The Taker

ONE

Goddamned freezing cold. Luke Findley’s breath hangs in the air, nearly a solid thing shaped like a frozen wasp’s nest, wrung of all its oxygen. His hands are heavy on the steering wheel; he is groggy, having woken just in time to make the drive to the hospital for the night shift. The snow-covered fields to either side of the road are ghostly sweeps of blue in the moonlight, the blue of lips about to go numb from hypothermia. The snow is so deep it covers all traces of the stumps of stalks and brambles that normally choke the fields, and gives the land a deceptively calm appearance. He often wonders why his neighbors remain in this northernmost corner of Maine. It’s lonely and frigid, a tough place to farm. Winter reigns half the year, snow piles to the windowsills, and a serious biting cold whips over the empty potato fields.

Occasionally, someone does freeze solid, and because Luke is one of the few doctors in the area, he’s seen a number of them. A drunk (and there is no shortage of them in St. Andrew) falls asleep against a snowbank and by morning has become a human Popsicle. A boy, skating on the Allagash River, plunges through a weak spot in the ice. Sometimes the body is discovered halfway to Canada, at the junction where the Allagash meets up with the St. John. A hunter goes snow blind and can’t make his way out of the Great North Woods, his body found sitting with its back against a stump, shotgun lying uselessly across his lap.

That weren’t no accident, Joe Duchesne, the sheriff, told Luke in disgust when the hunter’s body was brought to the hospital. Old Ollie Ostergaard, he wanted to die. That’s just his way of committing suicide. But Luke suspects if this were true, Ostergaard would have shot himself in the head. Hypothermia is a slow way to go, plenty of time to think better of it.

Luke eases his truck into an empty parking space at the Aroostook County Hospital, cuts the engine, and promises himself, again, that he is going to get out of St. Andrew. He just has to sell his parents’ farm and then he is going to move, even if he’s not sure where. Luke sighs from habit, yanks the keys out of the ignition, and heads to the entrance to the emergency room.

The duty nurse nods as Luke walks in, pulling off his gloves. He hangs up his parka in the tiny doctors’ lounge and returns to the admitting area. Judy says, “Joe called. He’s bringing in a disorderly he wants you to look at. Should be here any minute.”

“Trucker?” When there is trouble, usually it involves one of the drivers for the logging companies. They are notorious for getting drunk and picking fights at the Blue Moon.

“No.” Judy is absorbed in something she’s doing on the computer. Light from the monitor glints off her bifocals.

Luke clears his throat for her attention. “Who is it then? Someone local?” Luke is tired of patching up his neighbors. It seems only fighters, drinkers, and misfits can tolerate the hard-bitten town.

Judy looks up from the monitor, fist planted on her hip. “No. A woman. And not from around here, either.”

That is unusual. Women are rarely brought in by the police except when they’re the victim. Occasionally a local wife will be brought in after a brawl with her husband, or in the summer, a female tourist may get out of hand at the Blue Moon. But this time of year, there’s not a tourist to be found.

Something different to look forward to tonight. He picks up a chart. “Okay. What else we got?” He half-listens as Judy runs down the activity from the previous shift. It was a fairly busy evening but right now, ten P.M., it’s quiet. Luke goes back to the lounge to wait for the sheriff. He can’t endure another update of Judy’s daughter’s impending wedding, an endless lecture on the cost of bridal gowns, caterers, florists. Tell her to elope, Luke said to Judy once, and she looked at him as though he’d professed to being a member of a terrorist organization. A girl’s wedding is the most important day of her life, Judy scoffed in reply. You don’t have a romantic bone in your body. No wonder Tricia divorced you. He has stopped retorting, Tricia didn’t divorce me, I divorced her, because nobody listens anymore.

Luke sits on the battered couch in the lounge and tries to distract himself with a Sudoku puzzle. He thinks instead of the drive to the hospital that evening, the houses he passed on the lonely roads, solitary lights burning into the night. What do people do, stuck inside their houses for long hours during the winter evenings? As the town doctor, there are no secrets kept from Luke. He knows all the vices: who beats his wife; who gets heavy-handed with his children; who drinks and ends up putting his truck into a snowbank; who is chronically depressed from another bad year for the crops and no prospects on the horizon. The woods of St. Andrew are thick and dark with secrets. It reminds Luke of why he wants to get away from this town; he’s tired of knowing their secrets and of them knowing his.

Then there is the other thing, the thing he thinks about every time he steps into the hospital lately. It hasn’t been so long since his mother died and he recalls vividly the night they moved her to the ward euphemistically called “the hospice,” the rooms for patients whose ends are too close to warrant moving them to the rehab center in Fort Kent. Her heart function had dropped below 10 percent and she fought for every breath, even wearing an oxygen mask. He sat with her that night, alone, because it was late and her other visitors had gone home. When she went into arrest for the last time, he was holding her hand. She was exhausted by then and stirred only a little, then her grip went slack and she slipped away as quietly as sunset falling into dusk. The patient monitor sounded its alarm at nearly the same time the duty nurse rushed in, but Luke hit the switch and waved off the nurse without even thinking. He took the stethoscope from around his neck and checked her pulse and breathing. She was gone.

The duty nurse asked if he wanted a minute alone and he said yes. Most of the week had been spent in intensive care with his mother, and it seemed inconceivable that he could just walk away now. So he sat at her bedside and stared at nothing, certainly not at the body, and tried to think of what he had to do next. Call the relatives; they were all farmers living in the southern part of the county… Call Father Lymon over at the Catholic church Luke couldn’t bring himself to attend… Pick out a coffin… So many details required his attention. He knew what needed to be done because he’d been through it all just seven months earlier when his father died, but the thought of going through this again was just exhausting. It was at times like these that he most missed his ex-wife. Tricia, a nurse, had been good to have around during difficult times. She wasn’t one to lose her head, practical even in the face of grief.

This was no time to wish things were different. He was alone now and would have to manage by himself. He blushed with embarrassment, knowing how his mother had wanted him and Tricia to stay together, how she lectured him for letting her go. He glanced at the dead woman, a guilty reflex.

Her eyes were open. They had been closed a minute ago. He felt his chest squeeze with hope even though he knew it meant nothing. Just an electrical impulse running through nerves as her synapses stopped firing, like a car sputtering as the last fumes of gas passed through the engine. He reached up and lowered her eyelids.

They opened a second time, naturally, as though his mother was waking up. Luke almost jumped backward but managed to control his fright. No, not fright-surprise. Instead, he slipped on his stethoscope and leaned over her, pressing the diaphragm to her chest. Silent, no sluicing of blood through veins, no rasp of breath. He picked up her wrist. No pulse. He checked his watch: fifteen minutes had passed since he had pronounced his mother dead. He lowered her cold hand, unable to stop watching her. He swore she was looking back at him, her eyes trained on him.

And then her hand lifted from the bedsheet and reached for him. Stretched toward him, palm up, beckoning him to take it. He did, calling her by name, but as soon as he grasped her hand, he dropped it. It was cold and lifeless. Luke took five paces away from the bed, rubbing his forehead, wondering if he was hallucinating. When he turned around, her eyes were closed and her body was still. He could scarcely breathe for his heart thumping in his throat.

It took three days before he could bring himself to talk to another doctor about what had happened. He chose old John Mueller, a pragmatic GP who was known for delivering calves for his rancher neighbor. Mueller had given him a skeptical look, as though he suspected Luke might have been drinking. Twitching of fingers and toes, yeah that happens, he’d said, but fifteen minutes later? Musculoskeletal movement? Mueller eyed Luke again, as though the fact that they were even talking about it was shameful. You think you saw it because you wanted to. You didn’t want her to be gone.

Luke knew that wasn’t it. But he wouldn’t raise it again, not among doctors.

Besides, Mueller had wanted to know, what difference does it make? So the body may have moved a little-you think she was trying to tell you something? You believe in that life-after-death stuff?

Thinking about it now, four months later, still gives Luke a slight chill, running down both arms. He puts the Sudoku book on the side table and works his fingers over his skull, trying to massage out the confusion. The door to the lounge pushes back a crack: it’s Judy. “Joe’s pulling in up front.”

Luke goes outside without his parka so the cold will slap him awake. He watches Duchesne pull up to the curb in a big SUV painted black and white, a decal of the Maine state seal on the front doors and a low-profile light bar strapped to the roof. Luke has known Duchesne since they were boys. They were not in the same grade but they overlapped at school, so he’s seen Duchesne’s narrow, ferretlike face with the beady eyes and the slightly sinister nose for more than twenty years.

