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Chapter: Constance

She had never made the conscious decision not to tell her sister. 

Their mother had died, and Constance had fallen into grief.  A piece of her remembered that Finn had encircled her within his strong arms.  She didn’t recall sending for him.  He seemingly just appeared one day and picked her up from her crumpled position in her mother’s rocker.  She and Jeanne took turns sitting there for hours at a time.

The days turned into weeks, and Constance was vaguely aware that Jeanne imposed less often on her time in the rocker.  Fumbling through the days as if moving through thick fog, Constance cared for her father as best she could.  In return, Finn took care of her.  She was grateful to have him, especially on the day Jeanne declared she was leaving their Hill.

“I only stayed these last few years because of Mama,” she revealed defensively one day.  As if she believed Constance and their father would try to stop her.  As if she feared they would keep her with them against her will.  Jeanne had accepted an offer of marriage.  She had agreed because the suitor was wealthy and handsome, of course, but more so because the accordance meant she could leave the wild of the woods and live in town.

Until this day, Constance had never realized that Jeanne’s feelings for their home had never matched her own.  She thought her sister had run to town so often simply because of her playful nature.  Lulled by her own love of the Hill, she had never questioned if Jeanne had other reasons.  She never considered that Jeanne was dreaming of escape.

The confusion Constance felt joined with her sadness.  She was already carrying the loss of her mother.  Now the loss of her sister was to be heaped upon her.  The look in Jeanne’s eyes and the flush of her face made it plain that she meant to leave with no return in mind.

“I will never see her again,” the small voice inside Constance spoke to her.  She knew it spoke true, as it always had before.

She spent the next week pushing aside her grief to assist her sister in her packing.  The groom’s sturdy companions took the bulk of the belongings, although Constance carried down the wedding quilt her mother had made.  She carried it as far as the edge of the stream and then found she couldn’t seem to take a step further.  She realized she didn’t want to anyway and passed the richly embroidered fabric into her sister’s hands.  Jeanne crooked one arm around Constance’s neck and brushed a feather kiss across her freckled cheek.  She whispered in her ear, “Don’t let this Hill make you sick as it did our mother.”

Constance jerked away from her.  Shocked at her sister’s words, she could not think of a response.  She watched Jeanne back away, turn at the stream’s edge to cross, and disappear on the other side through the thick mat of trees and shrubs.  It seemed as if the forest had swallowed her, although Constance knew that what lay beyond was simply the dusty road into town.

The walk back up to her home felt longer than usual to her.  She was glad of the robins and their cheery tune.  There were new blooms on the honeysuckle.  The sunshine broke through the tree canopy in a way that made it appear as if the sun was a physical presence.  Thick rays that you could see so clearly that they made you believe you could encircle them with your hand if only you dared reach out for them.  Constance never tried, though.  She wanted the illusion, and the glamour was enough for her.

The crows met her halfway up.  They chased away the robin’s melody, but they replaced it with a dark, throaty song of their own as they followed in the trees behind her the rest of the way home.  They cawed to one another, and at times they cawed down to her.  The small voice inside her could almost understand what they said.  “If only I could hear them clearer,” she thought as she gazed back at them.  That she felt protected by them would have to be comfort enough.

They clustered together in the oak closest to the cabin, and she arrived at the top to find Finn on the porch.  He was rocking in a chair, but it was not her mother’s.  She realized he had carved another.  Under the distraction of the day, he must have secretly arranged it on the porch from whatever hiding place he had stowed it.  He had made it so they could sit side by side, and she smiled for the first time in months. 

“Your father’s gone hunting,” Finn told her as she sat down next to him.  She nodded without speaking.  When he held his hand out to her, she stretched her arm over her rocker’s armrest and took it in her own.  He talked to her plainly about the life he wanted to have with her up on the Hill.  Away from the bustle of town, they talked about their future until the moon came up.  The whip-poor-wills rustled from their dusky hideaways to chant their lament and gorge on the insects of the night. 

Only as she and her betrothed turned inside did Constance realize she had never told Jeanne what she had learned in town.  Her mother was gone.  Her sister had abandoned her.  Who else was there to tell?  Not her father, who had pretended he had never seen the glimmer that sometimes appeared around his wife.  Not her new husband-to-be, stoic and practical and disinclined to fabrication.  Even if there was someone, why on earth would they believe her?