The Endless Forest
Page 15

She had stayed with the Bonners for that visit too, because Nathaniel Bonner was one of her guardians. Nathaniel and his sons had been out on a week-long hunt, and so they were a household of women: Elizabeth and Birdie and the two LeBlanc girls who came every day to cook and clean. Curiosity and Hannah came by almost every day, always with Hannah’s children in tow. There were visitors enough, and still there had been little to do but help with the household chores, read and write letters, and pay visits.
The only person she cared to call on was Callie Wilde. Callie was not a blood relation but she was a stepsister, and the only family Martha would claim. The hardest part about going to Manhattan had been leaving Callie behind. She had asked about taking her stepsister with them to Manhattan, but Callie herself had no interest in that proposition.
Even at that young age her friend’s only interest was the orchard her father had started, and the pursuit of the perfect apple.
The storm picked up its rhythm when they were less than a half mile out of Paradise, and Martha realized that some would take it as a sign: a turn for the worse in the fortunes of the village. Most likely some would hold even this against her, and truth be told, she couldn’t be sure they were wrong.
Lily hunkered down under the oiled tarp and told herself yet again that it would not do to scream at the heavens. So close to home after so long, and the oxen had slowed to a painful crawl, their heavy hooves sending up sprays of mud and water with every jolt forward.
The irony of it was not lost on her. She had left Italy with doubts; then one day she had come up on deck at first light and there was the shoreline, Long Island stretching as far as she could see. Everything in her had clutched in joy and fear; she was sure, at that moment, that they had been right to come home.
And it was at that very point that things began to go wrong with the journey. Broken axels, lamed horses, lost trunks, misplaced letters of credit. They had finally boarded the steamboat that would take them up the Hudson in a fraction of the time it had once taken to sail the same route, but even that had not gone to plan. She had given up counting the delays after the third time they were required to disembark because of trouble with the boilers.
People were burned to bits every year when steamboats caught fire, she reminded herself each time she made her way onto the shore. Better to arrive home like this than not at all.
Once they finally reached Albany the men had been keen to have a look at how the great canal was coming along. Even Simon, who understood how much she wanted to get home, even Simon couldn’t hide his fascination with the idea of double-stair-step locks. Only the promise of more bad weather put an end to the discussion.
“Better to wait until it’s done,” Simon had said—to console himself alone. Lily would go to see it with him, but for his sake rather than her own. She would draw the locks and the boats and the mules who trod the towpath, but it was Simon who looked forward to the outing. And they had not even reached Paradise yet.
“Next year you’ll be able to travel from Manhattan to Albany to Lake Erie without a single portage,” Luke added. “It’s a great advance for commerce.”
No doubt it was, but at that moment Lily wouldn’t care if the whole thing collapsed upon itself and sunk into the middle of the earth. She wanted to be home. She was desperate to be home.
Now the wind rose in eddies, picking at wet bonnets and capes. It set the trees to twisting and bowing low to the ground like agitated old ladies, all flutter and creak. The sharp crack of a branch giving way made them all jump.
So close to home, and the storm dug in its heels, sending down a cold driving rain that cut right through the stoutest boiled wool mantle. Were the little girls weeping? Lily thought she might join them.
“Almost there!” Luke rode up alongside the wagon. His voice had the hearty tone that was meant to comfort his frightened children, but the boys only scowled at him and the girls wouldn’t meet his eye at all. Lily saw him exchange glances with Jennet, a whole conversation in a flash. Worry for their children bound them like a sturdy rope, intricately knotted.
As they came around the last curve and onto the road that led down through the village and to the west branch of the Sacandaga, the rain began to slacken again.
“One last bluster,” Jennet announced. “The storm is played out now. I can feel it.”
The children immediately perked up and began to look about themselves, but the oxen took no note of the weather one way or the other and plodded along at their usual pace; it was enough to drive a person mad.
Adam said, “The road is a river. Look, the oxen are pulling us down a river.” Nathan giggled. Neither of the boys were concerned; they were enjoying the novelty of being out in the weather. They had already forgotten the morning’s scolding, but then it had been Gabriel who had been taken aside, he and Annie with him, for a discussion that had taken the defiance from his expression and replaced it with something else, far more thoughtful.
The nieces and nephews loved the idea of Gabriel and Annie getting married. And despite the surprise of it all, Lily found she liked it too. It seemed right, once she saw them together. It was one more bit of evidence of what she had known in theory: Everyone had gone about their business while she and Simon were away. Gabriel was a man, as good a shot as their grandfather had been. “Better than I was at his age,” Lily’s father had told her. “Better than I was at my peak. As good as Daniel was.”
Nobody said, before he lost the use of his arm. But they thought it, every one of them.