Hands tucked into his armpits for warmth, Luke watches Duchesne open the back door and reach for the prisoner’s arm. He’s curious to see the disorderly. He’s expecting a big, mannish biker woman, red-faced and with a split lip, and is surprised to see that the woman is small and young. She could be a teenager. Slender and boyish except for the pretty face and mass of yellow corkscrew curls, a cherub’s hair.

Looking at the woman (girl?), Luke feels a strange tingle, a buzz behind his eyes. His pulse picks up with something almost like-recognition. I know you, he thinks. Not her name, perhaps, but something more fundamental. What is it? Luke squints, studying her more closely. Have I seen her somewhere before? No, he realizes he’s mistaken.

As Duchesne pulls the woman along by the elbow, her hands tied together with a flexicuff, a second police vehicle pulls up and a deputy, Clay Henderson, gets out and takes over escorting the prisoner into the emergency ward. As they pass, Luke sees the prisoner’s shirt is wet, stained black, and she smells of a familiar blend of iron and salt, the smell of blood.

Duchesne steps close to Luke, nodding in the pair’s direction. “We found her like that walking along the logging road to Fort Kent.”

“No coat?” Coatless in this weather? She couldn’t have been out for long.

“Nope. Listen, I need you to tell me if she’s hurt, or if I can take her back to the station and lock her up.”

As far as law enforcement officers went, Luke’s always suspected Duchesne of being heavy-handed; he’s seen too many drunks brought in with lumps on their skulls or facial bruising. This girl, she’s only a kid-what in the world could she have done? “Why is she in custody? For not wearing a coat in this weather?”

Duchesne gives Luke a sharp look, unaccustomed to being mocked. “That girl is a killer. She told us she stabbed a man to death and left his body out in the woods.”

Luke goes through the motions of examining the prisoner, but he can barely think for the strange pulsing in his head. He shines a penlight into her eyes-they are the palest blue eyes he’s ever seen, like two shards of compressed ice-to see if her pupils are dilated. Her skin is clammy to the touch, her pulse low and her breathing ragged.

“She’s very pale,” he says to Duchesne as they step away from the gurney to which the prisoner has been strapped at the wrists. “That could mean she’s going cyanotic. Going into shock.”

“Does that mean she’s injured?” Duchesne asks, skeptical.

“Not necessarily. She could be in psychological trauma. Could be from an argument. Maybe from fighting with this man she says she killed. How do you know it’s not self-defense?”

Duchesne, hands on hips, stares at the prisoner on the gurney as though he can discern the truth just by looking at her. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “We don’t know anything… she hasn’t said much. Can’t you tell if she’s wounded? ’Cause if she’s not hurt I’ll just take her in…”

“I have to get that shirt off, clean off the blood…”

“Get to it. I can’t stay here all night. I left Boucher in the woods, looking for that body.”

Even with the full moon, the woods are dark and vast, and Luke knows the deputy, Boucher, has little chance of finding a body by himself.

Luke picks at the edge of his latex glove. “So go help Boucher while I do the examination…”

“I can’t leave the prisoner here.”

“For Chrissakes,” Luke says, jerking his head in the slight young woman’s direction. “She’s hardly going to overpower me and escape. If you’re that worried about it, have Henderson stay.” They both glance at Henderson tentatively. The big deputy leans against a counter, leafing through an old Sports Illustrated left in the waiting room, a cup of vending machine coffee in his hand. He’s shaped like a cartoon bear and is, appropriately, amicably dim. “He won’t be of much help to you in the woods… Nothing is going to happen,” Luke says impatiently, turning away from the sheriff as though the matter is already settled. He feels Duchesne’s stare bore into his back, unsure if he should argue with Luke.

And then the sheriff lurches away, heading for the double set of sliding doors. “Stay here with the prisoner,” he yells at Henderson as he jams the heavy, fur-lined hat onto his head. “I’m going back to help Boucher. Idiot couldn’t find his own ass with both hands and a map.”

Luke and the nurse attend to the woman strapped to the gurney. He hefts a pair of scissors. “I’m going to have to cut your shirt away,” he warns her.

“You might as well. It’s ruined,” she says in a soft voice with an accent Luke can’t place. The shirt is obviously expensive. It’s the kind of clothing you see in fashion magazines and that you would never find someone wearing in St. Andrew.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Luke says, small talk to loosen her up.

She studies his face, evaluating whether to trust him-or so Luke assumes. “I was born here, actually. That was a long time ago.”

Luke snorts. “A long time ago for you, maybe. If you were born here, I’d know you. I’ve lived in this area almost my entire life. What’s your name?”

She doesn’t fall for his little trick. “You don’t know me,” she says flatly.

For a few minutes there’s only the sound of wet fabric being cut and it is hard going, the scissors’ tiny beak moving sluggishly through the sodden material. After it’s done, Luke stands back to let Judy swab the girl with gauze soaked in warm water. The bloody red streaks dissolve, revealing a pale, thin chest without a scratch on it. The nurse drops the forceps holding the gauze into a metal pan noisily and hustles out of the examination room as though she knew all along that they’d find nothing, and yet again, Luke has proven his incompetence.

He averts his eyes as he drapes a paper sheet over the girl’s naked torso.

“I’d have told you I wasn’t hurt if you’d asked,” she says to Luke in a low whisper.

“You didn’t tell the sheriff, though,” Luke says, reaching for a stool.

“No. But I’d have told you.” She nods at the doctor. “Do you have a cigarette? I’m dying for a smoke.”

“I’m sorry. Don’t have any. I don’t smoke,” Luke replies.

The girl looks at him, those ice blue eyes scanning his face. “You gave them up a while ago, but you started again. Not that I blame you, given everything you’ve been through lately. But you have a couple of cigarettes in your lab coat, if I’m not mistaken.”

His hand goes to the pocket, out of instinct, and he feels the papery touch of the cigarettes right where he had left them. Was that a lucky guess, or did she see them in his pocket?

And what did she mean by given everything you’ve been through lately? She’s just pretending to read his mind, trying to get inside his head like any clever girl who finds herself in a fix would do. He has been wearing his troubles on his face lately. He just hasn’t seen a way to fix his life yet; his problems are interconnected, all stacked up. He’d have to know how to fix all of them to take care of even one.

“There’s no smoking in the building, and in case you’ve forgotten, you’re strapped to a gurney.” Luke clicks the top of his pen and reaches for a clipboard. “We’re a little shorthanded tonight, so I’m going to need to get some information from you for the hospital records. Name?”

She regards the clipboard warily. “I’d rather not say.”

“Why? Are you a runaway? Is that why you don’t want to give me your name?” He studies her: she’s tense, guarded, but under control. He’s been around patients involved in accidental deaths and they’re usually hysterical-crying, shaking, screaming. This young woman is trembling slightly under the paper sheet and she jiggles her legs nervously, but by her face Luke can tell she’s in shock.

He feels, too, that she is warming toward him; he senses a chemistry between them, as though she is willing him to ask her about the terrible thing that happened in the forest. “Do you want to tell me what went on tonight?” he asks, rolling closer to the gurney. “Were you hitchhiking? Maybe you got picked up by someone, the guy in the woods… He attacks you, you defend yourself?”

She sighs and presses back into the pillow, staring at the ceiling. “It was nothing like that. We knew each other. We came to town together. He”-she stops, choking on the words-“he asked me to help him die.”

“Euthanasia? Was he already dying? Cancer?” Luke is skeptical. The ones looking to kill themselves usually pick something quiet and surefire: poison, pills, an idling car engine and a length of garden hose. They don’t ask to be stabbed to death. If this friend really wanted to die, he could have just sat under the stars all night until he froze.

He glances at the woman, trembling under the paper sheet. “Let me get a hospital gown and a blanket for you. You must be cold.”

“Thank you,” she says, dropping her gaze.

He comes back with a much-laundered flannel gown edged in pink and a pilling acrylic blanket, baby blue. Maternity colors. He looks down at her hands, bound to the gurney with nylon strap restraints. “Here, we’ll do this one hand at a time,” Luke says, undoing the restraint on the hand closest to the side table where the examination tools are laid out: forceps, bloodied scissors, scalpel.

Quick as a rabbit, she lunges for the scalpel, her slender hand closing around it. She points it at him, wild eyed, her nostrils pink and flaring.

“Take it easy,” Luke says, stepping backward off the stool, out of her arm’s reach. “There’s a deputy just down the hall. If I call for him, it’s over, you know? You can’t get both of us with that little knife. So why don’t you put down the scalpel-”

“Don’t call him,” she says, but her arm is still outstretched. “I need you to listen to me.”

“I’m listening.” The gurney is between Luke and the door. She can cut her other hand free in the time it takes him to make it across the room.

“I need your help. I can’t let him arrest me. You have to help me escape.”

“Escape?” Suddenly, Luke isn’t worried that the young woman with the scalpel will hurt him. He’s feeling embarrassed for having let his guard down, allowing her to get the drop on him. “Are you out of your mind? I’m not going to help you escape.”

“Listen to me-”

“You killed someone tonight. You said so yourself.”

“It wasn’t murder. He wanted to die, I told you that.”

“And he came here to die because he grew up here, too?”

“Yes,” she says, a little relieved.

“Then tell me who he is. Maybe I know him…”

She shakes her head. “I told you-you don’t know us. Nobody here knows us.”

“You don’t know that for sure. Maybe some of your relatives…” Luke’s obstinacy comes out when he gets angry.

“My family hasn’t lived in St. Andrews for a long, long time.” She sounds tired. Then she snaps, “You think you know, do you? Okay-my name is McIlvrae. Do you know that name? And the man in the woods? His name is St. Andrew.”

“St. Andrew, like the town?” Luke asks.

“Exactly, like the town,” she replies almost smugly.

Luke feels funny bubbles percolating behind his eyes. Not recognition, exactly… where has he seen that name, McIlvrae? He knows he has seen it or heard it somewhere, but that knowledge is just out of reach.

“There hasn’t been a St. Andrew in this town for, oh, at least a hundred years,” Luke says, matter-of-fact, stung at being upbraided by a girl pretending to have been born here, lying about a meaningless fact that won’t do her a bit of good. “Since the Civil War. Or so I’ve been told.”

She jabs the scalpel at him to get his attention. “Look-it’s not like I’m dangerous. If you help me get away, I’m not going to hurt anyone else.” She speaks to him as though he’s the one being unreasonable. “Let me show you something.”

Then, with no warning, she points the scalpel at herself and cuts into her chest. A long, broad line that catches her left breast and runs all the way to the rib area under her right breast. Luke is frozen in place for a moment as the line blooms red across her white skin. Blood oozes from the cut, pulpy red tissue starting to peep from the opening.

“Oh my god!” he says. What the hell is wrong with this girl-is she crazy? Does she have some kind of death wish? He snaps out of his baffled inertia and starts toward the gurney.

“Stay back!” she says, jabbing the scalpel at him again. “Just watch. Look.”

She lifts her chest, arms outstretched, as though to give him a better view, but Luke can see fine, only he can’t believe what he is seeing. The two sides of the cut are creeping toward each other like the tendrils of a plant, rejoining, knitting together. The cut has stopped bleeding and is starting to heal. Through it, the girl’s breathing is rough but she betrays no sign of pain.

Luke can’t be sure his feet are on the floor. He is watching the impossible-the impossible! What is he supposed to think? Has he gone crazy, or is he dreaming, asleep on the couch in the doctors’ lounge? Whatever he’s seen, his mind refuses to accept it and starts to shut down.

“What the hell-,” he says, barely a whisper. Now he is breathing again, his chest heaving up and down, his face flushing. He feels like he is going to vomit.

“Don’t call for the policeman. I’ll explain it to you, I swear, just don’t yell for help. Okay?”

As Luke sways on his feet, it strikes him that the ER has fallen silent. Is there even anyone around to hear him if he did call out? Where is Judy, where is the deputy? It’s as if Sleeping Beauty’s fairy godmother drifted into the ward and cast a spell, putting everyone to sleep. Outside the door to the examination room, it’s dark, lights dimmed as usual for the night shift. The habitual noises-the far-off laugh track of a television program, the metallic ticking from inside the soda vending machine-have disappeared. There is no whir from a floor buffer wending its way laboriously down the empty halls. It’s just Luke and his patient and the muffled sound of the wind beating against the side of the hospital, trying to get in.

“What was that? How did you do that?” Luke asks, unable to keep the horror from his voice. He slides back onto the stool to keep from dropping to the floor. “What are you?”

The last question seems to hit her like a punch to the sternum. She hangs her head, flossy blond curls covering her face. “That-that’s the one thing I can’t tell you. I don’t know what I am anymore. I have no idea.”

This is impossible. Things like this don’t happen. There is no explanation-what, is she a mutant? Made of synthetic self-healing materials? Is she some kind of monster?

And yet she looks normal, the doctor thinks, as his heart rate picks up again and blood pounds in his ears. The linoleum tiles start to sway underfoot.

“We came back-he and I-because we missed the place. We knew everything here would be different-everyone would be gone-but we missed what we once had,” the young woman says wistfully, staring past the doctor, speaking to no one in particular.

The feeling he had when he first saw her this evening-the tingle, the buzz-arcs between them, thin and electric. He wants to know. “Okay,” he says, shakily, hands on his knees. “This is crazy-but go ahead. I’m listening.”

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes momentarily, like she is about to dive underwater. And then she begins.

TWO

I’ll start at the beginning, because that is the part that makes sense to me and which I’ve inscribed in my memory, afraid that otherwise it will be lost in the course of my journey, in the endless unraveling of time.

My first clear, vivid memory of Jonathan St. Andrew is of a bright Sunday morning in church. He was sitting at the end of his family’s box at the front of the congregation hall. He was fourteen years old at the time and already as tall as any man in the village. Nearly as tall as his father, Charles, the man who had founded our little settlement. Charles St. Andrew was once a dashing militia captain, I was told, but at the time was middle-aged, with a patrician’s soft belly.

Jonathan wasn’t paying attention to the service, but then again, probably few of us in attendance were. A Sunday service could be counted on to run for four hours-up to eight if the minister fancied himself an elocutionist-so who could honestly say they remained fixed on the preacher’s every word? Jonathan’s mother, Ruth, perhaps, who sat next to him on the plain, upright bench. She came from a line of Boston theologians and would give Pastor Gilbert a good dressing-down if she felt his service wasn’t rigorous enough. Souls were at stake, and no doubt she felt the souls in this isolated wilderness town, far from civilizing influences, were at particular risk. Gilbert was no fanatic, however, and four hours was generally his limit, so we all knew we would be released soon to the glory of a beautiful afternoon.

Watching Jonathan was a favorite pastime of the girls in the village, but on that particular Sunday it was Jonathan who was the one watching-he made no secret of staring at Tenebraes Poirier. His gaze hadn’t wavered from her for a good ten minutes, his sly brown eyes fixated on Tenebraes’s lovely face and her swanlike neck, but mostly on her bosom, pressing against the tight calico of her bodice with every breath. Apparently it didn’t matter to him that Tenebraes was several years his senior and had been betrothed to Matthew Comstock since she was six.

Was it love? I wondered as I watched him from high up in the loft, where my father and I sat with the other poor families. That Sunday it was just me and my father, the balance of my family at the Catholic church on the other side of town, practicing the faith of my mother, who came from an Acadian colony to the northeast. Resting my cheek against my forearm, I watched Jonathan intently, as only a lovesick young girl will do. At one point, Jonathan looked as though he was ill, swallowing with difficulty and finally turning away from Tenebraes, who seemed oblivious to the effect she was having on the town’s favorite son.

If Jonathan was in love with Tenebraes, then I might as well throw myself from the balcony of the congregation hall in full sight of everyone in town. Because I knew with absolute clarity at age twelve that I loved Jonathan with all my heart and that if I could not spend my life with him, I might as well be dead. I sat next to my father through the end of the service, my heart hammering in my throat, tears welling behind my eyes even though I told myself I was a ninny to get carried away over something that was probably meaningless.

When the service ended, my father, Kieran, took my hand and led me down the stairs to join our neighbors on the common green. This was the reward for sitting through the service: the opportunity to talk to your neighbors, to have some relief after six days of hard, tedious work. For some, it was the only contact they’d had outside their family in a week, the only chance to hear the latest news and any bits of gossip. I stood behind my father as he spoke to a couple of our neighbors, peeking from behind him to find Jonathan, hoping he would not be with Tenebraes. He was standing behind his parents, alone, staring stonily into the backs of their heads. He clearly wished to leave, but he might as well have wished for snow in July: socializing after services typically lasted for at least an hour, more if the weather was as pleasant as it was that day, and the stalwarts would practically have to be carried away. His father was doubly encumbered because there were plenty of men in town who saw Sundays as an opportunity to speak to the man who was their landlord or in a position to improve their fortune in some way. Poor Charles St. Andrew; I didn’t realize till many years later the burden he had to endure.

Where did I find the courage to do what I did next? Maybe it was desperation and the determination not to lose Jonathan to Tenebraes that compelled me to slip away from my father. Once I was sure he hadn’t noticed my absence, I made haste across the lawn, toward Jonathan, weaving between the knots of adults talking. I was a tiny thing at that age, easily hidden from my father’s view by the voluminous skirts of the ladies, until I went up to Jonathan.

