George Burroughs has been arrested and now sits in the Salem jail. Papa wants to go to his examination, and this time he wants me to attend with him. All the hearings are taking place at Salem Town now. Papa fears he would not be able to hold his tongue were I not there in the room with him. As long as I am there, he will think twice about shouting a protest such as put John Proctor in chains. He worries what would become of me if he were arrested and I was left alone at the cottage.
We are both of us torn by the weight of knowing all these people cannot possibly be witches. If we speak in their defense, we become accused. If we say nothing, we condemn them falsely with our silence. What would God have us do?
Papa has decided to write a letter to the magistrates Hathorne and Corwin and fill it with as elegant and insightful words as can be found to persuade them who have been so easily persuaded by less grand words.
He is praying for the opportune time to give it to Hathorne. He is afraid no matter what he says or how he says it, he will be jailed and I will be alone at the cottage.
I wonder—and I shudder to even write it—where is God in all this?
I have been praying that the eyes of the deceived may be opened, or that my eyes may be opened if these people be indeed servants of the Devil.
But my prayers go unanswered.
Papa awoke with a fever today and could not attend Rev. Burroughs’s examination. I begged Papa to let me stay with him today, but he pleaded with tears in his eyes to see to what could be done for George Burroughs. He tried to raise himself from his bed, as though he might run to the meetinghouse himself and defend George Burroughs. Papa would have crawled to Salem in the mud to speak on his behalf if he had the strength. But he does not. He reminded me that I do.
“Who will care for you while I am away?” I said. But Papa just said, “What need have I today that God cannot rightly meet? But who will stand for Rev. Burroughs in that place of deception, daughter?” And I said in my heart, “And where is God in that place of deception, Papa? If God is here with you, why can He not also be with George Burroughs?” But I did not say it. Papa asked me to carry his letter to the magistrates and pray that God would show me the providential time to give it to Magistrates Hathorne or Corwin.
I am shaking as I write this. And my heart is shaking within me. For I was in that meetinghouse today, and I saw what happened. There was much need for God there. And I fear God was shut out of doors. The people do not want answers to their fear. They want reasons for it.
I sat with Goody Trumball. She fidgeted the whole time. I perceived she is also of a mind that what is happening in our Village and in Salem Town is a spectacle from hell. I knew there had to be others. They are afraid to speak out, just as Papa and I are. The magistrates asked question after question, willing the reverend to confess to partnering with the Devil, but Rev. Burroughs would not.
Rev. Burroughs is not the most holy man I know. He is large and loud and can be driven to arrogance, which is why I cannot believe he is a wizard. He is far too human.
The magistrates asked when Rev. Burroughs had last had communion, as if they already knew it had been so long he could not remember. They asked if his children had been baptized, knowing, surely, they had not. Then they asked about his wives, since they had appeared to people and claimed to have been murdered by him. Here Susannah Sheldon, a young maiden I have known since a young girl, screamed that Burroughs’s dead wives were standing right in front of her, wrapped in sheets and calling out that Burroughs had murdered them. Others said Rev. Burroughs lifted a whole barrel of molasses with naught but two fingers. And that he held a heavy gun with one finger. And this six or seven years past! The Devil’s enabling, they said. During the questioning, the afflicted girls, or so they are called, began to scream and writhe. It was a dreadful sight. The magistrates ordered the girls out of the room so they could restore order. And when order was restored, Burroughs was taken back to jail.
I came home and realized I still had Papa’s letter in my pocket.
Papa is still feverish. John Peter came for eggs today and told us Rev. Burroughs has been transferred to the jail in Boston.
He also told us Sarah Osborne has died in prison.
Clarissa didn’t ask about my weekend. Perhaps she was waiting for me to volunteer information, but what was there to say? I saw Cole and Raul for all of five minutes, and I’m almost certain Cole’s spontaneous decision to play Halo 3 at a friend’s house Saturday night would have trumped doing something else with Clarissa and me had she come. I had the feeling Cole forgot he even asked about her. So I didn’t mention the weekend and neither did Clarissa.
Abigail seemed quiet and preoccupied that following week and as uninterested in my weekend as Clarissa, though I’m sure for very different reasons.
When I arrived at Abigail’s house Tuesday afternoon, I was greeted by Esperanza, who had a pensive look on her face as she opened the door. She showed me into the tiled entry, and I could hear Abigail’s raised voice coming from behind the closed library doors on my left.
“We’ve been through this before, Graham,” Abigail said, her voice laced with anger and frustration. “I am not going to let the family inheritance be slowly gambled away. I know that’s exactly what you’d do with it.”
“Miss Boyles is on the phone,” Esperanza said quickly. “An unexpected call. Perhaps you don’t mind waiting for her in here?”
She motioned to the sitting room. The doors were open today. Crisp autumn sunlight fell across the parquet floor and glinted off the crystal orbs on the chandelier. It was a lovely room, but I would have preferred waiting in the kitchen or the dining room or the patio. The sitting room seemed to exude a keen longing. Not the kind of longing that made you impatient for Christmas, but the kind that filled you with emptiness. The kind that made you feel alone.
I turned to ask Esperanza if I could wait for Abigail in the kitchen, but she was closing the sitting room doors behind her as she left. Whatever Abigail was saying, I wasn’t meant to hear it. I didn’t know who Graham was, but it was evident Abigail was ticked at him, he wanted money, and Abigail didn’t want to give it to him. I could barely hear her voice now—just muffled sound waves and snippets of inflection. I couldn’t make out any of the words.
