For a fleeting moment, Maud wondered if maybe Grandma would stand up for her. Reverend Archibald was always talking about God’s miracles; perhaps this would be one of them.
“Maud,” Grandma said. “Please explain what happened in a calm and rational way.”
“I knew my lesson,” Maud said, as if each word was sparked with venom. “But Miss Robinson did not give me the opportunity to speak.”
“Maud.” Grandma peered over her spectacles. “I said calmly and rationally.”
“But you don’t understand, Grandma!” Maud said, hating the childish whine creeping into her voice. “I did know it, but she had startled me so badly the words completely left my head. I knew it! I knew it!”
“You don’t speak to your grandmother that way,” Grandfather said, without raising his voice. The sound curdled Maud’s stomach, bringing forth the inevitable tears.
“Miss Robinson,” Grandma said, standing up. “I’m sorry for my granddaughter’s conduct.” She glared at Maud. “She knows better than to allow her emotions to get the better of her.”
There was no mercy. Her grandparents would always be ashamed of her.
Miss Robinson’s pruned mouth twisted into an almost smile. “She’s at that age, Mrs. Macneill. Young ladies need to know their place.”
Neither grandparent acknowledged Miss Robinson’s remark, but Maud’s grandmother did ask the teacher to leave the room. Satisfied, Miss Robinson smoothed down her skirt and went upstairs.
Grandma waited until they heard the creaking of Miss Robinson’s door shutting before she spoke. “Sit down, Maud,” she said, handing her granddaughter a tissue. “You handled that poorly.”
“I know,” Maud said, blowing her nose. “But I couldn’t help it. She treated me so abominably!”
“Shh,” Grandma said. “Honestly, the way you talked to her…”
Grandfather didn’t speak; raising children was woman’s work.
“We must protect ourselves, Maud, from gossip,” she continued. “That woman is already going around town spreading falsehoods. You’re old enough to understand the damage that can happen to a family if people get the wrong idea.” Grandma was talking about Father.
“Your grandfather and I will talk it over, and we’ll give you our verdict,” Grandma said.
Maud stood up. It was as if a gnarled, twisted root was suffocating her when she remembered what had happened in school. And what would happen if she returned. “I can’t go back there,” she said quietly.
“You can if we make you,” Grandfather said.
Maud opened up her mouth to speak, but her grandmother held her hand up as if to silence her. “True, Alexander. But.” She patted Maud’s hand and dropped her own back on her lap. “I’m not sure it is the best course of action. Now, go upstairs, and we will discuss it.”
Maud listened to her grandmother and went upstairs and waited. She wrote in her journal of how unjustly accused she had felt and how she would never forgive her teacher.
No one said anything for a few days, and for once, her grandparents let Maud stay home from school. Maud helped her grandmother with the chores and at the post office. She took long walks through the cow path she called Lover’s Lane, her favorite place, and waited. She wanted to ask what “verdict” her grandparents had rendered, but they were silent.
A few days later a letter arrived from Aunt Emily in Malpeque indicating she would be “willing to take in Maud for a little while.”
“It is settled,” Grandma said, folding the letter in half. “You are to leave school and we’ll make arrangements with Emily. She’s had some trouble lately with the children, and I suspect she would love the help. You’ll stay there until we decide how to deal with—” she paused—“her.”
Of course they hadn’t even considered sending Maud to Saskatchewan to live with Father. He couldn’t take Maud when he left the Island after her mother died. He had sold his general store in Clifton and went to visit Maud’s aunt in Boston. He had come back twice: once when Maud was nine, and then again when she was eleven, but she had not seen him since. He wrote to her, of course, and Maud even had a new baby sister, Katie. While he hadn’t said it, Maud knew one day he would come for her.
Now, as Maud stood in front of her mother’s grave, she wondered if Father would have even taken her. From his letters, it didn’t appear to be a good time. He had originally moved to Prince Albert to run his auctioneering business. But Father had big dreams and went into government too, becoming a forest ranger and homestead investigator. His supervisor had accused Father of being in a “conflict of interest” for continuing to run his auctioneering business while also performing his other duties, so he and his new wife were living in Battleford, Saskatchewan. In his letters, Father had told Maud that his requests for a transfer back to Prince Albert, where he had purchased his beautiful home, Eglintoune Villa, were consistently denied. It wasn’t fair! Father worked so hard. Why couldn’t his supervisor see that?
At least she could comfort herself by visiting Mother’s grave. Maud stood quietly in front of the white-and-gray-peppered tombstone. Maud loved the graveyard with its old tombstones of Cavendish’s founders, ancient clans from the Old World communing together. Everyone in Cavendish was practically related. Her grandparents often murmured one had to be careful if you didn’t want to marry your kin—as was the custom with some. By their tone, it was clear they didn’t put themselves in that category.
Maud had memorized every deep crevice of her mother’s tombstone: the hand with its index finger pointed up to the sky, the “God is Love” inscription, and the often quoted hymn for the dead:
“Yet again we hope to meet thee, / When the day of life is fled,” she read out loud.
Even her mother’s tombstone showed how much Grandfather and Grandma had disapproved of Father. The hymn was about a dearly departed sister, not a beloved wife and mother. Mother died when she was twenty-three years old, almost eight years older than Maud was now. Father loved Mother, but no one ever talked about how her parents met. No one ever talked about why they married so quickly. No one ever talked about Mother at all. One day, Maud would be reunited with Father and he would tell her about her mother, about their courtship and her life with them before Mother died. One day, she would have a family and a place to call home.