“CATHERINE?”
I catch up to her in the front hall, where she’s leaning against the stairs, face cradled in her hands. When she hears me coming she jerks her head up, hastily wiping away a tear.
I know I should leave well enough alone, but she looks so small, so pathetic with her uncombed hair and stained shift. She lost so much blood yesterday that I can’t help but be worried for her, and that’s to say nothing of what must be going through her head right now, the hollowness of her loss.
She glares at me from red-rimmed eyes. “What do you want?”
I ignore the razor-sharp hostility in her words. “I’m sorry about...about what happened yesterday. Really, I am.” I reach out and touch her on the shoulder. She violently shrugs off my hand.
“You’re sorry,” she repeats tonelessly, studying the carpet. Then, lifting her eyes to mine, she takes a deep breath, raises her hand back and, with surprising strength, smacks me clean across my cheek.
Gasping, I stand there, too stunned to do anything except rub my stinging face. “What was that for?”
“You know exactly what it’s for,” she hisses.
I wince, vaguely wondering if it will leave a mark, and if it does, if it will dissolve by Friday. “No, I don’t.”
Glaring, she leans in so close that I can smell the lingering odor of blood, of sickness, of death that wreathes her. The front hall shrinks around us and grows quiet, the only sound the faint clinking of dishes as Ada clears the table in the dining room. Catherine’s words fall into the silence like steaming coals.
“You murdered my child.”
The accusation knocks me back, sucks the air right out of me. I reach for the sideboard behind me, steadying myself. “Catherine,” I whisper. “How can you say that?”
“Admit it,” she says, jabbing her finger into my chest, backing me farther up against the sideboard. “I saw you out poking around your herbs. You thought you could slip me something in my tea and I wouldn’t know. You make me sick.”
Blood rushes to my head. My face must be red as fire and it feels just as hot. I can’t get my words out around my suddenly thick tongue. “N-no! I would never.”
Her eyes narrow to slits. I shrink under her penetrating gaze, hopelessly aware that my guilt must be written on my face plain as day. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t go through with it; I thought about it, I prayed for the same outcome, and coincidence or not, the baby is dead.
I bite my lip, unable to meet her eye. “You never even drank the tea.” I feel rather than see the bitter, triumphant tilt of her chin.
“I knew it! For all your downcast lashes and moral high ground, you’re just as bad as the rest of us. Worse even, because you really believe you’re a good person. All the while you’re skulking around, plotting against me and my innocent baby.”
“That’s not fair. I don’t—”
“Oh, shut up, just shut up! I know what you are even if you don’t see it yourself. Did you know that I watched you that day with Tommy Bishop? I saw you from the window, the whole thing. You never laid a finger on that boy. Everyone else came running around after it was over and thought it was a street fight between two little brats, but I saw it all and you never touched him, not with your hands.”
My skin prickles cold. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her voice is low, deceptively steady. “Maybe you didn’t put something in my tea, but there’s something wrong with you, something different inside of you. You used whatever...” she searches for a word “...power you used on Tommy Bishop, on me to kill my baby. Have you forgotten that I was there at the pond? That sound that came out of you, it wasn’t...human.”
Snippets of memories, incomplete pictures from that long-ago day flash across my mind: matted fur and blood, the film of red behind my eyes as I found Tommy Bishop in the street, a pressure building and rising inside of me until my hands tingled and my body vibrated. The same sensations I felt when Emeline died and I wanted to strike out against Mr. Barrett and the pond churned with my rage. My stomach lurches and I push the memories away.
Catherine is watching me. “You’re evil,” she says with something between awe and disgust. “You’re really evil and you don’t even realize it.”
My last vestiges of guilt fade as her accusations break against me like waves, one after the other. I draw myself up taller, moving away from the sideboard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, firmer this time.
Catherine stands her ground. “Yes, you do!” Her voice is rising, her words cracking with hysteria. “You wanted my baby dead. You thought it was an abomination and you’re glad that it died!”
At one time I might have held back, but the words erupt out of me now, a swift torrent of bad feelings, barely suppressed grudges and untold truths held below the surface for too long.
“Of course I’m glad that it died! That thing would have ruined our lives. I saw it, and it wasn’t even a baby, it was...grotesque! It was unnatural from the very moment of its conception. How can you possibly think it would have been born healthy and right?”
Her face drains of color and she takes a shaky step back, as if she had never even for a moment considered this. But then her eyes narrow and she regains her balance. When she speaks it’s low and dangerous, like a snake in tall grass, ready to strike its prey. “You. Little. Bitch. My child was conceived in love. You think the world is black-and-white, that because Charles is my brother he couldn’t possibly love me in any other way. You could never possibly understand what he and I shared, and now you’ve taken away the only thing I had left of him.”
“You’re disgusting. You—”
She lets out a shrill, piercing, laugh. “Oh, grow up. You’re almost nineteen and you act like you’re still in the nursery. Playing make-believe with Emeline was one thing, but she’s gone and you can’t seem to shake your fantasy world. Maybe someday you’ll learn that in the real world happiness doesn’t just fall into your lap, that you have to go out and take it for yourself, like me. But until then, by all means sit inside lost in your silly novels and pining away over the man you love and don’t have a clue how to get.”
“Maybe because I’m too busy trying to clean up your messes to be able to even think of anything besides keeping this family together. Do you have any idea how much I’ve done for you? The things I’ve sacrificed to make sure that your careless, disgusting behavior didn’t ruin us completely?”
“And did I ask you to do anything, Lydia? Did I?”
