The Girl Who Wrote in Silk (22 page)

Where could the McElroys have gone?

That niggling thought finally came into focus: Duncan could have killed them to get the property for himself.

She hugged her knees to her chest, hating herself for thinking such a thing about her own blood. But if he’d ruthlessly murdered hundreds of others, what were three more? And if he did kill them, surely after seeing notices in the paper of bodies washing ashore, he wouldn’t have tried dumping them out in the strait like the last time.

Did that mean he would have buried them on Rothesay property? Maybe down in the forest by the crumbling log cabin she and her brother and sister had used as a playhouse. Or across the road on Tom’s property that had once been the Rothesay orchards. Maybe in his own orchard in the rocky soil where no one since had wanted to dig.

She had to find out. She couldn’t live here and not know. She couldn’t dig in the garden and wonder if she’d pull up human bones.

She had to find the truth, and somehow she had to do it before Daniel did.

Monday, October 1, 1894

McElroy Farm, Orcas Island

Yan-Tao raced down the slope from the vegetable garden, his thin arms, browned from a summer spent almost entirely outdoors, pumping furiously. White teeth flashed as he laughed out loud just before he dove into the tall grass. When he came up, he was still laughing as he took off running again, oblivious to the grass and leaves clinging to his hair and clothes.

Mei Lien watched her son through the new parlor window. “New” wasn’t entirely accurate, since Joseph had built the addition nearly three years ago, but she’d always think of that room as new.

The window glass, thicker in some areas than others, distorted the images outside just enough to make her have to move her head around until she found the right place to see clearly. With the exception of her son and his boundless energy, the world outside seemed to reflect how Mei Lien felt—out of focus and tired.

The grass was still green, but it had lost its luster, no doubt caused by the coating of white frost she’d found on it every morning for the past two weeks. Trees just starting to change dotted the mountain here and there with bold splashes of color on an otherwise forever green landscape. Though the colors lightened her heart, she knew it was nothing more than an illusion to distract her from the truth—soon there would be nothing left but bare branches and sleeping ground. Even the sun itself had dipped south, leaving long midday shadows over the yard.

Yan-Tao ran from the shadow cast by the barn into a patch of bright sunlight that gleamed on hair as black as oil like her own and cut short like his father’s. She could hear his laughter as the black Labrador Joseph brought home for his son’s fifth birthday darted past him, barking at what must have been an animal of some sort in the grass. Yan-Tao’s healthy seven-year-old body twisted, jumped, ran, and dove for whatever he and the dog were trying to catch.

The years were passing too fast, she thought, not for the first time. Her baby would soon be a young man.

She and Joseph had tried to give him a sibling. Still were trying for that matter, even though they’d lost two pregnancies. Now her monthly courses had become irregular and a tender bulge pressed on her right side. She’d reached her twenty-sixth year, and she felt every one of those years in her sore legs, aching back, and swollen hands. Yet she worked all day helping Joseph bring in the crops and load them on a hired barge at their new dock so Joseph could sell them in the mainland cities.

When the farmwork was finished for the day, she turned her attention to the gift she was making for her son. Late into the night, every night, she embroidered their story onto the robe she would give to Yan-Tao when he married and started his own family.

As she thought those words—thought about Yan-Tao growing up—a sharp pain stabbed her low in the belly. She moaned under her breath and placed a warm palm over the pain, willing it away.

She couldn’t wait until Yan-Tao was grown to finish the embroidery. He might have years ahead of him, but she did not. She didn’t need a doctor to tell her she was dying. Her body had never been the same since Yan-Tao’s birth, and she knew she must have inherited the same affliction that had taken her own mother from her before she even knew her.

She could feel the mass in her womb, growing, twisting, slowly draining her life from her.

Unlike her mother, at least Mei Lien had known her child.

Watching him now filled her with longing. Life should be different for Yan-Tao. He should live where there were other children to play with. He should be free to accompany his father on business trips. He should be treated with respect and kindness.

Since one horrible day in Eastsound Village at the statehood celebration, during which the other islanders made no effort to hide their revulsion, she and Yan-Tao had not stepped foot off their farm. Joseph did all their trading and shopping. She was happiest this way, but was Yan-Tao?

His only playmates were her and Joseph (when they could spare the time), the animals on the farm or in the forest, and his cousins, Priscilla and Penelope, Elizabeth’s girls, who had visited every summer since he was born.

