The Endless Forest
Page 212

“See how Susanna is looking at me, so’s I remember that I promised her to be civil. I will try harder, I promise.
“As a girl the thing I wanted most was to be here. Right here, at Lake in the Clouds. When Hannah started home after school everyday, I wanted to follow her. I never let on, of course, but this place was like some kind of palace in my mind, back then. Maybe because I knew I didn’t belong and never could belong. Don’t things out of reach just glow in your mind? And then sometimes when you do get what you’ve been hoping and planning and fighting for, the glow is gone. Rubbed off in the getting of it.
“Most things I fought for turned out that way. I’d think, that’s what I need to be safe and happy, and I’d fight and fight, and then when I got it in my hands, it wasn’t gold but brass needing to be polished and polished if it was to give any service at all. That’s the way it was marrying Isaiah. I knew he didn’t want anything to do with me and that was fine. I thought the money would be enough. I thought I could withstand anything if I had nice clothes and enough food and firewood and a house to call my own and servants. I told myself it didn’t matter how he hated me or if I disgusted him, as long as he kept up appearances. But I found out soon enough, pity is much harder to swallow than hate. You all think I’m made of stone, but I never was.
“The thing is, everybody I ever wanted, every single person, wanted somebody else and only made do with me. My father was mad I wasn’t born a boy and the minute my brothers came along, he couldn’t see me anymore. Liam Kirby was bound heart and soul to Hannah, who didn’t even want him back. I took what he wouldn’t give me of his own free will, and to this day I’m glad I did it. If you’re honest you’ll admit you’re glad of it too, all of you, or Martha wouldn’t be sitting there, precious as she is to you.
“Nicholas wanted Lily, he wanted her so bad he was sick with it, but she didn’t want him. Not really, or she wouldn’t have fallen so hard in love with that Scot. So I took things into my own hands. Yes, I did. Levi wants to hear me say it, and so here it is: I did what needed to be done. When Cookie fell and knocked her head I did the rest. I lied to Nicholas about Lily, and I let Callie’s ma walk away into a blizzard. I did all that because I knew I could be a good wife to Nicholas and that he would take care of us. By that time I had given up the idea of an easy life. I just wanted to know there’d be food and firewood.
“A man goes out and fights and kills sometimes for his family, and that’s honorable. Nathaniel knows what I’m talking about, don’t you? That’s what it means to be a man. A woman is supposed to take what fate hands her and be satisfied with that. She’s supposed to be thankful for that. If I had any strength left that idea would still make my blood boil.
“When things went bad and Nicholas was close to losing his mind for grief and anger and hurt male pride—because that’s what it was, even if you refuse to see the truth of it—I knew I had to go before he killed me or I killed him. Of course I left the girl behind. I couldn’t look after her. If I had taken her, you would have raged about that. Sometimes I wonder who got the brunt of your anger once I was gone.
“It didn’t matter that I left without Martha. She wouldn’t have wanted to come with me anyway. Can’t say as I blame her, to tell the truth.
“So I went. I went and I found my way and I had my boy.
“You’ll be surprised to hear me admit this, but there’s something sour in me. Something spoiled. It has been there since I was a girl, since Ma and my brothers choked to death with the quinsy. I nursed them as best I could. I went to Curiosity and got tea and medicine, and none of it did any good. I begged them, but they died anyway. Something settled on me then, and I never did get rid of it. Like a tattoo on my face, I could scrub at it but it wasn’t going nowhere. And after a while, I liked myself like that. I looked in the mirror and I liked what I saw. I’m crabbit and mean and vindictive, always have been.
“But I did mean for the boy to grow up healthy. So I sent him away with Lorena to look after him, and every month I sent money. I couldn’t have kept him in any case, because by that time I had regular work singing in the theater. You didn’t know that, did you? I sang every night under the name Monique Moreau. And I’d still be singing but for this cancer in my belly.
“I hate that the cancer has got the best of me. I hate that after all I did to keep my head above water, my own body has betrayed me. They told me a year ago I didn’t have long, but I was determined to see that the boy was took care of. So I spent the last of my money hiring Dan Focht to play my husband, hired the carriage and horses and the extra servants. Dan wanted his boy Harper along and I didn’t object. If I hadn’t been sick maybe I would have realized the boy was quick-fingered and always looking for easy money. He’s dead and no doubt he deserved it, whoever did it. I can’t hold a grudge on his account.
“I went and claimed my son and we lived all together for that short time so I could know him better. And what I found was a child so sweet and good, I could hardly believe he was mine. But he is mine. He’s the only thing I can claim as my own.
“All I wanted was for the boy to have what is rightfully his. Martha has money enough to raise him proper, but I wanted him to have something of his own, something of his father’s. You all thought I wanted the orchard because of that apple, the Bleeding Heart, but the truth is I didn’t know anything about it. I’d swear it on my son’s life. What I did know was that my boy had some property owing him, and I wanted to make sure he got title to it before I died.