Hester(61)

“I’m fine.” I stand so quickly I feel faint. “I’ll have a cup of water and I’ll be fine.”



* * *



IN THE AFTERNOON I show Abigail the scrap of wool I cut from Nat’s coat sleeve.

“I want to make a new coat for Edward,” I lie.

“Felicity will know where to find it.”

“A lot of that fabric came from London last month,” Felicity tells me right away. This is her skill—knowing where to find the best materials for the best price in Salem. “It’s a superfine wool. Very costly. It comes in twice a year. Many merchants in Salem own a coat made of it.”

“I found a scrap of it in Newell’s shop. But I’ll need at least one and a half yards.”

She tells me where I might find another lot and seems pleased to say that even with the increase in my glove wages, I’ll be able to afford only a small bit of it.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t make anything now,” she says. “Your husband may return to you much changed. I have seen it many times.”

She’s right and yet she’s wrong. For Edward was changed before we ever came to Salem. And Edward isn’t returning to me now.

“I’ll make it up according to the measurements I have and wait to make the final adjustments when he’s home.”

“Don’t forget about my gloves,” she says.

“I promise you’ll have them in time, Mrs. Adams.”



* * *



I USE NAT’S coins to purchase a length of the superfine wool and silk to patch the torn liner. I clean the waistcoat and trim off the frayed bits, hold his coat on my lap like a shadow of him, and inhale the smell of lint, cigars, and the tavern where he played cards.

I remember the first time I saw him on the docks, how he wore the red and gold of his voice like a crown.

I’ve kept the scrimshaw buttons in a small bowl by my bed. Now I roll them in my palm and listen to the sound they make, like tiny chicken bones in a cup. I work until it is very late. In the morning there are four eggs in a bowl beside my door. I’ve slept so deeply I did not hear the children come into the yard.



* * *



IT’S WELL PAST dark the next evening when Nat leaves his boots at the door and slips into the cottage. I’m glad I’ve prepared my pencil and the length of string to take his measurements, for the cottage feels very small now that he’s here.

“I’m ashamed I came to you that way. I don’t blame you if you’ve changed your mind.” He’s quite sober, and there’s a weight about him that wasn’t there before.

“I have not,” I say.

The expression on his face when I hold the black wool against his torn coat is admiration and something more.

“I found it in a tailor’s shop at the end of Essex Street.” I’m tense and hopeful, but for what, I dare not admit, even to myself.

“Did I give you enough money? Did he ask why you needed it? Did he want to know what you were making or for whom?”

“I had enough money,” I say. “And said as little as needed.”

I take up my tools and run my measure across him. His chest is forty-two inches, his shoulders are forty-four.

I’ve touched him and it hasn’t burned me like a flame. But it might. I can feel it.

“I’ll stitch the sleeve and mend the liner,” I say.

He puts on his old jacket and looks around the cottage for the first time. He sees my yellow curtains, and Edward’s apothecary book on the shelf, and his gaze falls upon the stack of Charlotte’s unfinished petticoats.

“They’re a private order,” I say.

He reaches for a bleached bit and hovers his hands over the place where I’ve put rosebuds at the nape of a chemise.

“May I?”

“Touch lightly.” I remember his fingers counting out the names of the old Salem families and the shock of his touch on my skin. I think of the crisscrossed marks on his back and the guilt and the ghosts he carries.

“You shouldn’t waste your needle on beautiful work that will never be seen,” he says.

“It pays well. And what’s private can also be beautiful.”

He cocks his head to look at me sideways and I feel myself blush.

“There’s something in your needle that evades analysis of the mind.” Nat puts a finger to one of the infant gowns. “Yet it’s there, I can feel it.”

With his finger on the small white gown and eyes squinting into the dim light, he seems part of a story, the mirage of something that was once solid and will be solid again.

“May I ask you something?” I’m thankful I don’t sound as uneasy as I feel.

“Anything.”

“You told me there’s a story about this cottage.”

He nods. “But it’s not a happy one.”

“I’m not afraid of dark tales.”

He settles himself on the stool.

“Widow Higgins was a midwife.” He speaks slowly at first. “She was the midwife who brought my sister into the world. She wasn’t a widow then, she was Mrs. Sally Higgins, a young bride.”

He hesitates.

“You may as well know it, for everyone in Salem knows—my mother was with child when my parents married. Sally Higgins attended my sister’s birth while my father was at sea.”