The Secrets She Carried (32 page)

When the bad news is all out on the page, I beg her forgiveness and assure her that what I have done cannot be laid at her door. I tell her I am happier than I have a right to be, that I care nothing for the world’s opinion so long as I have Henry’s love and can hold my little patchwork family together. It will not matter, I think, as I seal the envelope and fix the stamp. She will blame herself. I could have lied, I suppose, or at least softened the news, but that has never been the way between Mama and me. She deserves to know the truth, even if it shames us both.

A week later Henry brings me a present, a small box of dark green velvet he pulls from his pocket when I’ve finally gotten Jemmy to sleep. I wonder if he bought it because he has sensed a change in my mood. I have become sullen and restless since mailing the letter, anxious about what Mama will say when she writes, but more afraid that she will not write at all.

I am shy about opening the box; I’m not used to presents but can see that he’s eager. I hold my breath as I raise the lid, then let it out again when I catch sight of the pendant—a tiny book fashioned of silver. It is a lovely thing, bright and charming, though I have no idea why Henry has chosen it. Still, I smile as I lift it out by the chain, watching it glitter and twirl in the lamplight.

“I drove over to Level Grove to get it,” he says, sidling closer to me on the settee. “It’s a locket. Here, let me show you.” He works at the hasp a moment with his thumbnail, then hands it back. “See? There are little pages inside for…family pictures.”

The last words are a whisper, an apology for all he cannot give me and for all that’s been taken away. I manage a nod, but my heart
squeezes hard against my ribs, the ache suddenly too much to bear. When his arms go around me, I finally break, all the months and years of holding in, of pretending this half-life is somehow enough, spilling from me in great, wrenching sobs.

We have each played our part in this wicked thing, each turned our backs on decency. But I am the woman. It was my place to say no, to stay strong and not yield. Instead, I sold my soul.

I
t’s plain that Maggie blames me.

She is still too young to ask questions, though they live unasked in her sharp gray eyes whenever they settle on Jemmy. He is her rival—and he is my fault.

Henry’s love for his little girl has not faltered; she has always been, and still is, the brightest part of his life. But I would be lying if I said he is not smitten with his new son. He is gone from the Big House now, for longer and longer stretches, spending two or three nights out of each week at the cottage, while Maggie is left alone in her rosebud-papered room down the hall from Susanne.

I miss her terribly. She rarely comes to the cottage now, and never when Henry is gone. And in those rare and precious times when we are all together, she makes it clear she wants no part of me, casting sullen looks in my direction while she clings to her father. It hurts me to see it, though I do my best to pretend I don’t. I think of all the frigid mornings I held her hand while she waited for the bus, or the afternoons when we played dress-up, and I wonder if it can ever be like that again. I fear it cannot. I lost the affections of Henry’s daughter the day I gave him a son.

By the end of summer Jemmy is toddling and Maggie has come
around. She has all but forsaken her favorite doll, preferring to dress up poor Jemmy instead, pouring out endless cups of imaginary tea or hanging on for dear life while I haul the pair of them up and down the drive in her wagon. She is leery of me still, but less sullen, and now and again, I fancy I catch a longing in her eyes when they fall on me, a sort of wistfulness for the way things used to be before Jemmy was born. I know that she has not forgiven me yet, but for now it is enough.

I adore every part of being Jemmy’s mother, but there are times I find it hard to believe that one tiny boy has so altered my life. There is no longer any order to my days, only an unrelenting sense of never enough sleep, never enough quiet, and always, always, more to do. I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.

At least going into town is easier now, with Jemmy in tow. There is still always the customary knot of loiterers in front of the barber’s, but they pay me less mind now. I am no longer the naïve young girl Henry dropped off in their midst all those years ago—no longer a
ripe little peach.
Now when they look at me, their eyes hold different kinds of questions, mostly about who might have fathered my boy. These are the moments I’m actually glad Jemmy looks nothing at all like his daddy.

The gossip has finally quieted. It helps that the Gavin Historical Society has disbanded and that Celia Cunningham has moved away—gone to live with her sister in Kentucky while her husband serves his time for stealing from the bank—though, if you were to ask Mama, she’d probably tell you folks are just too worn down with their own trials to care about sticking their noses in their neighbor’s troubles.

Lottie comes less and less now, usually on her way home, when it’s dark and she can’t be seen from the house. Susanne has threatened to fire her if she catches her visiting me.

“I ain’t worried, though,” Lottie tells me with a grin. “Mr. Henry
won’t let her do that. He hired me way back when. He ain’t gonna let me go just for being neighborly.”

I nod my head, but I wonder. I see that deep down she does too, now that Henry takes most of his meals at the cottage. And now that Susanne’s got a new girl to fetch and carry for her.

“At least you don’t have to spend your days running up and down stairs now that Lyla’s come to look after Susanne.”

Lottie sucks her teeth, then follows it with a snort. “Shoot, that girl can barely find her way around the house yet. She ain’t lazy, but she’s scared of her own shadow, and slow-witted as all get-out. You should have seen her face when them boys came knocking at the back door.”

I frown as I hand her a piece of sweet potato pie. “What boys?”

“The same bunch who used to bring Susanne’s bootleg. She can get it legal now, but she still pays them to come over from Level Grove a couple times a week and do odd jobs, hauling trash, raking leaves, toting wood in from the shed. Never see ’em do any of it, though, just come round for their money at the end of the day. Shifty no-accounts is all they are. Wouldn’t want them hanging around my place, or hanging around my girl either.”

Lottie’s expression makes me uncomfortable, like she’s trying to say something without saying it. I wait to see if she’ll say more, but she just keeps pecking away at her pie. Before I can ask her more, I hear Jemmy start to cry.

