The Endless Forest
Page 102

She said, “I’ll make tea and see what there is to eat.”
If she moved slowly and with caution, Elizabeth thought that Callie might relax enough to start the conversation herself. She warmed the teapot, sought out the milk jug, set the table properly. It wasn’t until she put the tea and the plate of buttered bread down and sat herself that it happened.
“Martha?”
“She’s safe,” Elizabeth said.
“On Hidden Wolf.”
“Yes. For the moment.”
Callie looked so stricken that Elizabeth reached out to touch her, but the girl jerked away. A scratching at the door, and her face was suddenly alive with hope.
When Ethan came in, it all seeped away, like a candle flame stuttering out. Slowly, though, something new came into the girl’s face. Contented relief, perhaps. Resignation. Ethan was a friend she trusted who had come to help, and she was glad of it.
Without explanation or introduction Ethan said, “Here’s what’s happened so far.”
Elizabeth listened without interrupting as Ethan told Callie in great detail about what Jemima and her new husband had said and claimed, and how they had been received. He described the boy who was meant to be her half brother, and he described him carefully, noting the things that Elizabeth had seen: a sweet child, unafraid.
“Does he look like my father?”
“I think that’s for you to decide,” Ethan said.
He told her about the meeting in the schoolhouse, and the plan they had put together on such short notice.
And then, looking at Elizabeth as much as Callie, he told them about his ride up Hidden Wolf, and how he found Daniel and Martha, and the conversation they had had about the documents and the choices before them.
In all of that Callie never said a word. Instead her breath came more slowly and the little bit of color in her face seeped away until Elizabeth feared that she might faint.
Her voice rasped. “You are telling me that Martha is gone off with Daniel. Eloped with Daniel.”
“That was the suggestion put to them,” Ethan said. “I believe that is what they are going to do, but we can’t know for sure.”
Elizabeth said, “It is Martha’s choice, Callie. No one would try to force her.”
“They’ll be married,” Callie said dully. “Because of Jemima.”
Elizabeth caught Ethan’s gaze. He gave a small shake of the head.
“What we’re worried about right now is you,” Ethan said.
“I want to go to Johnstown,” Callie said.
Elizabeth started, but Ethan seemed not at all surprised.
“I want to go to Johnstown now,” Callie said. “Will you take me, Ethan? Or lend me a horse and I’ll ride by myself.”
And just that simply, Ethan agreed. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll take you.”
It seemed that Ethan saw nothing odd in this plan, but Elizabeth was not so fortunate.
“Callie, what do you hope to accomplish?” Elizabeth asked, in as gentle a tone as she could manage.
Callie looked puzzled, and so Elizabeth tried again. “Why is it you want to go after them?”
“To be with her,” Callie said simply. “To be there. She’s all I have left.”
Her tone was unremarkable. Elizabeth glanced at Ethan again and he shook his head at her, one sharp movement that asked her to leave this line of inquiry alone.
“We have to go straight away,” Callie said. She stood and looked at Ethan. “There’s no time to lose.”
Elizabeth said, “Callie, first we should talk about Jemima. I fear you are just as much at peril as Martha. Jemima will take what she can.”
Suddenly the animation came back into Callie’s face, as quick as a strike of lightning.
“Oh, no,” she said with a disconcerting calm. “No she won’t. I’ll kill her first. I’d go to the gallows happily for that pleasure.”
“But right now we’re going to Johnstown,” Ethan said. “We can talk about Jemima later.”
He was speaking to Callie but looking at Elizabeth, asking her for some understanding and latitude in a matter she could not fathom.
The whole episode took less than twenty minutes and now they were gone, on their way to Johnstown. Like thieves in the night.
And why did that phrase come to mind?
Elizabeth felt vaguely nauseated, and so unsettled that her hands shook when she held them out in front of herself.
When her children or grandchildren were undone by emotion, unable to act or react, she had tried to teach them to articulate their fears for themselves. Even as very young children they had found it useful. Now she must try to follow her own advice.
What scared her about Callie?
The girl was not herself. In fact, she had not been herself since the flood. Since the day they all came back from Manhattan, Lily and Simon and Martha. Something about the confluence of those two events: the flood that took everything, and the stepsister who came back unexpectedly. Then today Jemima came, and Martha, the only family Callie cared to claim, had gone.
Long ago Elizabeth had convinced herself that Callie had no feelings for Daniel, but now she wondered if she had perhaps been wrong.
It was Lily Elizabeth came across first, and Lily wanted to know everything. She lay on her daybed, propped up on pillows with one hand resting lightly on the curve of her belly. Her expression was difficult to read; just another indication that they had been too long separated and knew each other too little.