The Endless Forest
Page 7

All the way across the ocean she had imagined coming home by sleigh, gliding over a winter’s worth of hard-packed snow, tucked into a cocoon of furs. The way she and Simon had once come home to Paradise from Montreal, in the deep of winter, traveling fast and quiet because of the war and the troops that patrolled the border. Now she had to laugh at herself for such girlish fantasies, for her steadfast refusal to consider the unpredictability of spring weather. The snow was going, and the rain was rapidly turning the roads to mud.
Yesterday the men had gone about the business of arranging for oxen and wagons suitable for the transport of women and children, and for the storage of the sleighs over the summer. More delay.
Lily thought of setting out for home on foot, how good it would be to simply walk. Simon would laugh at such an idea, but he wasn’t here to tease her into a better mood. He was rolled into a blanket, asleep in the barn along with the rest of the men and Jennet’s two boys. Where they would all be sleeping at this moment, if Ma hadn’t managed to talk the landlady into letting them have these tiny rooms under the eaves.
They had been lucky to get them, as Johnstown was overrun with people who had come to see a hanging. A thief, well known and widely admired for his style if not his morals, was going to the gallows today—just over the meadow behind Mrs. Kummer’s garden, if they cared to join the crowd.
Not an auspicious beginning to this last leg of the journey home. Lily closed her eyes and brought up other images: the brother and sisters waiting in Paradise. Old friends, and Curiosity.
Then Lily realized that she was being studied.
“What are you thinking about?”
She turned on her side to talk to her niece.
“Curiosity.”
The wide mouth split into a smile minus two bottom teeth. “I was thinking about her too. Did you miss her while you were gone?”
“Every day,” Lily said.
“More than your ma and da? More than Birdie and Gabriel and Daniel and Hannah and—”
“Not more,” Lily interrupted. “Just as much.”
“Then why did you stay away so long?”
Jennet’s daughters were as direct and unflinching as their mother. The only way to deal with any of them was to offer the truth.
“There were things I needed to do. Things I thought were important.”
“And were they? Important?”
“Yes,” Lily said. “They were.”
The girl considered for a moment. “More important than having babies?”
Every day since she stepped off the ship Lily had expected this question. The first time she was alone with her mother, when the women sat down to tea together in her aunt Spencer’s parlor, when she saw Jennet at the door and recognized the curve of her belly for what it was. But none of them had raised the subject. Curiosity would ask, of that she was very sure. And by that time she might be ready to answer.
“Not more important, no. But babies are born in Italy, you know. Every day.”
“You didn’t have one,” Isabel said.
“No,” Lily agreed. “I didn’t. Tell me what you like best about going to Paradise.”
Isabel wiggled with happiness as she talked about her Savard cousins. They were wild as ponies, full of life and noise and mischief, and fearless, too, in a way that made the uncles laugh and the aunts go very still.
As young as Amelie and Eliza were, Lily had no doubt that they had already discovered some of the secret places on the mountain and in the village. From Curiosity’s letters and her mother’s, it was clear that Hannah’s daughters had no interest in dolls or quiet games played in the parlor, but they could run and climb as well as their brothers. And while the boys might be older and bigger, the girls had a powerful ally in their aunt Birdie.
“Birdie is ten,” Isabel announced. “She is the boss of us all because she’s the aunt. Even Nathan pays her mind, though he’s only five months and sixteen days younger and he’s already a head taller.”
She ran the numbers all together, as if she announced the exact age difference with great regularity. Fivemonthsandsixteendays.
“Well of course he does,” said Mariah, awake now. “She’s Da’s sister, ten years old or a hundred. If you bother her too much she makes you call her Dearest Auntie Caroline Curiosity instead of Birdie.” She brightened. “Do you know why she’s called Birdie?”
“I’m not sure I do,” Lily said, trying not to smile. She had still been at home in Paradise when Birdie got her nickname, but she didn’t want to discourage the twins from talking to her. “You go ahead and tell me the story.”
“Well,” Mariah said, spreading her hands over the covers. “When she wasn’t even a whole year old, she looked out the window and saw a wren—”
“It wasn’t a wren, it was a robin,” her sister said.
“She saw a bird,” Mariah said pointedly. “On the windowsill. And she stood up—she couldn’t really walk yet, but she stood up because she was so excited, and she yelled Burtie!”
“Just like that,” said Isabel.
“And the bird flew away,” Mariah said.
“Oh, she was awful mad at the bird,” said Isabel. “Kept yelling at it to come back. Burtie! Burtie! Burtie!”
“And that’s when everybody started calling her Birdie.”
“Except when she says not to,” Isabel amended.
Lily pushed a curl out of Mariah’s eyes. “So you don’t mind this long journey every year?”