After Alice Fell(34)

I shift forward on my knees and take the small knife. With an intake of breath, I cut my own, then hold it out to him. We touch fingers, then I pull back and blow on the cut to dry it. “That stings.”

He sucks on his finger, nods, shakes it in the air. “That’s so you remember it.”





Chapter Fourteen


We walk away from the fort along another path, this one well traveled, used to move a cart from the woodlot to the Runyons’. Brittle leaves and bark husks line the sides. Toby stomps through them and then runs to the other edge to do it again.

I press my thumb to my fingertip where we made the blood oath that Toby no doubt has now forgotten in the glee of crushing leaves. He runs ahead. Stops when he reaches a certain distance from me, looking back and waiting until I am closer before charging off to stamp and twirl again.

He stands at the fork in the path between the Runyons’ and our own house.

“This way,” I call and point down the way to the Runyons’.

We follow the stone fence, passing fallow land, then a low-slung barn for Abel Runyon’s dairy cows. The smell of slop and hogs comes as we trek past the central pens and round to the front of the farmhouse proper. It is solid plank wood, long and low, house flowing into barn.

I brush a leaf from Toby’s hair and knock upon the front door.

Essa Runyon answers, leaning one shoulder to the doorframe. She bounces Frederick Hiram up and down upon her hip and looks over my shoulder from the farmhouse steps to the road. “Something wrong with the sheep?”

“No, not at all. We were just, well, my nephew and I wondered if—”

“Ach, Freddie.” She winces, tugging her hair from his fist and then swatting his arm. “You know not to pull.” Then she looks at me, her eyes narrowed to near slits in her wide face. “Did you get where you needed?”

My skin flushes hot as I recall how she and her husband had found me stumbling along the road. “Yes. I did.”

“Good, then.” The baby’s bare legs swing round and kick into her thighs. She slides him to her other hip and looks down at Toby. “You’re Lydia’s little one.”

Toby snaps his attention from the baby to her.

I put a hand to his shoulder. “This is Toby.”

“I knew you when you were a mite. You still are on the smallish side, aren’t you?”

He fingers the grip on his bow. “I’m eight.”

“Well, you are, aren’t you. Been a long while since a Snow came for a proper visit.” Frederick sticks a finger to her ear. “Might as well come for a sit, then. Give me a conversation that’s more than blubbers and burps.” She pushes the door wider and ambles back inside. “You can leave your bow and arrow at the door.”

The kitchen, like the rest of the house, is dark wood with low ceilings of hewn beams. One square window with square panes lets in a modicum of light but no air.

Mrs. Runyon lowers Frederick to a rocker bed and pushes it with her toe. He wiggles his fingers and watches her with his black bead eyes as she opens an icebox and takes out a glass jar. “Got plum preserves.” I take it from her and give Toby a quick wave to take a seat on the bench.

She grabs a stack of plates from a shelf and sets them to the gingham tablecloth. “Hope you like biscuits.”

“Thank you.” I sit next to Toby, back to the window, wishing it open. “It’s been a hot summer.”

“As summers are.” She clatters the teapot on the stove, then opens the cast-iron door to poke at the log. “We’ll have some coffee, then.”

Toby stares down at the baby. “He’s very large.”

Mrs. Runyon tips her head and barks out a laugh. “That he is.”

“We wonder, Toby and I, if you might still have one of your boys’ old bow and arrows. And if we may borrow them.”

She stretches her mouth in thought, then nods. “Going boar hunting soon, Toby?”

He frowns. “No.”

“They’d be on you before you got the arrow nocked.” Then she puts her palm to the table. “It’d be you I’d serve here instead of the hog.” Her laugh is broad and loud enough to stir the baby. He smiles, pink gums glistening, then shrieks and bellows. Essa clamps her mouth and stares at him until he quiets and sticks his thumb to his mouth to chew.

The room is almost too hot to sit in. Essa serves the biscuits, a heap for each plate, and then pours the coffee into our mugs. Toby’s looking both sallow and red. He picks at the biscuit in front of him and pushes the crumbs under his thumb and across the last of the preserves on his plate. Frederick is asleep, one finger to his cheek and his mouth moving with some dream. Essa leans forward, elbows on the table and cup in her hand, nothing fancy about her. She bites at her lip and pulls it through her teeth. She’s one of the plainest women I’ve ever met, but it suits her, as if she never wanted any fuss and bother.

“The boys?” I inquire. Tommy and Samuel. They would be fifteen and sixteen now. Lucky enough to have escaped the war.

She takes a drink of her coffee and puts the cup down. “Out at Widow Humphrey’s with Abel. She’s got those New Hampshire gilts he’s been eyeing. Good stock.”

“Hm. Yes.”

She stares at me and leans back in her chair.