Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(22)

I’ll leave it there.





? ? ?


“Under more ordinary circumstances.” That’s what I wrote only a minute ago.

But in a way, these circumstances of ours have come to feel . . . not ordinary, but perhaps consistent in their peculiarity. A woman can get used to anything, I guess. It must be something like the adage about a frog in hot water: Drop him in, and he’ll jump back out. Turn the heat up slowly, and he’ll sit there and cook.

We cook ourselves in fear.

Fear is the routine that has come to feel ordinary. That, and Lizzie’s search, her quest for understanding. Her struggle to find a solution before her investigations are found out—as they very well might be, someday. We use a great deal of gas power. We send and receive an inordinate amount of mail, and from strange places. Stranger people. No matter how much caution we exercise, the details may eventually betray us. Now our terror is not merely that we’ll both be thought mad, and possibly criminal. No, it’s worse than that. How much worse, I dare not speculate.

No. That isn’t true, and I shouldn’t lie here. When I lie to myself, I lie to everyone. Here’s the truth: I speculate all the time.

The threat is great against the pair of us, if we are found out before we can explain ourselves fully. At best, we might find ourselves incarcerated at a sanatorium, and what would become of Maplecroft then? What of Fall River? Massachusetts? For yes, the threat extends to the entire region—that much has become appallingly clear.

And how much farther than that?

To the whole of the nation? To the world?

We are pulling at threads in the darkness, traversing a labyrinth of ancient and awful design. There are worse things than minotaurs at the center. That much, I can state with utmost confidence.





? ? ?


And now, here comes Gertrude.

Nancy with the fancy actress name. “Nance,” Lizzie calls her with enough affection that it makes me ill. Tall and pretty and strong, in some sense Nance makes a better, more reliable companion than I do. But she’s naive and quick to take offense, and quicker still to leap to judgment. Her moods are mercurial under the best of circumstances, and Lizzie has enough to manage without her.

This having been said, my sister’s mood has been grim for years, and it remains grim almost always . . . except when Nance brings herself around. When she’s in Nance’s company, she’s as happy as I’ve seen her since before Father passed.

So there’s one point in Nance’s favor.

Since I’m feeling generous, I’ll offer another: It could be worse—the girl could be stupid. But she’s only rash and inexperienced.





? ? ?


Lizzie is already beside herself with regard to Nance’s impending visit, her heart torn in the two most obvious directions. She’s glad for the opportunity to see her young friend, but horrified at the sheer extent of what must be hidden before she arrives.

Over the winter we’ve settled into these awful patterns, these anxious routines, and they’re beginning to show outside the cellar laboratory. The laboratory itself is easy enough to hide: You shut and lock the door, and it’s sorted.

But the usual books on our shelves upstairs are joined by tomes more directly alarming; and we’ve made changes to the house which cannot altogether be written off to winter modifications.

In the kitchen hang racks of drying herbs that cannot be used for cooking. Around the yard, small stakes and barriers have been installed, to say nothing of the alarms and traps at the outer reaches of the property. And then there’s Liz’s recent fascination with the nails. Scores of them, pounded unevenly into the doorways, along windowsills, and across every threshold.

I made her take some of them out, because some of the doors refused to open or close properly, courtesy of her inexpert attempts to wield a hammer. Of course, the moment my back was turned, she went and reapplied them all. More tidily, I’ll grant you. But still.

It was almost a real embarrassment, for when Doctor Seabury came to call yesterday afternoon, I found myself at a loss as to explain the exposed nailheads, after he tripped over one, and therefore noticed them all. I made some excuse about the house’s foundation shifting and settling during the last hard freeze, and he nodded politely.

I doubt he believed me.

The doctor had come on my behalf, as he’s made a habit of visiting once per month or so, depending. Sometimes we see him more, sometimes less. It all depends on my health.

Really, I find his appointments to be quite pleasant. We see so few other people, except in passing; and though his visits are not social in nature, they are nonetheless appreciated. He is patient and kind. He is a thoughtful, clever man.

When Lizzie was on trial, he defended her. He told the jury again and again that the stains on her dress were consistent with her story, that she had only found our father and his wife, and fretted over them. He vowed on the Bible and on his life that she could have never killed them, and certainly the murders were the work of a stranger.

He lied, and lied, and lied. I know he did.

But whatever he believed then, or believes now, he’s never treated us with disdain or suspicion. It speaks well of him, though I think his amiability comes partly because he is lonely, and that’s why he indulges us. His wife passed a year ago. No? Eighteen months, at least. It was after the trial, but not long after it.