“Of course not, you were too busy opening your legs at every chance you got and—”
Catherine laughs again. “Do you know what your problem is? You think you’re some sort of martyr, that the world is broken and only you can fix it.”
“Trust me, I wish someone else would take some responsibility. Like Charles. Where is he in all this? If you love each other so much, how come you aren’t with him? He must know you hate it here, must know that you were carrying his child. Mother might turn a blind eye, but don’t think I don’t see you posting letters to London all the time. So why hasn’t he sent for you? What’s keeping you here?”
Catherine’s face freezes, and then she turns away, curling her fingers around the balusters of the stairs. “That’s none of your business,” she murmurs.
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “None of my business? How can you possibly say that after yesterday?”
She spins back to face me, emerald eyes flashing. “Because he abandoned me, that’s why! Don’t you think I’d rather be anywhere than stuck in this godforsaken place with you?”
She looks as if she instantly regrets divulging this. “Oh,” I say, taken aback. “I didn’t know.”
“Oh, what do you care?” Catherine runs an impatient hand through her tangled hair. “I got a letter from him a couple of weeks ago. He’s met some English whore, a dancer, and he’s going to marry her. He told me before I had a chance to write about the baby.”
“Catherine, I—”
“You’re sorry? Spare me.”
I’m not sorry, but I’m about to tell her that it’s for the best no matter what it feels like right now, when the door flies open. Father thunders out of the dining room, brandishing his newspaper over his head like when he used to swat Snip for having an accident inside. His face is as red as a beet, a vein I never knew he had pulsing in his temple. Catherine and I exchange a look of horror.
“For God’s sake, would you two be quiet?” he roars. “You would think we were at war with all the carrying-on out here.”
Catherine and I don’t say anything, our last words still simmering in silence between us. Father doesn’t give a backward glance as he jams his hat on his head, grabs his cane and yanks open the front door. “I’m going to the mill,” he mutters. “At least there the only noise to contend with is the looms.”
The door slams shut behind him and Catherine’s unflinching gaze slides back to me. When she speaks it’s so cold and detached that a shiver runs up my spine. “Just know this, Lydia—I will do everything I can to ensure that you are miserable and alone for the rest of your pathetic life.”
And just like that, the last tenuous strands of love, of family, of sisterhood strain and snap. Only yesterday her blood stained my hands, her laboring body vulnerable and helpless before me. I can’t take it anymore. I pick up my hem and head for my room.
“That’s right, go on, Lydia! Run away, you coward.”
My eyes are hot, but the tears stubbornly absent as I take the stairs two by two. I’m halfway up when I come to a sudden stop, nearly teetering backward.
I don’t know how long Mother has been standing there, one hand over her open mouth, the other clutching her shawl at her neck. Usually small and wispy among the imposing rooms of Willow Hall, she now towers above me, a queen of her castle. And the queen is not pleased.
I glance behind me to find Catherine has the decency to look ashamed, her gaze quickly settling back on the carpet. I can’t stop staring at my mother though, transfixed by the fury on the face that is usually so vacant and withdrawn.
Mother’s words are low and crisp. “That’s enough.” She sweeps down the rest of the stairs, her diminutive figure brushing me aside. “I won’t have another minute of this in my house. I’m at my wit’s end with all the bickering and animosity between you two.”
I’ve never seen Mother so angry. It doesn’t come naturally to her, it’s almost as if she has to feel her way along, not quite sure of what she should say. But it takes her only a matter of seconds to find her footing.
“It’s past time you were both married, but since you seem determined to spoil every opportunity, then I expect you’ll at least behave civilly to each other so long as you are under this roof.”
“Mother, that’s not fair. I—”
Mother cuts Catherine off with a look so frigid that it could turn the ocean to ice. Catherine clamps her mouth back shut.
“Now,” Mother says as she retrieves a letter from the sideboard. Catherine and I watch her in stunned silence. “This,” she says, waving the envelope, “is another letter from your Aunt Phillips. She’s lonely and doing poorly with her foot, and in need of a companion around the house.”
I swallow, casting a sidelong glance at Catherine.
“I told her that one of my daughters would be happy to come and—”
Before I can protest, Catherine blurts out, “Lydia should go.”
“Me? But I—”
“I don’t think it would be right for me to go,” Catherine hurries on. “I don’t want to start any fresh rumors about running off to Boston after Mr. Pierce.”
Mother doesn’t see the look of smug exultance that Catherine flashes me, and my heart plummets into my stomach as I realize what she’s doing.
“Catherine should go,” I say obstinately. “She’s the one that’s always going on about New Oldbury not being grand enough for her. She’s wanted to go back to Boston since the first day we arrived.”
“Oh, and you don’t? Just the other day you were complaining about how there are no bookshops here, and before that it was how much you missed the ocean.”
I feel my footing start to slip out from under me. “But...” I protest feebly. “But Mr. Barrett is calling on Friday and—”
“If Mr. Barrett were going to call on you he would have by now,” Catherine snaps, relishing the knife twist all the more because she knows it’s true.
“ENOUGH!”
The single word slices through our bickering like a knife. Mother closes her eyes and massages her temple, her flush of outrage receding just as quickly as it came on. “Lydia, you’ll go to Boston. Catherine, I don’t know what’s gotten into you but I agree, I want you home where I can keep my eye on you.”
I open my mouth to tell her what Catherine’s doing, that it’s not fair, but Mother holds up her hand to silence me, shattering my last fragment of hope. “As for Mr. Barrett,” she says with finality, “he can wait.”