“Jonathan. Jonathan St. Andrew,” I said but my voice came out as a squeak.

Those beautiful dark eyes looked on me and me alone for the first time and my heart did a little flip. “Yes? What do you want?”

What did I want? Now that I had his attention, I had no idea what to say.

“You’re one of the McIlvraes, aren’t you?” Jonathan said, suspiciously. “Nevin is your brother.”

My cheeks colored as I remembered the incident. Why hadn’t I thought of the incident before I came over? Last spring, Nevin had ambushed Jonathan outside the provisioner’s store and bloodied his nose before adults pulled them apart. Nevin had an abiding hatred of Jonathan, for reasons unknown to all but Nevin. My father apologized to Charles St. Andrew for what was seen as nothing more than the sort of skirmish boys get into routinely, nothing sinister attached to it. What neither father knew was that Nevin would undoubtedly kill Jonathan if he ever saw the chance.

“What do you want? Is this one of Nevin’s tricks?”

I blinked at him. “I-I have something I wish to ask you.” But I couldn’t speak in the presence of all these adults. It was only a matter of time before Jonathan’s parents realized there was a girl in their midst, and they would wonder what the devil Kieran McIlvrae’s oldest daughter was doing, if indeed the McIlvrae children harbored some strange intent toward their son.

I took his hand in both of mine. “Come with me.” I led him through the crowd, back into the empty vestibule of the church, and, for reasons I will never know, he obeyed me. Strangely, no one noticed our exit, no one cried out to stop us from going off together by ourselves. No one broke away to chaperone us. It was as though fate conspired, too, for Jonathan and I to have our first moment together.

We went into the cloakroom with its cool slate floor and darkened recess. The sound of voices seemed a long way off, only murmurs and snippets of talk drifting in from the common. Jonathan fidgeted, confused.

“So-what is it you wish to tell me?” he asked, an edge of impatience in his tone.

I had intended to ask him about Tenebraes. I wanted to ask him about all the girls in the village and which ones he cared for and if he had been promised to one of them. But I couldn’t; these questions choked in my throat and brought me to the edge of tears.

And so in desperation I leaned forward and pressed my lips against his. I could tell he was surprised by the way he drew back, slightly, before regaining his wits. And then he did something unexpected: he returned the kiss. He leaned into me, groping for my lips with his mouth, feeding his breath into me. It was a forceful kiss, hungry and clumsy and so much more than I knew to expect. Before I had the chance to be frightened, he backed me against the wall, his mouth still over mine, and pressed into me until I bumped against the spot hidden beneath the front of his breeches and below the folds of his jacket. A moan escaped him, the first time I heard a moan of pleasure come from another person. Without a word, he took my hand and brought it to the front of his breeches and I felt a shudder run through him as he uttered another moan.

I drew my hand back. It tingled. I could still feel his hardness in my palm.

He was panting, trying to get himself under control, confused that I’d pulled away from him. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” he asked, studying my face, more than a little worried. “You did kiss me.”

“I did…” Words tumbled out of me. “I meant to ask… Tene-braes…”

“Tenebraes?” He stood back, smoothing the front of his waistcoat. “What of Tenebraes? What difference-” He trailed off, perhaps realizing he had been watched in church. He shook his head as though brushing aside the very notion of Tenebraes Poirier. “And what is your name? Which McIlvrae sister are you?”

I couldn’t blame him for being uncertain: there were three of us. “Lanore,” I answered.

“Not a very pretty name, is it?” he said, not realizing that every little word can bruise a young girl’s heart. “I will call you Lanny, if you don’t mind. Now, Lanny, you know you are a very wicked girl.” There was a playfulness in his voice to let me know he wasn’t seriously angry with me. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you should not tease a boy so, especially boys you do not know?”

“But I know you. Everyone knows you,” I said, somewhat alarmed that he would think me frivolous. He was the eldest son of the wealthiest man in town, the owner of the logging business around which the entire settlement revolved-of course everyone knew who he was. “And-and I believe that I love you. I mean to be your wife one day.”

Jonathan lifted a cynical eyebrow. “To know my name is one thing, but how can you possibly know you love me? How can you set your heart on me? You don’t know me at all, Lanny, and yet you’ve declared yourself mine.” He smoothed his jacket one more time. “We should go back outside before someone comes looking for us. It would be best if we were not seen together, don’t you agree? You should go first.”

I stood there for a second, shocked. I was confused, still possessed of phantom traces of his desire, his kiss and the memory of his hardness in my hand. In any case, he’d misunderstood me: I hadn’t given myself to him. I had declared that he was mine. “All right,” I said, and the disappointment must have been evident in my voice because Jonathan gave me his handsomest smile.

“Don’t worry, Lanny. There is next Sunday-we will see each other after service, I promise. Perhaps I can persuade you to give me another kiss.”

Shall I tell you about Jonathan, my Jonathan, and then you will understand how I could be so sure of my devotion? He was the firstborn of Charles and Ruth St. Andrew and they were so thrilled to have a son that they named him on the spot, had him christened within the month, recklessly exulting in him in an age when most parents would not even name a child until it had lived for some time and proved it had a chance of survival. His father threw a great party while Ruth was still recuperating in her bed; had everyone from the town come in for rum punch and sugared tea, plum cake and molasses cookies; hired an Acadian fiddler, had laughter and music so close after the boy’s birth, it seemed the father was daring the devil-just try to come and take my boy! Just try and see what you will get!

It was apparent, from the earliest days, that Jonathan was uncommon: he was exceptionally clever, exceptionally strong, exceptionally healthy, and above all, exceptionally beautiful. Women would sit rapt beside the cradle, beg for turns to hold him and pretend that the well-formed bundle of flesh and swirling tendrils of black gossamer was their own. Even men, down to the hardiest axman working for St. Andrew in the logging operation, would get uncharacteristically misty when brought in proximity to the babe.

By the time Jonathan reached his twelfth birthday, there was no denying that there was something preternatural about him, and it seemed just as obvious to attribute this to his beauty. He was a wonder. He was perfection. That could not be said of many at the time; it was an age in which people were disfigured by any number of causes-smallpox or accident, burned at the hearth, spindly from malnutrition, toothless by thirty, lumpy from a broken bone set improperly, scarified, palsied, scabbed from lack of hygiene, and, in our stretch of the woods, missing parts from frostbite. But there wasn’t a disfiguring mark on Jonathan. He’d grown tall, straight, and broad shouldered, as majestic as the trees on his property. His skin was as flawless as poured cream. He had straight black hair as glossy as a raven’s wing and his eyes were dark and bottomless, like the deepest recess of the Allagash. He was simply beautiful to look upon.

Is it a blessing or a curse to have a boy like Jonathan living in your midst? Pity us girls, I say; consider the effect a boy like Jonathan can have on the girls in a small village, in a town so limited there are few other distractions and it is impossible to avoid all contact with him. He was a constant, inescapable temptation. There was always the chance you might see him, coming out of the provisioner’s shop or as he rode across a field seemingly on some errand but really sent by the devil to weaken our reserve. He didn’t even have to be present to dominate our thoughts: as you sat with your sisters or friends to take up needlework, one of them would whisper about a recent glimpse of Jonathan, and then, he would be all we could talk about. Perhaps we had a part in our own bedevilment, for the girls could not stop obsessing about him, whether on the occasion of a casual meeting (did he speak to you, the girls would want to know; what did he say?), or a mere sighting in town, when even a detail as trifling as the color of his waistcoat was discussed. But what we were really thinking, all of us, was: how he could look you over with an impertinent eye or the way the very corner of his mouth turned up in speculation, and how any of us would die to be in his arms, just once. And it was not just the young girls who felt this way about him; especially as he reached his teenage years, fifteen, sixteen, he already made the other men in the village seem spent, coarse, overfed, or scrawny, and the good wives started to consider Jonathan differently. You could tell by the way they’d stare at him, their feverish looks, flushed cheeks, bitten lips, and the eternal hope in a quick drawing in of breath.

There was the aspect about him of slight danger, too, of wanting to touch him the way a mad voice in your head tells you to touch a hot iron. You know you cannot help but be hurt, but you cannot resist. You must just experience it for yourself. You ignore what you know will come next, the unbearable pain of seared flesh, the sharp bite of the burn all over again every time the wound is touched. The scar you will carry for the rest of your life. The scar that will mark your heart. Inured to love, you will never be quite so foolish in the same way again.

