With Lizzie gone and Mrs. Borden tucked into the guest room attending to some seams in one of her summer dresses, I quietly made my way down the back stairs. With everything I’d learned today, I needed to see Liam. He’d sort through this for me, remind me that nothing mattered so long as we had each other.
The house was dark, the candle Abigail Borden had left lit in the front window filtering through the rooms. She knew I was going out, even knew I was planning on meeting Liam. Her only word of caution had been to make sure he walked me home. Apparently, the streets of Fall River were no place for a young lass to be wandering about alone.
Her concern warmed my heart. It made me think of my own mother back in Ireland, and then the mother Lizzie had lost. I’d seen a new side of Mrs. Borden today, the quiet worry she harbored for the girls. She seemed willing to do anything and everything to keep them safe, but Lizzie didn’t see that, or as her stepmother had put it, Lizzie’s excitable nature prevented her from seeing it.
I made my way through the kitchen to the sitting room, was nearly clear across the room before a subtle intake of breath startled me. I quickly darted into the parlor and grabbed the lit candle from the window and held it up to confirm who I saw.
I watched Mr. Borden for a moment, his hand tracing tiny circles across the mantel, each mindless movement carefully skirting around the brass key he kept there. I knew he saw me, the flare of light and my not-so-gentle steps had given me away. But he made no movement towards me, uttered no words of acknowledgement, not even a curt nod of the head.
I put the candle down on the table in the sitting room. The narrow staircases in this house could be treacherous in the dark, and I saw no wick or flame in his hand.
“Do you know why I lock my bedroom door at night? Why my desk, and Abigail’s wardrobe closet, even the china hutch housing my family’s silver, are all locked each day?” he finally asked, his words coming on top of a heavy sigh.
It wasn’t just the chests he kept locked, but everything. Every door, every window, every crevice of this house was sealed off with an iron key. And each night he tested them, over and over as if to make sure nobody had tampered with them. I could still hear the sound echoing through the walls of the house, the sharp, metallic smack of the lock sliding into place and then being undone again, and redone. It was like a ritual, a routine. God knows why he did it or how long it would last, but if I’d learned anything in that house, it was to pretend I saw and heard nothing.
“Prowlers, sir?” I asked, knowing full well that he wasn’t afraid of the occasional hooligan. To be honest, the people in this town were too afraid of him and his “spinster” daughters to even think about entering this house unannounced.
I saw the slight nod of his head in the glow of the candlelight. “Yes, prowlers. Thieves on the inside.”
I knew what he meant; he believed the items stolen from him were Lizzie’s doing. That’s probably why he hadn’t summoned the police immediately when the barn was broken into. He alerted the police only after he’d searched the barn himself. That was probably a not-so-subtle cue to Lizzie that he was in control. That he believed her to be the culprit and that he would no longer tolerate her behavior. Fortunately for her, he found the prussic acid before the police arrived.
“I owe you an apology, Miss Sullivan.”
He turned to look at me then, and even from across the room, I could see the sincerity in his eyes, the strength and humility it took for him to utter those words. Sorry wasn’t a word I’d ever heard used in this home before, the words “my due” and “my right” often taking its place.
“I shouldn’t have let this go on for as long as I have. I knew Lizzie had taken a liking to you and purposely ignored it. For that, I am truly sorry. With you occupying Lizzie’s thoughts, with her every action centered around you, Abigail and Emma had a reprieve, a brief chance to resume the semblance of a normal life. I selfishly wanted that for them and turned a blind eye to the unnatural fascination Lizzie has towards you.”
“No need to apologize, sir. I am under your employ . . .” I went to say, but he cut me off.
“Under my employment and, as such, under my protection.” His voice rose now, and I got a small understanding of how his business associates must feel and why he was so successful. His tone brooked no rebuttal, not even a hint that an alternate explanation was warranted or welcomed.
“My first wife, Sarah . . . Lizzie’s mother, was a good woman, a good mother. She struggled with demons, but she always won. As each of my children approached their first birthdays, I could see the demons lifting, the spirit I fell in love with slowly coming back.”
I’d heard rumors of such demons, seen them firsthand back in Ireland. Maggie O’Shea lived only a few miles away. She married my oldest brother Sean when she was barely sixteen. I had a niece, a round little thing with a shocking head of black hair. I remember Sean bringing her by the house for days at time, claiming Maggie had birthing fever and was out of sorts and talking nonsense. Even when the fever broke, Maggie seemed different—always crying, always mumbling to herself. I couldn’t help but wonder how Maggie was now, if she had borne my brother more children, or if the demons Mr. Borden spoke of had taken her mind, too.
“My Uncle Laddy’s wife struggled with them as well, but she was weak, let her sickness claim not only her soul but the souls of her children as well. That’s why I did it. That’s why I killed the pigeons, Miss Sullivan.”
I paled, my mind floating back to the image of Lizzie’s pets, mangled and headless. It had taken me hours to clear the crimson from the kitchen floor, the knots of the wood absorbing it, the color spreading through the rough grain of the wood all while the smell of blood pudding festered in the air.
“I’m sorry, sir?” I didn’t understand how slaughtering Lizzie’s pets had anything to do with his first wife’s death or how he could possibly justify what he’d done that day.
“Lizzie may not be a handsome woman, and no one, maid or master, has escaped the gossip that surrounds her. Regardless of how we live, no matter how much I try to portray this family as miserly and cheap, the enormity of my wealth is known. One day that wealth will pass on to my daughters. Any prosperity-seeking man would be more than willing to overlook Lizzie’s peculiarities in the hopes of securing her hand and in turn, my money. I cannot let that happen.”
“But there are no suitors, sir. I am sure Lizzie would have told me if there were.”
Mr. Borden shook his head and took a step closer, the same pity I’d heard earlier in Mrs. Borden’s voice when she’d shown me the Prussic acid now mirrored in his expression. “You are young yet, Miss Sullivan, too young to decipher reality from fiction, to understand the things Lizzie chooses to tell you are not always true. There are young men, one in particular. My associates have seen Lizzie talking to him in town. I’ve heard his voice myself in the barn. He delivered the feed for her birds once a month, but she meets him nearly every week in town.”
“But Lizzie married to a man of good standing . . . isn’t that what you want?” Isn’t that what every father wanted? I added to myself. That is why I was sent here, why my own parents gave me what little money they had to buy my passage. They wanted a better life for me, one with a good man with a solid reputation.
“Most fathers would want that, yes. I mourn the loss of the grandchildren I will never know, the name and wealth that will never be passed on. But I would gladly give away all my wealth and position if it meant not passing the illness that curses this family on to my grandchildren.” He straightened up and looked me in the eyes. “I’ll keep Lizzie alone until the day I die, if that’s what it takes to keep this curse from consuming another generation.”
My memories circled around that night, around the story Lizzie had told me the evening I’d found her wandering the kitchen in her day clothes. Andrew Borden’s great-aunt, the one who’d dropped her own children into the well. She was the one he was referring to, the illness he was desperately trying to avoid. Lizzie swore her mother suffered the same madness, was convinced it was afflicting her as well. I struggled to swallow as I remembered Lizzie’s face in the pale glow of my lantern as I tucked her in, how she confessed she was afraid the curse was coming for her. Blood or marriage . . . it didn’t matter; anybody who bore the Borden name was cursed in her mind.
She wasn’t the only one who was afraid of that. Her father was, too. And he planned to keep Lizzie a spinster her whole life to avoid it.