The Endless Forest
Page 187

Callie shook her head slowly. “She came here to die, is that it? She wants us to watch her die. Or, wait—” She looked at Hannah. “She wants Martha to nurse her.”
Hannah gave a sharp nod of her head.
Everyone’s gaze shifted to Martha, who had lost all her color.
“You are not to even consider that seriously,” Elizabeth said in a firm voice. “If she has nowhere else to go, she must stay at the Red Dog. She can pay one of the LeBlanc girls to look out for her, and Hannah—”
“Not Hannah,” Curiosity said. “If Jemima needs doctoring, she will get it from me. I’ll sit right there and do what needs be done until she’s gone, and then we’ll bury her and we’ll be shut of her, once and for all.”
Martha said, “Why would you do that for Jemima?”
“I wouldn’t,” Curiosity said. “I’ma do it for you.”
Martha was surprised to come out of the shack and into sunshine. It seemed that much more time must have passed; she had come here one person and now she was another, and how could such a thing come to be in a matter of minutes?
Callie touched her arm and started to ask a question, but Daniel was walking toward them. She shook Callie off and went to him, her pace picking up until they met there in the middle of the pasture. Martha put her face to his shoulder and began to shake. She didn’t want this; she didn’t want Callie or anyone to see her like this, but she could not control it. Daniel’s hand cradled her head and he was whispering to her, soft nonsense things that began to work, somehow.
She was aware of other people passing but she stayed as she was. Daniel was shaking his head now and then, telling people to stay away for now.
Then he led her to the springhouse and they went inside.
She leaned against the wall, cool and damp, and made herself breathe. Once, twice, three times she drew in air until her lungs were close to bursting before letting it go.
Daniel was concerned, there was no hiding it. But he would wait. He would wait until she could find the words to tell him that her mother had come back, as Martha had always known she would, to stay. Jemima would be here until she died, and there was no way to escape that fact.
She took a step toward him and he held out his arm, drew her to him, and tucked her up against his good side, and then they settled on the bench. A small bench like any other you’d see in a dairy or woodshed, the plank worn smooth with use. Martha saw now that Daniel’s initials were carved into the corner, and she thought of him as a boy, bent over his work. It gave her comfort for a reason she didn’t understand.
“Can you talk?”
To her own surprise Martha found that she could. Once she started the words ran like a flood. She was shaking again, and in one part of her mind she wondered if she might simply break into pieces.
When she was finished, Daniel said, “Tell me the rest of it.”
She paused and tried to gather her thoughts. There was more, and he knew that without being told.
“I’ve never told anybody,” she said.
He waited, nothing of tension in his body.
“When I was younger,” Martha said, “I had a dream almost every night. Always the same dream. I come into the kitchen at the old mill house, and my mother looks up at me. She’s sitting at a table. And I walk up to her and I hit her in the head with a hammer. That dream was always so real to me, I felt the force of the blow travel up my arm and shoulder to my own skull. And then I woke up. It didn’t stop until I had been in Manhattan for at least a year.”
“Martha,” Daniel said evenly. “I don’t think you’re the only person who has dreams about killing Jemima.”
A laugh caught in her throat and turned to a sob. “But she’s my mother.”
“She gave birth to you, but I wouldn’t call her your mother.”
“That’s what Curiosity said.”
“Whatever is wrong with her now,” Daniel went on, “whatever is coming, she brought that on herself. You have no obligation to nurse her or even to visit her.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Martha said.
She might have said the things that were in her mind, but Daniel knew them already, and she disliked herself for them.
What will people think of me turning my back on her now?
He would tell her that it didn’t matter, and he was right and wrong all at once.
Daniel said, “I want you to tell me the truth, Martha. Do you want to take her in? If you feel you must, then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll see to it that she has good care, and otherwise we’ll stay clear of her.”
She shook her head. “You cannot mean that.”
“Of course I mean it. If you feel strongly that you must do this thing she is asking of you, then we’ll do it together.”
“No,” Martha said. “I don’t want to do it. I don’t want her anywhere near our home. I’m not even sure I could be in the same room with her. It doesn’t matter how sick she is, I’ve still got that hammer in my fist, and I can’t put it down.”
A harsh sound left her throat. “But she’s going to drag it out. She’ll make us all watch, and wait. She’ll hold on to every minute just to make us suffer with her. You don’t believe me, but I know it. I know she can do it. That’s why she’s here.”
Daniel’s chest rose and fell with his breathing. She pulled away to look at him, his familiar face. His beloved face. What she saw there was understanding and sympathy and concern and nothing of censure or disgust. He pulled her closer and kissed her, a sweet kiss that lingered no longer than a heartbeat. Then he pressed his mouth to her temple and he took a deep breath.