A Northern Light(25)

"Yes, Cook."

"Lizzie?"

"Yes, Cook."

"Mrs. Morrison needs you all on your very best behavior. Sleep well, girls, and remember that poor thing downstairs in your prayers."

I wonder how I am supposed to remember the dead girl downstairs and sleep well. Seems to me it's got to be one or the other. I hear Ada get up off the floor, then feel the mattress shake and bounce. She plumps her pillow and tussles around. She curls up on her side, then stretches out onto her back. "I can't sleep, Matt," she whispers, turning toward me.

"I can't, either."

"She wasn't much older than us, I don't think. Do you really suppose her young man is still alive?"

"He could be. They haven't found his body," I say, trying to sound hopeful.

"They're still out there, Mr. Sperry and Mr. Morrison and more besides. I saw them going into the woods after supper. They had lanterns."

We are both silent for a minute or so. I turn on my side and slide one hand under my pillow. My fingers touch the letters.

"Ada?"

"Hmmm?"

"When you make someone a promise, do you always have to keep it?"

"My ma says you do."

"Even if the person you promised to dies?"

"Especially then. On his deathbed, my uncle Ed made my aunt May promise never to take his likeness down off the wall, even if she married again. Well, she did marry and Uncle Lyman, her new husband, didn't care much for Ed watching his every move. But May wouldn't go back on her promise. So Lyman bought a bit of black cloth and glued it across Ed's photograph. Like a blindfold. May reckons that's all right, as Ed never said anything about blindfolds. But you can't break a promise to anyone who's dead. They'll come back and haunt you if you do. Why are you asking?"

Ada blinks at me with her huge, dark eyes, and even though it's boiling hot in our room, I suddenly feel cold. I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. "No reason," I say.





Uri ? ah the Hit ? tite, stink ? pot, wart ? hog


John the Baptist was looking dustier than a man should. Even a man who spent all his time wandering around in a desert.

"Mattie, be careful with that! You know those figurines mean the world to me."

"Yes, Aunt Josie," I said, gently wiping John's porcelain face.

"Start with the top shelf and work your way down. That way you're—"

"—not dusting the dust that I already dusted."

"A smart tongue does not become a young lady."

"Yes, Aunt Josie," I said obediently. I did not want to anger my aunt. Not today. I wanted her in a good mood today, for I had finally thought up a way to get myself to Barnard—one that didn't involve my father's say-so or a job up at the Glenmore.

My aunt Josephine had money. Quite a bit of it. Her husband, my uncle Vernon, made a good living with his sawmills. Maybe, just maybe, I hoped, she would loan a little bit of it to me.

I was cleaning house for my aunt as I did every Wednesday after school. And she was sitting in a chair by the window, watching me work, as she did every Wednesday after school. My uncle and aunt live in the nicest house in Inlet—a three-story clapboard painted gold with dark green trim. They have no children, but my aunt has nearly two hundred figurines. She says her rheumatism keeps her from doing any real work because it makes her bones ache something wicked. Pa says his bones would ache, too, if they had as much lard hanging off them as hers do. She is a big woman.

Pa does not like my aunt Josie, and he did not want me to clean her house. He said I was not a slave—which was rich, coming from him—but there was not much either of us could do about it. I had started helping my aunt to please Mamma—Josie was unwell and Mamma had worried about her—and it wasn't right to stop just because Mamma died. I knew she wouldn't want me to.

Aunt Josie does not like my pa, either. She never thought he was good enough for my mother. Josie and my mamma grew up in a big house in Old Forge. Josie married a rich man, and she thought my mother ought to have married a rich man, too. She thought Mamma was too fine to live on a farm, and often told her so. They had a falling-out over it once, when Mamma was expecting Beth. They were sitting in Josie's kitchen, drinking tea, and I was in the parlor. I was supposed to be dusting, but I'd been eavesdropping instead.

"That huge farm ... all the work, Ellen," my aunt said. "Seven babies ... three buried because they weren't strong enough, because you weren't strong enough... and now another one coming. What on earth can you be thinking? You're not a field hand, you know. You're going to ruin your health."

"What would you like me to do, Josie?"

"Tell him no, for goodness' sake. He shouldn't make you."

There was a long, cold silence. Then my mamma said, "He doesn't make me." And then the parlor door almost hit me in the head as she burst into the room to fetch me home even though I hadn't finished dusting. They didn't speak for weeks after that, and when they finally did make up, there were no more words against my pa.

My aunt could be very trying and she made me angry at times, but mostly I felt sorry for her. She thought that figurines on your shelves and white sugar in your tea and lace trim on your underthings were what mattered, but that was only because she and Uncle Vernon didn't sleep in the same room like my mother and father had, and Uncle Vernon never kissed her on the lips when he thought no one was looking, or sang her songs that made her cry, like the one about Miss Clara Verner and her true love, Monroe, who lost his life clearing a logjam.