In that respect, I was envied and ridiculed at the same time: envied for all the time I spent in Jonathan’s presence, ridiculed because I had made it plain that there was no romance of any sort between us. This only confirmed in the eyes of the other girls that I lacked the necessary feminine wiles to pique a man’s interest. But I was no different from them. I knew Jonathan had the ability to burn me up with the brilliance of his attention, like a flame to paper. A girl could be destroyed in an instant of divine love. The question was, was it worth it?

You might ask if I loved Jonathan for his beauty, and I would answer: that is a pointless question, for his great, uncommon beauty was an irreducible part of the whole. It gave him his quiet confidence-which some might have called aloof arrogance-and his easy, disarming way with the fairer sex. And if his beauty drew my eye from the first, I’ll not apologize for it, nor will I apologize for my desire to claim Jonathan for my own. To behold such beauty is to wish to possess it; it’s desire that drives every collector. And I was hardly alone. Nearly every person who came to know Jonathan tried to possess him. This was his curse, and the curse of every person who loved him. But it was like being in love with the sun: brilliant and intoxicating to be near, but impossible to keep to oneself. It was hopeless to love him and yet it was hopeless not to.

And so I was afflicted by Jonathan’s curse, caught up in his terrible attraction, and both of us were doomed to suffer for it.

THREE

A friendship progressed between us-Jonathan and I-in this way through childhood. We met after services on Sundays and at social events such as weddings and even funerals, whispering together on the fringe of the mourners, or giving up on propriety altogether and wandering off to the woods so we could concentrate all our attention on each other. Heads shook in disapproval, and without a doubt, some tongues gave in to gossip, but our families did nothing to stop our friendship-at least, I was not made aware of it if they had.

It was during this time that I realized that Jonathan was lonelier than I had imagined. The other boys sought his company far less than I’d assumed and, for Jonathan’s part, when a group approached us at a social, he often skirted them. I recall one time, at a spring church gathering, that Jonathan steered me to another path when he saw a group of boys his age heading in our direction. I had no idea what to make of it and, after a few minutes of anxious contemplation, decided to ask.

“Why is it that you choose to walk this way?” I asked. “Is it because you are embarrassed to be seen with me?”

He made a derisive sound. “Don’t be daft, Lanny. I am seen with you now. Anyone can see us walking together.”

That was true enough, and a relief. But I could not give up my inquiry. “Then is it because you don’t like them, those boys?”

“I don’t dislike them,” he said, peevishly.

“Then why-”

He cut me off. “Why are you questioning me? Take my word for it: it’s different for boys, Lanny, and that’s all there is to it.” He began to walk faster, and I had to lift my skirts a bit to keep up with him. He hadn’t explained what the mysterious “it” was that he referred to: what was different for boys? I wondered. Nearly everything, from what I could see. Boys were allowed to go to school, if their families could afford to pay the tutor’s fee, whereas girls got no more schooling than their mothers could impart-the household arts of sewing, cleaning, and cooking, maybe a little reading from the Bible. Boys could tussle with each other for amusement, run and play tag without the encumbrance of long skirts, ride horseback. True, they drew hard chores and had to master all manner of skills-once, Jonathan told me, his father made him repair the foundation of their icehouse, stone and mortar, just so he would know a bit about masonry-but to my way of thinking, a boy’s life was much freer. And here Jonathan was complaining about it.

“I wish I were a boy,” I muttered, nearly out of breath from trying to keep up with him.

“No, you don’t,” he said over his shoulder.

“I don’t see what-”

He whirled on me. “What about your brother, Nevin, then? He doesn’t much like me, does he?” I stopped, dumbstruck. No, Nevin didn’t like Jonathan and hadn’t for as long as I could remember. I remembered the fight with Jonathan, how Nevin had come home spangled with a crust of dried blood on his face, and how Father was quietly proud of him.

“Why do you think your brother hates me?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ve never given him reason, but he hates me just the same,” Jonathan said, straining not to betray the hurt in his voice. “It’s that way with all the boys. They hate me. Some of the adults, too. I know it, I can feel it. That’s why I avoid them, Lanny.” His chest heaved, tired from explaining it to me. “There, now you know,” he said and then hurried away, leaving me to stare after him in surprise.

I thought about what he’d said all week. I could have spoken to Nevin about his hatred of Jonathan, but to do so would restart an old argument between us; he couldn’t stand that I’d befriended Jonathan, of course, and I knew the reasons well enough without having to ask. My brother thought Jonathan was proud and arrogant, that he flaunted his wealth, and that he expected, and received, special treatment. I knew Jonathan better than anyone outside his family-perhaps even within his family-so I knew all of this to be untrue, except the latter, but it was hardly Jonathan’s fault if others treated him differently. And, though Nevin wouldn’t admit to it, I saw in his hateful eye the wish to spoil Jonathan’s beauty, to leave his mark on that handsome face and bring down the town’s favorite son. In his own way, Nevin wanted to defy God, to right what he saw as an injustice God had deliberately meted out to him, that he should have to live in Jonathan’s shadow in every regard.

That was why Jonathan had rushed away from me at the church gathering, because he had been forced to share his shame with me, and perhaps he thought that once I knew his secret I would abandon him. How strongly we hold on to our fears in childhood! As if there was any power on earth or in heaven that would stop me from loving Jonathan. If anything, it made me see that he, too, had his enemies and detractors, that he, too, was constantly judged, and that he needed me. I was the one friend with whom he could be free. And it was not one-sided: to speak plainly, Jonathan was the only person who treated me as though I mattered. And to have the attention of the most desired, most important boy in town is no small thing to a girl nearly invisible among her peers. How could that help but make me love him even more?

And I told Jonathan as much the following Sunday, when I went up to him and slipped my arm under his as he paced about on the far side of the green. “My brother is a fool,” was all I said, and we continued walking together without another word between us.

The one thing I did not take back from our conversation at the church social was that I’d rather have been born a boy. I still believed that. It had been drummed into my head, by the things my parents did and the very rules by which we lived, that girls were not as valuable as boys and that our lives were destined to be far less consequential. For instance, Nevin would inherit the farm from my father, but if he hadn’t the temperament or inclination to raise cattle, he might be apprenticed to the blacksmith or sent to work as a logger for the St. Andrews-he had choices, albeit limited ones. As a woman, I had fewer options: marry and start my own household, remain at home and assist my parents, or work as a servant in someone else’s home. If Nevin rejected the farm for some reason, conceivably my parents could pass it along to one of their daughters’ husbands, but that, too, would depend on the husband’s preferences. A good husband would take his wife’s wishes into consideration, but not all of them did.

The other reason-the more important one, in my view-was that if I were a boy, it would be so much easier to be Jonathan’s friend. The things we could do together if I were not a girl! We could ride horseback and go off on adventures without chaperones. We could spend lots of time in each other’s company without anyone raising an eyebrow or finding it a fit topic to remark upon. Our friendship would be so banal and so ordinary that it would merit no scrutiny and would be allowed to proceed on its own.

Looking back, I understand now that this was a difficult time for me, still caught up in adolescence but stumbling toward maturity. There were things I wanted from Jonathan, but I could not yet put a name to them and had only the clumsy framework of childhood to measure them against. I was close to him but wanted to be closer in a way I didn’t understand. I saw the way he looked at the older girls, and that he behaved differently with them than he did with me, and I thought I might die of jealousy. Partly, this was due to the intensity of Jonathan’s attention, his great charm; when he was with you, he had a way of making you feel that you were the center of his world. His eyes, those bottomless dark eyes, would settle on your face, and it was as though he was there for you and you alone. Perhaps that was an illusion, perhaps it was merely the joy of having Jonathan to oneself. In any case, the result was the same: when Jonathan withdrew his attention, it was as though the sun slipped behind a cloud and a cold, sharp wind blew at your back. All you wanted was for Jonathan to come back, to enjoy his attention again.

And he was changing with every year. When his guard was down, I saw aspects of him that I hadn’t seen (or noticed) before. He could act crudely, particularly if he thought no woman was observing him. He would display some of the rough behavior of the axmen who worked for his father, speak coarsely of women as though he was already acquainted with the full range of intimacies possible between the sexes. Later I would learn that by age sixteen he had been seduced and gone on to seduce others, a participant (comparatively early in his life) in this secret waltz of illicit lovers going on in St. Andrew, a hidden world if you did not know to look for it. But these were secrets he couldn’t bring himself to share with me.

