Sweet Boundless (27 page)

Quillan didn’t doubt it. He’d seen the long hours spent in prayer, heard the sermons, waited for the reverend to come home from the bedside of the sick and dying.

Reverend Shepard touched the oval framed photograph of his wife that stood on the mantel. “All that, I can say with impunity. And still, the two people closest to me I failed.”

Quillan heard him through a fog of emotion and thought again of Carina. Shame burned inside. It was inexcusable the way he’d treated her. He could only hope she’d had the sense to leave Crystal, and him, for good. His hands gripped the arms of the chair.

“If one day you have it in your heart to forgive me, will you find some way to let me know?”

Quillan looked up. Reverend Shepard was diminished. He stood by the fire looking old. Quillan recalled him towering in the pulpit, his voice strong and certain. He recalled the hand holding the rod, and the arm swinging it with verve. How defiantly he’d resisted the discipline. And yet they weren’t so different after all.

Quillan drew himself up. “I don’t blame you.” It was God who betrayed them, and those most of all who served Him best.

Carina celebrated the New Year with the rest of the city, crowded onto the frozen street. Torches blazed, bells of every size and sort rang out, and someone had even provided fireworks. Carina watched the sparks shoot high into the sky and explode into green and gold with a bang. She clapped her hands with each explosion, laughing and cheering as loudly as those on either side of her.

To her right stood Alex Makepeace with Mae beside him. To her left, Èmie in the crook of Robert Simms’s arm. As the last of the fireworks rained sparks from the sky, Dr. Simms turned Èmie in his arms and kissed her. “New Year greetings, Èmie. Let’s make it our best yet.”

Watching them, Carina felt a pang and chastised herself for it. Should she wish any less for Èmie? She felt a touch on her arm and turned.

“Happy ’81, Carina.” Alex Makepeace leaned close and kissed her lightly on the cheek. He did the same for Mae, but Carina sensed a difference, as though that courtesy was only to cover his gesture toward her. She wasn’t nearly as naïve as she had been.

Before she could worry, her hand was being shaken by man after man along the street. “God bless you, ma’am. Greetings, Mrs. Shepard. Best to you and yours, ma’am.” She laughed and returned them all. Who was to say that 1881 wouldn’t be her best year yet?

Her heart swelled with hope and anticipation. Anything could happen under a winter sky so filled with stars in the city that was the diamond of the Rockies. Indeed, anything could happen. She rested her hand on her waist.

They went inside to the kitchen, where Mae had whipped an eggnog to a frothy richness and sprinkled it with nutmeg. Alex dribbled rum into the bottoms of the cups, and Mae ladled the creamy eggnog atop. Carina laughed when it coated the skin above her lip. “I’ve winter whiskers like the rest of Crystal.”

Alex rubbed his own beard and laughed with her. “You’ve a way to go to match these.”

Dr. Simms lowered his cup. “I saw a bearded woman once at a side show in Detroit. The whiskers hung down to her chest.”

“Were they real whiskers?” Èmie looked into his face as though she suspected a jest.

“Had to be. A little midget hung his whole weight on it, dangled there until she thumped him off.”

Mae laughed. “Must have been a sight.”

“If you go in for such things. I prefer women without.” And his smile made Èmie blush.

Alex raised his glass. “Here’s to women without. May the new year be bounteous.”

Carina raised her cup and tapped it to his. Then she clanked Mae’s and Èmie’s and Dr. Simms’s as well. “May the new year be blessed.” She met Èmie’s eyes. “Especially for the two joining their hearts.”

Èmie gripped her hand, and they shared a smile. Carina swallowed the rest of her eggnog and silently blessed the man who’d provided the eggs laid by the chickens in the lean-to.
Happy New Year, Quillan,
wherever you are
.

Quillan brought the spoon to her lips, the lukewarm soup dribbling in over the tongue Mrs. Shepard extended like an animal. His hand shook, and as much soup went down her chin as her throat. He brought the spoon back to the bowl as her hands jerked wildly. The moan gurgled in her throat, and he looked into her terrified eyes. What brought it this time?

She seemed to see something behind him, as her gaze was fixed over his left shoulder. These last two days she’d grown accustomed to his presence, and he no longer set her off just by walking in. He tried to put another spoonful to her mouth, but she backed away, trembling.

“There’s nothing there.” He spoke low and softly. “It can’t hurt you.”

Her wrists curled up and the hands gyrated. He remembered her fingers pinched into his ear, dragging him close to hear what nasty thing she had to say.
“I only took you to save your mother drowning you
in the river.”
He shook the thought away and again raised the spoon. This time she lapped at it greedily. It spilled over his fingers.

“When you’ve been married long, you’ ll know why I don’t have her
locked away.”

Could the reverend love her? Was it possible he held feelings for this . . . creature? The face contorted, almost as though she’d read his thoughts. She pawed his arm, petting him, preening him. Sounds that weren’t words came from her soup-stained mouth.

Quillan raised the cloth and wiped her lips clean. “Don’t talk now. You need to eat.” Quillan looked at her wrists, so thin and misshapen he could snap them with no effort at all. The next spoonful made it into her mouth. Maybe she’d remembered how it was done. Maybe it was just luck. He fed her another and congratulated himself when it, too, went down where it was supposed to. Then both her hands came up and pushed the spoon away. He started to protest, then froze.

“Quil-lan.”

His jaw fell slack at her throaty utterance. He’d imagined it. Her sounds were nothing but noise, no sense, no understanding.

