After Alice Fell(52)

“I stayed here after Paul . . . I don’t ask your love. Just some modicum of respect in my own house.”

“It was my house once too.” I push open the front door. “The cherries were rotten.”

“I’ll only be gone the night.” I roll my stockings and place them in the open leather case.

Toby’s got his arm hooked over the arm of the rocking chair and kicks the floor with his heel.

“Did you have fun at checkers?”

He shrugs. “Papa let me win. He thinks I don’t know. But it’s easy to tell when he’s lying. His eyes go like this.” And he bugs his eyes and then blinks and bugs them again.

I laugh and smooth a chemise to the case.

“What are you doing there?” he asks.

“I’m visiting Mr. and Mrs. Hargreaves.”

“I know, but what are you doing?”

“I’m going to talk about being a nurse. On Thursday morning.”

“At a girl’s school?”

“My old school.”

“What else?”

“Oh . . . looking at dresses. Feeding her birds.”

“She has birds?”

“Two.”

“What color?”

“Yellow. With black wings. They’re pretty.”

He wipes at his mouth. “I want a bird.”

“Perhaps when you’re older and can take care of it yourself.”

“I want a dog. Mama hates dogs.”

“Does she? Hold the corner of this skirt, will you?”

He reaches to clasp it, and I take a brush to the bombazine fabric. It rustles with each stroke.

“I think you should wear pink.”

“Pink doesn’t suit me.”

His nose wrinkles. “Where are you really going?”

My back tenses, but I continue to pack. Here the skirt. There the wallet with the few dollars Lionel has provided. The blue jay feather. “I told you.”

“But it’s not the truth.” He bangs his heel to the floor and wraps himself around the chair’s arm. “You’re a bad liar too.”

I kneel down to him. Move the hair from his eyes with a thumb. “You need a haircut.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find out what happened to Alice.”

“Will you be back?” he whispers.

“Yes. I promise. One night.”

He reaches to touch my hair, tucking a loose strand to my ear. “All right, then.”





Chapter Twenty-One


Nine p.m. Mr. Stoakes meets me at the far field of the asylum grounds. He leads the Hargreaveses’ black horse into a small clearing, setting the buggy’s brake and looping the reins around a tree limb. The moon is atilt, brushing the ground a flat gray. An icehouse hangs over the pond’s lip. Just past it are straight rows of simple stone markers.

“A graveyard.” I search for the bulge of a new dug grave, but see nothing amiss.

He nods and continues on.

There are resting places like this flung across the swath of war. Soldiers buried, unnamed, Union or rebel. Those not lucky enough to be collected and identified before the battle moved on. Numbers carved to the wood posts. When the regiment passed one of these outposts, the doctor’s horse shivered and stomped. The soldiers took off their kepis, prayers for their own survival on their tongues.

At the paddocks, the goats butt their heads against the fence as we approach, looking for treats. They scrape at the earth. Beyond, in the shadows of the barn, the pigs grunt and rustle loose straw.

Stoakes takes my elbow and guides us past the barn’s entrance.

There’s no one here. No one in the barn tending the livestock. No one shoveling coal or chopping wood. The lathe is silent, the room empty.

“Right here.” He explains nothing more. Then he’s around the corner between the shed and the shop, descending a flight of granite steps to a door dug into the earth.

He puts his ear to the thick wood. Knocks. Two short raps. Both are returned a moment later and the door pushed open, forcing us both a step back.

“There you are.” It is Kitty. “She’s agreed.”

“Come on.” Stoakes grips the door and ushers us in. A long tunnel faces me, its gas lamps few and encased in metal cages. The floor is worn stone tilting to the middle, and the whole of it is heavy damp and sharp with lye.

Kitty scuttles before us, the lace on her white cap fluttering as she moves ahead. The gaslight flares and dims and flares again. Each time, she is lost and then found, that cap glowing, the brass shoe buckles gleaming.

“You’ve done good to come,” she says.

My stomach tightens and turns. “Is this all necessary?” I ask and press my tongue to the salt and dust on my lips.

“It’s how you’ll get to the third floor,” Stoakes says. “It’s left alone during most of the night.”

The tunnel ends at another door. Kitty raps and turns to me. She puckers her lips, then spreads them in a smile. She knocks again.

There’s a dull clatter of keys, then the door unlocked from the other side. But not opened. Kitty grips the handle and pushes. Then we are through to a room of laundry tubs and drying racks. Whoever unlocked the door has disappeared through another and left it ajar for us.