All I know is that my hunger for Jonathan grew, and it felt, at times, that it was nearly beyond my control. That there was something about his smoldering eye or half smile, or the way he knowingly caressed a young woman’s silk sleeve when he thought no one was watching, that made me want him to look at and caress me in the same way. Or when I thought of the rough things I’d overheard him say, I wanted him to be rough with me, too. I understand now that I was a lonely and confused young girl who yearned for intimacy and craved physical passion (even though it was a mystery to me) and-I know this now-my ignorance would be the means of my ruin. I was in a mad rush to be loved. I cannot blame Jonathan alone. So often we bring about our own downfall.

FOUR

Smoke swirls in two down spots of light in the examination room. By now, the wrist restraints are undone and the prisoner sits with the gurney adjusted upright, like a chair, a cigarette smoldering between her fingers. Two butts, burned down to the filters, sit squashed at the bottom of a bedpan on the gurney between them. Luke leans back in his chair and coughs, his throat rough from the smoke, and his head cottony, as though he’s been partaking of a narcotic all night.

A one-knuckle rap sounds at the door and Luke is on his feet quicker than a squirrel can run up a tree, because he knows that’s the mandatory, perfunctory knock a hospital worker gives before stepping into an examination room. He blocks the door with his body, allowing it to open only about an inch.

Judy’s cold eye, distorted by the lens of her glasses, sizes him up. “Morgue called. The body just came in. Joe wants you to call the medical examiner.”

“It’s late. Tell Joe there’s no reason to call the medical examiner now. It can certainly wait until morning.”

The nurse folds her arms. “He also wanted me to ask about his prisoner. Is she ready to go or isn’t she?”

This is a test, he realizes. He’s always thought of himself as an honest person, and yet he can’t bring himself to let her go just yet. “No, he can’t take her yet.”

Judy stares so hard that it feels like it could go right through him. “Why not? There isn’t a scratch on her.”

A lie springs nimbly to mind. “She became agitated. I had to sedate her. I need to make sure she doesn’t have an adverse reaction to the sedative.” The nurse sighs audibly, as though she knows-doesn’t suspect but knows-that he is doing something disgusting to the body of the unconscious girl. “Just leave me alone, Judy. Tell Joe I’ll call him when she’s stabilized.” He pushes the door shut in her face.

Lanny pushes ash around the bedpan with her burning cigarette, deliberately not making eye contact with him. “Jonathan’s here. Now you don’t have to take my word for it,” she says, tapping ash into the bedpan and motioning to the door with her head. “Go down to the morgue. Take a look for yourself.”

Luke shifts uncomfortably on the stool. “So there’s a dead man in the morgue-all that proves is that you really did kill a man tonight.”

“No, there’s something else. Let me show you,” she says, pushing aside the cap sleeve of the hospital gown to reveal a small line drawing on the white underside of her upper arm. He leans in to look more closely and sees that it’s a crude tattoo done in black ink, the outline of a heraldic shield with a reptilian figure inside. “You’ll see on Jonathan’s arm, in this spot-”

“The same tattoo?”

“No,” she says, giving the tattoo a swipe with her thumb. “But it’s the same size and it was done by the same person, so it will look similar, like it was done with pins dipped in ink, because it was. His looks like two comets circling each other, with the tails extended.”

“What does it mean? The comets?” Luke asks.

“Damned if I know,” she replies, rearranging the gown and bedding. “Just go look at Jonathan, and then tell me if you don’t believe me.”

After he ties her up again-inefficiently, with rarely used straps kept on hand for unruly patients-Luke Findley rises from the stool. He slips through the swinging doors, checking first to make sure no one sees him leave. The hospital is still dark and quiet, with only faint movement in the distant pools of light illuminating the nurses’ station down the hall. His shoes squeak against the clean linoleum floor as he hurries down the staircase, heading north through a basement corridor that leads to the morgue.

The whole way his nerves jangle. If someone stops him and asks what he’s doing out of the ER, why he’s going to the morgue, he’ll just tell them… His mind goes blank. Luke has never been a good liar. He sees himself as a fundamentally honest person, for whatever good that has done him. Despite his honesty and his fear of getting caught, though, he has agreed to the prisoner’s outlandish suggestion because he is curious as to whether this dead person is the most beautiful man ever put on the planet and what the most beautiful man would look like.

He pushes open the heavy swinging door to the morgue. Luke hears music-the evening morgue attendant, a young man named Marcus, likes to have the radio playing at all times-but sees no one. His desk shows signs of occupation (the lamp glows brightly, papers are strewn about, a gum wrapper, an uncapped pen), but no Marcus.

The morgue is small, in keeping with the town’s modest needs. There is a refrigerated examination room farther back, but the bodies are stored in four cold vaults in the wall just past the entryway. Luke takes a deep breath and reaches for one of the latches, big and heavy like the latches on old-fashioned frozen food trucks.

In the first vault he finds the body of an elderly woman, unknown to him, which means she probably came from one of the towns farther out in the county. The woman’s short, thick body and white hair make him think of his mother, and for a moment he’s brought back to the last lucid conversation they had. He’d sat at her bedside in the intensive care unit while her unfocused eyes searched in his direction and her hand sought his out for comfort. “I’m sorry you had to come home to take care of us,” she’d said to him, his mother who never apologized because she never allowed herself to do anything that needed excusing. “Maybe we stayed on the farm a little too long. But your father, he wouldn’t give it up…” She stopped herself, unable to be disloyal to the old man so stubborn that he had hobbled out to the barn to milk the cows the morning of the day he died. “I’m sorry for what it did to your family…” Luke recalls trying to explain that his marriage was already coming apart long before he moved his family back to St. Andrew, but his mother wouldn’t hear any of it. “You never wanted to stay in St. Andrew, from when you were little. You can’t be happy here now. Once I’m gone, don’t let yourself get stuck here. You go and find a new life.” She started crying and kept trying to squeeze his hand, slipping into unconsciousness a few hours later.

It takes Luke a minute to realize the vault is still open and that he’s been standing there so long a chill has settled in his chest. It’s as if he can hear his mother’s voice in his head. He shivers and slides the tray back into the locker, then stands another minute until he remembers why he came to the morgue in the first place.

He finds a black body bag in the second vault and, with a grunt of exertion, pulls the tray out. The zipper slides down with a satisfying tearing sound, like the unpeeling of Velcro.

Luke opens the bag and stares. He’s seen many dead people over the years, and death does nothing to enhance appearance. Depending on how they died, the deceased may be bloated. There may be bruising or discoloration or they may be pale and bluing. There is always the unmistakable lack of animation to the features. This man’s face is nearly white and spotted with flecks of dark, wet leaves. His black hair is plastered to his forehead, his eyes closed. It doesn’t matter. Luke could stare at him all night. He is exquisite, even in death. He is breathtakingly, achingly beautiful.

Luke is about to push the tray back into the wall when he remembers the tattoo. He looks over his shoulder first in case Marcus might have returned, and then hurries, unzipping the bag farther and rearranging the clothing, to get to the dead man’s upper arm. And there it is, as Lanny had said it would be, two interlocked spheres with tails trailing off in opposite directions, and the dots look similar, in size, in the hand-done quality, down to the slight wobble of the line.

Retracing his steps through the empty halls to the emergency ward, Luke struggles with the jumble of thoughts, mostly questions. They are like matter and antimatter, canceling each other out, two truths that cannot both exist. He knows what he saw in the emergency room when the girl cut herself: it cannot have happened, and yet it did. He had touched that very spot on her torso, before and after the slash, so he knows there was no trick. But what he saw couldn’t have happened, not as he saw it.

Unless she is telling the truth. And now there is a handsome man in the morgue, and the tattoos… It all leaves him with the feeling that he needs to listen, to go along for a change. But he’s stubborn because he’s a man of science; he is not about to chuck everything he knows to be fact. He is, however, curious to learn more.

The doctor bursts through the door to the examination room in the darkened ER-his energy and nervousness in his chest like fireflies in a jar-to find the prisoner huddled on the gurney, caught in the downward shaft of light and the whirling motes of smoke. She could be an excommunicated angel, Luke thinks, her wings clipped.

Lanny looks at him hungrily. “So, did you see him? Wasn’t he everything I said he’d be?”

Luke nods. Beauty like that is its own kind of narcotic. He rubs his face, takes a deep breath.

“So now you understand,” Lanny says solemnly. “And if you believe me, Luke, help me. Untie me,” she says, arching her back and holding out the restraints, her sweet child’s face turned up to him. “I need you to help me escape.”

FIVE

Perhaps Jonathan and I would both have been better off if I had been born male. I’d rather have let our friendship continue and always have Jonathan in that way. We’d have spent our entire lives within the confines of that tiny village; I’d never have gotten into the trouble I did, never have suffered this terrible ordeal put upon both of us. Our lives would have been so small, but full and rewarding and complete, and I would have been happy with that.

