The Gilly Salt Sisters (47 page)

Already it was clear that the baby had changed, and this distressed Dee. It made her feel as if Claire had stolen something that should have been her own. But he was healthy, and for that, Dee gave thanks. The nurses had wrapped him up tight in a clean flannel blanket and stuck a knit cap on his head, and he was working his tongue in and out of his mouth like a hungry kitten.

“Go ahead, try to feed him,” the nurse told Dee, handing her a bottle. But Dee was still too weak and out of it, so Claire took over, cooing and smiling as though she were the one who was pumped full of drugs instead of Dee.

“Don’t worry,” Claire assured Dee after she was done. “We’re going to get you out of here just as soon as possible.”

But to Dee the hospital was as good as a resort. Whenever she wanted it, the nurses fetched her Jell-O and ice, they whisked the baby away just as soon as he started bawling, and Dee didn’t even have to get up to shower. The nurses came to do that, too,
sponging down her arms and legs the way she assumed she was supposed to learn to do for her child.

“It’s natural to feel so tired after what you’ve just been through,” the pretty blond nurse told her. Dee guessed she meant almost dying and everything, though, to be honest, she didn’t remember very much of the whole experience.

She recalled snooping in the parlor and finding that old letter, but everything after that went garbled and snowy, like television reception getting all screwed up from a storm. The picture wasn’t very good, and none of the voices matched the action. They still kind of didn’t. Dee remembered Jo holding her in the truck, and the bright lights when she looked up and found herself on a hospital gurney, and Claire’s high-pitched voice urging the emergency surgeons to hurry. Her legs had felt all wet, and when she’d looked down, Dee remembered seeing a lot of blood. Even she knew that wasn’t good.

When she’d come to, her stomach had become an empty pouch again and there was a strange baby crying in Claire’s arms. “Look, he’s perfect,” Claire had said, leaning over and tilting the bundle toward Dee. “It’s a boy. What should we name him?”

Dee didn’t know what to say. All the names she’d picked out—the ones she thought would be so cool—suddenly seemed stupid in this clean and orderly place. She looked at the baby squirming in Claire’s arms. He was clean, too, in spite of having a mess of a girl like Dee for a mother, and that simple fact gave her a little shot of hope. This baby deserved a pristine kind of name, she thought. It was the least she could do for him. She reached out her arms for him, thinking hard. “Jordan,” she finally said. “For the river. I want to name him that.”

But Claire didn’t hand over the baby as Dee wanted her to. “Jordan,” she said, stroking his tiny nose. “That’s lovely. We can call him Jordy for short.”

Dee was so drowsy that she let Claire keep rocking him. It still scared her to hold him anyway. But right before she drifted off again, an image of the marsh floated into her mind—the
weather-beaten angles of the barn, the blush of pink on the oleanders. It occurred to her that once you planted something in the earth, it grew roots so thick you could count the generations on them. And now Jordy was the newest bud on that branch, fused to the Gillys in ways Dee had never anticipated.

E
ven in the waiting room, the hospital air was pungent with disinfectant. It pinched Jo’s nose. She’d been sitting here for over an hour, and she was starting to get a headache.

Dee was going to be fine. The doctors had assured Jo of that before they’d wheeled her away down the hall. It was a good thing she was as much of an insomniac as Dee, Jo thought, because otherwise she might not have heard that thump downstairs, might not have sat up in bed, her nerves buzzing, and called Dee’s name only to hear nothing but an ominous silence.

She glanced around the waiting room now, pleased to find it totally abandoned. No one else was in labor, and Claire was sequestered with Dee, so Jo took the envelope she’d found in Dee’s coat pocket when she’d picked her up and carried her to the truck and unfolded it flat against her thighs. Immediately Ida’s aggressive penmanship assaulted her, full of spiny angles and flourishes. And while Ida’s words might have faded, Jo saw, they had not changed in the least.

Jo read:

Dearest,

Perhaps you’re surprised to see this pearl returned to you again after all these years. I kept it, even though it would
have been wiser not to, and now I’ve come to rue it, for even this one token between us is dangerous.

I am writing not out of regret, however, but resolve. I have gone from the bottom of this town’s pile to the top, and I don’t intend to let past mistakes throw me down again. I made my decision on a snow-ridden day years ago, and I have absolutely no intention of breaking it now.

Know that my fortune has had its own price. The sight of you, for instance, and the sight of our daughter. I know I have not been kind to her—quite the opposite, in fact—but the mere picture of her pains me. Her existence reminds me of everything I want to forget, and how odd that it should be so, that the presence of one person can evoke what we strive most to cover and hide. If I have been cruel to her, it’s been for her own good. Ironic, is it not, that the one gentleness I’ve been able to bestow is meanness?

What if I’d never let you kiss me that first time? What if I’d let the Temperance women place Joanna in a far county like you wanted? What if I’d been born a better woman? What if Sarah Gilly hadn’t met me kneeling at the feet of the Virgin the night of that terrible storm, her own babe in her arms?

There are no answers to those questions. One thing I’ve learned while living up on Plover Hill is that such elevation allows for marvelous perspective, but it also keeps one perpetually distant. In the end maybe that’s for the best.

I tell you all this now only to prevent future catastrophe. There are twenty-odd reasons why Joanna Gilly is not a suitable girl for my son, but only one of those facts truly haunts me—and should you as well.

