fifty-one
Lapeer County, June 1875
With great effort, Mary raised her eyelids. Nathaniel’s face came into shaky focus against a background of blurry colors. Baby Margaret wiggled in his arms.
“Mary?”
He sounded like he was outside, speaking through a closed window.
“Mary, can you hear me? The doctor is on his way.”
Margaret did look remarkably like Nathaniel.
“Mary?”
She closed her eyes.
“Mary?”
Oblivion.
Mary opened her eyes. Mrs. Farnsworth sat next to her with a bucket at the ready.
“Mr. Balsam is sending someone to hurry the doctor along.”
“George,” Mary whispered in a hoarse voice.
“You want to see Little George?”
Mary shook her head. The movement made her dizzy and she began to heave. Mrs. Farnsworth thrust the bucket at her, making it just in time. She let Mrs. Farnsworth wipe her mouth with a cloth.
“Big George.”
“Ma’am, I—”
“Please?”
The housekeeper let out a long sigh. “I’ll get him.”
Mary closed her eyes, but her head still spun. When next she opened them, George’s face filled her vision, looking so much like the man who had stayed at her bedside that fateful night when her first baby died—her real baby girl.
“Mrs. Balsam?”
“George,” she whispered.
“I’m here.”
She smiled. “You’re always there.” She moved her fingers. “Hold my hand.”
George stood up and closed the door. Then he took her hand in his.
“I need to tell you something.”
“Save your strength.”
“George, we have a baby.”
A look of panic came over his face, and he glanced at the closed door. “No, ma’am, we don’t.”
“Don’t call me ma’am.”
“Let me get you some cold water.”
“That day in the woods. I wasn’t with child. I thought . . . But I was wrong. But after . . . The midwife switched them. Took our baby boy away. And gave me the baby of Nathaniel’s prostitute.”
George was shaking his head. “You’re not thinking straight.”
“He’s out there. Someone has him. Mrs. Farnsworth knows. Please forgive me.”
“No, Mrs. Balsam.”
“Please forgive me. Oh, God, I’m so sorry. God, please forgive me.”
“Shhh,” he soothed.
“Anna knows where he is. You need to find him. Little George knows. Somehow. Figured it out. Maybe saw the baby in the basket. I don’t know. Clever, dreadful, spiteful boy. It would have been better if he had been the one born dead.”
“You don’t know what you are saying.”
“He helped them.” She began to cry. “Those awful men. The fire.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Somehow. I don’t know. Wanted you all gone. Please forgive me.” She squeezed his hand. “I love you, George.”
Mrs. Farnsworth opened the door. George snatched his hand away from Mary’s and put it in his lap.
“Mrs. Balsam needs her rest.”
He stood up. “Of course.”
Mrs. Farnsworth placed a wet rag on Mary’s ashen forehead. When the housekeeper straightened, she did not try to hide her contempt. George didn’t need to ask her anything. He left the room and reentered a world that had been irreversibly altered, a world in which he was the father of a lost son.
Mary tried to feel comforted by the cool rag, but the sensation of spinning out of control would not abate. She remembered the strange look Little George had given her at the dinner table that night. He had not looked her in the eye since baby Margaret’s arrival. Until that very evening.
She’d seen him in the herb garden earlier in the day, digging up weeds, a punishment she had meted out for some small breach of protocol, though what the infraction was she could not call to mind. It didn’t matter. They both knew the real reason.
Jacob had been talking to him in his new voice, courtesy of missing front teeth and a broken jaw that hadn’t healed correctly. “Carepul wi dat. Dat ain’t no parsnip. You best burn dat. Don’t let da pigs get at it. Dey be dead bepore you know it.”
She hadn’t seen what he’d done with the plant as she returned to the task of mending a torn shirt for Nathaniel.
No. It was Big George’s shirt.
Big George.
“No, that one is for you, Big George,” her son had said as the man set the plate in front of Mary.
“You should serve your mother first,” Big George had replied gently.
Roast chicken, spring peas, baked parsnips with butter and herbs. Mary loved parsnips. She had snuck a bite from her plate even before everyone had sat down, before they had said grace.
What had she seen in Little George’s eyes?
The convulsions returned and Mary felt her throat closing. She struggled for breath. She heard Mrs. Farnsworth’s strangled cry for Nathaniel.
Then she was swallowed up by the darkness.