But I was a girl, and for all my wishing there was no changing that. Ahead of me loomed the mysterious transition from girl to woman, as unfathomable to me as a magic trick. Whose example was I to follow? My mother, Theresa, wouldn’t be able to give me the kind of guidance I craved-she was too demure and quiet for my tastes; I did not want to be like her. I wanted more. I wanted to marry Jonathan, for instance, and it didn’t seem as though my mother would be able to teach me to be the type of woman who could make Jonathan her own.

There were secrets, it seemed, that not every woman was allowed to know. Luckily, there was a woman in town who did, a woman about whom things were said, whose name prompted a smile from the men (if their wives were not nearby). She was a woman unlike any other in the village and I had to figure a way to get her to share her secrets with me.

On a well-worn path, hidden in the shadow of the blacksmith’s forge, was a small cottage. If it was noticed at all, you might think it an outbuilding or a toolshed for the smithy, a place to store pig iron. It was far too ramshackle and tiny to be a house, yet it didn’t appear to be abandoned and the path to the front door grew more worn with time. Certainly no more than one person could live there, and customary law against solitary living still prevailed at the dawn of the nineteenth century in our bleak Puritan outpost (for Puritans we were, make no mistake about that; the fathers of the town had grown up in the Massachusetts territories and were accustomed to blending religion with governance). However, in this northernmost reach of what would become the state of Maine, the sole reason for the edict against solitary living was that of necessity: it was unthinkable that one person alone could perform the multitude of tasks it took to get by in this harsh environment. By contrast, in a more strictly Puritan town, no one was allowed to live alone because, in solitude, one might stray. One might do ungodly things. The edict against solitary living allowed for the policing of one’s neighbors, but the citizens of St. Andrew valued their independence and guarded their privacy a shade more fiercely.

Someone did in fact live alone in that tiny house, a woman on the outer limit of her childbearing years, beautiful still, though faded. She rarely went out, but whenever she did venture onto the street in daylight, the townspeople gave her a wide berth. The men would contrive not to let their eyes meet hers, and the women would pull their long skirts aside. Some would glare outright at her.

But at night, it was a different story. Under the cover of darkness she had regular visitors. Men-one at a time, more rarely a pair-would scurry up the path and knock politely on the aged door. If no one answered the knock, the visitor knew to take a seat on the step and wait, his back to the door, pretending not to hear whatever sounds came from within. Eventually, the sounds from the cottage would fade into murmurs of conversation, then silence, and within a minute the front door would open for the waiting visitor.

Those who knew of her existence called her Magdalena. It was the name she’d given herself when she arrived in town seven years earlier. No one questioned the odd appellation at the time. She arrived with a small group of travelers from the French Canadian territory, and when they moved on, she stayed. She said she was a widow and had decided to relocate to more southerly climates, that is, if the towns-people of St. Andrew would let her stay.

The blacksmith offered to convert his old shed into a tidy little abode and the good women of the village helped her to settle in, bringing her whatever precious scraps they could spare: a wobbly stool, an extra bit of tea, an old blanket. Husbands were sent over with firewood and kindling. When asked what she would do to support herself-needlework, spinning, weaving, perhaps? Was she a midwife, skilled with healing and nursing?-she merely smiled demurely and dropped her head as if to say, “Me? What skills could I have? My husband treated me like a porcelain doll. How should a poor unskilled widow make her way in the world?” The good wives walked away puzzled, clucking their tongues and shaking their heads, not knowing what to say except that God would provide for all his children, including this innocent woman who seemed to think boundless charity was to be found in this rugged, lonely town.

As it turned out, she did not have to depend on charity. Mysteriously, sustenance appeared at her doorstep, unbidden. A crock of sweet butter, a bushel of potatoes, a jug of milk. Firewood piled outside the back door. And money-she was one of the few people in town who had actual coin, would count it out at the provisioner’s when she ordered her supplies. And what curious supplies: bottles of gin, tobacco. Neighbors noticed a lantern burning late, through the one window of her tiny cottage-did she stay up all night smoking tobacco and drinking gin?

In the end, it was the axmen who gave her away, the lumberjacks who worked for Charles St. Andrew a year at a time and lived far from their wives. Men like this are capable of sniffing out women like Magdalena from across a town, across a valley if the wind is right and they are desperate enough. First one, then another, then each of them in turn found their way to Magdalena’s doorstep once the sun went down. Not that the axmen were her only customers: they paid in coin, after all, not in eggs and cured ham. But through the axmen her reputation was spilled across town, like tainted water emptied from a rain barrel, and the ire was raised of many a good wife. Still Magdalena said nothing. Not while the sun was up. Not even when she was insulted to her face by an indignant spouse.

The wives, enjoined by the pastor, organized a movement to have her ejected from town. Her presence was the first sign of sinful city living to sprout up in St. Andrew, the sort of thing the settlers were trying to escape. Pastor Gilbert went to Charles St. Andrew, as he was the employer of the axmen, those customers who could be openly complained about.

Sympathetic as he was to the pastor’s request, Charles pointed out that there was another side to Magdalena’s services that the townsfolk were overlooking. The axmen were acting on completely natural urges-to which the pastor grudgingly agreed-separated by many miles from their legal spouses. Without Magdalena’s services, what might the axmen get up to? Her presence actually made the town safer for its wives and daughters.

So an uneasy truce was struck between the whore and the virtuous womenfolk and had held for seven long years. In times of trouble and illness, she contributed her part, whether they liked it or not: she would tend to the sick and dying, feed the destitute traveler, slip coins in the church donation box when no one was around to see her enter. I couldn’t help but think she must long for a small measure of female companionship, though she respectfully kept to herself and sought no discourse with the townswomen.

Magdalena’s actual circumstances were a mystery to many children. We saw that our mothers avoided this puzzling figure. Most of the younger children believed her to be a witch or a supernatural creature of some kind. I remembered their taunting cries, the occasional handful of pebbles flung in her direction. Not by me-even at a tender age, I knew there was something compelling about her. By all rights, I should never have met her. My mother was not judgmental, but women such as she did not associate with prostitutes, nor would her daughters. And yet I did.

It happened during a long sermon one Sunday. I excused myself and slipped out to the privy. But instead of hurrying back to the balcony and to my father’s side, I dawdled outside in the warmth of a beautiful early summer day. I meandered to Tinky Talbot’s barn to look on the new litter of piglets, pink with black splotches, whirled with thin, coarse hair. I petted their curious snouts, listened to their gentle grunts.

Then I looked sideways down the path-it was the closest I had ever been to the mysterious singular cottage-and I saw Magdalena sitting in a chair on the narrow window box of a porch, a long, blackened pipe clenched between her teeth. She, too, was enjoying the sun, wrapped in a quilt, her hair scandalously loose around her shoulders. The parts of her not covered by the quilt were slender and delicate, the birdlike bones of her clavicle visible under papery skin. She had no powders on her face, just a trace of lampblack smudged at the corner of her eyes, a ghost of stain on her lips.

She was unlike the other women in town. You could tell as much by her very attitude: sitting by herself in the sunlight, enjoying her own company, and not apologizing for being idle. I was drawn to her immediately, though I was also frightened by her. There was something wicked about her. She didn’t attend services, after all; here she was enjoying her Sunday, whereas everyone else in town was inside the church or the congregation hall.

She lifted her hand over her eyes against the sun. “Hello, who’s there?”

I made my decision in that moment. I could have run back to church, but instead I took a few timid steps toward her. “You don’t know me, ma’am. My name is Lanore McIlvrae.”

“McIlvrae.” She weighed the name, satisfying herself that she didn’t know it and, hence, didn’t count my father among her customers. “No, my dear, I do not think I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.” She smiled when I curtsied.

“My name is Magdalena-though I suspect you may know that, yes? You may call me Magda.” Up close, she was very pretty. She stood to rearrange the quilt and revealed that she was still in her night stays and a filmy shift of pale linen, drawn low on her chest with a thin pink ribbon. In a practical house such as ours, my mother owned not even one item of clothing as feminine as Magda’s gently shabby shift. I was struck by the combination of her beauty and this pretty item of clothing; it was the first time I’d ever been really covetous of another person.

She noticed me staring at her shift and a knowing smile came to her face. “Wait here a minute,” she said and went inside the house. When she came out, she held a ribbon of pink velvet out to me. You can’t imagine what a treasure it was she offered; manufactured goods were rare in our hardscrabble town, fripperies such as ribbon rarer still. It was the softest fabric I’d ever touched and I held it lightly, like a baby rabbit.

“I couldn’t accept such a gift,” I said, though plainly I wished it weren’t so.

