TIME SLOWS DOWN, and when it’s over, Catherine lies drained and ashen on the bed, her lips parched but silent. The baby—if you can even call it that—lies wrapped in what would have been Catherine’s wedding gown in the corner.
I pat a damp cloth over Catherine’s brow, but her eyes never leave the pile of lavender silk. “What was it?” she whispers.
My hand wavers for a moment, then I start again, small, gentle motions with the cloth. “I don’t know. I don’t think that it was anything yet.” I don’t know exactly how far along Catherine was, and I don’t want to know. But it was far enough to look like a macabre parody of a baby, with its bulbous head and fingers like tiny curls of paper. It will haunt me until the day I die.
“We have to bury it.”
“Catherine, you—”
Suddenly she’s animated, struggling to prop herself up and reaching out to grab my wrists. “We have to. My...my child needs to be buried. Besides, Mother can’t know. She just can’t. It would destroy her.”
I wonder when Catherine became so concerned about our mother, but maybe she’s right. By some miracle no one is home yet, but Catherine isn’t in any state to go outside and do this unthinkable task. Which means it falls to me.
She slumps back down into her pillows. It’s hard to read her expression in the thick darkness. My hand trembles as I touch her fingers. “Cath, it’s too dark out. I can’t.”
How is this real? I get up and light the lamp, avoiding the far corner. “We’ll just have to wait until tomorrow, and hope that Mother goes out.”
“I’m not sleeping with that thing in my room... You have to do something with it!”
“And you need to calm down!” She’s sitting up again, making as if she’s going to jump out of bed.
“Stop yelling at me!”
“I’m not yelling,” I say, taking a deep breath and lowering my voice. “But think, Catherine. Where? How? I don’t even know where Joe keeps a shovel.”
For some reason the shovel, this particular detail, sends a shiver down my spine. There’s a little misshapen body in the corner next to the beautiful blue-and-white ewer and the yellow damask curtains, and we are going to bury it. I’m going to bury it.
The sound of wheels clattering cuts through the sharp stillness. Our eyes lock. “There’s no time. Keep your door locked and I’ll go down. I’ll tell Mother that you’re ill, that the blood is from... I don’t know. I’ll think of something, but you have to stay in here.”
“You can’t leave me in here with...with it!”
So much for “it” being her child. I hurriedly splash my hands with water from the basin, suppressing a shudder at the heap of cloth next to it.
Catherine fumes, cursing under her breath, but she gives up, sinking back into her bloody sheets. Those will have to be taken care of too without Ada knowing. She’s pale and for a moment I waver in my decision to leave her alone, wondering if she’s in any danger from succumbing to her ordeal. Maybe I should fetch the doctor. Almost as if she’s reading my mind she narrows her eyes. “Fine. But swear to God, Lydia, swear on Emeline’s grave that you will not call the doctor.”
I wince at her choice of words, but I swear.
The latch turns in the door downstairs. I force a few calming breaths, check my dress for any remaining streaks of blood and then go down to lie to my mother.
* * *
The moon hangs behind a hazy bank of clouds that night, as I wait until the last sounds of the house settle; Ada closing the grates, Father lumbering upstairs after dragging himself away from his study, and then the lighter, swifter steps of Mother following him.
Mother had been more concerned with the stains on the carpet than the lie I told her about Catherine having a bloody nose. She had asked if she should send for the doctor, but she’d already been looking around for something to clean the blood up with, frowning that Ada had run out of vinegar. I should have known that Mother wouldn’t have noticed anything was amiss, that she wouldn’t care enough to take me aside and make sure Catherine was really all right.
Catherine is fast asleep when I slip into her room, lightly snoring as if she were tired from a day of shopping or dancing at a ball. Anger surges through me. She’s dragged me into another one of her messes and as usual I have to clean it up. I could wake her up, force her to be a party to what I must do now. But as I stand beside her peaceful figure, pale and faintly frowning in the dim moonlight, the anger fades, replaced with pity and guilt. It hasn’t escaped me that the very thing I so longed for, that I was so near to making sure occurred myself, has happened of its own accord. What a horrible coincidence. It doesn’t make me feel any better that I got what I wanted. I let out a weary sigh, and then leave my sister to her sleep.
* * *
The night is cold and still, the woods every bit as watchful as the last time I made this trip. My breath comes out in short, white puffs as I struggle up the hill, one arm wrapped around the lifeless bundle, the other clearing thorny brush and dead branches out of my path.
A sound behind me—or is it in front?—and I stop, holding my breath. The dry rustle of naked branches in the breeze, and the faraway echo of an owl fill the emptiness. I move faster, with purpose. What if someone is following me? Ada or Joe, or even Mr. Barrett? What would he think of me, out here alone with a dead baby in my arms?
“Emeline?” I whisper out into the darkness. “Emeline, is that you?”
The only answer is the sweep of breeze that lifts the hem of my skirt.
“What are you doing?”
I freeze. My blood goes cold as I slowly turn around. “You.” My voice comes out in a choked whisper. “What do you want?”
The pale little boy laughs, the unsettling sound that has plagued my dreams and spilled over into my waking moments. He wears the same clothes as in the portrait that hangs over Mr. Barrett’s desk, but they are ragged and sooty. The tip of his nose and fingers are singed black, and he looks at me from lidless eyes that never blink. “I asked you first,” he says, sticking out a scorched tongue. How could I have not seen what has been in front of me all these months? The little boy laughing in my dreams, Emeline’s mysterious friend and Mr. Barrett’s dead little brother are all one and the same.