I moved away from the closed doors and gazed about the room. The sofa and armchairs looked pristinely uncomfortable. Each pillow was perfectly situated, and the upholstery bore no wrinkles, pulled threads, or the sheen of having been sat upon. The thick wool rug in the middle of the room looked like it had just been rolled off the boat from China. There wasn’t a scuff mark, a smudge, or any other evidence of human touch on the walls or baseboards.
Along a wall of multipaned windows was a mahogany table decorated with framed photographs. Intrigued, I walked toward it, suddenly glad to be in a room where a bit of Abigail’s past lingered.
The first photograph was a sepia-toned eight-by-ten of a man with a handlebar moustache and wearing a suit, sitting in a Queen Anne chair. Behind him was a woman with dark curls wearing a white dress and matching white shoes with button closures. She held a small bouquet. Neither smiled. Abigail’s parents, no doubt, on their wedding day, looking like they couldn’t stand the sight of each other. Perhaps they loved each other very much and the photographer had told them to stand still and not move a muscle, which meant no smiling. But looking at those dour faces, it was easy to imagine Abigail grew up in a cheerless home.
The next photograph, also in sepia, was of a black-haired young girl in a sailor dress, who was also no doubt sitting quite still but whose tiny features bore a smile under wraps. I recognized the shape of the eyes and the lift of the cheekbones. This was Abigail at five or six. She looked happy.
The third photo was also of Abigail, now a few years older, sitting on a porch railing with another girl with lighter hair. Dorothea, perhaps? The two girls wore matching ruffled dresses and carried unopened parasols. Their heads were bent toward each other, and they looked content to sit that way for hours.
The fourth was another bridal photo, this one black and white and with the look of the 1940s. The man in the photo wore an army uniform and the woman, a white peplum suit with a matching netted hat. In her arms she carried a nosegay of teacup roses. She and the man both smiled from ear to ear. The woman looked like an older version of the honey-haired girl sitting with Abigail. The fifth and last photo was of the same woman holding an infant in her arms. The woman was smiling at the camera, and the baby was smiling at the woman. I picked it up.
Dorothea had had a child.
I wondered at that moment if the baby in Dorothea’s arms was the guy in Maine who expected to inherit Abigail’s estate. Abigail told me the day I met her she had only one living relative. Just the one. And it was a man who lived in Maine.
Abigail had also said she had a mind to will that man her books and nothing else because he saw so little value in them.
And it occurred to me with a tantalizing jolt that this was who she was talking to, at that moment, in the library.
Graham.
Her cousin Dorothea’s child.
Her only living relative.
And clearly someone she did not admire.
I had the photo of Dorothea and her baby in my hand when the sitting room doors opened and Abigail came into the room.
“Sorry I kept you waiting, Lauren,” she said, looking at what I held in my hands, not at me. She walked toward me.
“No problem.” I kept my voice casual, like I hadn’t just figured out something curiously tragic. I set the photograph back on the table where I found it. “Is this Dorothea?”
“Yes.” Abigail’s tone revealed nothing.
“And her child?”
“Yes.” And this time Abigail’s voice seemed to falter. She looked at the photograph, and I could see hushed pain in her watery eyes. I had touched a place that still ached.
I wished I had said nothing, so great did the anguish appear to yet be.
“I’m sorry, Abigail. I didn’t mean to pry.”
She took her time answering. “You didn’t pry. You merely asked a question. Yes, that’s my cousin, Dorothea. Her husband, Joseph, died in the war, and she died within a year of giving birth. She never got over losing her husband. And Joseph never even saw his child. He left for Africa when Dorothea was six months pregnant.”
“I … I really am so sorry, Abigail.”
“It was a long time ago.” She inhaled heavily, and I could see her gathering up her composure to move away from a past that still stung. Her eyes lingered on the photograph I had replaced.
I pointed to the photograph of the two girls. “And this is you and Dorothea?”
“Yes. At the beach house. We spent a few weeks every summer at my aunt and uncles summer place on Pismo Beach.” The muscles in Abigail’s face relaxed as her mind floated back to sandy beaches and salty air. For a moment, she looked young and nearly happy. But then the muscles around her eyes and mouth tightened again, and when she turned to me a second later, her gaze was polite but stiff. “Ready to work?”
“Um, sure.”
I moved away from the table and followed Abigail toward the double doors. Her rubber-soled shoes squeaked on the wood floor, and she seemed to hurry into the entryway so the squeaking would stop. We moved wordlessly from one room to another, from the room of the dead to the room where time lay in pages everywhere I looked.
As Abigail retrieved the diary and I took my place at the writing desk, I laced my thoughts together. Abigail had probably promised to look after Dorothea’s baby, and she tried, but Graham grew up to be a man who cared only about money. Perhaps Abigail’s aunt, Grahams grandmother, raised Graham, but she and her husband didn’t have the money Abigail’s father did. Maybe they didn’t care for Graham the way Abigail wanted him cared for. And Abigail felt like she had failed Dorothea somehow. She wanted to do more for Dorothea’s child, but something prevented her. Just like Mercy wanted to speak out on behalf of the wrongfully accused, but saw no clear avenue by which to do it.
Abigail set the diary in front of me.
“I’ve had a busy day, Lauren, and I’m not feeling well. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t join you for supper tonight. Esperanza is making a salmon quiche. It’s very good. But I think I will retire for the day. I … I need to lie down.”
Abigail hadn’t lost her indomitable polish, but I saw cracks in her armor for the first time. She didn’t just grieve for a lost love; she grieved a lifetime of loss. I wondered how much I had accurately guessed.
“Can I do anything for you, Abigail?” I had never been more sincere.
She smiled at me. “Thank you, no.”
Abigail walked slowly away, leaving me alone with Mercy.