I have never come forward until now, but I am asking for your discreet help in this matter. Once, I remember, you offered to give everything up for me, and I would not let you. I think I knew even then that such gestures only lead to ruin and misery, and I was determined to be happy. And,
in spite of everything, I have been. Maybe it’s contrary to reason, maybe it’s wrong, but that’s a judgment to be decided upon my immortal soul and not in this worldly realm, and certainly not by you. Magna est veritas, et praevalibet.

Know that even though time has moved on, a constant part of me remains,

Ever Yours

Jo folded the letter back up, fighting down an old feeling of rage. She’d always believed that Ida had hated her, but the truth was more complicated. Ida hadn’t loved her, Jo saw now, but she hadn’t despised her either. Maybe the best way to put it was that Ida had simply regretted her. And with that regret came a measure of shame. It wasn’t that Jo wasn’t good enough for Whit—she was
too
good. In fact, she was exactly the same, of his line, with identical blood. Had circumstances been different, Jo might have even ended up a Turner herself, bonded to Whit not by affection but by name. Stale anger boiled in her chest, along with all the questions she’d tamped down for years, but the people who could answer them were either dead, in the case of Mama and Ida, or gone, in the case of Jo’s long-lost father.

Isn’t that just the way?
Jo thought, shoving the letter back into her coat pocket. The present swept the past along like a river clearing its banks. At least that’s how it was supposed to work, but some relic or another always got stuck. Her scars were proof enough of that. New did eventually grow atop the old, but never smoothly.

But how on earth had Dee ended up with the letter? Jo wondered. She looked up as Claire burst into the room, bluish circles smeared under her eyes, her cheeks pale, as if she’d just witnessed a battle. “It’s a boy. Seven pounds, six ounces. Healthy as can be, but Dee’s in rough shape. They did a C-section, and she lost a lot of blood, but she’s regaining consciousness now. Do you want to come see them?”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Jo said, trying to pull herself back to the present drama.

“Okay, but hurry.” Claire was so intent on returning to Dee’s bedside that she hadn’t even noticed Jo’s distraction, and maybe that was for the best, Jo thought. When they returned home, she’d throw Ida’s letter into the rubbish, where it belonged, but first things first. She had some pressing questions.

“Claire,” she said, “are you wearing the pearl?”

Claire spun on her heel in the doorway, confused. “What?”

“The pearl necklace that used to be Ida’s. Do you have it on?”

Claire frowned. “Why on earth are you asking?”

On a hunch Jo pulled the letter out of her pocket. “When I found Dee, she was holding this.”

Claire blanched and slid her eyes away from Jo’s.

“Do you know how she got it?” Jo asked.

Claire pursed her lips. “I found it. When I went to the house the other day.” Her voice was tiny.

“Have you read it?”

She paled further and sucked in her breath. “Have you?”

“Yes,” Jo said, without adding when. Before Jo could stop her, Claire reached out and grabbed the letter, folding the envelope in half and tucking it into her own sweater pocket.

“We don’t need to talk about this now,” she said. “Not here. Besides, don’t you think it’s time we started paying more attention to the future and less to the past?” She smiled brightly. “Why, we’ve got a new baby waiting right in the very next room and a sick mother to take care of.”

“My point exactly,” Jo replied. “You said the baby’s a boy. What if the same thing happens to him that fell on Henry? You know all the bad things that happen to boys in our marsh.”
And what if Whit is the bad thing?
Jo almost added but didn’t. What if Whit, in trying to get them off the land, went so far as threatening to sacrifice his own son, a child he never wanted to carry his name anyway?

Claire snorted. “Those are just a bunch of old wives’ tales. Now, are you coming? Let’s go see the baby.”

Jo followed her, trying to shake off the feeling that Claire knew more about her own past than she did.

B
y the time they got to Dee’s room, the baby was swaddled, blinking his brown seal eyes and suckling at his mother’s little finger.

“Oh, he’s perfect,” Claire cooed, peeling back a corner of the blanket. “May I hold him?” Dee relinquished possession of Jordy, but not with the alacrity Jo would have expected. Claire practically had to tug him out of Dee’s arms. It was as if in expelling Jordy into the world, Dee had come alive, too, Jo thought. Her eyes gleamed in a feverish new way, and even though she was so fatigued she could barely move, her muscles seemed attuned to every one of Jordy’s tiny fingers and toes. Did motherhood really set anchor that quickly, Jo wondered, watching Claire rock the baby, and was it like that for every woman?

Claire paced over to where Jo was sitting. “Here. Have a go.” She eased the complicated bundle of blanket and baby into the crook of Jo’s good arm. “Isn’t he just delicious?” Dee looked alarmed at that description, as if Claire might really devour Jordy whole, but Claire didn’t notice. She stroked the side of her finger down his cheek and laughed as his mouth puckered open. “He has Whit’s eyes,” she said. Silence fell over the room, and it was up to Claire to break it. “Oh, heck,” she finally said, and then, without anything further, she plucked Jordy from Jo’s arm, returned him to his bassinet, and left the room.

“Is she going to be all right?” Dee asked as the door clicked closed.

Jo stood up and awkwardly patted the covers next to Dee. “She’ll be fine.”

Dee reached out and grabbed Jo’s wrist. “I know this is all weird,” she said, her eyes glittering. “Maybe it’s best if I just leave Salt Creek Farm.”

“No!” Jo was surprised by how loudly she said it. She hadn’t realized how accustomed she’d become to seeing Dee folding laundry on the kitchen table or to hearing her laugh at something on the radio. She smoothed Dee’s hair. “Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”