Chapter 19

 

The stench of burning hair permeated the cottage walls. Long past morning sickness, Sarah still used her pregnancy as an excuse not to go outside while Archie and Sophia worked on the carcass. She caught a glimpse of Sophia standing helplessly by the center campfire where Archie had dragged the hog. He was showing her how to scrape the hide but so far she hadn’t reached for the knives to actually start work herself.

Sarah knew Sophia was struggling to do her best in her new family but she also knew that the girl had done very little real work in her life before marrying Gavin. She may have had an abusive father, but in some ways he was bizarrely indulgent with her. It was to Sophia’s credit that she tried her best to pitch in. Usually.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah noticed movement that made her look toward the front gate in time to see John and Regan returning with a small herd of pigs. They both had their arms full of squirming piglets. Sarah couldn’t help but smile. They were laughing, but even from this distance Sarah could see a cut on John’s forehead. He cranked down the front gate, then picked up a stick laying on the ground to herd the five pigs and their young toward the compound sty behind the gypsies’ old shacks.

Sarah picked up a large bowl of stale bread soaked in bacon grease and stepped out onto the porch. “Regan!” she called. “Come take this for the pigs.”

Regan walked over to her.

“Were they hard to find?” Sarah asked. “How did John get cut?”

“Not hard,” Regan said, taking the bowl. “Wily as shite, though. Once we found ‘em, we had to convince ‘em to come with us. John did a nosedive into a tree trunk trying to convince ‘em. Sure he’s fine. Sturdy as an oak is our John.”

There was a different look to Regan these days, Sarah noticed. If not exactly wholesome, the affect was at least very different from the first day since Regan arrived. Now she looked nearly radiant, grinning and suntanned, her long hair tied carelessly behind her.

Could it be that the girl just needed work to sort her out?

“Well, after you feed them, come get washed up for dinner. Tell the others too, please.”

Sarah went inside to check on the rolls baking in the oven. Ellen was in the living room. Sarah had taken her to the outhouse twice since they’d returned from looking at the ruined planting field. Otherwise, the woman hadn’t moved.

“You okay, Ellen?” Sarah asked as she walked by. Ellen smiled but didn’t respond.

In the kitchen, Sarah opened the door to the cook stove and pulled the rolls out. She’d just placed the hot pan on top of the stove when she heard the screaming.

Startled, she whirled around, knocking the pan to the floor, and snatched up the rifle by the kitchen larder she kept loaded and ready. Not bothering to look out the window first, she lumbered back through the living room as quickly as she could.

“Stay inside!” she shouted at Ellen and then stepped out onto the porch.

Not far from the cottage, Archie was standing between Sophia and Regan, and gripping each of them by the hair. The bowl of hog fodder was smashed on the ground. Sophia continued to scream. Regan was slapping at Archie’s hand and roaring her own form of displeasure.

Son of a bitch. Sarah stormed down the stairs as John came around the corner, a look of concern on his face.

“Go wash up!” Sarah shouted to him.

He shrugged and walked past her up the cottage steps. Sarah went to where Archie stood shaking the two girls like rag dolls.

“I’ve had enough of this shite!” he roared, “And I’ll not have it another minute!”

“What happened?” Sarah asked.

“This horrible…horrible girl—” Sophia began.

“Not you. I want to hear it from Archie.”

“Sure does it matter?” Archie said, giving the girls a last firm shake before releasing them. “One of ‘em said something to the other and that one returned the favor. Then the other commenced to slapping the other so’s the bowl broke—”

Regan rubbed her scalp and scowled at Archie but she spoke to Sarah. “The bitch said she poured honey in me bed!”

“That is absurd, Regan,” Sarah said. “Mind the accusations you hurl. And you broke the bowl! That is very serious.” But Sarah caught the expression on Sophia’s face. She reached out and grabbed her arm.

“Tell me you didn’t pour honey in her bed.”

“If you only knew what I am going through with this wretched, wretched girl!” Sophia said, not looking at Sarah.

“You are seriously telling me you wasted good food in this way?” Sarah felt a vein in her forehead throbbing.

“I told her she’d be switched for it,” Archie said as he turned back to the smoking hog.

“This cannot be true, can it, Sarah?” Sophia asked fearfully.

