It was over. She was dead.
There would be peace.
49.
The morning after it all went wrong, I wrapped my children in blankets and carried them down into the cellar. Brought them underground like a hulder, never to see daylight again.
Mr. Hinkley was already there by then, lying on the oilcloth. I did not put my children with him but placed them in the coolest part of the room, next to the potato bin, to preserve them the best that I could. Although I had done the work countless times, I just could not bring myself to take them apart and put them in the earth. When I wheeled away Mr. Hinkley, they were left behind.
I did not know what to do with them.
When I came back inside, the house was too quiet. It was as if all life had left with their sweet breaths. This was truly a house of death, when my angels were no longer there to call it home. Brookside Farm deserted me at last, and the walls wept with an invisible grime that tarnished the roses on the wallpaper and gathered between the floorboards like tar. It was as if rot came bursting forth, clinging to every surface. The house was no longer my sister but a foul and cold creature made of dread. Nothing seemed to matter anymore: not Lamphere, not Mr. Helgelien, not the bones that littered my yard. Those were all small concerns compared to what had struck me.
My jaw felt as if hit by lightning; the pain was so bad that it made me retch.
I wondered, not for the first time, if Anders was not done with his beating yet but reached out from the grave to pluck every child I dared called my own. That he meant to see me forever bereft.
As if he had not done enough harm, kicking me asunder by that lake.
Slowly, slowly, I cleaned the kitchen floor, and then I pulled on my boots and locked the door to the cellar. I left a note for Maxon saying that the children were ill, and I had taken them to Chicago to see our old doctor. He knew very well I did not trust the doctors in La Porte. I got out the buggy then and went—not to see a doctor but James.
When I arrived, he was not at home, so I waited in the narrow stairwell of his building, completely at a loss as to what to do if James did not come home that night. Many ugly thoughts passed through my head as I tried to make sense of what had happened. All I could see with my inner eye were those blue-lipped faces on the kitchen floor. I knew I needed James, and needed him fast, or else I might truly fall apart.
I tried but could not muster my wit to figure a way out of my predicament. I could not explain the children’s deaths as natural, nor as an accident—not after what happened to Peter. I could say I had sent them away, but that too could rouse suspicions, especially so soon after Jennie left, and with no good reason at all. Just the thought of living in that house without them made me feel sick to the bone, but if I left the farm, it would only be a matter of time before the soil gave up its secrets and my handiwork was exposed. I would be hunted if that happened. Maybe even captured and tried. And no matter where my thoughts went, they always came back to a blue-lipped child.
When James finally arrived, I was in quite a state. He was not alone but had a friend with him, whom he promptly sent away. The two of them were reeking of beer and had had a grand day for sure. James quickly sobered up, though, when he realized my state. He opened the door to his apartment and kicked it closed behind us. Without delay, he placed a bottle and a cup on the rickety kitchen table and told me to sit down.
“Tell me everything,” he said, pouring with a generous hand.
He saved my life that night, James Lee, talking me through the worst of it, plying me with drink and cooking up a scheme. When I at last fell asleep in his bed, I could finally see a light. It was tiny, but it was there, guiding me through hell.
* * *
—
The next day, we entered the bustling streets of Chicago, and the noise from the carriages, streetcars, and chatter was almost more than I could bear. I felt as if I were caught in a dream, exhausted and wrung out as I was, walking next to James on the sidewalk. He had donned a fancy suit with silver buttons and his shoes were gleaming black. Next to him, I looked like a beggar, but that would not last for long. Our first aim was to get me a satin skirt, a hat, and a decent coat. A pair of shoes too, and gloves.
Then we went on a hunt.
We found Moira in a women’s clothing store, drifting among rows of shirtwaists and long skirts, coats and pairs of gloves. James sat in a chair by the entrance reading a newspaper when I swung by him and nodded in her direction. She was clearly not a woman of great means, and was likely shopping for a mistress. Her coat was worn and her hat simple; her hands were as dry and hard as my own. When she riffled through the silk gloves, the fine fabric snagged in her skin. The clerk, a tall woman my age with a shirtwaist beset with ruffles, saw what happened too, and scowled.
James looked up. “She’s a little small compared to you, I think.”
“Well, I would have to handle her, wouldn’t I?”
“Oh, but you have handled some big beasts before.”
I looked at the woman again. She was perfect in age and stature and I did not think the difference in size was that notable. “She’s the best we’ve found all morning.”
“The hair color is wrong.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I could work around that.
“Well, go talk to her, then.”
I circled her a few times before I approached. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Finding the right color.”
She looked up. Her eyes were brown, not blue like my own, and there was a gap between her front teeth. “Yes.” She smiled at me. “My employer is very particular.”
“I used to work in Chicago as well. I had two different employers while I was here. It was hard, I remember, living with all those demands. It did not turn around for me before I left the city behind.” I was amazed at how easy it was to slip back into it. I had worried that with my grief, the lies would not come as easy to me as they usually did. But they came, like ducklings in a row, one following the other, tumbling forth. I liked being the woman I pretended to be, the one without blue-lipped children in the cellar.
She looked me up and down then, at the fur I wore and the bottle green hat with a plume. “Where did you go, then?” Her mouth hung open.
“I married a farmer in Indiana. My husband is dead now, bless his soul, but the farm is thriving and makes a good living.”
“Oh, how I miss the countryside.” She sighed. “I grew up outside Dublin and came here when I was eighteen.”
“I was twenty-one when I came from Norway. It was hard at first, trading one country for another, but it paid off. I never could have made as much money in Norway.”
“No?”
“We don’t have farms the size of mine in Norway.”
She laughed then and lifted her hand to hide her teeth. Some rot then, perhaps. “I don’t think I’ll ever escape the city.” Her smile turned bitter, drooping at the edges.