The Twelfth Child (Serendipity #1)(18)
A girl named Rosalina once told me that her grandmother had the ability to put a hex on people—supposedly the woman caused a wart the size of an egg to swell up on her sister-in-law’s nose and Rosalina could recount plenty of other instances as well. A man who cheated the grandmother got hit by a garbage truck; a neighbor kicked a dog and got his cellar flooded; a heavy-handed butcher had thirty-six pounds of pork sausage spoil overnight—not one of those incidents had a logical explanation, other than the hex. I’ve often thought if I had such an ability Elliott Emerson would have started looking like Pinocchio as he sat there telling all those lies to Detective Nichols.
After he had blurted out the worst of his accusations, Elliott told the detective, “This girl’s unscrupulous; she has no job. Swindling old people out of their life’s savings, that’s what she does for a living!”
“Destiny Fairchild?”
“Yes! Destiny Fairchild!”
“On what is this allegation based?”
“She’s stolen my aunt’s money!”
“Allegedly,” the detective said, “allegedly stolen. Do you know exactly how much money is missing?”
“It wasn’t just money!”
“Well what? Stocks? Jewelry? Bank Accounts?”
“It’s difficult to pinpoint all the things, but this list…”
Hearing such talk made me wonder what the world had come to. Is money the measure of things? What about a good heart? Destiny Fairchild was the sweetest soul I’d ever known. She didn’t ask for anything and she didn’t need much to be happy. One of those clear blue sky days would come along—the kind with puffy white clouds billowed out like sheets on a clothesline—and that was enough to make Destiny start singing like her heart was full up with gladness. The only thing that girl wanted was for folks to love her. But Elliott, now he was a person itching to grab up every dollar he could lay his hands on.
They say people can die of a broken heart and I for one believe it. Oh, the doctors give you a thousand other reasons, heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure—but the truth of the matter is sometimes people reach a point where they just quit living. That’s what happened to Will. Once Becky was gone, he pretty much lost his heart for living. I’d worry and fuss over him, fold an extra blanket over his feet on cool evenings, check that he was taking his medication, cook up special foods—things he’d craved all his life such as cornbread or stewed butter beans—but nothing seemed to help. When I set that hot cornbread on the table, he’d smile the way he used to, but before I could fetch us a cup of coffee he’d be poking at the edges and pushing a bunch of crumbs off to the side of his plate. “I thought cornbread was something you liked,” I’d comment; but he’d look at me and shrug as if what he liked or disliked was something he was too tired to remember.
“I suppose I’m not all that hungry,” he’d finally say, and then an hour or so later he’d start telling me about how Becky always made her cornbread with molasses. “Yes indeed,” he’d lick his lips, “cornbread with molasses, that’s really good.”
I’d make up another batch and add molasses even though it wasn’t part of the recipe. Soon as the cornbread was out of the oven he’d break off a piece but before he’d swallowed that first bite, I’d see him shaking his head like a man who’d run out of hope. “I reckon that wasn’t it,” he’d say and turn back inside himself.
The problem was that he’d been married to Becky for over fifty years and couldn’t remember how to live without her. It might have been different if they’d had children – but then everything would have been different if they’d had children.
Elliott Emerson came to visit Will every few weeks. “How are you feeling?” Elliott would ask. “Anything you want me to take care of for you? Insurance, maybe? Banking? Investment business?” Will would just shake his head from side to side and stick to watching some old TV rerun.
It was enough to make you cry because my brother had always been a smart man. The year we turned seventeen he went off to William and Mary College. I wish you could be here, Abigail, he’d written in his first letter. This school has a million books and a library bigger than the LynchburgCity Hall; he enclosed a picture of himself standing in front of the big stone building. For two years he studied at William and Mary but the third year Papa had his stroke and Will had to go back home to take over the farm, which wasn’t easy because by then Papa was more cantankerous than ever. Even though he was flat on his back, things still had to be done Papa’s way. After Papa died, Will ran the farm the way it should have been run in the first place; he put in fields of winter wheat and rotated the crops ‘till he got four, maybe five harvest seasons. Believe me; my brother deserved every nickel that came his way when that farm was finally sold. I still remember the day Will signed those papers; it was five o’clock in the afternoon when he telephoned and he sounded like he’d been nipping at the whiskey.
“Abigail Anne, you’re not gonna believe what I got for the farm,” he said.
I told him that if it was me, I wouldn’t give fifty cents for the entire place.
“Times have changed,” he said. “These folks are investing in the land and it’s not because of farming. They’re gonna build houses— hundreds of nice little three-bedroom houses right here on the Lannigan farm.”