“Oh, I would.” It was my turn to lift my chin and steel my gaze. “I’m cut from the same cloth as you, Little Brynhild. If anyone can, it’s me.”
Her lips twisted up in a smirk, but her eyes were dark with worry. “No one would believe you,” she muttered as she staggered to the table and slumped down on a chair. The cleaver no longer scared me.
“They would.” I spoke with more conviction than I felt, but surely if someone were to look into it, they had to find something. There had to be a trace. “You will still your hand and never lift it again—or I will see that you hang.”
I scrambled for the door, dizzy and sick. We shared no parting words. I felt as if I had drunk a whole bottle of her pear brandy all by myself as I staggered out of there on shivering legs. I barely saw the rooms around me as I passed through the dining room and then the parlor. The scent of raw meat would not leave me but followed me out the front door, where the fresh, cold air hit me like a fist.
Rudolph watched me come out from the buggy, his eyes widened in alert as I paused on the steps and drank in the air. Myrtle and Lucy were out there as well with the pony and the cart, having just come back from an outing. I could see a farmhand in the distance with a wheelbarrow full of hay. The girls gave me curious looks as I made my way down the steps.
“Do you need any help, Aunt Nellie?” Myrtle called out.
“No, no.” I hobbled toward them.
“Are you sick, Aunt Nellie?” Lucy asked.
“No, I’m not sick.” Though I sure did not feel hale. I put a hand on their cart to steady myself. “Have you been to school?”
The girls nodded. Their worried gazes lingered on my face.
“Lucy.” I cleared my throat and did not look at any of them. “Why don’t you go and look in on the chickens? Your mama mentioned that two of them had gone astray, but I think there’s something off with her counting.” I forced a smile to reassure her. It was not fair to trick the girl, but nothing had been right with this day. Nothing had been right for a very long time.
Lucy still looked puzzled, but nodded and set off toward the chicken coop, leaving me alone with Myrtle. The older girl looked at me with something wary in her eyes, sensing, perhaps, that this would not be any ordinary conversation.
“Myrtle,” I started, and I spoke fast as I did not have much time. Sooner or later, Bella would come bursting out the door, and I did not have it in me to speak to her again that day. “Do you remember after Peter died? When we spoke behind the barn?”
She hesitated only a little before slowly nodding.
“Do you remember that you told me you had seen something—and that I told you not to tell?” I forced another smile, though it felt more like a grimace.
Myrtle nodded again, even slower than the first time. Her hand was on the pony’s dark coat, absorbing its heat through the mitten.
“Myrtle.” My voice gave a little. “I have to know what that was.” I adjusted my hold of the cart’s wooden board and struggled to keep my tears at bay. They would do the girl little good.
“I can’t—” she started to say, looking so unhappy that my heart broke a little. The edges of her mouth drooped and her gaze flickered from side to side.
“Oh please, Myrtle. If you remember, you must tell me!” I all but fell to my knees to plead. “It was wrong of me not to listen to you then—please forgive me and tell it to me now.”
Her face scrunched up with fear and worry. Now it was her eyes that filled up with tears. “I cannot.” She sounded utterly miserable.
“I will not tell Mama,” I whispered, and held her gaze with mine, willing it not to slip away.
She chewed her lips for a moment, then stepped a little closer, rose up to her toes, and whispered quickly in my ear, “She hit Papa with the cleaver—Mama did.”
Then she quickly stepped away, as if I were made of smoldering coal.
“Thank you, Myrtle,” I breathed, and let the tears come at last. “Thank you so much for telling me that.”
“Mama, are you all right?” Rudolph finally called from the buggy. His nose had become red from the cold, and the horse stamped its legs.
“Sure,” I said, though I did not know if the faint sound of my voice would carry all the way to him. “I’m coming now.” I hobbled toward him. “I’m coming, and then we can go home.”
We had barely come off the driveway when we had to stop again, and my son had to hold my shivering form as I was sick by the side of the road. I felt raw on the inside, ravaged and torn. I knew I ought to turn her in—she had killed an innocent child—but God help me, I could not see her hang! Not her, not Little Brynhild, broken though she might be.
No law could ever make this right, but I prayed that my words would stay her hand, that the threat I had delivered would be enough to make her stop.
43.
Belle
La Porte, 1907
Isat in the kitchen for hours after Nellie had left, staring at the meat on the table, and then at the cleaver beside it. The scent of it teased my nostrils; I lost myself in the rinds of fat and the ruby-red beads of blood scattered on the flesh. I did not even look up when the girls came inside, or when Philip woke up from his nap, calling out for his mama. I could not move away from that table.
“Mama?” Lucy’s voice tried to reach me. “Mama, should we help with the food?”
When there was no answer to be had, the girls brought Philip with them into the parlor. I could hear them in there, whispering. I knew I should feed them—and yet . . .
I could not move away from that table.
My thoughts were spinning, yet I said nothing at all. Nellie would not leave me alone. Her words—her threats—came back to me over and over: I will see that you hang!
Would she, though? Would she really do that to me—or was there a way I could make this problem disappear? Ensure her silence in the best way I could? Nellie was in poor health, that was no secret. She had been struggling with her back for years and was not so young anymore. Maybe it would not be so strange if she suddenly died, following a dose of her medicine perhaps. There was not much spite in such an act, but at least it would keep me safe.
Keep us all safe.
But then she would hardly let me close to her cupboard now—after having me figured out. Might not even let me into her home. I found a strange sense of loss in that, to be barred from a place where I had always been welcome and never even thought twice about the fact. I did not like the way she looked at me either, that horror and despair etched on her face. It took me a while to recognize that what I felt was shame, as if I were a little girl caught stealing. I was ruined in my sister’s eyes; she would never again admire me. I grieved that fact, and yet—