She reached up and tugged at her hair, humming. Her gaze drifted to the window at the side of the room. Gathering himself, he urged her back to the soup, and like a baby she opened for him. He’d fed her half the bowl before she tensed again, gripping the neck of her nightgown and shrinking back into the pillows stacked behind her.

Quillan searched the room. It was stale and serene, nothing at all that could alarm her. “Here now, let’s finish.” He raised a spoonful, but she suddenly gripped the tray and flung it from her, spewing soup over the covers and him. Quillan caught her hands and brought them together. “It’s all right. It can’t hurt you.”

She growled and snarled and tried to bite his hands. There was more strength in her skeleton than he would have imagined, but he held firm. “Calm down.”

She started to cry, wringing her hands out of his grasp and pushing him away. Quillan stood. He picked up the bowl and tray and dug the spoon out from under the bedside table. From the washstand he snatched a towel and wiped the coverlet. Then he settled it over her as she curled into a weeping ball. He was learning the pattern. The rage, the fear, then the weeping.

Quillan carried the dish out to the kitchen. He wet a towel and rubbed his shirt and the side of his pants. The reverend would be home soon. Quillan would tell him he was leaving. He leaned on the counter and looked out across the yard surrounded by short white pickets. A cold wind blew, and he thought of Carina.

What if she hadn’t left? Would she be warm? Would she be safe? That was where he belonged, not here with an aging pastor and his imbecile wife. Yet he hadn’t left. He hadn’t intended to stay even one night, and here he’d been there two. Today when his foster father asked him to sit with Mrs. Shepard, he’d balked, then agreed.

He hadn’t known the reverend would be absent all these hours, hadn’t known he would have to feed and care for her alone. Quillan washed the bowl and spoon and put them in their places. His own soup was still in the pot, but he had no appetite for it. He dried his hands on the towel and walked back to make certain she was sleeping.

The huddled form under the covers was so small, shrunken bones and flesh, a fragile heap of misery. She seemed peaceful now, and he took his place in the chair across from the bed. Reverend Shepard had said he needn’t sit there all the time; she was too weak to stand. But Quillan sat anyway.

His feelings were awash with confusion. Why had she told him such lies? Why had she made him believe his mother would have drowned him? Had indeed thrown him away? That his father was a black-hearted, greed-infested animal? That he was doomed to be wicked as they were wicked.

Were they wicked? Was she? Could he even believe that now, when it was the illness that warped and twisted her mind? He dropped his face into his hands. Where did the truth lie? What was truth? Like Pilate before the scourged Savior, he wanted the answer.

Cain might have told him. But Cain was gone. Somehow the thought didn’t bring the debilitating guilt it had even a short while ago. Yes, Cain was dead. Yes, in a way he was responsible. But in a world so convoluted and inscrutable, what use was there in blaming himself? The blame lay squarely on God.

He looked at the woman lying in the bed, a woman of faith. He thought of the reverend out somewhere even now, in the cold with some member of his flock. Stoop-shouldered, shrunken, yet tenaciously serving a God who would always have the last laugh. Why?

He rested his head against the wall. Why?

FIFTEEN

A heart in love is the finest beauty treatment yet devised. I have never seen Èmie look so beautiful.

—Carina

PACKED INTO THE TINY dirt-floored cabin, while snow sparkled the air outside, Carina watched Father Antoine join his niece and Dr. Robert Simms in marriage. Had she looked at this priest with such hopeful joy when he’d joined her with Quillan? Or had her eyes held only the fear and uncertainty of their circumstances?

Could she have known then what a farce her marriage would become? She pressed her eyes closed against the ache, then opened them again, determined to see Èmie start differently. Hers would be a blessed union. It had no complications. These two married for love.

Carina forced back her tears. Hadn’t she also? Perhaps. It seemed so in her memory, but her emotions were so confused. It had been so long now since she’d even seen Quillan, heard his voice in the street. She missed him. Even in his cruelty, at least he showed that he knew she existed.

She put a hand to her belly. But did he know another one existed? A surge of hope filled her. When he knew, when he saw her belly swollen with life, would he dare suggest their union was anything less than God’s will? Though her skirts hid the slight bulging of her abdomen and she had yet to feel more than a flutter inside, she knew this child was their hope.

She bit her lip as Èmie raised her hand and Dr. Simms slid the ring onto her finger. How long before Èmie, too, carried a child in her womb? Would their babies grow up together on the streets of Crystal? Carina smiled at the thought. Was this a son she carried, strong and long of limb like Quillan, or a daughter with dark laughing eyes?

How could she have been so innocent of the early changes in her body? Thinking herself ill with some malady when she missed cycle after cycle? By the third she had guessed. Impossible as it seemed, Quillan had made her with child.
Grazie Dio!
She no longer felt so alone. Even in these circumstances, she couldn’t help rejoicing. God had brought good from that terrible night.
Un miracolo
.

Now Dr. Simms kissed his bride, and Carina clapped with the others, joy chasing all other thoughts from her mind. How Èmie deserved to be loved. Now she was free of Uncle Henri and could make a home for this man. Carina thought of her own empty room, but she pushed the sadness aside. This was Èmie’s day.

The feast was held in Carina’s dining room and consisted mostly of game and corn. She had baked a cake of soured cream and poppy seeds, the last of them in her small jar. The air outside was bitter, freezing the moisture into glittering crystalline wind. Inside, the fire’s glow and the joy warmed the room and all those present.