After Alice Fell(6)

“Cathy!” Lionel presses past me.

The boy totters back from her, chest welling, face purple with shock and rage.

“When will she leave us alone?” Cathy’s hands fist her skirt. “When will she ever leave us be?” She clamps her jaw and stands, wiping at the scratch now beaded with blood. “I want her buried.”

Behind the house, skirting the pebbles and rush that line Turee Pond, Lionel and I lug the coffin. There are piles of burnt wood where the glass house once sat. The path we follow is muddled with chokeberry and Queen Anne’s lace. The icehouse crouches between maples and oaks that tint the light pale green and hold in the clammy air. The coffin bumps my thigh.

“Nearly there.” Lionel steps over a twist of root.

Up a small hill, to the family plot, to a burst of sunlight and shimmering air and a deep hole to the right of Father’s, Mother’s, and Lydia’s. The grass of Lydia’s grave is scattered with twigs and feathers. I turn my eyes to the dark rectangle mouth that will soon swallow Alice whole.

We set the box on the lip of the grave. The yardman, Elias Morton, stands nearby. Lionel sent for him. Paid double to make certain the job was done quickly. His white hair curls from under his stovepipe hat, settling on the fray of his collar. His milky eyes follow Lionel and ignore me.

No words. The men take a handle each, crouch low, and drop the case into the ground.

I let out a breath, rake up a fistful of earth, then open my fingers so it sifts and scatters on the pine box.

“I’m sorry, missus.” Elias stares at his boots. “So sorry.”

Lionel stands with his hands on his hips. “She’ll be better now.” He looks at me across the pit. “She never forgave you for leaving her with us.”

I choke down a sob and turn away. I cannot watch the rest, when I know how the dark terrifies her, and now she will be encased in it. When I know my brother is right. I do not deserve forgiveness.





Chapter Three


Perhaps I should get up from the bed, open another window, the one facing the kitchen garden. I’ve been lying here since we buried Alice, watching the shadows slip across the room and the sun darken to a thick burnt orange. But Cathy’s down in the garden, her voice a burble and sometimes a coo and sometimes “Toby, stay out of the tomatoes,” and “Toby, Toby, where are you?”

Toby laughs and shrieks as only little boys can do when hiding from stepmothers amidst plants and hedges and the knife-edged shadows of a sinking sun.

Lionel and Cathy have given me this room at the back of the house. Alice’s old room. The windows face both the kitchen garden and Turee Pond. The bed sits next to the glass with a wide sill to hold my morning tea; the writing table has three drawers and a squat shelf. My childhood wardrobe has been dragged from the barn and repainted in robin’s-egg blue. Pink roses snake down the wallpaper. Cathy’s set a clock and a vase of posies on the fireplace mantel.

A fine little room trying so desperately to be cheerful.

“You’ll be more comfortable down here,” Lionel said. “And Cathy’s bought all new linens for you.”

What he meant was they would be more comfortable with me—the widow with no means—not underfoot. I haven’t determined yet how many thank yous and sorrys will be enough.

It comes then, a rip and tear to my heart, that this is not a temporary situation: this is what happens when one’s husband is killed with half his regiment on Monett’s Bluff.

I can still see the casualty sheet, posted atop the others until the watered silk walls of a room once elegant bulged with names of the missing and dead.

The ward attendant tapped the sheet and bellowed, “Forty-seventh Pennsylvania. Twenty-ninth Wisconsin. Eighth New Hampshire.”

A soldier in nothing but frayed gray trousers lurched up from the floor and yanked my apron for attention. “That’s my brother’s regiment.” He scratched under the bandage on his face. “That’s Franklin’s men! He’ll have got ’em good. Is he on the list? Can you look? Can you tell me if my brother’s on the list?”

“Stop scratching. It won’t heal.” I kneeled to him. Put my hand atop his to still it.

“Will you look for me? Look for my brother, Franklin Branch.”

The room felt wadded with cotton, all the sounds muted but the constant thump of my heart and the soldier’s voice. Will you look? Will you, Nurse?

“Eighth New Hampshire?” I stepped over and past the wounded, holding my skirts tight against me in the narrow hall. Jostled between cots and surgeons and soldiers who stood or swayed—too well for a bed, too injured to be returned to their troops. Crying and moans and the uproar of more carts and more men echoing from the street to the vestibule. I stood on tiptoe to see over the men who’d gathered in front of the lists. Started at the A’s.

There. Benjamin Abb—. One name amongst scores, the last three letters cut off in a crimp of glue.

It was late before I returned to my billet. All day I’d sent missives for the wounded and dying, my fingers stained with ink. Now I sent my own.

City Point May 4, 1864

Dear Lionel,

Benjamin is dead. Tell Alice. She will not lament his passing. For me, I tell you plainly I cannot mourn a man I did not love. He quashed that sentiment too soon and required it again too late.