Although the late May afternoon was clear and
bright and filled with the promise of spring, she found only worry
in it as she walked along the road that led out of town. The sight
of pretty wildflowers lifting their heads to the sun reminded her
how ratty and overgrown her own yard was. The light, clean breeze
brought to mind the peeling paint, the loose front step, the
rotting roof—everything that was wrong with her house.
She glanced at a green field stretching out
to her right, dotted with sheep and wobbly-limbed new lambs.
Persnickety, was she? So Cooper Matthews had called her. He’d made
it sound like the most loathsome of characteristics, worse than any
of the seven deadly sins. She couldn’t think of anyone who would
pay a man for sleeping instead of working. If that was persnickety,
so be it. Was it asking so much that things be done the way she
wanted? Why should she accept a fence painted once when she’d asked
for two coats?
And it seemed a simple enough request that
the barn door be kept closed, so that she wouldn’t have to see
inside the dark, gaping maw. Wouldn’t have to see inside and
remember what had happened in there. Even now, eighteen years
later, it gave her shudders to think about it.
Even now.
~~*~*~*~~
“
Olivia? I’m home,” Althea called from
the kitchen. From the parlor she could hear the high, sweet notes
of “Für Elise” and knew that her sister was in the same place she
had left her. Following the sound of the melody, she saw Olivia
sitting at her rosewood grand piano, the one Father had given her
for her tenth birthday. The instrument nearly overpowered their
small neat parlor, but when she’d expressed the desire to play, of
course Amos Ford had wanted her to have the very best.
Although she had the talent to play
beautifully, at that moment Olivia thumped out the Beethoven piece
with more force than it called for. The notes ricocheted off the
walls in a way that surely would have outraged the late
maestro.
Althea sighed. Though Olivia gave no other
sign of it, obviously her younger sister was still in a sulk. “Were
you all right while I was gone?” she asked, trying again for a
response.
Finally Olivia broke off the tortured melody
and lifted her hazel eyes. Her pale blue dress was the perfect
complement to her coloring. With hair the color of corn silk, and a
smooth, translucent complexion like fine china, she looked as
delicate and ethereal as an angel. Like their mother, or at least
what Althea could remember of her. Althea had been told she herself
favored a distant aunt whom she’d never met, but she thought that
she resembled no one else in the family. In fact, at moments of her
greatest self-doubt, when things had been the darkest, she’d
wondered if Olivia had been the Fords’s only true child. Perhaps
Althea had been a foundling.
“
Yes, I was fine. But I still wish I
could have come with you. You know I’m feeling much stronger these
days.”
Althea reached up to pull the pins out of her
straw hat. “I know you are and I’m glad for that. It just wasn’t a
good time for you to go with me today.”
“
Well, I would’ve liked to have pie and
tea at Elmira’s Café.” Her sister’s soft, clear voice carried just
the edge of a pout.
Althea pushed aside the lace curtain and
glanced through the front door glass at the ratty yard. She thought
she had explained her town trip plainly enough, but as was her way,
Olivia didn’t always listen very closely. Facing her, Althea said,
“I didn’t go to have pie at the café or do anything else that was
fun, Olivia. I hired a man to repair the roof and plant our garden.
So many things need to be fixed around here. Anyway, you didn’t
miss much. Decker Prairie doesn’t change.”
Olivia said nothing but her face betrayed a
shadow of moping disbelief. Clearly she thought she’d missed having
a grand time.
“
I’ll fix us an early supper,” Althea
said with forced brightness. “I left a kettle of soup simmering on
the stove.” It was a challenge to get Olivia to do more than pick
at her food, especially if it was something she didn’t care for—and
that seemed to be just about everything. “Are you feeling
hungry?”
She shrugged. “I guess. But pie and tea
would’ve tasted better.”
“
We’ll go another time.” Then
remembering her stop at the general store, she tantalized, “I
brought you a surprise.”
Immediately Olivia perked up, and her hazel
eyes widened liked a child’s. “What?”
Sometimes it was difficult for Althea to
remember that her sister was twenty years old. She seemed more like
a young girl, one whose mind was incapable of a grave or dark
thought. Unless a bad case of the “mopes” was upon her, of course.
