But I wanted the rest of the story. And I needed it before the others arrived. “What did you make for his last supper?”
“All I could find.” She kept her eyes on the men’s approach. “Mushrooms.”
*
Phineas leaped from his horse and rushed for Rachel.
I don’t know what she did or how she did it—most of my attention was frozen on the last thing she’d told me—but her gesture made him halt. Emotion worked across his face. He took a deep breath and ironed his expression. The only indication of lingering angst was in how he scanned me—jealously, for some reason. His tone was clipped when he observed, “Nice tree, Freddy.”
“Oh.” I finally let go of the branch.
Daniel grasped me by the arms. “What happened?”
“Linton kidnapped her.”
Daniel stared and mouthed, Kidnapped, while Phin’s head jerked back, as though someone invisible had delivered an uppercut.
Rachel glanced away from them. “He knocked me out and took me to his homestead”—her eyes grazed mine—“and had an attack not long after we got there.”
Fury bloomed in Phineas’s face, a red ire. “Where is he now?”
I found Rachel’s hand and squeezed. “He’s dead.”
Silence answered this announcement.
She tugged her hand free and walked to the side of the road. Her arms made a shawl over her chest.
Phin’s breath left him in a growl. He whirled around, hiding his face from us, and his fisted hands pounded the air once. “Rachel, Rachel”—his back shook—“how I wish I could make him dead all over again.”
“Lord Almighty,” Daniel breathed. He drew me into a hug, and the motion jangled my collection of stones. He glanced down. “What in the world—”
I pulled away to empty my pockets, aware as I let the stones fall from my hands that I would never again palm a rock without remembering this day—the day I’d planned to use rubble for a weapon.
Then I threw myself into Daniel’s arms.
He cleared his throat and murmured thickly, “If you ever run away and leave me like that again, I’ll lose my mind.”
I clung to him. He’d get no argument from me. I had never been so scared in my life.
*
The road, on our way back, all but disappeared in the gathering darkness. Had the moon not found an open berth between the clouds, we might have been forced to pass the night in the mill with the drunken guests, somewhere on the nasty floor. However, there was sufficient light for us to cautiously head north. We met up with the Welds brothers on our way, their identities revealed not because we could make out their features but because we heard Ed weeping, “I hate it here, Bobby. I want to go home, to our real home.”
We called out to them, and Robert joined the crying when we verified Rachel’s return. When Daniel finished briefly telling them what had happened, they stammered apologies. She didn’t appear to hear them. As we started the journey home, they repeated their apologies. She still maintained a silence. But after the third time Robert wetly moaned about “putting her in a bad spot in the first place, leaving her in the horrible hovel with that drunkard,” she snapped, “Yes, you did. And you didn’t cry about it then.”
Which effectively quelled them.
The closer we got to the Standen-Gale cabin, the more the day showed on her. By the time we reached the property, her teeth were chattering. I helped her out of her cousins’ wagon and braced her with an arm around her waist. She would have fallen on the spot otherwise.
The Welds brothers looked ashamed and anxious to leave. With a few mumbled words, they drove their wagon out of the yard.
Marian came to the door. She took one look at Rachel and ordered Phin, Daniel, and Gid to the barn to bed down with the animals for the night.
Not even Phineas argued with the command. The cabin, on this night, was not for men.
*
A fire filled the hearth. It threw a restless glow on the rough-hewn walls and played across Marian’s face, which was already alive with emotion, and glinted on Rachel’s lowered head, adding a reddish hue to the dusky length of hair. The hectic light matched our thoughts, the tumult of our feelings. Marian heated water in the kettle, then sat by Rachel, put her arm around her shoulders, murmured soft words, crooned in the way mothers do. I fed wood to the flames to hurry the warming, then helped Rachel when she struggled with the latches on her dress.
The cabin grew hot, but neither the fire nor the warm bath nor a flannel nightgown squelched our friend’s trembling. Marian fetched quilts off the built-in bed and tucked them around her shivering frame, from neck to toes.
Rachel rested her forehead on the table. “I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again.” Even her words shook.
Marian covered her mouth with a hand, then rose. She hastened across the room and took down a bottle from the top shelf of the pantry. “Maybe this will help.” She poured some golden liquid into a short glass and set it before Rachel.
We made a huddle at the table, my arm around Rachel’s shoulders, holding the cape of quilts in place, Marian opposite us but leaning forward to clasp one of Rachel’s hands in both of hers, chafing the knuckles, shaking her head, once muttering fretfully, “We need to get you warm.” Then, to me: “Shock.”
Shock. We had seen the marks on our friend. Marian had administered a salve on two of the rawest spots. But what else could she or I do? What could anyone do? I stared dazedly at the fire, tried to absorb what had transpired, held my shivering friend closer—the entire time feeling altogether foreign. A foreigner to this room, a foreigner to this moment, unfamiliar with even myself, thinking over and over, We are different now. Who were we yesterday? Nothing will ever be the same.
How silly I used to be … so anxious to toss aside childhood and move on with life. But I was learning something today, a lesson murky and bitter. Liberating feats, daring adventures—accruing such experiences wasn’t the essence of maturity. In fact, growing older seemed less about getting things and more about losing them, less about realizing dreams and more about feeling wakeful and alone. Maybe adulthood wasn’t really a matter of age at all. Maybe it happened whenever a person at last saw human nature for what it was, for the shape it could take, from the depravity of one to the mettle of another.
Well, I supposed I was good and grown now. I still held the image of my girlhood in my mind’s eye but could find no way back into the frame. I didn’t belong in the picture.
The hours passed, fast and slow at once. It was as if we were gathered for a wake. Not for Linton. He deserved no vigil. I was glad—fiercely glad—he was dead.
No … rather, we were keeping watch over the living. Over Rachel. By the hiss and crackle of burning wood, in this room of uneasy quiet, a brooding silence that demanded reverence, a careful broaching in whispers, Marian and I made a small shelter around our friend. And I prayed distractedly, without conscious aim, a pleading oh, God, oh, God. When I noticed what I was repeating, I forced myself to make better sense, to form an intention to this petition. What did we need right now besides succor and healing? Clarity. We needed direction.
And then, as morning smudged crimson into the web of branches, quite abruptly it came to me. An answer.
Marian had gone to stand at the window. Though her back was turned to us, I could hear the frown in her voice when she said, “Phin can stay with the Welds brothers at their cabin for a night or two.” She turned and gazed soberly at Rachel. “What you need now is some privacy.”
This prescription seemed to hit Rachel in a strange way. She pulled her cheek from my shoulder and swept the cabin with a mournful glance. “I would like that. I would cherish a little privacy. My own place. Will I ever know what that’s like?”
“Yes.” I nodded for good measure.
They turned to me expectantly.
“I have a plan.”
*