“THIS TIME IT’S YOUR TURN TO REST IN THE INFIRMARY,” ANDREW said, as Rose drifted to consciousness. Mairin sat on the edge of her bed.
“Why does my shoulder hurt so much?”
“Because you were stabbed, remember? You—Shaker eldress, bound by a vow of nonviolence, flung yourself at an armed man, in defense of a sweet little girl. Is any of this sounding familiar?”
Rose groaned. “I’ll have to confess for the rest of my life for this.”
Andrew laughed. “Agatha declared that you’ve been punished enough,” he said. “One confession will do the trick.”
Rose pushed herself up on her good elbow. “Mairin, were you hurt at all?”
Mairin offered a larger-than-normal smile and shook her head.
“Mairin is staying in the Children’s Dwelling House,” Andrew said. “Given her treatment at the hands of the New-Owenites, it looks like we can keep her with us.”
“Thank God.” Rose fell back on her pillow with a grimace of pain.
“Indeed.”
“And the New-Owenites themselves?”
“That’s another story. Did you realize that Earl Weston was killed? Nay, you didn’t kill him,” Andrew said, at Rose’s expression of horror. “You were stabbed in the shoulder, and the pain and loss of blood were too much for you. You blacked out just as Deputy O’Neal burst through the women’s entrance to the Meetinghouse. He thought Earl had killed you, and he shot by instinct. He killed Earl with one bullet.”
Mairin seemed unmoved by Andrew’s description.
“How long have I been here?”
“Just over a day,” Andrew said. “Josie gave you a sedative we’ve been working on in the Medicinal Herb Shop, and it worked better than we’d predicted. Just as well, though. Josie said you missed quite a lot of pain, including the stitching up. I was glad for that. And now you need to rest.”
“Not until I have answers to all my questions,” Rose said. With the arm that wasn’t taped up at her shoulder, she reached over and took Mairin’s hand. “You were hiding in the barn and you saw what happened to Hugh, didn’t you? All of it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me?”
“I was up high, and Hugh came in first,” Mairin said, without emotion. “He looked really scared, and he pushed a big box over and stood on it and reached up with his arm. I didn’t know what he was doing. He couldn’t reach that high. Then he got a long rope and laid it out like a snake, and then Earl came.”
“Did they fight?”
“The way they always did, with yelling. I didn’t understand all of it. It was something about money. Hugh was really mad at Earl and said he had to go tell the police what he’d done, and Earl said he wouldn’t, and then Hugh pointed to the rope and said . . .” Mairin frowned. “It was something like ‘take the way like gentlemen.’ ”
“Take the gentleman’s way out?” Rose guessed.
‘That’s it. Then he started to leave, and . . .” A hint of fear cracked Mairin’s impassive mask.
“It’ll help to talk about it.”
“Earl picked up the rope and came up behind Hugh and threw the rope around his neck and squeezed really hard. Hugh was the only one who was nice to me. I’m glad Earl got killed.”
Rose squeezed the girl’s hand and said nothing about the sin of violence. If anyone had earned a moment of anger, it was Mairin. And feeling anger was better than not feeling anything at all.
“Did you see Earl take Hugh out of the barn?” she asked.
“Yes. I didn’t understand what he was doing. He looked at a window, and then he took the rope and just threw Hugh over his shoulder and left really fast. So I got down and followed him. That’s when he went to the orchard, and I climbed a tree to see what he was doing.”
Rose nodded. “He was worried about daylight, and the brethren arriving for their early chores. So he moved to the abandoned part of the orchard. And I’ll bet the rope was too long, and he had to cut it, right?”
“He used a penknife, a really dull one. My penknife is sharper than that,” Mairin said, with scorn.
Rose rested her head against the lavender-scented pillow. Earl’s penknife had been sharp enough to do damage. “Andrew,” she asked, “how did Grady know to come to North Homage?”
Andrew laughed. “He said he hardly had a choice. He’d had a call from me, from the train station, telling him I’d had dinner with Hugh’s lawyer, who suspected Hugh was being swindled by Earl. Then Nora called him. When Gilbert came to get Mairin—he’d watched you go in there, by the way—he couldn’t manage two girls, and he didn’t really take Nora seriously. He should have. And finally, Grady had confronted Sheriff Brock about his failure to pursue Hugh’s death as murder. Brock will be resigning.”
“What?”
