The Endless Forest
Page 105

One look at Callie’s face made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with Mrs. Cady, whose curiosity was open and avid. Ethan thanked her and they walked on into the center of town, where he took two rooms at the White Horse Inn. Then Callie stayed behind, dripping onto the hearth, while he went out to take care of matters that could not wait. She barely looked at him when he told her where he was going, so lost was she in her own thoughts.
In the next hour, while he roused the blacksmith from his Sunday rest and made arrangements for the horses to be stabled overnight, Ethan tried to plan what he was going to say to Callie and failed completely. He had only a vague idea of what was wrong, but one thing he knew for certain: She wouldn’t welcome empty promises.
She was waiting for him by the front door of the inn when he got back. Her clothes were still wet, and her hair lay in clumps and snarls on her shoulders.
“You know all the same people as Daniel,” she said. There were hectic spots of color high on her cheeks. “You know his friends. Where might they have gone?”
The one question Ethan had hoped she wouldn’t put to him, because in fact he did have some ideas. Daniel had a few very close friends, one of them a carpenter here in Johnstown, and another who lived due west on a large family farm. Both men had served with Daniel and Blue-Jay in the militia, and Ethan had met them now and then over the years. But he had no intention of telling Callie about those friends, because she seemed now to have regained some of the frantic energy that had driven them here in the first place. The idea of intruding on Daniel and Martha at this most sensitive time was not acceptable to him, but Callie would insist.
Hope faded from her face, and she went back to her room without another word.
Ethan ordered a meal and tea, and arranged for the innkeeper’s wife to find some dry clothes for both of them and then he went up to Callie to see what could be done. On the way he thought of Curiosity, and tried to imagine what advice she might give, if she were only nearby to talk to.
He said, “If we could find them this evening, what would you hope to accomplish?”
At first it seemed as if Callie hadn’t heard him. She stared at the untouched food on her plate and then slowly raised her gaze to him. “I don’t know. Nothing, I suppose.”
And then, to his horror, a tear ran down Callie’s cheek. Callie Wilde was the most pragmatic, sensible, least emotional person he had ever known, and now she was weeping for reasons she couldn’t or wouldn’t name. But she would not appreciate soft words, and so he cut to the heart of the matter.
“If you love Daniel, you could have told him so at any time in the last years.”
Her eyes flickered toward him, unsure, and then away again. Rather than embarrassment what he saw on her face was something like annoyance. “What gives you the idea that I love Daniel Bonner?”
“Don’t you?”
“No,” she said. “I think of him as a friend, and nothing more. As I think of you.” She looked at him directly, as if she thought this might cause him pain and she was glad of it.
“I feel the same way,” Ethan said.
“About me, or Daniel?”
Her tone was stark and even strident, but Ethan found that he couldn’t take offense. “I think of Daniel as a brother. He would want to help you if he were here, but he is not, and I am.”
“I don’t want your help,” Callie said. “I don’t want Daniel’s help either.”
“But you would have let Martha help you.”
She regarded him coolly. “Martha is to me what Daniel is to you.”
Ethan was determined to meet her cruelty with calm, just as he was determined to continue the conversation until he had the answers he needed. Callie was angry; she had been angry for years, but she had never let it out, as though she were afraid what might happen if she let go. Others had seen only her sharp wit and sharper tongue, until recently. Until the flood, and Martha’s homecoming.
With Callie the best approach was usually the most direct. He said, “Why are you so angry at Martha?”
She jerked as if slapped. Her face, when she turned to look at him, had drained of all color.
“You think I’m angry. At Martha.”
“I do think so, yes.” Calm in the face of the pain.
“And why would I be angry at her?” Callie asked, her voice low.
“She left you once, came back, and now suddenly she’s left again.”
She struck out like a viper, the flat of her hand meeting his cheek with enough force to bring water to his eyes. Ethan caught her wrist before she could strike again.
The last time Ethan had seen Callie weeping was the spring they buried her mother. Even then she had cried reluctantly, her whole being stiff with resistance while the tears rolled down her face. Only Martha had seemed able to reach her.
She broke away, turned her back to him and shuddered with the effort to control herself. Ethan waited, five minutes, ten minutes, a full half hour before she was willing to look at him again.
She said, “I do not begrudge Martha her good fortune. I do not.”
“But?”
She drew in a hitching breath. “She is always being rescued. First her inheritance and Manhattan, and when that went wrong everyone came to her aid and brought her home as though she were as fragile as an egg. And now—now—”
For a moment he thought she could not go on, but she found her voice again.
“I have things to lose too, but nobody seems to remember me. Everything turns around Martha. What about me? What about the orchard?”