The Endless Forest
Page 201

The cart stopped, and Martha began to move forward with Daniel by her side.
Callie called out, “Go back. Go back. There’s no talking to her. She’s as mean and stubborn as she ever was.”
“Martha Kuick!” Jemima shouted, her voice cracking. “You get over here right now or I will box your ears, I promise you that, missy.”
Those words came out of the past and struck Martha with such force that she stopped, unsure of herself and the world around her. Everything folded in upon itself and narrowed to a small island of wavering lantern light on the border between open field and the dark of the woods, between herself and the woman who had borne her and raised her, the woman who demanded recognition, who would wring it from her like water from a rag, if Martha let her. Out of pity, out of guilt and a regret she could hardly explain to herself.
For that moment Martha met her mother’s gaze and a great stillness came over her, an understanding. Jemima was dying, and she was afraid. Fear and desperation had brought her back to Paradise, and to this spot on the mountain. In her rage she would strike out, as vicious as an animal caught in a trap, and she would strike first at those who were bound by blood to care for her. The mother Martha had wanted, the mother she had wanted to believe lived deep within the mother she knew, she would not show herself in these last days. There would be no gentle words or kindness, because that woman had never existed.
The woman in the cart, and the people who stood nearby talking to her and to one another, their voices small and distant … Martha was aware only of herself and Daniel, standing so close that she felt the heat of his body. Close enough to touch, but not touching. Waiting.
She drew in a hitching breath and held it for three heartbeats. Then Martha turned and started back for the house.
Behind them the cart began to move again, Florida tossing her head so that her harness jingled. Jemima was still shouting, her voice so strained that the words came out first garbled and then not at all. She hissed and squawked like an angry goose, but the cart moved on and she went with it.
Martha was aware of Daniel looking over his shoulder to watch. Then he stopped so suddenly that she would have fallen if he hadn’t steadied her.
“What?” she said. “What?”
Daniel said, “It’s Levi. Stay here.” And he ran off at a lope toward the group that had stopped again, just short of the spot where the trail turned into the wood.
Martha watched Daniel moving away from her, and then she jolted out of her waking dream.
She raised her skirts in her hands and ran after him.
Daniel was aware of his father’s steady voice, talking in a tone most people recognized as something to take seriously.
“Levi,” he was saying. “You won’t mind me pointing out that laying in wait with a loaded musket ain’t exactly neighborly.”
“My business is with her,” Levi said, jerking his head toward Jemima.
“I was wondering if you’d ever get around to it,” Jemima said. She sounded almost pleased. “All these years you been thinking about this, haven’t you. Getting me alone and making me pay.”
Ethan said, “We could gag her.”
“You should take your own advice,” Jemima said. “Unless you want me to start talking about you.”
Levi held the musket easily, like any tool a man might pick up to fix what was broken. Daniel felt the weight of the knife under his hand. It would be easy enough to disarm the man, if things got that far. If he could make himself do it.
“She wants to talk about my mother,” Levi said. “Let her talk.” He looked at no one but Jemima, even when he was speaking to someone else.
“He wants a confession,” Jemima said to no one at all.
“Now see,” Nathaniel said to Levi. “I know you’re too smart to let her draw you into one of her traps. She’ll poke at you until you boil over and point that gun at her. That’s what she wants, Levi.”
Jemima let out a barking laugh, but Levi’s face was stony. He said, “I’d be glad to oblige you, if you want to die right here and now. As soon as you confess.”
“You first,” said Jemima. “You tell everybody how it was you schemed your way into buying the orchard out from under Callie.”
“I got all night,” Levi said. “I’ll stand here until you feel like talking. I want to know how my ma died. Maybe it’s too late to see you tried and hanged, but I’ll have a confession.”
“Levi,” Callie said. “She’s never going to tell the truth you want to hear.”
“What truth is that?” Jemima said. “The one that makes you feel better?”
Nathaniel stepped right up so that he was towering over Jemima. He said, “’Mima, I’ve had just about enough of your nonsense. Another word and I gag you. You think I won’t do it?”
The lantern light lit only half her face, which looked to Daniel like a mummer’s mask, human and animal all at once.
“Now I think I got a solution that will satisfy Levi and won’t run too contrary to the law. You listening, Levi?”
“I’ve got nothing to say about this?” Jemima tried to sit up straighter.
“Not a thing,” said Nathaniel.
“Go on,” Levi said.
“I say tomorrow we fetch Bookman up here, and we have a hearing. An inquiry, I think you call it, into Cookie’s death. Will that serve?”
Levi uncocked his musket. He nodded. “Tomorrow morning.”