Then she could be downright gloomy.
Olivia rose from the bench and clasped her
hands at her waist. “Oh, did you bring a music box, or maybe those
garnet eardrops in the jeweler’s display window?”
“
Good heavens, Olivia!” Althea said,
and laughed. “Those are the kinds of gifts people give for
birthdays or at Christmas. It’s just a little surprise.”
She sank back to the piano bench with a
rustle of her blue skirts. “Oh. Yes, of course, you’re right.”
Althea searched her dress pocket and withdrew
a pair of bone hairpins. “I got these at Wickwire’s. You’re always
losing yours and I thought you could use them.”
She took them from Althea’s outstretched hand
and put them on top of the piano. “Thank you.”
“
Maybe we can go into town next week,
after the repairs are started. We can shop and have lunch at the
café,” Althea offered.
Olivia nodded, her face still reflecting her
disappointment.
Althea made her exit to the kitchen, anxious
to get away. After tying on her apron, she went to the table and
began cutting careful slices from a loaf of fresh bread. The rich
smell of simmering beef soup filled the room.
Olivia followed her to the stove and lifted
the lid on the pot of soup Althea had made. “We could have a picnic
on the grass tomorrow. Wouldn’t that be fun?” She looked up at
Althea, her face suddenly full of excitement. “You could make
little sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and potato salad and
cake. Then afterward you could read aloud to me, just like when I
was little, remember?”
Althea walked to the stove and spooned some
of the soup into a flowered tureen. “Not tomorrow, Olivia, maybe
the day after. And I remember very well. But we’ll probably have to
sit on the back porch.” She nodded in the general direction of the
yard. “The grass is too tall and still too wet to sit on.”
“
Oh, is it? I hadn’t noticed.” Olivia
glanced outside, and her face fell into sullen lines again. “Maybe
the man you hired will cut it down for us when he comes
out.”
It didn’t happen all that often, but when
Olivia got into the mopes she could be so trying. Of course, Althea
supposed she couldn’t blame her sister; she had suffered from frail
health off and on since her childhood. Father’s death had sent her
into a frightening decline in which she had lingered for almost
three years. Despite the fact that Dr. Brewster had never found a
medical reason for what he dismissed as Olivia’s hysterical
convulsions, Althea had not completely abandoned the hope that her
sister might someday grow well enough to marry and lead an
independent life. But deep in her heart, Althea didn’t believe that
was likely to happen.
Lane Smithfield hadn’t understood the depth
of her devotion to Olivia when he’d come courting Althea. In fact,
he’d once even confided to her that he doubted the seriousness of
Olivia’s condition. Then one Saturday evening while the three of
them sat at the dinner table, as if to prove him wrong, Olivia had
suffered one of her spells. It had been a particularly severe and
frightening event during which several dishes were broken and food
was splattered on the walls.
Althea never saw Lane again. Three months
later she received an invitation to his wedding to Sarah Wilcott.
Looking at the careful script that told the day and time, she felt
her throat grow tight with discouragement.
It hadn’t been that she cared about Lane. She
hadn’t had a chance to begin caring about him. Their courtship had
been so brief she wasn’t certain she could even call it a
“courtship.”
But what he had kindled in her heart was
hope. Hope for a life beyond this crumbling house—hope to be
someone other than Amos Ford’s daughter and Olivia Ford’s sister.
He’d even brought her a small bouquet of wildflowers that she had
later pressed in a book. It had very likely been the only bouquet
she’d ever receive, and she wanted to remember it always.
When she’d read the invitation, a part of her
slipped away and she’d mourned its passing, weeping silently in the
darkest part of the night. Any dreams Althea had held for herself
were put to rest during those sleepless hours.
Olivia had finally begun to improve again
over the last few months, just about the time that Lane stopped
courting Althea. She realized that it was only natural that her
sister would want to get out more often now that she was feeling
better.
As for herself, Althea was grateful for the
arrangement she had with Wickwire’s—twice a week Eli Wickwire sent
his son out with deliveries of meat, eggs, milk, and other
groceries. She was spared from having to go into Decker Prairie,
and suffer the prying stares.
She knew why they stared. It had all been her
fault, and now she had Olivia to look after.
