The Twelfth Child (Serendipity #1)(33)

In November, the chrysanthemums wilted and turned brown but no one bothered to cart the pots away. A curtain of gloom settled over the once cheerful house and day after day the shutters to the study remained closed. Ida Jean Meredith had been halfway through the third verse of a poem about the simple joy of a songbird, but she ceased writing. When prompted to continue on with her verse, Miss Meredith replied, “Joy?” her eyes glazed over with a bewildered expression as if she could no longer comprehend the meaning of such an emotion.

Abigail’s silk dresses hung in the closet gathering dust as she scoured the floors and laundered their clothes in cold water and lye soap. Her hands once again grew raw and callused; the skin on her right thumb split open and bled, then it crusted over and split open again. She rummaged through cupboard after cupboard searching for a bit of cream or rosewater and glycerin to soothe her skin, but there was nothing and she cursed the fact that she had used it up so wastefully. Most every night she cried herself to sleep, praying that when she woke in the morning this horror would be a nightmare that had come and gone, instead she would wake to find a lump of self pity stuck in her throat and the thought of food banging away at her brain. For breakfast she’d gulp down a bowl of oatmeal, all the while dreaming of hot chocolate thick with cream, and at dinnertime she’d imagine the watery soup of potatoes and onions to be a thick stew. Once in a great while there might be a hambone in the pot and then she would lose all pretenses and gnaw at it until every last drop of marrow was sucked clean. On nights when she crawled into bed feeling the emptiness of her stomach press against her spine, Abigail called to mind a picture of the fat bellied cook stove that warmed the old farmhouse kitchen – she could almost smell the thick slabs of bacon sizzling in an iron skillet and taste the biscuits, so buttery they drizzled down onto her chin.

When winter came, she took to wearing heavy wool stockings in the house because Miss Ida was fearful of wasting the meager supply of fuel. “We’re fortunate to have a roof over our head and a bit of food for the table,” the old woman would say – but Abigail did not feel fortunate, in fact she felt miserable. Despite the wool shawl pulled tight around her shoulders, a chill needled into her spine and at times caused her to long for the warmth of Henry Keller’s embrace. When the wind blew and frost iced the ground, she sunk into a bottomless sense of loss and began to wonder if there was such a thing as going back.

That January was the coldest Richmond had seen in many years. On a bitter morning when the trees were bare of leaves and the sky such a dark gray it looked to be night, a noisy black crow settled on the window sill. Abigail believed it to be the very same bird that summer before last perched in the tree outside of her old bedroom – the bird had the icy stare of a black-robed clergyman and she sensed it had been following her ever since she left Chestnut Ridge. Last summer she had seen sparrows and bright red cardinals nesting in the lilac trees, now there was only one hateful crow gleefully cackling at the miserable fortune that had fallen upon her. Abigail rapped hard against the windowpane but the nasty bird pecked at the place her hand had touched and cawed arrogantly. She pictured Preacher Broody banging his fist against the pulpit and hammering home the message as ye sow, so shall ye reap.



Ida Jean Meredith, who was a frail woman to begin with, died in the spring of 1930, just one month before the bank foreclosed on the two-story pink house and by some odd circumstance, the very same year the rhododendrons never bloomed.

For the first time in her life Abigail was alone, so alone that she took to talking to inanimate objects – a chair, a table, a cooking pot. “I don’t expect you’d know what time it is,” she’d say to a chest of drawers, or mumble some question as to the state of the weather as she passed by the sofa. Without the responsibility of doing for Miss Ida she became lost and wandered aimlessly from room to room, forgetting to eat and falling asleep at odd times and in odd places. One afternoon she awoke draped across Miss Ida’s desk – the inkwell tipped over and a blue-black stain on her left cheek. She might have continued on that way, except that three weeks after the funeral, Harold Wigbottom, who was Miss Meredith’s attorney, knocked at the door and told her she had to be out of the house by the end of the month.

“Miss Meredith willed her entire estate to The Artists and Poets League,” he said. “They plan to take possession of the house and it’s furnishings on May first.”

“But,” Abigail stuttered, “I’m living here!”

“You can stay until April thirtieth,” he said. “No longer. I regret that such is the circumstance, but –” he shrugged then doffed his hat and walked off as if the conversation had been of little significance.

“Where am I to go?” she called after him, but Mister Wigbottom rounded the walkway and kept going. As soon as the door clicked closed, Abigail threw herself onto the sofa and started to bawl. She pounded her fists against the pillows and cried for hours on end, she cried until it felt as though there could be no more tears inside of her, then sometime during the wee hours of the morning she fell asleep on the sofa.

That night she heard thundering hooves pounding against the pavement, she saw wild horses running through the streets of Richmond. At the forefront of the pack was Malvania – his mane billowing recklessly, his nostrils flared and snorting, astride his back was a straight up Abigail with her nose tilted in the air and a look of determination in her eyes. As the herd thundered closer to the center of town, people clambered back against the walls of the buildings, all but one man, that one man was her father. He planted himself in the pathway of the horses and stood ground. Abigail could sense a collision coming, a collision that would shatter one of them into tiny shards of hopelessness. She had to do something. She spurred Malvania into a hard right and the herd followed, circling around him. When Abigail looked back, her father was standing there, his arms folded square across his chest and a look of hatred frozen on his face.