Something tells me he already knows what I’m doing. I shift the bundle to my other arm trying to maintain a steady composure. Every instinct in me makes me want to recoil and flee as far and as fast as I can. But I won’t let this little spirit see my fear. “Why are you following me? What do you want?”
He regards me with eyes that are so like Mr. Barrett’s that I find myself powerless to look away. My anger grows. “You took Emeline from me. You lured her to the pond to have a playmate. Isn’t that enough for you? Why do you continue to plague me?”
He doesn’t answer me, just launches into an intense fit of coughing. Blood and soot come up, which he spits on the ground. I flinch. Then he turns a terrible grin on me. “You should go away from here and leave John alone. You should go away and never come back.”
“Why, Moses?” My voice is steady and even, but my heart is pounding against my ribs.
He laughs again. “Ask John. Ask John what he did and then you’ll see.”
Before I can ask him what he means, he’s gone. He disappears in the time it takes me to blink. I stand there for another moment, the air around me heavy in its stillness.
I sprint the rest of the way to the pond, tripping once and clutching the bundle tighter, scraping my palms against an outcropping rock as I brace my fall. Ignoring the stinging, I hang on and keep going. I don’t look back until I reach the clearing, my breath coming in painfully shallow gulps. Moses is nowhere to be seen, and again I almost wonder if it’s just my imagination playing tricks on me, a product of my overburdened mind. I never seem to sleep soundly anymore so it wouldn’t be any wonder. But by now I know that it’s not my imagination, that nothing that has happened to me at Willow Hall has been my imagination. The sooty boy with blistered burns and lidless eyes was as real as what I carry under my arm.
The pond is visible only by the smallest reflection of clouds on the glassy surface. Before I go any farther I poke around in the dark, and my hand closes around a small rock, then another. I plunge them into the silk folds of the bundle, praying that my hand doesn’t touch what lies within.
One thing, I tell myself. I just have to do this one thing and then this nightmare will be over. Mr. Barrett will come on Friday and Catherine won’t have reason to interfere anymore. It will all be over.
I take a deep breath and wade out into the blackness, the icy water nipping my ankles but somehow making me warm. There’s no siren call from the willow this time, no Moses watching me, and when the water reaches my knees, I stop. The air is so thin, so devoid of life that you could hear a lone bird sigh a hundred miles away.
Carefully, I take the bundle out from under my arm and, closing my eyes, toss it out in front of me. The splash echoes off the trees and rocks, the blanket of clouds. When I open my eyes, only the faintest ripple on the inky black surface betrays that the water has accepted its offering.
Tuesday
By some miracle Catherine is already awake the next morning when I stagger downstairs to breakfast. Her face is drawn, her eyes vacant. Her dressing gown hangs limply from her shoulders, and with dawning horror I realize that she’s still wearing her shift from yesterday under it, blood specks visible around the hem when she leans for the teapot.
I glance at Mother and Father to see if they notice, but Mother is listlessly studying the enamel grapevine border on her plate while she pushes her creamed wheat around with her spoon. Father is buried in his paper, blindly groping for his plate from behind it. If ever there was a day when I wish I could slip into the panoramic wallpaper and its world of gentle sloping banks, carefree ladies in rowboats and picnicking children, it’s this morning.
“Look here,” Father says without emerging from his newspaper fortress, “the Boston Manufacturing Company is buying up more land in the Merrimack Valley, and they’re paying out dividends of over 27 percent to the investors. Twenty-seven!”
No one responds, and he goes on muttering to himself, exclaiming that he’ll have to watch those slick Lowell city men in the future.
Mother catches my eye. “You look pale, Lydia. Did you sleep poorly?”
“Do I?” I make a bright show of smiling and taking an extra helping of bacon. It doesn’t help that the crisp meat reminds me of Moses and his burned face. I force myself to swallow a tiny piece and almost gag.
“Catherine, your color is low too. There’s a fever going round the town, widow Morton has it too. I wonder if I shouldn’t call the doctor.”
Catherine’s head snaps up and we both exclaim in unison, “No!”
“Really, we’re fine,” I hurry to reassure Mother. “Just a touch of a sore throat from our walk yesterday. Catherine was saying she had one too, weren’t you, Cath?”
Catherine raises her gaze slowly to mine, and I give her a weary smile. If nothing else we’re in this together now.
But instead of understanding, or a silent look of thanks, her eyes meet mine with a malice so intense that my blood instantly goes cold.
I silently mouth “What?” but Catherine turns her nose up and looks away.
Mother sighs. “I hope it’s not catching. I’ve been feeling rather tired lately.”
Father finds her hand from behind his paper and gives it a pat. “You really ought to rest, my dear. No more of this calling on sick widows, it isn’t good for your constitution. Why don’t you go have a nice lie-down?”
Mother opens her mouth as if to say something, but closes it and nods. “Yes,” she says, pushing her chair back. “Perhaps that’s a good idea. Excuse me.”
“I’ll bring you up a cup of tea soon,” I tell her, thinking of the mint I harvested and how that might be a nice addition to a hot drink. She gives me a thin smile before disappearing to her room.
Catherine glares at me from across the table. “You and your tea.”
“What?”
She flickers a glance to Father who’s still absorbed in land deals and dividends, then scrapes her chair back and stands. Her arms are wobbly and she has to brace her weight against the table. “Don’t play stupid with me, Lydia,” she hisses.
“What are you talking about?”
Then, without a word of explanation, she bolts out of the room.