Now, here in the dark, Maud wished for some moment of clarity—something to reassure her that she wouldn’t be forever in the dark, forever caught between what she wished and what was expected of her.
Tracing the hymn in her mind, she felt that shiver of knowing: “With the morn those angel faces smile / Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.”
She’d experienced that moment when she first saw Laura at church, the feeling that they were twin souls reunited.
Perhaps it wasn’t what she’d originally believed would happen, but she would never have dreamed of Laura and Will’s friendship. And, yet, here they were.
“Lead on,” she said to the dark night and the moon and the stars. “Lead on.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
One morning toward the end of January, they had an unexpected visitor. The leader of the federal Liberal party came to visit and the men spent a number of hours in Father’s study. When they emerged, Father’s eyes had that look of adventure in them, and he pronounced that he was entering federal politics, running on the Liberal ticket.
“Are you sure this is wise, Hugh?” Mrs. Montgomery said. “You’ve always been a staunch Conservative supporter, even helping with Mr. MacDowall’s campaign. Now he’s going to be your opponent. People are going to think you are being opportunistic.”
“Trust me, Mary Ann,” Hugh said. “They’ll vote the man, not the party.”
Maud could see her father was excited by this new opportunity, but she wasn’t sure what to think. Her whole life her father and grandpa had been Conservatives, and hadn’t Father’s positions been given to him because of Prime Minister Macdonald and his party? He must know what he was doing.
But before her father could begin campaigning, the arrival of her baby brother took over the household. Her father looked so proud when Mrs. McTaggart brought a sleeping baby Bruce into the parlor, all pink, swaddled in the blanket Maud had knitted during all those long nights she had been forced to listen to Mr. Mustard.
In those first few weeks after Bruce arrived, Mrs. Montgomery was happy too. She smiled and was even kind to Maud, thanking her for all that she had done. Perhaps her stepmother’s boorish behavior had been because she was tired from her pregnancy?
Father talked cheerfully of a bright future, his business, and the election. He didn’t discuss how the paper was calling him “a renegade,” or how people were criticizing him for “crossing the floor,” as her stepmother had warned that they would.
Maud didn’t attend school, nor did she see her friends for those first few weeks. She would snuggle with her two siblings on the bed in Southview. She couldn’t get enough of Bruce’s little, darling toes and nose. Katie would cuddle up beside them, reaching her arms out to hold him as if he were one of her dolls. “Mine!” she’d say.
“He’s ours,” Maud would say, letting her little sister pet him.
In those quiet moments, Maud almost believed a peaceful home was possible.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Montgomery’s predictions were right, and in the first week of March, the news came out. Father had lost.
Her father had been so light of heart and full of fun since Bruce’s birth, but now he lost his joy. It worried her. What would this mean for them? Would his auctioneer business be enough to sustain them?
As the weeks progressed, Father and Mrs. Montgomery fought more and more. They fought about going back to Ontario, with Father in favor but Mrs. Montgomery staunchly opposed. They fought about money, particularly about “extra people in the house who didn’t pull their own.”
It was too much—not to mention unfair. Now that she had stopped going to school, and was helping with Katie and the baby full-time, she felt busier than she’d ever imagined, preparing meals, doing the laundry, and cleaning the house. Maud loved her siblings, but this was not how she saw her future. She took advantage of the fact that Father had hired a quiet Métis girl named Fannie and asked if she could go back to school, at least to finish the year. While Mrs. Montgomery complained that she didn’t want to be left alone in the house with just the children and the “help” for company, Father allowed Maud to return.
“At least you can say you’ve finished what you’ve started,” he said. Maud leaped up and hugged her father.
But time away had romanticized Maud’s memories of high school. As soon as she got there and saw Mr. Mustard and his thin mustache, she realized nothing had changed.
Her first day back went downhill fast. First, Will slipped her a note, inviting her to go tobogganing that night at the barracks, but this time Mr. Mustard saw it and forced her to show him, telling her she was “wasting her time” and giving them both detention.
Then Douglas came in dripping wet from being pushed in the snow, and Mr. Mustard made him go stand in the corner for being tardy.
When the students were working not-so-diligently on their geography, Maud caught her teacher staring forlornly out the window, as was his wont…but there was a new darkness in his expression that frightened her.
Frank and Willie M. behaved as they normally did, roughhousing and teasing when they should have been studying—but then again, no one was really studying. Perhaps it was because Frank had already been warned that his “outbursts” would have “dire consequences,” or maybe it was because Mr. Mustard had been staring out the window longer than usual, but when Willie M. shoved Frank one time too many, Mr. Mustard marched over to them, grabbed Frank by the collar, and shoved him against the wall. Frank clutched the teacher’s arms, pulling them off him, and swung—
Maud turned away. She couldn’t watch. Burying her head in between her arms and her desk, she stared at the crack in the floorboards as she heard a slap and then another and then a grunt. Someone—Willie M.?—cheered, but then there was the slap of a ruler against skin and it grew silent.
A few minutes later, Mr. Mustard dismissed them.
It was over. Maud slowly lifted her head to see Frank doubled over in pain, and Willie M. rubbing his palm against his leg. The floor creaked as Frank fell to his knees.
She felt sick—she had never seen such violence in the classroom before. But then she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder.
“Maud,” Will said. “Are you okay?”
“Will, I—”
Her head felt as though it was mired in mud.
“Frank got the worst of it, getting punched in the stomach,” Will said, helping her stand. “But he did get in a few blows. I don’t think Mr. Mustard will be hitting him again.”
She looked over at her teacher, who was now back to staring out the window, arms crossed against his chest, a slight bruise forming on his chin.
“I heard—” She swallowed. She couldn’t even describe what she had heard.
“Come.” He guided her out. “I’ll walk you home.”
Three days later, Fannie quit without notice or reason, leaving Maud once again in charge of Bruce. After six months of fighting, Maud resigned herself to her fate. She did not return to high school.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN