The Endless Forest
Page 44

She cleared her throat. “All right,” she said. “Tell me.”
Curiosity glanced up at her and then back down at the fleece she was combing.
“I told you already what there is to know about her condition. You think I’d try to hold anything back on you?”
Elizabeth kept her gaze on Curiosity and said nothing.
Curiosity said, “You cain’t take Lily’s trouble on yourself. It ain’t your fault. Something else I been wanting to say to you since she got home—this ain’t the time for you to get all fluttery on the girl.”
Elizabeth jerked up. “Fluttery? Fluttery? When have I ever been fluttery?”
“Now see,” Curiosity said, widening her eyes as if she were surprised. “I knew you was in there some place. Betimes I have got to poke you real hard to make you wake up.”
“I assure you, I am awake.”
“I ain’t so sure,” Curiosity said. “You going to lose your nerve when Lily need you most?”
“I haven’t lost my nerve. I just want to—”
“Fix things. I know you do. And you know you cain’t. What you can do you already doing. You go down there every day and sit with that little girl of yours, and you talk to her and read to her like you do for any of us when we feeling low. You make sure she has got good fortifying food, red meat to feed her blood. When she get restless you distract her.”
“But I’m running out of things to distract her with,” Elizabeth said.
“Far from it. Ask the girl to teach you how to draw.”
Elizabeth barked a short laugh. “Draw? Me?”
“Why not?” Curiosity shrugged. “It’s something she can do that you cain’t. It might help her to remember that her mama ain’t perfect.”
Curiosity had surprised her many times over the years, but for a moment Elizabeth was truly speechless.
“Perfect?” she said finally. “Lily couldn’t think—” She broke off, lost in her thoughts.
After a moment Curiosity said, “You brought six healthy children into this world. The ones you lost were carried off by illness ain’t nobody but the good Lord hisself could fix. Why, you had Birdie when you was almost fifty. There was a time Nathaniel only had to look at you crossways and you fell pregnant.”
To her consternation Elizabeth felt herself blushing.
“How old were you when your mama died?”
“You know the answer to that. I was ten.”
“You still think about her?”
“Every day.”
“You remember how it felt when you done something that disappointed her?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. She remembered her mother’s voice and her hands and the set of her shoulders. Her features had faded and could only be called back by means of the miniature Elizabeth kept on the table near her bed. But she remembered snatches of conversations, and games played and books read aloud in the nursery at Oakmere. She remembered her mother’s accent and way of speaking, how it had set her apart from everyone—from Elizabeth herself—and how she had tried to sound more like her. And she remembered how easily her mother could deal with Julian when he was frightened or moody.
“I remember a day in July just before she fell ill. It was very hot,” she told Curiosity. “I was wearing a new bodice and it was terribly scratchy, so I was out of sorts. And I—I was cruel to Julian. He came crying about something, and I shook him off, like a fly. And when I turned around I saw my mother standing there, watching. I remember her expression, very sad and disappointed. My stomach lurched into my throat, because I knew I couldn’t take back what I had done. Then she turned away from me and called Julian to her and took him on her lap to comfort him. I was in agony until she came to talk to me, and then I wept as much as Julian had.”
She paused. “Are you saying I need to let Lily weep?”
“Mayhap,” Curiosity said.
Elizabeth walked to the window and stood there for a moment.
“I’d much rather have Lily whole and healthy than have a grandchild. Curiosity.” Elizabeth inhaled very deeply. “Tell me, what are her chances?” The question that kept her awake long into the night.
Curiosity took her time, thinking it through. Elizabeth pressed her forehead to the cold windowpane.
“Lily had a hard time these last years,” Curiosity said. “From what she told, I have got to doubt whether she can bring a living child into this world. But we will do everything in our power to save Lily. You know that we will.”
“I can’t lose her,” Elizabeth said. “I couldn’t bear it.”
Curiosity left her chair and came to stand next to Elizabeth at the window. On the sill Curiosity’s hand looked frail, the skin as thin as silk tissue with age, the joints swollen. Elizabeth’s own hand was chapped from cold and wet, and the first faint old-age freckles were rising up out of her skin to remind her that she was sixty years old. When that thought came to her, she always had the urge to laugh at the absurdity of it.
“Listen to me now.” Curiosity’s voice was low, and the tone familiar. It was the voice she used when she was talking to a woman who had been so long in travail that she was close to giving up.
“Listen close. If that day come, if Lily has got to move on, you will do what you got to do. You be right there beside her to help her go, the same way you brought her into this world. The last thing she see should be the faces of the people who love her best. You know that you will be there to do for her. And she know it too, that’s why she came home.”