Mei Lien did her best during that weeklong visit every August to bite her tongue and be pleasant to Elizabeth, who still treated her like a servant. The girls, however, had turned into sweet young women who were always polite to Mei Lien and treated Yan-Tao like a little brother. For that, Mei Lien would forgive their mother almost anything.

Something in her stomach twitched and pulled, causing her to bend at the waist to relieve the pain. She breathed in and out, trying to drive the pain away but recognizing that each time it came, it was stronger. Soon it would be unbearable. She pushed at the lump in her stomach where the pain was centered and groaned. Time to sit. Time to direct her attention elsewhere.

Reluctantly she turned from the window and gingerly picked her way into the sitting room to her embroidery frame. Even though the precise and repetitive motion of embroidery had grown callouses on her fingers and made her wrists so sore that most nights she had to wrap them in cool cloths, she still loved every moment that she spent here. With each stitch she was one step closer to giving her son his heritage. With each stitch she connected with Grandmother and even her own mother and all the women of their family, lost to her forever.

She moved back the protective cotton covering and picked up the needle to make the next stitch. The section she worked on now told the story of when she and Joseph married and grew to love each other on their farm.

She shook her head. Love was such a strange emotion. She’d loved her father and grandmother with every breath in her body, and when they were taken from her, her breath was taken away too. And yet, somehow over the years she’d lived as Joseph’s wife, she’d started to breathe again. Her nerves jumped with excitement when she heard his boot on the step. Her insides melted when she watched him gently guide Yan-Tao’s hands holding the horse’s reins, or when he tossed the boy high into the air and caught him again, their laughter mingling like music.

She loved him more with each passing day. More than she’d ever thought possible.

But still she felt the heavy dullness inside that told her she had not fully recovered the part of her soul that had died the day she saw Grandmother’s body on the beach and knew she was all alone. Perhaps that dead part of her was what had settled in her womb and turned rotten. Just as surely as the devil Campbell had killed Father and Grandmother, he was now killing her.

She sat back, noting absently that her stomach pain had receded, and took a minute to stretch her neck. When she was ready, she cut the green thread she’d been using and reached for the peach-colored one she’d carefully twisted with pink to mimic the color of Joseph’s skin. Before piercing the cloth, she held the thread against the fabric, testing the color against the green background that was the forest surrounding the farm.

Satisfied, she pushed the needle through and began what would become her husband’s face, loving that moment of resistance before the cloth gave and the floss slid through the fabric. She pushed the needle through from the back and then repeated the motion, over and over in tiny seemingly random stitches, each with a specific purpose.

Her stomach gave another twinge but all she did to accommodate it was to hunch forward, relieving the pressure. She didn’t have time to lie down. She’d wasted an hour yesterday by lying down.

Joseph’s face slowly came into focus on the silk. His pink skin that he’d kept clean-shaven for her since the day they married. His intense green eyes that always seemed to be smiling at her. The strong jaw, thick eyebrows, straight nose. What had she ever done to deserve a man such as him?

Nothing.

She didn’t deserve him.

But Yan-Tao deserved him. And so, for both of them, she told the story of the love they shared through her stitches. Tonight she’d tell Yan-Tao the story in words, Chinese words, so he could practice the language, and so, one day, he could look at the embroidery and remember what every symbol and picture meant.

She’d embroidered nothing on this silk that did not have meaning or purpose.

“Mama, Mama!” Yan-Tao burst through the front door and barreled into the sitting room, the dog on his heels. His round cheeks were pink and nearly bursting from his wide grin. In his thin arms he held a bundle of gray fur. “I caught a rabbit! Want to pet it?”

“Keep that thing away from my silks!” she told him, trying not to laugh for, in truth, she even loved her son’s naughtiness because it showed he was happy and thriving. “I’m sure it is filthy!”

“I’ll give him a bath,” he said with a lift of his chin that reminded her of her father. “I’ll take good care of him. I promise.”

Mei Lien’s hand stilled with the needle poking halfway up through the cloth. “What do you mean you’ll take care of him? He is not a pet, is he?”

Yan-Tao’s throat bobbed. He nodded.

“You already have a pet.” She nodded to the mutt stretched on the floor at his feet. “You don’t need another. Besides, a rabbit isn’t a pet. It’s dinner.”

