The Winter People(31)

Poor old Shep has taken up residence at the foot of Gertie’s chair in the kitchen. He lies there all day, looking hopeful each time he hears someone enter the room, only to rest his head mournfully on his front paws when he sees it is not Gertie.

“Poor love,” my niece, Amelia, says, getting down on her knees to stroke the dog’s head and feed him choice scraps. Amelia has been very kind. She has insisted on staying with us for a few days to help with things. She is twenty-one, very striking, strong-willed.

Last night, she brought me some warm brandy before bed and insisted I drink the whole cup. “Uncle Lucius says it’ll do you good,” she explained.

Then she took up my brush and began to work the tangles out of my hair. I haven’t had my hair brushed for me since I was a little girl.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Amelia asked.

I nodded.

“The dead never really leave us,” she whispered to me, her lips so near my ear I could feel the warmth of her breath. “There is a circle of ladies in Montpelier who meet once a month and speak with those who have passed on. I have been several times now, and heard the spirits rapping on the table. You must come with me, Aunt Sara,” she said, her voice growing urgent. “As soon as you feel up to it, we will go.”

“Martin would not approve,” I said.

“Then we won’t tell him,” she whispered.


Martin has been no comfort—he is shy, clumsy, and awkward. Once, I found these things sweetly boyish and endearing; now I find myself wishing that he were a different man, a man more sure of himself. I have come to despise the way he never looks anyone in the eye—how is a man like that to be trusted? There was a time, not all that long ago, I even loved his limp, because in some way it reminded me of everything he’d given our family—his constant drive to keep us warm and fed, to keep the farm going no matter what. Now I loathe the way his bad foot scrapes across the floor so noisily; it is the sound of weakness and failure. I know it’s wrong, and it makes me sick, this new seething venom inside me, but I cannot help it.

Deep down, I understand the true cause of these feelings: I blame Martin for what happened to Gertie. If she hadn’t followed him into the woods that morning, she would still be here by my side.

“We will see our way through this,” he tells me, squeezing my hand in his own, which is as cool and damp as a fish. He gives me a warm, loving smile, but behind it I see his concern.

I do not answer. I do not tell him that I no longer wish to get through it. That what I want most is to sneak away and throw myself down into the bottom of that well so I can be with my Gertie once more.

Even Reverend Ayers can offer no relief.

He came this afternoon to discuss the service and burial arrangements for Gertie. I had been putting off this discussion, but today Martin and Lucius announced that it was time, we had waited long enough.

We sat at the table over cups of coffee that grew cold before us. Reverend Ayers had brought a basket of muffins his wife, Mary, had made. There was some talk of burying Gertie up at the cemetery by Cranberry Meadow with Martin’s family, but I wouldn’t have it.

“She belongs here,” I said. Martin nodded, and Lucius opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it. And so it was decided we would bury her in the small family plot behind the house, beside her tiny brother, my mother and father and brother.

As Reverend Ayers was leaving, he took my hand. “You must remember, Sara, that Gertie is in a better place now. She’s with our Lord.”

I spat in his face.

I did this without thinking, automatically, as if it were as natural to me as taking a sip of water when thirsty.

Imagine, me spitting in Reverend Ayers’s face! I’ve known the man all my life—he baptized me, married Martin and me, buried our son, Charles. I have struggled all my life to believe his teachings, to live the word of God. But no more.

“Sara!” Lucius said, looking alarmed as he pulled a clean white handkerchief out of the front pocket of his trousers and handed it to the reverend.

Reverend Ayers wiped at his face and stepped back away from me. He looked … not angry or worried about me, but frightened of what I might do next.

“If the God you worship and pray to is the one who brought my Gertie to that well, who took her from me, then I want nothing more to do with him,” I said. “Please leave my house and take your vicious God with you.”

Poor Martin was horrified and stuttered off excuses for me.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, as he and Lucius walked Reverend Ayers out. “She’s sick with grief. Not in her right mind.”

Not in my right mind.

But I am in the same mind I have had all along. Only now there is a piece missing. A Gertie-shaped piece cut from the center of my very being.

And perhaps, with this new grief, I am seeing things clearly for the first time.

I understand now that Martin has never known the real me. There is only one person who ever did—who saw all of me, all the beauty along with the ugliness. And it is that person I long for now.

Auntie.

For so long, I have done my best to push all my memories of her away. I’ve spent my whole adult life trying to convince myself that she got what she deserved; that her death, terrible as it was, was the consequence of her own actions. But that’s never been what I truly believed. What I think about most is how I should have done something to stop it. If I had found a way to save her, I tell myself, maybe my life might have turned out differently. Perhaps all the tragedy and loss I have suffered is somehow linked to what I did that one day when I was nine.