In the coming days, Lottie’s words stick with me. I can’t help wondering what would possess Susanne to let such trashy boys anywhere near Maggie, and I wonder if it might not be time to talk to Henry. Surely he knows a decent man or two who would be happy to have the work, though it will mean having to deal with Susanne, something he seems more and more reluctant to do these days.

I can’t say I blame him. From the stories Lottie tells, Susanne is no longer in her right mind, though she is still at her window most
days. When the light is just right, I can make out her face, like a vigilant ghost peering out between the curtains, pale and ravaged and full of hate as she stares down at my boy. And then there is a day that lodges in my memory like a bone, a day when our eyes meet through the glass and I see something new in her expression, a brand of malice that makes me shiver, that makes me want to pick up my son and run. And keep on running.

The next morning I’m surprised to hear a knock on the cottage door. Lottie’s the only person who ever comes calling, and she never knocks, just sticks her head in and hollers. There’s a girl standing on the stoop when I open the door, shadow thin, with eyes round as quarters, her mouse brown hair tied back from a face like spoiled milk. She’s wearing one of my old aprons.

“Yes?” I say, wondering what this is all about and why the girl isn’t saying a word.

She blinks slowly, like she’s just come awake, then looks down, fingers worrying the hem of her apron. “Mrs. Gavin says you’re to come up to the house.”

I look back at Jemmy, finally asleep after a long, fussy morning. “My son is asleep. What does she want?”

Her eyes are dull but faintly pleading, her mouth working soundlessly as she backs slowly down the stoop. For a moment I think she might burst into tears. “The Missus says for you to come now,” she blurts, then turns to scurry back toward the house.

She leaves me to stare after her, my belly clenched tight as a fist. I have always known this day would come, that she would seek out fresh ways to punish me, and that when that time came it would be my son she used against me.

Jemmy protests, mewling softly as I rouse him from his nap, his curly head warm and heavy against my shoulder. I loathe the very thought of taking him into that house, or anywhere near that woman, but there is no one else to look after him. Henry has gone into town
this morning, though that’s for the best, I suppose. He would not want to be nearby when Susanne and I finally bare our claws.

I pass quietly through the mudroom door and into the kitchen. Lottie glances up from a freshly plucked chicken, her small cleaver suspended in midair when she sees me standing there with Jemmy in my arms.

“Girl, what are you doing here with that boy?”

I nod toward the back stairs. “I was sent for.”

Lottie heaves a gusty sigh, and the lines in her weathered face deepen. “Leave the child with me, then, when you go up.”

I shake my head, tightening my grip on Jemmy until I feel him begin to squirm. I have no idea how long this encounter might last, but I do know my son won’t be out of my sight so long as I am in Susanne’s house.

I catch a flash of white apron in the pantry as I turn and head for the stairs, then a glimpse of stringy brown hair though the crack in the door, and I wonder how much young Lyla knows about the girl who once served in her place. But then, it is no matter. I am long past caring what most people think.

I pause at the top of the stairs, dizzied by the memories that seem to hover like ghosts, cold but not quite gone, of a child lost, and a love found, of discovery, and heartache, and such terrible shame. It’s the first time I’ve been back since the day my things were moved out to the cottage, and I’m startled to find I have forgotten the grandeur of its rooms, its fine furnishing and wide airy spaces, and how empty and cold it always felt.

My eyes skim along the gloomy hall, lingering on Henry’s door, then move on to the room that was once mine. I’m strangely glad to catch a glimpse of rosebud-covered walls and of Maggie’s precious Violet, propped unseeing against a shiny bank of pink satin pillows. It helps, somehow, to think of her saying her nightly prayers, then closing her eyes beneath the same bit of roof that once sheltered me,
as if, despite the sin that separates us, we are in some small way connected.

I gird myself then and hold tight to Jemmy as I move to Susanne’s door and knock. I don’t wait for an answer, just turn the knob and go in. The room is stifling, thick with the stench of dirty linen and unwashed flesh. The bed is unmade, the sheets rumpled and gray, half-puddled on the floor, as if Susanne has only just climbed out from between them.

She is still in her nightgown, though it is past noon, sitting at her dressing table where I used to fix her hair. Her eyes are slow to meet mine in the glass, and for a moment she seems confused, almost startled to see me standing there.

I am astonished by her reflection, by the wicked toll the years have taken since I saw her last. She is all sinew and shadow now, a specter of the woman who once looked down her nose at me in the downstairs parlor, her powderless skin like parchment, stretched tight and sallow over too-sharp cheekbones, her eyes so deep in shadow they appear mere hollows in her face.

In her lap, her hands are anxiously at work, endlessly scraping at wrists that are a ruin of white and purple scars. They go still when her eyes light on Jemmy, and I find I have to fight the urge to take a step back.

“How dare you bring your bastard here—to
my
house!”

Her voice is like venom, a rasp meant to wound. But the words miss their mark. I am beyond wounding. At least by her.

“You sent for me,” I say, shifting Jemmy to my other hip. He is wide-awake now, squirming to be put down.

Susanne lurches unsteadily to her feet, grasping the edge of the dressing table for support. Before I can step away, she has reached out to touch one of Jemmy’s curls, testing its coppery springiness.

She pulls back in revulsion. “The boy is…Henry’s?”

“You know he is.”

Her eyes glitter shrewdly. “He doesn’t look like my husband.”

“Neither does Maggie.”

It is a small victory, but a victory nonetheless, to see her already pale face go paler, to see her weave her way to the bedside table and pick up her teacup with unsteady hands. The bottle of tincture is still there, alongside a half-drained bottle of bourbon. She makes use of the bourbon, splashing some into the cup, then draining it, wiping her chin on the sleeve of her nightgown. I understand now why Henry never speaks of her. It is too terrible.