After Alice Fell(61)

The household ledger, green leather with worn corners, seated to the left. Two nib pens resting on a piece of cloth. On the cloth, dark ink stains. A stack of blank paper.

I lift the ledger to the desk, then bend to peer into the back of the drawer. One box. I reach for it, hold it in my palm. It is plain maple, oiled and hinged. I set it atop the ledger and lift the lid. Inside is a crushed-velvet bag, the satin strings drawn tight. I pick at the tie with my good thumb, but the knot is too tight. I twist to hold the end of a string with my other fingers, using the weight of my arm and splint, but there’s not a way to untie it, and when I jerk, the splint knocks the box to the floor. I grab it up. Push the bag inside and shove the whole of it to the pocket on my skirt.

The ledger holds the normal pages of transactions for eggs and milk, the Mortons’ weekly payments. Cathy’s handwriting tilts and whirls, but the numbers are precise. Deposits from Lionel. House money. Sewing thread and rush baskets. I flick the pages back from the present, stop on April 5 the last. Run my index finger down the figures and stop. Buttons 10-. It is an exorbitant amount for buttons, even for Cathy, and perhaps I’ve skipped a line, for my head is beginning to throb. I run my nail along the ledger’s line, from the amount to the item.

The other figures are as expected, the daily costs marked with care, the deposits from Lionel generous and regular. How many creditors has he borrowed from? Then again, May 6: Buttons 10-.

And June 5, the same.

July 7, double. Final.

I roll the pages backward, to the first of the year. There are no payments out of the ordinary until the one on April 5. Each month forward, a purchase of buttons and a figure not less than ten dollars.

Each payment nearly a half of the funds Lionel has given for the running of the household.

The thud of a door startles me. I shut the book, slip it back to the drawer. I grip the knife, then cross the room, my hip catching the corner of the card table as I pass by. I drop onto the settee, lie back, grabbing at a magazine and thumbing the pages.

Footsteps approach from the back, up the kitchen steps and through the hall before stopping at the parlor. “I’m trying to read, Lionel.”

There’s a shuffle of a boot. “It’s Amos, ma’am.”

My eyes snap open and I sit up. “Amos.”

He doesn’t step in the doorway. “We’ll be setting the fire. If you want to come.”

“I thought that was tonight.”

“Ready now.” His voice is reedy, and his eyes don’t stop watching me. He points at my cinched arm. “Which bone?”

“Both.”

“Hell of a thing to heal, all right.” And then he rolls his sleeve and holds up his arm, showing off a bend in the forearm just above the wrist. The skin is scarred, white puckers. Old scars.

“How did it happen?”

“I left the lid off the well when I was a boy. My father didn’t like it. He gave me a whack with a shovel.”

I nod and look away. The sun has crawled higher, and the room is darker without the cut of it through the curtains. “No one to set it?”

“No, ma’am. Just me and him then.” He rolls his sleeve down. “You don’t remember me.”

“Should I?”

“You were a nurse. I was Ninth New Hampshire. Came in from Hatcher’s Run.”

He could be any soldier, I think. Though his eyes are disconcerting; something that would have been remembered. But not in the last year. Not then. Then the men came too fast, and each was a wound to drain and bandage, a face to wash, a final letter to a mother or wife that sounded the same as any other letter I’d written. I’d lost the mercy to care for them. I’d lost the ability to care for the cause.

“I don’t. I’m sorry.”

He lowers his head and shifts his boot. “Just a case of the Tennessee Trots.” When he looks up, he’s smiling and his teeth seem yellow in the muted light. “I deserved a medal for bravery. Just getting through that.”

“You and everyone else.” I shift on the couch. The box I’ve stolen pokes into my hip. “You were lucky to live. More of you were buried to dysentery than a gunshot.”

“It was a break from marching and fighting, I guess.” He runs his hand down the doorframe.

“And now? Where’s your family?”

“Got none. Just odd jobs to keep my mouth fed.” He glances around the room and settles his gaze back on me. “You looking to kill someone with that?”

My eyes drop to the knife I hold tight on my lap. “No. No, I . . .” I drop it to the lace-covered side table.

Amos gives a quick click of his tongue and looks back to the dining room, then up at the arched window in the front hall.

“You can go now,” I say.

“Can I?” He arches his brow. He’s laughing at me. I’m alone in the room—in the house—and he knows it. He could do anything, steal anything from my person or the room and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. He gives a little nod of his head. “It’s cooler in here.”

My jaw tightens. “Get out.”

He clicks his tongue again.

I feel the thump of my heart in my chest and the hammering throb of it down my arm. I grab the scrolled arm of the sofa to push myself up. “Get out of this house. Get out. Get out.”