as to call his name and fiddle with the doorknob, but it was locked.
Catharine has kindly promised to visit me when time permits. I believe she may do so in the hopes of seeing Winston, but her motivations do not truly concern me so long as she is here. The only regular conversations in this house are the creaking floorboards responding to Winston’s raking coughs. Write me, Annie, dearest. Break your incomprehensible silence.
Your pleading sister,
Abigail
Annie,
Please forgive this barely legible scrawl. Writing is proving difficult.
I followed Grant on his walk tonight, once he closed the store. That is not the way of a dutiful wife, I know. In other things I have been a good wife to him, I believe, but I am allowed my moments of weakness, just as he is.
Grant went to the forest, as I knew he was wont to do. I followed close behind, the canopy of leaves weighing oppressively on me. It was dark, but the moon shone bright.
Annie.
Once he was far enough from the village, Grant broke off branches, whipped them on the trunks of trees like he was flogging them, shouting Mama and Papa’s names. Sometimes he shouted mine, or even Winston’s. When the branch broke he ripped another and started anew. I watched him trample dirt and leaves, scour the forest until he made it to a new clearing by the river. There he palmed small stones and cast them into the water, screaming, Dammit. The stones pierced the surface, and every time I flinched as they disappeared in the white rapids. Grant did this over and over, until he tired and sat by the shore. After a time, he wept, loud racking sobs. I took shelter in a bush some distance behind him, under the shadow of the trees, and watched the rise and fall of his shoulders.
This man is my husband, I thought, watching him. We know so little of this world, Annie. Men and women like Catharine write of their experience, take meticulous notes of their surroundings, but I do not think we ever really know anything, or anyone, until moments such as these. Watching Grant, for a moment I saw him as Catharine – who has never known the version of Grant I carry – must see him, only as a frustrated, fragile man in want of a simple life, a wealthy wife, and he has neither. I saw how those lacks had not quite broken, but twisted him, certainly.
With all his rage, I wondered if he loved me still. I trust he did back in England, when we had no concern other than that we should be wed, even with Mama and Papa disapproving of our union. It would have been easy then, with my promises of their eventual support. Which would not make that love any less pure, only simpler.
But that was him, and this is him now. What was I, here, at the other end of the world, a disgraced wife, daughter, sister, struggling in the bush? In my mind, Annie, I was anyone but Abigail. This frightful uncertainty, it could not be me. Whatever I was, I thought then I would be that with Grant, or I was nothing.
I made to walk out to Grant, but before I could reach him a figure dressed in tattered clothing ambled out of the forest from a path opposite me. The man’s gait was awkward, stumbling, and he hummed off-key one of the songs popular with the lumbermen. I knew him for a drunken lumberman, and immediately I feared for his safety – I have never known Grant to harm another, but his unprecedented display of violence in the forest worried me. Grant took little notice of the man. In fact, the tone-deaf song seemed to soothe him, and I too found myself lulled by the man’s fumbling melody.
The lumberman took position on a stump behind Grant. It was an odd sort of companionship, the three of us there by the river and the forest, each seemingly ignorant of the other, but one I decided was likely not unprecedented. I knew lumbermen and raftsmen frequently camped out on the shore, here and all along the Otonabee, and it was unlikely all of them sought company, despite their proximity. We remained in that peaceful state for a time, until the lumberman rose from the stump. I thought he had to have been whittling a piece of wood and cut himself – I caught sight of blood on his palm, which the man wiped on the stump. The sight filled me with dread – what if the drunkard meant to harm Grant? He was probably armed after all. I rushed out of the forest to warn Grant as the tree sprang up.
There is no other way to describe it, Annie. The stump where the man sat expanded upward, bursting great branches in all directions. The tree obscured my sight of the moon, seemed to reach toward the stars as though it would nest one in a nook like a robin’s egg.
When I looked down, the man beckoned me over. Still he was humming. His fingers were long, almost taloned together. Strangely, it was not a frightful hand. I walked over. Up close, I saw his head was covered not with hair but a multitude of vines, that his ragged clothes were leaves held together with mud. The face was indeed that of a man, if a man could be carved from ancient bark, with the beard on his chin the greenish-brown of lichen. He was of this place in ways we would never be.
I found myself humming along.
The man placed a hand on the tree and held the other out to me. I took it. His touch filled me with such longing, Annie. Like I was made of seeds, and he was the dirt and the sky and the rain, simultaneously in and around me, drawing me out and up. Through him I felt the tree coursing through my veins, the life of it a blinding light warming me from the inside. I felt Grant seated by the water, the roots beneath him telegraphing his pulse. He seemed so small, but significant. I could not let the moment pass as it had in Exeter, when you and I failed to recover my birch tree. I needed him to witness, to commune with this strangeness and with me. I needed to make it true.
I called out to Grant.
That made the man cease to hum, made his jaw shift left to right with the low rumble of a landslide. His mouth full of mica glinted in the moonlight.
