The Endless Forest
Page 77

“What marriage?” Gabriel says. “I see thee alone here on the very edge of the frontier.”
“Tomorrow,” Maddie says. “Tomorrow Alfred will be gone for six months. If he does not come tomorrow, I will go with thee.”
The day comes and goes. Thunderheads build in the west and then descend to pelt the small settlement on the lake with fistfuls of hail. The wind tears down the fence and the corn within the fence and the twining morning glories from the fence. When the lightning finishes they go out, Maddie and Gabriel, Curiosity and Galileo, to save what they can. They are soaked to the skin within seconds.
Curiosity and Galileo go off to their small cabin and Maddie stands across from Gabriel, dripping onto her scrubbed plank floor. The first time she saw this room there was only the beaten earth. But she wanted a floor, and Alfred saw to it she got one. The men who did the work have still not been paid.
The sun has come out, only to set. Gabriel stands in the open doorway watching the last of the sunlight reflected in every water drop. A cave of wonders, jewel-bright.
Maddie says, “Come now. Come, it is time.”
Later they talk of where they will go. Or Gabriel talks and Maddie listens, stopping him now and then to ask a question. Tomorrow, she thinks, she will remember little of this, but no matter. He will tell her these things again. As often as she asks, he will tell her because he will be right there, beside her. His body, the long bones of him, the muscles that flex and tighten under her palms. His mouth. His lovely mouth.
She sleeps, one hand cupped over her own belly. Over the child she has conceived with this man who is not her husband.
And the next day her husband comes home.
Elizabeth was pale, her gaze fixed on her folded hands. “Tell the rest of it,” she said without looking up.
“I think you know,” Curiosity said. “But I got to tell it anyhow. Gabriel Oak asked her to go away but she couldn’t, not with her husband come home. So he left without her. Said he’d be back in the spring to ask her again, and every year after that until she said yes. In November Alfred was gone again, off to Montreal for one thing or another. Man could not sit still. Neither of her men could.”
“But why did she go to England?” Birdie asked. “Why didn’t she go home to her ma and da?”
“I expect she didn’t want to lie to them,” Elizabeth said. “And she wanted to be far enough away that her husband couldn’t come after her easily.”
“She did write to her family,” Curiosity said. “Borrowed paper from Cora to write a letter and borrowed money to send it. And waited until an answer came back. A draft on a bank in Manhattan and a note from her daddy, saying her ma wouldn’t have her back but she should write for money when she needed it. And that same day there was a letter from England, from her good-sister, your aunt Merriweather, Elizabeth. Saying she wished Alfred and his wife would come home to England. She worried about him with all the Indian trouble.”
“But what about Gabriel Oak?” Birdie asked and her voice had a tremble to it. “How could he not come back?”
Curiosity was looking at Lily. “You know, Lily, don’t you? You guessed it.”
Lily looked from Curiosity to her mother and back again. “Yes, I suppose I did. I told Simon a long time ago that Gabriel Oak was most likely my real grandfather.”
For a moment Elizabeth thought Lily would want to tell them how she had come to such a conclusion, as Elizabeth herself had in that last summer Gabriel Oak spent in Paradise. Like Lily, Elizabeth had talked to Nathaniel about it, but otherwise kept the idea—one that had grown from suspicion to a certainty over the years—to herself. But then it seemed Lily was as impatient as Elizabeth was to hear the rest of what Curiosity had to say. To confess.
Lily said, “He did come back, didn’t he. He came back and you told him she was gone. Did he give you a letter?”
“Yes, he did,” Curiosity said. “He come back here at Christmastime, couldn’t wait any longer is what he say to me. We sat at the table and I told him not the way it was, but the way I wanted it to be. And then I watched him write a letter for Maddie. He gave that letter to me to make sure she got it, and he went off and didn’t come back for a long time, some twenty years.”
“Did you have a letter for him?” Elizabeth asked. “Did she give you a letter for him when she left for England?”
Curiosity closed her eyes briefly and then nodded. “I didn’t give that over neither. If I had done what they ask me to do, most likely she would have come back. It was me kept them apart, may God forgive me my pride. And you know why I did that? Lily?”
“Because you thought you knew better,” Lily said. There were tears on her cheeks now. “You thought you knew what was right, and you were so sure you made that decision for her.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Curiosity said. “In my pride and vanity I thought I knew better than your grandmama. I tole myself that Gabriel Oak couldn’t be trusted to take care of her and a child too. Him with that itch to always be off moving. I was bitter about her going off, though I didn’t see that right then. And so I tampered where I had no business, no matter how much I loved Maddie. I had no business. I have prayed every day that the Good Lord might take mercy on me for my wickedness. When the letter come from England saying you was safely come into this world, Elizabeth, there was a note for me too.”
She reached into her apron pocket and brought it out. A single piece of paper, yellow with age. Elizabeth took it when Curiosity held it out to her, and after a moment she opened it. She read aloud: