The Mapmaker's Children (30 page)

N
EW
C
HARLESTOWN
, W
EST
V
IRGINIA
O
CTOBER
2014

C
ricket died the morning of the first frost. A lacework of crystals wove tight across Jack and Eden's bedroom window, and the icy leaves of the maple dropped overnight from the weight.

Jack had gotten up early for work, preparing for his first week as the new vice president of marketing for CGC's Green Line, based on the Anderson formulas.

“Eden, darling,” he'd called her from deep sleep with a shaky voice. “I think it's Cricket's time.”

They'd sat on the floor at the base of the staircase, Eden in flannel pajamas, Jack in his suit, and rocked Cricket through his last labored breath. Then Eden had kissed his cold nose before Jack had wrapped his body in a blanket and taken him to Dr. Wyatt's office for cremation.

Cleo had been at school, and Eden was glad for it. It broke her heart to tell the girl the news when she got home that afternoon. They sat on the couch together, and Eden held her until the tears subsided.

“They say Grams went fast,” Cleo whispered. “One day she was reading on the porch, and the next day, gone.”

Eden hugged her tighter, the girl's caramel hair smelling savory sweet against her cheek.

“I'm not scared of dying,” Cleo continued. “Everybody's got to. There are worse things than dying…like being alive and unwanted. Even if his life was short, Cricket had you and Mr. Anderson. I asked my pastor, and he said family stays with you for always, even in the hereafter.
So it's good that he found you, and you found him. He won't ever be alone. That'd be worse.”

Eden rubbed Cleo's hot back. She liked to think that Cricket felt loved—that their spirits were tied together for eternity.

“My mom left me with my grandpa when Grams died,” said Cleo. “She went to California. Rehab. Only after she got well, she never came back.” She turned her face down to her lap, pick-pick-picking at the stitching of her school skirt until Eden was sure she'd undo the whole seam.

Finally, here it was: Cleo's mom was an addict, living on the other side of the continent. True, it was none of Eden's business, but Cleo had trusted Eden enough to make it her business. She wasn't just some kid next door. She meant a great deal more to Eden now. Eden took Cleo's hand away from the hem and held it, sweaty in her own.

“I don't even know if she's alive or not. I have a picture from when I was a baby, but she was sick then…I don't like to look at it much. I've been trying to put the clues together.” She raised her eyes to meet Eden's. “Grandpa says he doesn't know where she is, either. He hasn't heard from her in years. She just disappeared. Only nobody vanishes like a ghost.”

Eden repeated her own words of comfort with the addition of Cleo's, far wiser than she'd ever know. “There are no such things as ghosts. Only unsolved mysteries. Like the doll's head.”

Cleo leaned into Eden's arms.

“That case is still unsolved.”

“Well, sometimes we aren't meant to have the whole story all at once,” said Eden. “Only the part God, fate, history, or whatever sees fit to reveal at the time. I'm sorry I can't solve the mystery of your mother for you. I wish I could. And not even the world's greatest going-on-eleven-years-old veterinarian-detective could've known Cricket was so sick.”

Cleo inhaled sharply, and Eden smoothed the sweaty strands off the girl's forehead. She knew what it was like to feel guilty for something out of one's control.

“We can't force life to do what we want when we want it. We can't change yesterday or control tomorrow. We can only live today as best we can. And it just might turn out better than expected.”

Saying it made her believe, too. Something bubbly warm rose up from her toes to her cheeks, and before she could stop it, she'd kissed the crown of Cleo's head.
I wish you were mine
, she thought.
If I were your mother, I'd have come back. If I were your mom, I'd never have let you go
.

Cleo hugged her. “I'm glad I got you, Miss A.”

“I'm glad I got you, too, Miss Cleo.”

Cleo helped Eden choose a clover-covered spot straddling the backyard's property line. They bought an apple sapling in Cricket's honor and dug a hole to plant it with his ashes. A whole Cricket in a jewelry box of cinders. It seemed too little remains of a body and soul—even a little one of mostly fur.

She thought of her father's ashes sealed up in the gold urn her mother had picked out. The inscription read,
To some you may be forgotten, to others a part of the past. But to those who loved and lost you, your memory will always last
. It had been on the list of remembrance poems the funeral home suggested. Eden had thought the poem trite at the time. A quatrain that read like a nursery rhyme. She'd been young and heart-stricken over so much left unsaid, father to daughter. His memory would last, yes, but it was muddled with doubt and disappointment. Now she realized that the poem was about choice. The “you” in the stanza was dead. It was up to the living to decide: to forget entirely, to put behind, or to recognize the love and carry that into the future.

C
LEO CAME
to Cricket's burial in her church patent leathers and a calico dress that made her eyes glow like periwinkles. Mr. Bronner came, too, and brought an evergreen wreath with a miniature bronze angel tied to the front. Eden felt regretful that their first meeting was for such a somber occasion but was moved by his thoughtfulness. She hung the wreath on the front door, and from the moment she did, the door remained open.

Children and parents from Eden's weekly Story Hour delivered homemade condolence cards smelling of finger paints and glitter glue. Vee and her dad arrived in the ice-cream truck with freshly baked cinnamon cookies, a Niles family recipe. Mr. Niles insisted that it was a tradition
as old as the town. He'd healed enough to walk with a cane and used it with Dickensian flourish,
tap-tapping
it as an exclamation point to his gregarious chatter. Eden liked him immediately. As did Jack, especially when they learned that prior to breaking his pelvis, Mr. Niles had been in Scotland, shopping for antiques and visiting relatives.

“Your Cornwall is on the opposite end of the isle, but I'll share a stout with you anyhow—this being the wake of a good dog gone too soon,” he good-naturedly quipped. “I got two Labradors. Lost their father, Brae-burn, ten years back, and I still get choked up missing that old boy.”

Jack and Mr. Niles sat outside on the porch swing, talking for the next hour while Vee disclosed to Eden another gift. Her paperwork for the National Register of Historic Places had been approved by the National Register Review Board and was on its way to the National Parks Service in Washington, D.C., for final review.

In addition to the information Eden had collected on her own, Ms. Silverdash's bank box had provided irrefutable evidence of the home's authenticity. It contained a notarized Last Will and Testament of Mrs. Hannah Fisher Hill, with a detailed description of the Hills' home as an Underground Railroad station managed by her father-in-law, Frederick Hill, and his parents, George and Priscilla Hill. A family tree had been drawn out listing Hannah's parents as the freed slaves Hank and Margaret Fisher; an elder sister, Siby Fisher, and a twin brother, Clyde Fisher; and Hannah's husband, George Hill II; their children included sons Henry and George III and daughters Betty and Camilla, Camilla being Ms. Silverdash's grandmother.

Based on the new findings, Mr. Bronner, in corroboration with Judge Jamison, declared Emma Silverdash the official beneficiary of the remainder of the bank box's contents: fifty thousand dollars' worth of gold bullion dating back to 1867.

Ms. Silverdash had thrown a bookstore party with a buy-one-new, get-one-old-free sale to celebrate and thank the town's patrons for their unwavering support during troubled times. Morris's Café catered the event, but Mack and Annemarie brought the star dish. Celebration deviled eggs, of course. Father and son had reconciled.

“The minute Matthew arrived, I understood,” Mack told Mr. Morris.

“When it comes to family, there's no dividing, just multiplying,” Ms. Silverdash had chimed in. “That's history's math!”

And they'd all toasted to that with creamy mustard eggs.

That was only the week before. Now the Miltons, including Ms. Silverdash, came to Cricket's burial together, bearing pumpkin pie and skillet corn bread, a book of prayers, and bags of groceries to keep the Andersons' pantry stocked for weeks.

Eden hadn't felt this kind of kinship anywhere before, not even around her childhood table. It was the family she'd always hoped for but never envisioned. There was only one person missing.

“Denny?” She phoned him from the kitchen, where she'd placed the doll's head back on the windowsill beside potted violets from Suley Hunter. “It's done. We buried him.”

She'd called him immediately when Cricket had died but had only managed to sniffle and croak into the receiver.

“I wish I could've been there today,” Denny let out a long exhalation. “My boss at Mother Mayhem's said if I jumped ship again, there'd be no coming back, and I still haven't heard from any of the job interviewers. How'd it go?”

She told him everything. About the Miltons coming with Ms. Silverdash, Mr. Morris's pies, Vee's funeral biscuits, the National Register of Historic Places, Cleo and Mr. Bronner finishing up the last of the lemonade tea while Jack and Mr. Niles swapped memories of England.

Denny was silent through it all. At the end, he said, “Jessica had an abortion. I just found out.”

So suddenly did his grief unmoor Eden that she didn't have a chance to steel herself. Hearing his breath come ragged on the other end, she wept, too—for him, for the babies here and gone, for Cricket, for herself and the unfulfilled hopes she'd bottled up through the years. And though she couldn't see him, she felt Denny's crushed heart.

“Come home,” she told him. “Come home to New Charlestown.”

NEW CHARLESTOWN POST

Red Bluff, California, September 20, 1864

Dear Freddy
,

We have arrived. Our cousin did not exaggerate. It is autumn and yet the flower beds overflow with wild roses and sedum. Alice could have her pick of every fabled bloom. The forests are not oaks or maples but pines growing so tall and narrow, they look like Goliath arrows pointing to the sun. And oh, the sun! I write you now bathed in it and shivering off every thought of Decorah. I close my eyes and it pinwheels right through my skin. It's our Promised Land, this California
.

We have begun to search for a homestead. There is no shortage of land, and the locals have put on their fanciest hats to show us around. The town's newspaper correspondent has come calling every afternoon to interview us. Somehow, I've been dubbed the family spokesperson. Mother goes mute on the man's arrival. Annie hides in the kitchen, conveniently indisposed with the makings of sorrel soup. And little Ellen is more likely to tell the neighbors about the menagerie on her circular needlepoint frame than anything of significance
.

The town is small but contains the necessities: post office, general store, bank, courthouse, a gun shop and hardware store, church on one end and blacksmith on the other. While Salmon and Abbie intend to find land to raise sheep, Mother, Annie, Ellen, and I are searching for a simple home in town. We'll first need stable employment. What the locals don't realize is that while we are rich in name, we are poor in finances, having used nearly all we had to make this journey
.

The Red Bluff schoolhouse has advertised for a teacher, as have a number of the surrounding townships. Annie and I aim to secure two of those positions straightaway, given our scholastic backgrounds. Once again, we're ever grateful to Mr. Sanborn for his patronage of our education. It is proving a powerful asset to our family's survival. I am also told that there is a large contingent of society ladies with a desire for
stylish sewing, embroidery, stamping, and paintings from the East. I'm devising a way to turn my art into purse pence since it is not being used for other measures at present
.

Truest, trusted friend, we are desperate for news of you and your family, having not received any for so very, very long!

Eternally yours
,

Sarah

P.S. Enclosed is one of the thousands of miniature pinecones underfoot here. Thimble-sized, as if carried by Louisa May's fairies. They have renewed my curiosity. Magic may exist after all…or at the very least, the hope of magic
.

New Charlestown, West Virginia, October 20, 1864

Dear Sarah
,

I have written dozens of letters over the course of the last year with the hopes of sending the latest as soon there was a safe opportunity. However, Harpers Ferry, New Charlestown, and the surrounding townships have swapped hands of opposing military jurisdiction so often (Lee, Jackson, Milroy, Early) that as soon as the ink had dried on a letter, another battle would erupt and we'd again be divided from our northern friends. This war has turned into the generals' card game, and we, the people, are petty coinage on the saloon table
.

Added to our confusion is the deteriorated state of the Confederate forces. Their uniforms are little more than tatters, stolen bits from fallen Union troops, so that we aren't ever assured of a soldier's true creed. A man in Federal garb could turn out to be a Confederate in disguise. The Yankees are no better. They come as they please and take whatever supplies we have. Any attempt to stop them is perceived as proof that we
are southern sympathizers. My unsolicited Confederate appointment as minister to the troops has been used as evidence against me, despite my papers of Union furlough. Neither side trusts us, and we trust no one except our faithful friends and New Charlestowners
.

Father perished at the Battle of Gettysburg. I'm sorry this news reaches you so late and, yet, abruptly. Provisions were made to bring his body home. He now rests in our own New Charlestown Church cemetery, beside Alice, who did not, as we hoped, recover from her injury. Mother has been in mourning for the entirety of this war. Her grief has aged her tenfold. Despite the rumors of peace each season, the war continues. I wish this letter could be as our old ones—full of literature, art, and happy memories—but times have changed. And while we are changed, too, I still count you, Sarah, as my truest confidante
.

It is with that in mind that I send this weighty request and write more candidly than ever before…as I intend to pass this letter directly into the good hands of Mr. Silverdash and our
friends
.

From the reports of slave catchers and the years between, we hold no false optimism that Mr. and Mrs. Fisher will return. Hannah and Clyde Fisher have been hidden in our home since the war's onset. They are as much our family as our blood relations and, in many ways, more. I would sooner give my life than see these two children come to any harm. Keeping them hidden was an easier task when they were young. However, at nearly five years old, they are growing at great pace. Soon even their one safe haven will betray them, proving too small for their bodies should the Confederates come for inspection
.

Ruth has had her hands full with our firstborn, little George, nearly a year old. She is weak from nursing and her own lack of proper nutrition, so Siby has taken on the task of caring for her and my ailing mother. Hannah and Clyde are mostly left to themselves and spend more hours than is healthy beneath the pantry floorboards. They need the sunshine you described
.

Since your departure, Mr. Silverdash has become a formidable legionnaire of the
. His work extends to the free state of Ohio. Despite
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the routes have remained covertly active. Most of the lines move north to Canada, but there are those striking out west—to you in the Sacramento Valley
.

Hannah and Clyde are at hourly jeopardy. I have argued for Siby to go with them, but she refuses to leave Mother. She will only give her consent for the children to flee if you, Sarah, are their destination. Please, discuss with your family and send word as soon as possible. Whatever your decision, I will remain…

Eternally yours
,

Freddy