Take care of your sister when I’m gone.
Don’t let me down again, girl.
Trying to shrug off the indictment that lay
on her shoulders as heavy as a millstone, she finished making two
small diamond-shaped sandwiches, mortared with raspberry jam. She
didn’t care what other people thought, she told herself. She didn’t
have time to worry about it. Her duty and responsibility were right
here with Olivia, and Decker Prairie had done nothing to make her
job easier.
Getting the soup bowls from the cupboard, she
caught her reflection in a small mirror that hung next to the back
door. What she saw made her pause. Did her hair seem a bit more
dull than it used to? And when had she lost the youthful roundness
in her cheeks that she’d once had? Time seemed to have flown by,
and yet, here on the Ford farm, it also had crawled to a stop while
life and the rest of the world had gone about their business and
passed her by. She’d had hopes and dreams for herself once, a
yearning for a meaningful life. Now,
though . . .
Just as Althea put the soup and sandwiches on
the dining room table, from the parlor she heard Beethoven’s gift
to Elise commence again, this time with a much gentler touch. Maybe
Olivia’s doldrums were gone.
Althea ladled soup into the bowls and
sighed.
~~*~*~*~~
Long after Althea went to bed that night, she
could hear her sister prowling around in her bedroom on the other
side of the wall. She heard the sound of bureau drawers being
opened and closed. The tread of slippered feet made the floor creak
so softly, Althea could barely hear it over the sound of the rain
outside. But she was aware of it, just the same.
What Olivia did with her time this late at
night, Althea couldn’t begin to guess. She had been withdrawn
through dinner, but at least her disappointment about not going to
town had diminished.
Althea pulled her quilt closer to her chin,
as much for comfort as for warmth. Maybe Olivia didn’t feel as
keenly the curious stares and gossipy murmurs when she and Althea
went to Decker Prairie. Even that dreadful Cooper Matthews had
identified Althea as “one of them crazy Ford women.”
Her hands clenched on the hem of the quilt
and she gazed through the bedroom window at the cold while moon
that showed its face from between silver-edged clouds.
Crazy
She’d heard it before.
Insane
Not right in the head.
They were nasty little words and phrases that
sat like spiders in the corner of people’s minds. It had started
with her mother, long before that dark day all those years ago. And
of course there had been speculation about Olivia since then. Why
should she, Althea, hope to be excluded?
What was that old saying?
The fruit doesn’t fall far from the
tree . . .
She rolled over and tried to force the
thoughts from her mind. Maybe that was often true, but not about
her. She was positive about that.
And it wasn’t true about Olivia. Her sister
was just—childlike. Frail and childlike. Why couldn’t people
understand that?
~~*~*~*~~
Jefferson Hicks made his way down a
rain-slick hillside and approached the split rail fence surrounding
the barnyard. Although the sky had finally cleared, it was cold and
damp. He hunched his shoulders against the night chill, wondering
briefly where he’d left his coat. He thought he still owned one,
but then again, he couldn’t be sure.
Jeff Hicks was never sure of anything
anymore.
He proceeded as carefully as a man could who
had just emerged from a two-day drunk. The world wasn’t quite
steady yet, and the darkness didn’t help.
When he touched the latch on the henhouse
door, he stood there for a moment, gripping it to get his bearings.
The wood beneath his fingers was weathered and rough, and his hand
trembled, although not from nervousness. He’d done this a dozen
times or more over the past two years. He wasn’t proud of the fact,
but he’d gotten to be fairly good at it. At least he’d never been
caught.
Glancing over his shoulder, he looked at the
farmhouse windows again. His hand tightened on the latch.
The stink of the chicken coop nearly stifled
him, and he wasn’t even inside yet. What was it about those damned
birds, anyway? he wondered as he lifted the bar from its notch.
Even the cleanest henhouse smelled like a full chamber pot under an
August sun. As he inched open the door, the warm, fetid odor poured
out and flowed over him. His empty stomach lurched and his aching
head throbbed harder. He turned his face away, waiting for his
insides to settle down. Then he took a deep breath of clean, cool
air and opened the door wide. After he stepped inside, the light
breeze pushed it closed behind him.