“It’s true. Brock had suspected, after he thought about it awhile, and he tried to call Gilbert, who’d gone out of town. He got Earl. And Earl dropped a number of hints that, if the sheriff would forget his suspicions, then he—Earl—would personally see to it that we Shakers disappeared, and our land and businesses would become available for purchase at a very reasonable price. But Languor is stuck with us. Gilbert has admitted defeat, and his group is packing up to leave. We’ll be auctioning off quite a lot of furniture to help bring our finances back to order.”
“Have they gone yet?” Rose sat up, suddenly alert.
“Nay, not yet.”
“Then would you do something for me? Would you find out what Gilbert kept locked in his wall cabinet? If he is chastened enough, perhaps he will even tell you.”
“Oh, I know what’s in there,” Mairin said. “Hugh told me once. He said Gilbert made drawings, like me, but he always kept them locked up because he didn’t want anyone to mess with them—you know, add things or anything.”
“Gilbert made drawings of his dreams?”
“Well, sort of. Hugh said he was always dreaming about towns, perfect towns, and he had lots of drawings of them that he carried with him everywhere he went.”
“So that was all,” Rose said. “His precious plans for the future of North Homage.”
“Never to be realized, thank goodness,” Andrew said. “Now, Rose, will you rest?”
Rose was asleep before the smile had left her lips.
With a public auction scheduled for the next day, and the threat of snow rolling in from Cincinnati, Rose and Andrew decided the time was right to fulfill one of Rose’s dreams. Because of the New-Owenites, North Homage now had rooms full of restored Shaker furniture. Though Rose accepted the need to auction off much of it to restore their financial stability, she wanted to share some of it—along with the salvageable food from the South Family Dwelling House kitchen—with the poor families living in the barren outskirts of Languor.
Early Christmas, they’d all been calling it. Nora was thrilled beyond words, and even Mairin sparkled, though she had little concept of Christmas. However, she did understand that her life had taken a happy turn, for the first time. With luck and care, perhaps she was still young enough to learn to hope.
Archibald had volunteered to help them. After Matthew announced he was leaving the Society, Archibald had asked for forgiveness and received it. He’d already begun his special lessons, along with Mairin.
Rose took Mairin with her to the South Family Dwelling House. “Now this is a Shaker kitchen,” Rose said with satisfaction. The sisters had spent days picking up and scrubbing down until the kitchen was spotless. They hadn’t known what to do with the bits of cheese and half-eaten hunks of bread, so, not wanting to waste anything, they’d just wrapped everything up and stored it in the pantry.
Rose carried a large basket, filled with wooden boxes, round and oval, that she’d collected from other rooms in the dwelling house. She opened the boxes and laid them along the work-table.
“Help me pack these, will you? My shoulder still hurts.” Rose and Mairin put all the left-over food in the boxes, then fit the boxes back in the basket. Mairin did an admirable job of controlling her still-troublesome hunger. It was easier, now that she was well fed.
Andrew and Archibald had already left with the horse-drawn cart, filled with a selection of ladder-back chairs, candle stands, and anything else useful that Rose could rescue as the brethren prepared for the public auction. Mairin and Rose stashed their basket of food in the back of the Chrysler, where Nora was waiting, and the trio headed for the outskirts of Languor. After a few miles, they caught up to the wagon and followed slowly behind.
“You’re very quiet today, Mairin,” Rose said. “Is anything troubling you?”
Mairin started by shaking her head, then changed her mind. “It’s just . . . lots of times people don’t like me and call me names. Will these people, die ones we’re going to visit?”
“I’ll get really mad if they do!” Nora said from the back. She quieted down as Rose turned briefly and raised an eyebrow at her.
“Mairin, sometimes people laugh at me because I’m a Shaker and I dress differently.”
“Does it make you mad?”
“I’m afraid it does. But then I remember that sometimes people come along who don’t care that I’m different from them, and they like me anyway.”
“Like me.”
“Like you.”
Mairin nodded solemnly and gazed out the window for several minutes.
“Rose?”
“Hm?” With a silent prayer for guidance, Rose prepared herself for the next difficult question.
“I miss my doll. Can I have her back?”
“Of course!”
Mairin is becoming the child she was meant to be, Rose thought, as she sent a prayer of thanks to Mother Ann, Holy Mother Wisdom, and anyone else who might have been listening all along.