The Endless Forest
Page 48

Of course things were not back to normal and might never be again for either of them.
The Wilde farm was on a long sloping stretch of land that ran along the river on one end, three quarters of it orchard. The buildings that made up the homestead—the house and barn and outbuildings—they were all gone. The only evidence that they had ever existed was a scattering of stone where the chimney had stood.
“It was your home too,” Callie said. “Do you ever think about that time?”
To be truthful, Martha did her best not to think about that year when she and Callie had truly been stepsisters.
“I try not to,” Martha said. “I try to give my—to give Jemima as little thought as I can manage. I don’t know how I’d live with what she did, otherwise.”
“You mean marrying my da?” Callie asked. “Or forcing him out?”
At that moment Martha was glad that the orchard house was gone. So many bad things had happened there, she had never wanted to cross the threshold again, and now she wouldn’t have to. Now Callie could start over again.
Just across from where they stood was the cider house, still intact, and all around it evidence of Callie’s hard work. A few dozen split oak baskets had been scrubbed and set out in the sun to dry; a goat and a mule both grazed within a hastily fenced pasture, and chickens hunted through the sparse late-winter grass. From behind the cider house came the sound of an axe on wood.
“Levi?”
Callie nodded. “Most of the trees we salvaged couldn’t be saved. At least we’ll get firewood out of them.”
Martha had the sense that Callie was holding something back. Something too awful to talk about for fear of what those words might trigger. The only thing Callie cared about so much was the orchard and the trees.
She cleared her throat. “How many did you lose?”
Callie held herself very still. “Too many. Do you remember what Cookie used to call you and me? Working fools.”
Martha smiled. “I dream about Cookie sometimes.”
Callie drew in a deep breath. “Me and Levi, we talk about her a lot and I dream about her almost every night,” she said. “Mostly about the way she talked to my ma, like there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with her. Other folks were afraid of Ma, but not Cookie.”
“She knew how to talk so your ma heard her. She took care of all of you.”
Cookie had died in the same blizzard that killed Callie’s mother. In Martha’s view of things, Cookie was the greater loss. Not that she could say such a thing out loud, but it was true. Cookie had been an irritable and prickly old woman, an emancipated slave with no good opinion of white people, with the exception of the Wildes. She ran the household and kept an eye on Dolly, who would wander off if not watched. It was Cookie who had raised Callie.
“She deserved better than she got.” Callie’s voice had taken on an edge.
“They both did,” Martha said.
Martha wondered if they would start up the old conversation again, the one they had had so many times. How Cookie had died, if she had fallen from the icy bridge by accident, or if she had been pushed. Whether she had gone out to find Callie’s ma before she got lost in the storm, and how Dolly had slipped away in the first place.
They had been young girls and ready to buckle under the weight of what they dare not tell the adults. And if they had come across solid proof that Jemima had pushed Cookie to her death, they still would have been silent. They had only each other at that point, and in their minds and hearts they believed that if Jemima were to go to the gallows, Martha would be sent to a workhouse, or worse.
I couldn’t bear it, Callie had said. I can’t lose you too.
How frightened they had been, and how foolish.
In the end the court had dismissed the charges against Jemima for lack of evidence, and the two girls had cried themselves to sleep out of anger and relief.
“We should have told,” Martha said. “If we had told—”
“She wouldn’t have come back again,” Callie finished for her.
Martha said, “If I could empty out the half of my blood that comes from Jemima, I would do it right here, on this spot.”
“Cut it out, bad from good.”
“Just so,” Martha said.
“There’s things I’d cut away too, if I could. Did you know my ma’s grandma was just as mad as Ma? It comes down through the bloodline. Sometimes I feel it in my brain, like a seed waiting for rain so it can come up out of the ground and bear fruit.”
Martha drew in a shocked breath. “Do you really believe that, that you could turn out like your ma?”
“Yes,” Callie said. “I do believe it.”
For a long moment Martha listened to the sound of the axe meeting wood, the steady thunk thunk thunk and then the pause before it started again. The wind was rising cool on her hot cheeks. At this moment, standing next to Callie, she was overcome with regret and sorrow. She had left Callie behind, in the end.
“I wish I had never gone to Manhattan,” Martha said.
To which Callie said nothing, and rightly so. It did no good to worry about things long gone. Things she couldn’t change. Martha cleared her throat.
“Where are you going to build?”
Callie had taken a few steps forward, and she looked back at Martha over her shoulder. “I’m not sure yet. Why do you ask?”
“Because,” Martha said. “I can’t stay with the Bonners forever. I shouldn’t even be there now. If I left, there would be room for Lily and Simon. Nobody has said as much to me, but I know Elizabeth thinks about it.”