He didn’t know it at the time, but this was one of Sara’s great gifts—the ability to see the future in these tiny pieces, like she had a special telescope.
“You won’t leave West Hall, Martin,” she announced at the Fourth of July picnic when Martin was twelve. Most of the town was gathered on the green, around the newly built bandstand. Some were dancing, others spread out on picnic blankets. Lucius was in the gazebo, playing the trumpet with a few men from town who made up the West Hall town band. Lucius, who would be going off to Burlington in the fall—his high marks had earned him a full scholarship at the University of Vermont.
“What makes you so sure?” Martin asked, turning to look at Sara, who had sat down beside him.
“Did you ever think that perhaps all the adventure you could ever want is right here?”
He laughed, and she smiled indulgently at him, then reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled something out. The Jupiter marble.
She tucked the marble back into her pocket, leaned over, and kissed his cheek. “Happy Independence Day, Martin Shea.”
He decided then and there that Sara had been right—she was the girl he would marry, and maybe, just maybe, she was the adventure he was meant for.
“Martin,” she’d whispered on their wedding night, fingers curled in his hair, lips tickling his left ear, “one day, we’ll have a little girl.”
And, sure enough, they did.
Seven years ago, after losing three babies still in the womb and then their son, Charles, who’d died at two months, Sara gave birth to Gertie. The girl was tiny, so small; Lucius said she wouldn’t live through the week.
He had passed his state boards and come back from Burlington to work with old Dr. Stewart, who soon retired, leaving Lucius the only M.D. in town. Lucius closed his leather medical bag and put his hand on Martin’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
But Lucius was wrong: Gertie attached herself to Sara and sucked and sucked, growing stronger each day. Their miracle child. And Sara glowed with happiness, the tiny baby asleep on her chest, Sara looking over at Martin with an all-is-right-in-the-world-now smile. Martin felt the same way and knew that no adventure he might ever have gone on could have had a happier outcome than this.
Though she no longer sucked at her mother’s breast, Gertie had kept herself attached to Sara. They were inseparable, always intertwined, and they spelled secret words in each other’s palms with fingertips. Sometimes Martin was sure they didn’t need words to communicate at all—that they could read each other’s minds. They seemed to have whole wordless conversations with their eyes, laughing and nodding at each other across the supper table. At times, Martin felt a little spark of envy. He would try to be in on their secrets and little jokes, laughing in the wrong places and getting a poor-Papa look from Gertie. He understood, and eventually came to accept that they had a closeness, a bond, that he would never be a part of. The truth was, he believed he was the luckiest man on earth to have these two for a wife and daughter—it was like getting to live with fairies or mermaids, some breathtakingly beautiful creatures he was not meant to understand fully.
He did worry though, that the losses of their previous children had made Sara cling to Gertie in a way that seemed almost desperate. There were days when Sara would not let the girl leave for school, saying she was worried that Gertie’s nose was a little runny, or her eyes looked glassy.
In his darkest hours, Martin believed that, though she’d never say it, Sara blamed him for those dead babies that came before Gertie. Each miscarriage had nearly destroyed Sara—she spent weeks bedridden, weeping, eating only enough to keep a sparrow alive. And then Charles had been born healthy and strong, with a headful of dark curls and a face as wise as an old man. They’d found him breathless and cold in his cradle one morning. Sara wrapped her arms around him, held on to him all day and into the next. When Martin tried to take the baby, Sara insisted he was not gone.
“He’s still breathing,” she said. “I can feel his little heart beating.”
Martin stepped away from her, frightened. “Please, Sara,” he said.
“Leave us,” she snarled, pulling the dead baby tighter, her eyes cold and frantic like those of a mad animal.
Finally, Lucius had to come and sedate her. Only when she was sleeping could they pry the child from her arms.
Martin believed the deaths were the fault of this place—the 120 acres that belonged to Sara by birthright. Other than her older sister, Constance, who’d married and moved out to Graniteville, she was the last remaining Harrison. He blamed the ledgy soil and barren fields, where almost nothing would grow; the water that tasted of sulfur. It was as if the land itself dared anything to stay alive.