She was looking not at him but down into the snow at her feet. “The ring you found in the field. The one you tried to give me for Christmas. I know you still have it.”
She’d known all along that he’d held on to the ring. That he’d been too selfish to bury it as she’d asked. Now here he was, caught in his lie. He didn’t speak.
Sara’s breath came out in white puffs of steam. Her skin was pale; her lips were blue with cold. “You were wrong to take it. I warned you never to keep anything you unearth there. You must get rid of it, Martin. You must give it back.”
“Give it back?”
“Take it back out to the field and bury it. That’s the only way we’ll get our Gertie back.”
He stared down at her, blinking. Surely she couldn’t be serious. But her face told him she was. Sara had always been so strange about the field and woods, warning him to be careful out there, not to plow too close to the rocks, never to keep anything he unearthed. He’d thought it was old family superstitions, passed down. But this idea that Gertie was missing because he kept a ring he found out there—it was preposterous. Mad, even.
“Go do it now, before you go into town. Please, Martin.”
He remembered what Lucius had told him back when Sara had her spell after the death of little Charles: “You must never argue with a person experiencing an episode of madness. It will only serve to make matters worse.”
Martin nodded at Sara, clicked his tongue, turned his horse in the direction of the fields.
He rode out to the place where he’d found the ring—in the back corner of the far field, right up against the tree line. He dismounted, turned, and looked back toward the house, where Sara stood, watching, just a tiny shadow.
He took off his soaked mittens and reached into the right front pocket of his trousers. The ring wasn’t there. His fingers searched frantically. He patted his left pocket. Nothing. His left coat pocket held only a few shotgun shells. Then, in the right coat pocket, his fingers brushed against the coil of hair. He shuddered with revulsion.
The ring had to be there! He’d put it in his pocket this morning. He remembered checking it when he was out hunting the fox. It had been in his pocket then, he was sure of it.
Sara was still watching, arms crossed over her chest. She swayed slightly in the wind, like a piece of tall, dried-out grass.
Sweat coated Martin’s forehead in spite of the cold.
He reached back into the right pocket of his wool overcoat, felt the hank of hair curled like a soft snake.
Getting down on his knees, he started to dig with his fingers. He went as deep as he could with his numb fingers, until he hit a layer of crusted ice that he couldn’t break through. He kicked at the ice with the toe of his boot, kept digging. When he could go no deeper, he dropped the hair inside, refilled the hole with snow. Wiping his frozen hands on his trousers, he walked back to the trembling horse. She fixed him with a pitiful gaze.
“Did you do it?” Sara asked, when he rode by her on his way into town.
He nodded, but couldn’t look her in the eye. “Go inside and get warmed up. I’ll come back with help.”
Visitors from the Other Side
The Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea
January 13, 1908
It was Clarence Bemis who found her, early this morning, nearly twenty-four hours since she crept out of bed to follow her papa.
When the three men—Clarence, Martin, and Lucius—came into the house, tracking in snow, at ten past eight this morning, I knew from their faces. I wanted to send them away. Bolt the door. Tell them there must be a mistake—they had to keep looking, they could not come back until they brought me my little girl, alive and well.
I hated all three men just then: Clarence in his overalls, his hair too long and shaggy and the stink of whiskey on him; Lucius with his earnest face, good shoes, and carefully trimmed mustache; Martin, who limped in, shoulders slumped, looking pathetic and ruined.
Go away, I longed to say. Get out of my house.
I wanted to turn back time, keep Gertie wrapped up in my arms, soft and warm under the covers.
Martin took me by the hand, asked me to sit down.
“We found her,” he said, and I covered my mouth, thinking I would scream, but no sound came.
All three men stood frozen, hats in their hands, six sad eyes all on me.
There is an old well at the far-eastern edge of the Bemises’ property, something that ran dry years ago. I remember Auntie and I went there once, when I was a girl not much older than Gertie, to drop stones down and listen for the sound of them hitting bottom. I leaned against the rough circle of stones and tried to see the bottom, but it was too dark. There was a dank smell coming out of it, and I could almost imagine feeling a cool breeze.
“How far down do you think it goes?” I asked Auntie.
Auntie smiled. “Maybe all the way through to the other side of the world.”
“That’s impossible,” I told her.