The Hunger(64)

He beat her to it, though, and his laugh was like water running over stones in the creek—fast and free and clear. She wanted to enter that laugh and to swim and bathe and splash in it, to drink it down and be cleansed by it.

“Well, that’s a relief, then,” he said, though she was the one who felt relief—was nearly dizzy with it.

This feeling amazed her. How neatly the answer came to her, that this man, Charles Stanton, who had, even before she’d realized it, occupied so many of her thoughts—this man was the man for her. The person for her. She knew it in this moment, suddenly and definitively, as though it had been preordained, as though her life had been building up to it from the start: She, Mary Graves—the serious, ever-practical, always patient Mary Graves—was giddily, stupidly, happily in love with Charles Stanton.

And because she was so certain of it, she felt the truth would have to be known. She must tell him. Soon. Very soon. But not now. Not yet.

After all, since they met, they’d spent nearly as much time apart as together. She would wait, at least, until the latter outmeasured the former before she would give full voice to her feelings. It seemed only right, and she wanted to do things right, now more than ever.

As they wandered along the creek, the late-afternoon sun comfortable on their shoulders, she started to tell him about the things that had happened while he was away—about Snyder’s death and Reed’s banishment. That hit Stanton hard—he’d come to trust in Reed, and he admitted that it scared him how quickly the group could turn.

She told him about the rest, too: The old Belgian, Hardkoop, had taken ill and been left behind, and then Jacob Wolfinger had tried to go back for him, never to return. She told of how the sounds of Doris Wolfinger’s soft crying seemed to hang in the air for many nights thereafter, as though the realization that her husband was gone for good had come to her only in gradual waves.

“I don’t know what to make of everything that’s happened to us,” Mary said truthfully, feeling more overwhelmed than before as the weight of it all piled back on top of her. “I can’t tell who’s good or who’s bad anymore. It seemed so easy back in Springfield. But not one of those good people lifted a finger to help poor Mr. Hardkoop when Lewis Keseberg threw him out . . . Or went back to look for Mr. Wolfinger when he disappeared. It’s like everyone is just out for himself . . . Everyone says Tamsen’s a liar, with her tales of shadowy men in the basin. Even those who once trusted her seem to despise her now, but I saw her after they brought her back from the fire. I don’t know why she would have made up a story like that.”

Stanton shook his head. “Tamsen likes attention, but not the negative kind. You’re right, Mary. It is very strange.”

“And then there’s Mr. Reed,” she went on, not eager to linger on the theme of Tamsen and her disconcerting stories. “Reed didn’t seem capable of killing a man in cold blood like that . . .”

“You’re right about that, too. That doesn’t sound like the man I know.” Stanton’s voice was hard, distant.

“It just makes no sense, no sense at all.” She looked toward the horizon, hazy with sun. “That’s why I’m so glad you’re back, Mr. Stanton. One of the many reasons.” She blushed. “You always seem to make sense. I—I feel safer around you.”

He appeared to withdraw then—it was subtle but she felt a tiny space had reopened between them. He stepped closer to the river to avoid their elbows brushing, and a coldness rustled through her that had nothing to do with the changing weather.

“I don’t know why you have given me your trust—again and again, Mary. I want it, of course, but you must know I don’t deserve it.” He had stopped walking and was staring quietly at the flowing river.

“Whatever you’ve done, whatever happened in your past, it can’t be as bad as you imagine.” She touched his arm gently. “The sin has atoned for itself—I can see that in you, in the way you carry the burden of it. You must forgive yourself.” She said these words because she believed them to be true—the Bible teaches forgiveness in others so that God may bestow forgiveness on all.

She thought, fleetingly, that he might cry, but he only let out a heavy breath and pushed a hand through his hair. “I can never forgive myself—it would be like letting her die again. I already fail to save her, over and over again, in my dreams. Every night, I watch her drown again.”

Mary’s breath caught in her throat. She knew what he was referring to: the story of the girl he had loved—and whom he left when she was with child.

“I planned to marry her, you know,” he said. “I had come to tell her so that very day.” Mary watched his knuckles turn white as he clenched his hands and flexed them. Then he turned to look at her, as if expecting her to protest.

“Then it wasn’t your fault,” Mary said, though she could tell the words didn’t touch him. Mary’s father had told her that the poor girl had killed herself because Stanton had abandoned her. But now she could see that perhaps there’d been another reason altogether. The man—the boy—her father described hadn’t sounded like Stanton at all. It seemed absurd now that she had doubted Stanton, even for a minute.

The shadow of a lone cloud, high overhead, rippled over the landscape in front of them. It was a sign, like the hand of God touching the valley.