“That you’ll be punished for wasting food?” Sarah sputtered. “Of course you will.”

“Ha!” Regan said, clapping her hands on her hips and smiling at Sophia.

“However, lucky for you, I do not believe in physical punishment.” When Sarah saw Sophia’s sigh of relief she tightened her grip on the girl’s arm. “Be glad Mike isn’t here. He has a different philosophy about such things.” She turned and glared at Regan. “You had a part in this, so don’t think I don’t know that. Clean up this mess, then go wash for dinner. Now.”

Regan grinned at Sophia and then knelt to pick up the sticky bread pieces. Archie handed her a handkerchief and she filled it.

“As for you, Sophia,” Sarah said. “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that you could do such a juvenile thing.”

“I am so sorry—”

“You’ll clean Regan’s bed—to my satisfaction—and when your other chores are done, you’ll replace the honey you wasted.”

“Replace?” Sophia said with dismay. “How I am doing this?”

“How do you think, Dago?” Regan said as she stood up with her sopping food bundle.

“Regan, go feed the pigs,” Sarah said between clenched teeth. “First things first,” she said to Sophia. “Go clean the bed.”

She spoke to Archie. “Are you ready to stop for dinner?”

He nodded.

Sarah looked back at Sophia who was starting to cry. “After dinner,” Sarah said to her, “you’ll continue assisting Archie in the hog skinning.”

“But it is reee-volting!” Sophia wailed, tears rolling down her face.

“Trust me, I know. Did it once occur to you that Regan shares that bed with her mother?”

“I am forgetting,” Sophia said meekly.

“Yes, well, go on now and get started.”

As Sarah and Archie watched Sophia flounce back toward the cottage, Sarah muttered under her breath, “I’m not sure I shouldn’t have just shot them.”

“Might come to that,” Archie said with a grimace.

Most of the rolls for dinner that had fallen on the floor were salvaged and the rest went to the pigs. Sophia, gloomy at the prospect of tackling the hog again after dinner, was silent as she ate. Regan, by contrast was talkative and cheerful. It occurred to Sarah that this might be one of the few times in Regan’s whole life where she wasn’t the one held wholly accountable for bad behavior. It was a nice change. For everyone.

After dinner, Sophia trudged off with Archie to finish up with the hog, and Regan surprised everyone by settling her mother outside on the porch with a rug across her lap and a cup of tea. She sat at Ellen’s feet and pointed out the stars to her. Ellen even appeared to be enjoying herself.

Sarah felt the baby kicking and massaged her lower back. Maybe a little exercise would quiet him. A little exercise that would serve another purpose as well…

“Show me the hogs,” she said to John. “I want to make sure they’re settled in for the night.”

John picked up a lantern but hesitated before leaving the porch. “You guys going to be okay?” he asked Regan.

She looked at him and grinned. “We’re grand. And Archie’s right over there in plain sight.”

It was true that Archie and Sophia were clearly visible by the fire. Sophia stood next to him, her shoulders slumped in obvious dejection. They could hear Archie talking to her but his words didn’t carry.

John and Sarah walked down the path toward the back of the compound. This time of evening was decidedly creepy and because they hadn’t lit any of the marker torches, the path was darker than elsewhere in the camp. If it weren’t for the fact that Sarah really wanted to have a private word with John—and there hadn’t been a better moment during the day—she wouldn’t have suggested the walk.

“Why do we keep them so far away?” she asked, as much to distract herself from the moving shadows that seemed to track them as they walked.

“Because they’re noisy, filthy pigs?” John said with a grin.

“But they’re so cute when they’re little.”

“And so tasty when they’re fried.”

“John, stop it.”

“Sorry, Mom,” he said laughing. “But we don’t have them for any other reason except to eat them. You know that.”

“I know. It’s one of the more difficult tenets of pioneer living, I have to admit.”

“You mean life was better when the gypsies did all the dirty work.”

“Yes, darling, thank you for clarifying that.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

Now it was Sarah’s turn to laugh. “You don’t think I just wanted to take a walk in the dark to a pigsty?”

“Well, sure, that’s what most people would want to do on a nice spring evening, but somehow I don’t think that’s your motive.”

She looped an arm through his. “It’s just we haven’t had a moment to talk since we got back.”

