“I understand that, Jennie.” I smiled and took her hand in mine on the scarred tabletop. “I do wonder about that cellar, though.”
“Oh don’t.” Jennie abruptly withdrew her hand. “Nothing good can come from poking around in Mama’s business. What she does down there is up to her.” The fear on her face was plain to see in the soft light.
“What do you mean by that? Is she doing something down there?”
“No—I mean, she is there sometimes, for a long while, and I have to watch the children.” She was clearly uncomfortable; her shoulders were hunched and she was looking around as if she were a rabbit caught in a trap, eager to find a way out.
“And you don’t know what it is?”
“No . . .”
“But, Jennie.” I used my most reasonable voice—the girl was eighteen; she could take what I was about to say. “What if she does something dangerous down there—dangerous for her, I mean. Don’t you think we should help her, even if she doesn’t want us to?” I gently took her hand again. “Sometimes it’s hard to see it yourself if you’re in need of help from those who love you.”
Jennie did not answer at once, but I could hear her swallow hard. “There is a room upstairs.” Her voice was hoarse and very quiet. “She mostly keeps it locked now, but I know what’s inside.”
“What is that, Jennie?” I could hear the dread in my own, whispering voice.
“Travel cases, trunks, things like that. Coats, too, and hats.” There was something wild in her gaze when she looked at me, and she clutched my hand so hard in her grasp that I could feel her fingernails cut into my skin. “She says she is keeping it for them. That they will come back for their belongings in time.”
I let go of her hand and sank back against the chair. It felt as if all the air had left my lungs at once. “I have to go down there and see.” My whisper was brittle and weak.
“No, Aunt Nellie.” She shook her head with vigor. “Nothing good can come of that.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure about that, Jennie.” I staggered to my feet. I would not look away this time. I would not! “Hand me that candle and the matches, if you please.” With my inner eye, I saw Myrtle again, that day behind the barn. Oh, how I hoped she had forgotten it, whatever it was she had seen. I should have taken the burden from her then, but I had not. I would not make the same mistake again.
Jennie cried when she handed me the half-burned candle from the windowsill and the box of matches. Small whimpering sounds escaped from her throat. I had expected her to leave me then, to go back to the safety of her bed, but she stayed with me, and followed me into the passageway, too, when I moved so very slow with my poor back, across the creaking floorboards. The cellar door was to our right, a dark shape in the wall. I put my hand on the door handle and pushed.
Nothing happened. The door remained firmly shut.
I used more strength and put my weight against it, but the door stood firm.
“It’s locked,” I whispered back to Jennie.
“Are you sure?” Her eyes were wide in the light from the candle.
I nodded. “Do you know where the key might be?”
She mouthed no and shook her head.
We made our way back to the kitchen about as quietly as we had exited it before. Jennie was relieved, I could tell. Her whole face seemed to have smoothed out and her shoulders had slumped as well. I put the candle back on the windowsill and extinguished it. A string of acrid smoke curled from the wick through the air.
“Maybe it’s nothing, Aunt Nellie. Perhaps she is doing nothing down there.”
“Perhaps.” I turned to her and took her hands in mine. “But she wouldn’t suddenly lock the door then, would she? If there were nothing she was trying to hide.”
Jennie did not answer but looked a little pained again. I hated to put such a burden on her but did not know what else to do. “Be careful, Jennie,” I whispered. “Be very, very careful, but if you can, please try to find out what she’s doing down there.”
It had to be more than counting potatoes, or dusting off her jars of spread.
40.
Belle
How long would it take before Nellie added together the deaths of my husbands and the mysterious men who were gone before dawn? This was not good. Not good at all.
I had done everything in my power to appease my sister. I had given her good food and invited her for Christmas, done what I could to ease her worry, and yet she looked at me with suspicion and questioned my every move. Thought herself clever for sure.
I just wanted her to forget those things she thought she knew. It would be better for all if she did. What did it matter to her if my husbands died? It did no harm to anyone but the men in question, and the children and I were better off for it. My money box, too, was better off for it. Should she not rejoice that we thrived? Should she not be happy that I was my own woman, without a need for a good-for-nothing husband? Why did she only see what was wrong, and not all the good that came of it? The world was certainly no lesser place from my husbands’ being dead.
Yet Nellie looked at me with fear and concern, and a little bit of pity, too, which bothered me even more. She thought she had it all worked out after she heard from Olina. Thought she could see both the wound and the knife that had cut me. She thought me damaged rather than strong—and no cheerful Christmas party seemed to be able to remedy that.
I did not know what to do.
If only she had stayed well away from the topic of my guests, and the cellar, but no. She had even tried to raise my own daughters against me, tempting them to do mischief. Although I had never seen a need to do so before, as my children were well-behaved and obedient, I had turned the slender key in the cellar door lock that very same day, and it had remained that way ever since—just in case.
Just in case my sister’s words had taken hold.
I would never forgive her for tempting them so, and for allowing them to gossip about their mother. That was the problem with the little ones; as they grew up, their tongues became slippery and they spoke without thinking things through. Nellie should have known better, though, than to encourage such idle talk. The damage was already done, however. Nellie knew I had men coming to see me at Brookside Farm, and I was not at all convinced that I had managed to derail her with talk of a widow’s needs—that all her suspicion was gone.
In dark nights by the kitchen table, I kept wondering if there was a way to silence my sister—and then I felt aghast that I could even think that way.
Was this who I had become? A woman who would raise her hand against her own to protect her tawdry secrets?
The answer to that came in the most horrible of ways.
* * *
—