His mouth twisted in the way that always signaled tears were close at hand. He visibly fought the emotion with a deep breath and a swallow. His arms tightened, bringing the rabbit up to his face. “I love him, Mama. Please?”

Mei Lien looked at her son and the two animals with him and wondered if she could get out of this by telling him to speak with his father about it. She immediately rejected the idea, though, knowing Joseph would give in to anything Yan-Tao asked.

They didn’t need a pet rabbit. Yan-Tao didn’t need another distraction from his lessons and chores. He certainly didn’t need another pet.

But what she worried about most was the simple fact that one day the rabbit would die, or be eaten by a dog or coyote, and her son’s heart would break. It was a lesson he would have to learn, but not just yet if she could help it.

“No.” She forced herself to resume her stitches. “But I will let you set him free outside instead of killing him for our supper, even though a rabbit stew tonight would make your father happy. You know how hungry he is after his trips to Port Townsend.”

“Yes, Mother,” he muttered as he turned to the front door. Without another word, he shuffled outside with the dog beside him and closed the door softly.

His palpable disappointment left a heavy pall over the room.

Mei Lien shook her head and used the fingers of her left hand to massage her right wrist. She’d done the right thing. The farm was no place for a pet rabbit.

The door opened again and she looked up, expecting to hear Yan-Tao plead for the rabbit again. Instead, he slammed the door shut behind him and raced through the parlor into the kitchen. The sound of his boots stomping loudly up the stairs rattled the lantern hanging on the wall. The click of the dog’s toenails followed the whole way. A door slammed and she knew he’d gone into hiding in his room.

Several minutes later, she was again lost in her embroidery when the dog alerted her that all was not well. His whimpers carried through the ceiling from Yan-Tao’s bedroom above her.

She carefully pierced the needle into the silk to hold it in place, then left it there and drew the cotton cloth over the top, protecting the entire work from dust and light.

Then, ignoring the protest from her belly, she stood and made her way to the kitchen and slowly up the stairs to the second floor where she knocked on her son’s closed door. “Yan-Tao? Are you unwell?”

“No,” came his muffled reply.

Mei Lien sighed and shifted to ease the pain in her stomach. “I know you’re angry with me, but it’s for the best that you don’t take in another pet. We don’t need another mouth to feed.”

She waited, listening for a reply.

When none came, she continued. “Besides, you need to be careful how much you share your heart. Pets die, and if you give them your heart, well…” She searched for the right words to explain to a child what she herself didn’t fully understand. “You lose yourself with them.”

The door clicked open.

She nudged the door the rest of the way open and peered inside the bedroom. He’d lit the small lantern Joseph had given him and was curled up on pillows on the floor in the corner with the dog pressed against his back.

“It’s all right, Mama. I don’t love the rabbit.”

The steely determination on his face made something in her chest feel like it had snapped and was squeezing her heart right out of her. “I’m sorry you had to let him go.”

“I didn’t let him go.” He used his fist to swipe at his eyes.

“Where is he?”

“On the porch. You can have him to make stew for Father.”

Never in her life had Mei Lien known that someone so young could exhibit more bravery than a full-grown adult. In that instant she saw a flash of the honorable man her son would someday be, and she felt a wash of emotion come over her.

Maybe she’d been too rash. Maybe she should let him keep the rabbit.

“Do you still want to keep him?” she asked, knowing the question was silly. Of course he wanted to keep the animal.

But he surprised her by shaking his head. “It’s too late, Mama. He’s dead.”

• • •

She made the rabbit stew and Joseph’s favorite biscuits to go with it, but he didn’t return from his trip to Port Townsend by dinnertime. She kept the pot warm on the stove as she tucked Yan-Tao into bed and kissed him good night, thanking him again for the rabbit even though they both knew she should have let him keep it as a pet. He hadn’t eaten more than two bites, and she could tell he’d had to choke those down.

A storm had blown in while they were eating, and rain pounded the house as loudly as drums. A glance out of Yan-Tao’s window showed the trees thrashing madly in the wind. A branch or pinecone banged against the roof, making them both jump. “Don’t fret, Son. It’s just a storm. Good night.”

“Where’s Father?”

Mei Lien paused at his bedroom door to give him a smile she hoped would reassure him. “I’m sure he’ll be here when you wake up. Go to sleep.”