***
Saturday nights, our two families always came together for dinner, one Saturday at the house in town and the next at the farmhouse. I had found Ray in the barn on a Thursday, and two days later, all six of us gathered at the farmhouse dinner table. My mother had prepared roasted chicken and turnips, not one of her better meals, sadly dry and bitter. Starting late, she had never become much of a cook. I could see Silas’s wife pushing the food around on her plate with evident disdain. I redoubled my efforts and ate with feigned enthusiasm so I would be able to ask for a second serving. Ray’s nose was hugely swollen, an ugly red shot through with violet, which I noted with grim satisfaction. I wondered if his belief in his healing powers was shaken. Clearly he had made no inroads on healing this injury, and I hoped it was causing him great pain.
At length, Silas said, “Son, are you going to tell the ladies what happened to your nose?”
“Got broke,” Ray said.
“The boy’s being modest. He was trying to remove a stuck nail from a mare’s hoof and she kicked him.”
“Kicked in the face by a horse?” I said loudly. “He could have died.”
“He got almost out of the way,” Silas said, slapping his son on the back. “Barely got grazed as a result. Quick reflexes, my son.”
“Well, thank goodness he wasn’t hurt worse,” exclaimed my mother. “That’s quite lucky.”
“Unbelievably lucky,” I said. No one reacted.
“I hope the horse will be all right,” my stepfather said.
“She should make a full recovery,” Ray said. “I caught it in time. If she’d been walking around on it long, the nail would have been pushed further in, and it would have festered.”
“Can’t make a business on injured horses,” Silas said.
“You’re certainly blessed to have the boy’s aptitude,” added his wife.
I couldn’t believe it. They accepted his story, flat out. No one at all saw through it. They didn’t even try.
My stepfather said, “On a different subject, I don’t suppose anyone has seen a shepherd puppy on the farm lately?”
“No,” my mother said, and I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
“Neighbor stopped by to ask if we’d spotted it. Belongs to his daughter, and she hasn’t seen it in a week. Of course, the girl is distraught.”
I immediately looked over at Ray, but nothing showed on his face. He took another bite of turnip and chewed slowly.
“That’s strange,” said Silas. “Two other neighbors are missing dogs too.”
Ray muttered, “Maybe they’ve all run off together. Like the dish and the spoon.” His father smiled at this, and his mother laughed.
I cringed. I couldn’t stand thinking about what might have happened to those dogs. If Ray had gotten to them. If he had a mind to experiment. Scientists had been experimenting on dogs in England for hundreds of years, even taking blood from one to put into another. If I had learned that in my science lessons, Ray could have learned it too. He might want to hurt them in order to heal. What he would do with the idea made me ill.
It was a small thing compared with the other wrongs, but it was the last straw.
After dinner, in the kitchen, I was alone with my mother. I hesitated to speak at all, but I made myself ask, “Don’t you think it’s strange, about the neighbors’ dogs?”
She paused to consider it, handing me a plate to dry. “These things happen. There are animals in the woods. It’s not the city.”
“I know.”
“Are you so concerned? You needn’t be. None of the wild animals around here are dangerous to us.”
“I’m not concerned about animals. I’m concerned about—humans.”
“Humans?”
“That there might be…bad people doing things to the dogs.”
She wiped her hands on her apron and picked up another plate to wash. “Oh, Ada. That’s not likely.”
“It’s possible.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “It’s possible. But why would you want to think about such things? It’s not good for your mind.”
“It could be Ray,” I blurted.
Her hands stilled.
I went on, the words spilling out. “He might have hurt those dogs. He hurt that horse. Mother, he hurt me.”
She didn’t look at me. She looked down at her hands. She said, “He hurt you? How?”
“At Biltmore. He found me and he tried…he wanted…” And I found I couldn’t say it. Not to her. It was too shameful, and I was too ashamed.
“Ada?”
The accusation hung in the air, incomplete, unbelievable.
“Enough,” she said, lowering her voice. “You want to accuse this boy of—of I don’t even know what. You have this fantasy that three missing dogs means something nefarious. I doubt it means anything at all. Honestly, Ada, this is appalling behavior.”
I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Her face softened then. I saw it change. “You don’t need—oh, darling, I’m sorry too. I am. But you see, you must be mistaken.”
Tentatively, I said, “I don’t think I am.”
“But you must be,” she said again, squaring her shoulders, speaking quietly enough that we wouldn’t be overheard. “Here’s why. Because we all depend on that boy’s father, for our lives, for everything. We’re only here because he allows it. If Ray hurt you, if he’s done something wrong, then I will have to tell Victor. Victor will have to tell Silas. Silas will have to respond, and I think you know Ray won’t be the one he’ll punish. We will all suffer instead. Our family. Is that what you want? You want us out on the street with nowhere to go?”
“Of course not,” I said in a whisper, feeling the hot sting of tears under my lashes.
“So you were mistaken. Weren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She said, “I’m so sorry, Ada. Once upon a time, I was stronger than this.”
I was afraid to breathe, let alone to speak, so I simply continued to cry, clutching the dish in my hand as if it could give me some kind of solace. Her eyes were dry, but I could see her knuckles turn white as she clutched her own dish, her head bent and staring down into the sink in front of us.
“You’re old enough to hear it. I was ready to lose my whole world for your father,” she said quietly. “He wasn’t ready to lose his for me. He didn’t love his wife. Everyone knew that. Her parents offered him so much money to stay that he couldn’t refuse. He didn’t refuse. He didn’t love me enough. I worshipped him, but in the end, he was weak. And it didn’t matter how strong I was, if he wasn’t.”
“Victor was strong enough. He loved you enough. He was strong enough to run away with you.”
Grimly, she said, “By then, neither of us had all that much to lose.”
I watched her wipe away a tear, and I realized I would never see her quite the same way again.
“Now we have even less,” she said. “And I can’t lose what little we do have. I can’t.”
My powerful, beautiful mother, my songbird, my cello. She was only an ordinary woman, and one who felt herself at the mercy of the world. She was right. She wasn’t strong enough.
“No more of this,” she said, dunking the dish in her hand under the surface of the water. She swished it from side to side and scrubbed at it even though it was already clean, then handed it to me to dry and return to the cabinet.
And that was all.