Mama didn’t attempt to persuade them. She nodded slowly. “We’ll join the party seeing you off Saturday morning.” To Rachel, who was tying on her hat, she smiled tremulously. Real affection flitted across her face. “I understand your cousins are escorting you to the Genesee Valley. I pray you make a happy home with the Lintons. We’ll miss you here.”
Rachel and Mama exchanged a few words of parting. Matthew remained, still as a statue, slumped in his chair. My father continued to observe him with displeasure. Gideon stood by the fire, warming his hands and similarly frowning, for once apparently too distracted to try to wheedle a conversation out of Rachel and get in her good graces, despite the little time he had to do so before she left Middleton.
When I caught my favorite brother’s gaze, I raised my eyebrows. What was going on?
He shook his head.
Not until our three friends parted did Papa speak again.
He strode to the fire and delivered his words to the flames. “Your silence bothers me more than anything, Matthew. Given your propensity for gambling, I suspected you in the theft. But Daniel shouldn’t have been the one to verify it.”
Matthew’s hands fell from his head to the table with the force of two angry slaps.
Mama jumped. Then she turned and, with her back to us, went about cutting salt pork and situating the slices in the skillet.
I didn’t belong in this conversation yet was reluctant to leave unless ordered to do so. Dreadful awareness, not idle curiosity, arrested me. For months now I’d kept secret the incident of the purse exchange outside the meetinghouse, though I’d often wondered if it was information my father deserved to know.
And now there was this. Theft. My misguided discretion dismayed me. Obviously, I should have told.
I waited with trepidation to learn what new sordid situation Matthew had devised. Apparently, it involved Daniel Long. My parents didn’t seem to notice me, so I took down the yarns and began nervously organizing them.
“You’re right,” Matthew finally answered. “He shouldn’t have. This is none of Daniel Long’s business.”
“You made it his business when you borrowed from him.”
“Just so he could sport me enough blunt to recover—”
Papa barked a harsh laugh. “At the card tables? No one recovers there.” His mouth twisted. “And don’t use your cant with me. I’m not Isaac Rush.” He spat the gamester’s name.
Matthew’s hands made fists on the table. “Plenty of men find their amusements in town.”
“Cruel, pernicious amusements … expensive games and cockfighting,” Mama said. She shook her head. “Wasteful.”
Matthew began an angry retort that Papa cut off with a sharp “Watch your tone with your mother.”
“I’m twenty years old, yet she treats me like a lad.”
“You act like one. If I’d known how often you took advantage of your free time on the farm to skip to the tavern and throw dice in hazard, I would have kept you occupied doing chores alongside Betsy and Grace.”
The insult drew Matthew to a rigid posture in his chair. “I don’t go for hazard. I play faro with perfectly respectable gentlemen, like Mr. Goodrich, Dr. Davis, and Mr. Underwood.”
“I don’t care if the prince regent of England sat at the card table with you. The fact is you’re not in their positions. Perhaps they have spare money to lose. Perhaps they can afford to plunge heavily, write vowels to pay up later, and talk all that nonsense about bad luck turning. Besides pin money, you have no coins to wager, not that belong just to you.” Papa sighed and more gently continued, “Farmers don’t make much money. You know that, Matthew. We raise our livestock and grow our food and take care of our own needs. If there are a few things we can’t manage, we trade with friends or bring our molasses, butter, and eggs to the store for exchange.”
Yes, the molasses and butter that Mama, my sisters, and I made and the eggs we collected—not to mention the feathers we gathered and the candles we dipped. I glowered at Matthew, increasingly irritated with his nonchalant high-handedness. How little he valued our labor.
Papa crouched by the fire and, with the poker, shifted a burning log, stirring into the air a spray of red sparks. “Money’s hard to come by. It took us three years to save that amount. Three years squandered.”
Matthew’s head had returned to his hands. He mumbled sulkily, “I planned to restore it—even add to it. It’s not like I wanted to lose. And I didn’t take it all.”
“No. I had just enough to buy your mother the new wheel.” He rubbed his brow. “Do you know how I felt when I pulled out the chest from under my bed two days before Christmas and found most of the savings gone? Sick. Physically ill.” He groaned. “I didn’t want to think about one of my own children stealing. Decided to put off confronting you until after the holidays, hoping you’d come forward on your own accord, confess, and apologize. It never crossed my mind the situation could get worse”—his laugh was brief and bitter—“until Daniel visited this morning and admitted you’ve been going to him off and on, begging for help in paying off your gaming debts.…” Disappointment crossed his face. “Oh, Matthew. How could you?”
A sob escaped Mama. Shakily strewing the chopped apples into a bowl, she shook her head again.
The sound seemed to penetrate Matthew in a way Papa’s words hadn’t. His own face briefly crumpled, and his voice was unsteady when he said, “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll pay it all back.”
“When? How? I wanted to purchase a new ox this spring at auction.”
Perhaps it was unfortunate that Matthew happened to glance at Gideon in that moment and become aware of his younger brother’s presence, or that Gideon didn’t bother to hide his condemnation, for Matthew’s expression soured again and he said, “Ask Gideon to cover the costs. He’s squirreling all sorts of cash away. Who knows for what?”
Gideon folded his arms. “I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t discover where I hide it.”
Matthew snarled. “All I’m saying is I’m not the only person in this house with secrets.”
Papa straightened, swiped his hands on his legs, and shot both sons a weary look. “After a year of furious whispering with Robert and Ed? Not much of a secret. I imagine he’s saving to follow his pals in their pioneering.”
Flabbergasted, I stared at Papa. When I recovered sufficiently, I turned to my brothers and found them still agape.
Under different circumstances, I would have laughed at this: the eldest and youngest brothers—so opposite in physique and nature—abruptly sharing dumbfounded faces as alike as twins’.
But Matthew’s deception, not to mention his defensiveness, sickened me and killed any impetus for humor. Who did he think he was, risking the farm, the whole family, for his entertainment? What a selfish fool.
Father’s perceptiveness, however, did surprise me. And I grew even more surprised when Mama bestowed on Gid a small smile, somehow understanding, sad, and approving all at once.
“You’re a hard worker,” she said to him. “It makes sense you’d want to try your hand at keeping your own farm.”
Matthew’s mouth closed with a snap. His astonishment gave way to a jealous glare. “More like try his hand at catching Rachel.”
Gideon scowled. With a sniff, he turned and said to Papa, “I’ll put off my plans, if you need the money for the cattle. It wouldn’t take me many months to recover.”
Papa patted his shoulder but shook his head, while Matthew made a mocking face and loudly scraped his chair across the floor in his impatience to stand. “No, I’ll raise the blunt.” When Papa’s expression turned suspicious, Matthew added with an angry blush, “Not that way. I work hard, too, you know. And if I can’t make enough by auction time, I’ll—well, I’ll work something out.”
“I won’t have you going to Daniel again,” Papa said. “You’re already beholden to him.”
He grunted. “Fine. He wouldn’t mind, though. The man’s practically my brother.” With a toss of his head, he indicated me. “Everyone knows he and Harry will make a go of it one of these days. And once they’re married, his farm’s as good as mine.” He flashed me a humorless smile, then said to Papa, “Dare say he’d give you an ox or two in exchange for our little wasp nest here.”