“We talk all the time.”

“We haven’t had a moment to talk where it’s just us.”

“What’s up?”

“I want to make sure you’re still thinking about going to the UK next fall to school.”

John didn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought. You’ve been thinking about not going, haven’t you?” Sarah stopped walking and forced John to face her. “John?”

“Mom, I just don’t see how I can leave you guys. I mean, am I gonna go to school and come back at Christmas and find you and Mike and Gav gone, too?”

“I know. We need answers before you go. We need to find out what happened.”

“And then…” He hesitated.

“What?”

“Well, what if it’s just us? What if the rest of ‘em are gone for good? We find out they’ve all been murdered or whatever?” He shrugged. “It would be horrible but we’re all sort of thinking that might be the case. I mean we hope it isn’t, but we’ve all thought about it.”

“And if they’re gone for good, you think we can’t manage without you?” Sarah squeezed his arm.

“I’m not saying I’m indispensable, Mom. I’m saying in that case every pair of hands is essential. Me staying to help with the harvest and trapping and stuff like that might make the difference between surviving and not. And you know that’s true.”

The hell of it was he was right. And saying he wasn’t would be believed. How could she tell him she wanted him to go to school—to be something more—even if it meant she ate corn stalks all winter? And how could she say that when there was the coming baby to think of?

“When is the helicopter supposed to come for you?”

“In five months. Plenty of time to sort this out. But if we don’t. If we can’t—”

“We will,” she said firmly. “We’ll find our people and bring them back. And you will go to school in the fall.”

“I hope so.”

“You know you’ll always be my baby,” Sarah said, her voice catching with emotion.

“I know, Mom.” He grinned. “Do you still want to look at the hogs now that we’ve had our talk?”

“Not really.”

“I didn’t think so.” They made their way back toward the cottage.

 

**********

Regan looked at the stars above. She had no idea what the names of any of them were. She just knew that the world had changed for her. The stars twinkled brighter and the night felt velvet and soothing against her skin. The world had surely changed when she walked away from a fight and the other person was punished for it.

She’d rerun the row with Sophia in her head all through dinner—almost not able to believe it had happened like that. Regan had been the injured party, sure, but facts like that had never mattered before. Was the world different? Had something happened to make it different?

“Your father knew the names,” Ellen said softly.

Regan snapped her head around to look at her mother.

“Mum?” she said.

“The stars,” Ellen said. “He could name them for me.”

Regan laced her fingers through her mother’s cold hands. Her gaze was distant as she looked skyward, her head wobbly on her neck. Regan was afraid to breathe, afraid to talk. She tried to remember the last time she’d heard her mother’s voice.

Finally, she couldn’t help herself. “He didn’t leave us on purpose, Mum. He didn’t abandon us.”

Ellen lowered her head and her eyes met Regan’s. She smiled sadly. “My poor lass. You must feel as if the whole world has left you.”

Regan kissed her mother’s cold hands and held them to her face. Her heart was pounding.

“I’ve missed ye so much, Mum,” she said, feeling her heart swell with joy. “So much.”

“He’ll be back for us any day now. Ye must have faith. As I do,” Ellen said, touching Regan’s hair.

“I do, Mum. I think I can bear just about anything if we’re all together again.”

The creak of the foot on a board would have gone unheard if Regan hadn’t been holding her breath to listen to her mother’s voice again. She looked toward where Archie and Sophia stood by the fire. Past them she could see the glow of Sarah and John’s lantern well down the pathway.

It was a sound, furtive and secretive. A sound that shouldn’t be there.

Could someone have gotten inside the compound? John had closed the gate. Regan watched him do it. She squeezed her mother’s hand, her eyes searching the darkness, watching, waiting for a form to morph from the gloom. The sound came again, this time closer. Regan gathered herself into a squatting position next to her mother. She had a short dagger in her boot. Archie made them all wear one. Her hand dropped to her ankle and she felt it, sharp and cold against her fingers.

Was she imagining the sound? How could someone have gotten in? She listened intently, the gentle wheeze of her mother’s breathing the only sound on the night air. She stood up slowly.

“Regan?” her mother said. “What is it?”

Regan didn’t answer. Her eyes were on the four men silently slithering over the top of the front gate.