A few feet away, Grant shook off his lethargy. I cannot imagine the sight we made, the green man and the tree and I all entwined. Grant’s face contorted into hideous rage at the sight, and he picked up a stone and cast it at the green man, striking him on the temple. I cannot tell what came next. I believe I screamed. Grant may have delivered more blows. Perhaps he thought he was protecting me, or it may have been something darker, more animal in nature. I only know he grabbed hold of me, dragged me away. The forest around us still seemed lit, more effervescent than the streets of Montreal. I meant to stop, to get back to the green man, but the landscape was dizzying. Everything shone, until it didn’t. The contrast was terrifying. I felt myself a child again, back in Exeter, being carried away from a dream I knew to be real.
We fled in silence. In the centre of the village there was a commotion, perhaps lumbermen squaring off with residents, perhaps with each other. Violent lights shone off windows. Somewhere there was smoke. We avoided the area and made it home. Inside, Grant paced the floor, refusing to look at me. He mumbled to himself.
Winston. The store. The responsibility of it all is crushing me.
That cannot account for it, Grant, I said, finally.
What do you know of the time and effort I spend to keep us well? he said, more to the room than to me. If your family had dowered you properly, if they supported us as they should have, then we would never have had to move to this Godforsaken place. And now we are here.
This is not about us, Grant.
It is about us, Abby. It is only ever about us.
But the green man, I said. He must have called to us. Or we called him.
What do I care of some green man? You are like Winston, driven to delusion by this land. Too weak for it. Infected by it. It slips into your bones. Dammit, I am too weak for it. This is not our place. We should not be here. There is nothing here but our failure.
His indifference I could bear, his distance, but not his cruelty. I burst out crying, covered my face with my hands.
What is that? Abigail, what is that? He grabbed my right hand, held it out, and dropped it almost instantly.
Annie, my fingers were – are – not pale but white and rough, the ridges of my knuckles split and greyish-black where the green man touched me. My skin, it is almost peeling, papery.
Abigail! He screamed over and over while I examined my hand. Grant’s face held such disgust. Not at the hand itself, I think, but at the fact that it belonged to his wife.
In the next room Winston’s coughing worsened until the floorboards groaned and seemed to give way under his weight. Grant left and found Winston collapsed beside the bed, crawling toward the door.
A doctor was called for – for Winston, not I. Grant waited for him by the door while I penned this. I heard them discussing about draughts to keep Winston immobilized. The man is not long for this world.
Next day
Annie,
I have been to see Winston.
Grant left for work today without a word, and without locking Winston’s door. Perhaps out of distraction – we do not know the state of the store after last night’s riots – or because my safety no longer preoccupies him. It may have been shame that kept him secretive, or a feeling of terrible impotence regarding his brother’s state, and after last night that may no longer matter. It is of little concern in the end.
I am ashamed I never tried to visit Winston before. Catherine has often told me of his kindness, his good humour, and I learned more of him from Catherine than I ever did from Grant. The plump storeowner I had seen only in a painting back in Exeter lay there, replaced by a whipcord-thin man with layers of flesh folding over itself.
He was breathing raggedly, but he opened his eyes when I entered the room. His pupils were hazel, I noticed, and the veins around them red and sharp as scars. He looked dazed, no doubt from a draught prescribed by the doctor.
I placed my misshapen hand on his forehead without thinking. The moistness there was not unpleasant, and my fingers seemed to drink it in.
Winston smiled, mumbled under his breath. I bent to listen, but he shook his head, kept shaking it until I backed away. When I did, he opened his mouth.
His tongue, I saw, had shrivelled, turned the rough brown of black walnut bark. When he spoke, the words were the rattling of branches rubbing against one another. I rubbed my wooden fingers together in response, and a similar sound filled the room. Winston nodded, and for a moment, it was as though we knew each other.
He expired shortly thereafter.
I sat by his bedside for a terribly long time. Eventually I lifted the covers, saw his legs had turned to stumps, with roots edging out of every part. It is strange, to mourn a stranger who would have been kin, not by blood but by nature.
Later
I have been sitting here, smelling new-cut pine, listening to the slow-creep of bark in my blood. Thinking of what to write you. What will Grant say, when he returns? Whatever it is, it will not matter. I can see my fate with him.
He will keep me here, locked away like poor Winston, because he cannot understand. For Grant, it would be another failure to give me what I will ask for. He must have felt much the same with his brother – they have been apart so long – I trust he thought letting go would be abandoning the man, not delivering him.
As you can no doubt tell, Annie, I do not believe Grant to be a vicious man, only overwhelmed, twisted by his bitter disappointments. But I have been wrong before. There is a roughness to him that seems more at home in the bush than he realizes. Though, if I am to be truthful, that is not my concern now. I have been a daughter, I have been a wife, and I have been a sister, which has brought me great joy, but I have rarely been myself.
I will go to Catharine. She must be told about Winston, and she has been good to me. Surely she will think up some suitable lie for Grant should he come looking. Who is to say, perhaps she will write a curious sketch of all this someday. Somehow, though, I doubt she will accept the truth of it.
Then I will leave for the forest, to find my place amongst the creatures and the trees. Where a part of me has always been. Unlike Catharine I have never truly cared for the wild. I do not care for it still. But I care for my tree. I touched something in Exeter, all those years ago, the day I cut my white shawl. Here, I think I can become it. Visit me someday, sister. You of all people will know me as a birch tree.
Yours, always, your loving,
Abigail