“Nonsense,” she laughed. “It’s only a bit of trim from a dress. What would I do with it?” she lied. She watched me finger the ribbon, enjoying my pleasure. “Keep it. I insist.”

“But my parents will ask where I got it-”

“You can tell them you found it,” she offered, though we both knew I couldn’t do that. It was an unlikely story. And yet I could not make myself give the ribbon back to Magda. She was pleased when my fist curled around her gift, and she smiled-but not in triumph, more in solidarity.

“You are most generous, Mistress Magda,” I said, curtsying again. “I must return to the service or my father will worry that something has happened to me.”

She tilted her chin up so she could look down her fine nose in the direction of the congregation hall. “Ah, so you are right. You mustn’t worry your parents. I do hope you will visit me again, Miss McIlvrae.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Good. Then run along.” I trotted down the path, lifting my skirts to avoid the muddy parts. Before I turned the corner, I looked back over my shoulder to the cottage to see that Magda had settled back in her chair and rocked contentedly, staring off into the woods.

I could hardly wait for next Sunday to steal out during service and visit Magda again. I’d hidden the ribbon in the pocket of my second set of petticoats where I could slip my hand in from time to time and give the velvet a surreptitious stroke. The ribbon reminded me of Magda herself; she was so unlike my mother and the other women in the village and that alone seemed reason to admire her.

One thing about her I thought worth admiring, but did not really understand, was that she did not have a man. No woman in the village lived without a man, and the man was always the head of the household. Magda was the only woman in the village who spoke for herself, though from what I could tell, she did very little on that front. I doubted she went to town meetings. And yet she continued to live on her own terms and seemed to be successful at it, and to a young girl that was a very admirable thing indeed.

So the next Sunday I contrived to be excused from service again (though with stern looks from my father) and ran to Magda’s cottage. And there was Magda, standing on her porch this time. Her casual air was gone. She was dressed in a pretty striped skirt and wore a fitted woolen jacket in purple heather, an unusual color. The entire effect seemed calculated to delight, as though it was her intent to impress me. I was flattered.

“Good day, Mistress Magda,” I said as I ran up to her, slightly out of breath.

“Well, good Sabbath to you, Miss McIlvrae.” Her green eyes sparkled. We chatted; she asked about my family, I pointed in the direction of our farm. Just as I was thinking I should return to service, she said shyly, “I would ask you in to see my home-but I suppose that your parents would not approve. Seeing as who I am. It wouldn’t be proper.”

She must have known I’d be curious to see the inside of her cottage. Her own place, the seat of her independence! I felt a tug to return to church, to my waiting father… but how could I turn this down? “I have but a minute…,” I said as I followed her up the steps and through the door.

It seemed to me like the inside of a jewel box, but in actuality, it was probably quite tumbledown and makeshift. The tiny room was dominated by a narrow bed covered with a beautifully embroidered quilt of yellow and red. Glass bottles lined the sill of the one window, sending slivers of green and brown light to the floor. A few pieces of jewelry rested in a ceramic bowl painted with tiny pink roses. Her clothing hung on pegs by the back door, an assortment of full skirts in a variety of colors, trailing sashes, the frill of petticoats. Not one but two pairs of delicate women’s boots were lined up by the door. My only disappointment was that the room was stuffy, the air heavy with a musky scent I didn’t yet recognize.

“I would love to live in a place such as this,” I said, making her laugh.

“I’ve lived in nicer places, but this will do,” she said as she sank into a chair.

Before I left, Magda gave me two pieces of advice, woman to woman. The first was that a woman should always put by some money of her own. “Money is very important,” she said to me, showing me where she kept a pouch full of coin. “Money is the only way for a woman to have any true power over her own life.” The second was that a woman should never betray another woman over a man. “It happens time and again,” she said, sounding sad. “And it is understandable, seeing that men are given all the worth in the world. We are made to believe that a woman’s only worth is that of the man in her life, but that’s not true. In any case, we women must stand by each other, for to depend on a man is folly. He will disappoint you every time.” She ducked her head but I swear I saw tears in her eyes.

I was rising from the floor to leave when there was a knock at the door. A burly man stepped in before Magda could answer; I recognized him as one of St. Andrew’s axmen.

“Hullo, Magda, I figured you’d be alone and wanting company, as everyone else is in church this morning… Who’s this?” He stopped short when he saw me and an unpleasant smile spread over his wind-burned face. “You have a new girl, Magda? An apprentice?” He put his hand on my arm as though I were not a person but a possession.

Magda stepped between us and deftly ushered me toward the back door. “She’s a friend, Lars Holmstrom, and none of your business. You can keep your clumsy hands off her. Get along, now,” she said to me as she pushed me out the door. “Perhaps I will see you again next week.” And before I knew it I was standing in a pile of dead leaves, fallen branches crackling under my feet, the plank door shut tight in my face as Magda went about her business, the price of her independence. I crashed through the underbrush and onto the path, running back to the congregation hall as parishioners were spilling out into the sunlight. There would be hell to pay with Father this time, but I calculated it was worth it; Magda was the custodian of the mysteries of life and I sensed that whatever it took to continue learning at her knee was worth it.

SIX

One summer afternoon in my fifteenth year, the entire town gathered in the McDougals’ pasture to hear a traveling preacher speak. I can still see my neighbors making their way to the golden field, tall grass glinting in the sun, plumes of dust rising from the winding trail. By foot, horseback, and wagon nearly everyone in St. Andrew made their way to the McDougals’ that day, though not from any excess feelings of piety, I assure you. Even itinerant preachers were a rarity in our neck of the woods; we would take what entertainment we could get to fill the dreariness of a long summer day in that desolate place.

This particular preacher had come from out of nowhere, apparently, and in a few short years had built a following, as well as a reputation for fiery speech and rebellious talk. There were rumors he’d divided churchgoers in the nearest town-Fort Kent, a day’s ride to the north-setting traditional Congregationalists against a new wave of reformists. There was also talk of Maine becoming a state and freeing itself from Massachusetts’s proprietorship, so there was a frisson in the air-religious and political-pointing to possible revolt against the religion the settlers had brought with them from Massachusetts.

It was my mother who’d convinced my father to come, though she would brook no notion of converting from Catholicism: she’d only wanted an afternoon out of the kitchen. She spread a blanket on the ground and waited for the preaching to commence. My father took the spot next to her, hanging his head with a suspicious air, glancing about to see who else might be there. My sisters remained close to my mother, tucking their skirts primly under their legs, while Nevin had taken off almost as soon as the wagon came to a halt, eager to find the boys who lived on the farms neighboring ours.

I stood, shielding my eyes against the strong sunlight with one hand, surveying the crowd. Everyone in town was there, some with blankets, like my mother, some with dinner packed in baskets. I was looking for Jonathan, as usual, but he didn’t seem to be there. His absence was no surprise; his mother was probably the most hardened Congregationalist in town, and Ruth Bennet St. Andrew’s family would have no part of this reformist nonsense.

But then I spied a shimmer of black hide between the trees-yes, Jonathan, skirting the edge of the field on his distinctive stallion. I wasn’t the only one to see him; a palpable ripple went through parts of the crowd. What must it be like to know dozens of people are watching you raptly, eyes following the line of your long leg against the horse’s flank, your strong hands holding the reins. So much suppressed lust smoldering in the bosom of many a female in that dry field that day, it’s a wonder the grass didn’t catch on fire.

He rode up to me, and kicking free of the stirrups, vaulted from the saddle. He smelled of leather and sun-baked earth and I longed to touch him. “What’s going on?” he asked, taking off his hat and running a sleeve along his brow.

“You don’t know? A visiting preacher’s come to town. You haven’t come to listen?”

Jonathan looked over my head, assessing the crowd. “No. I’ve been out surveying the next plot we’re to harvest. Old Charles doesn’t trust the new surveyor. Thinks he drinks too much.” He squinted, all the better to see which girls were looking his way. “Is my family here?”

“No, and I doubt your mother would approve of your being here, either. The preacher has a terrible reputation. You could go to hell just for listening to him.”

Jonathan grinned at me. “Is that why you’re here? You have a desire to go to hell? You know there are much more pleasant paths to damnation than listening to devious preachers.”

There was a message in the glimmer in his deep brown eyes, but one I couldn’t interpret. Before I could ask him to explain, he laughed and said, “Every soul in town looks to be here. More’s the pity that I won’t be staying, but as you say, there’ll be hell to pay if my mother finds out.” He steadied the stirrup and swung back into the saddle but then leaned over me, protectively. “What about you, Lanny? You’ve never been one for preaching. Why are you here? Are you hoping to find someone here, a particular boy? Has some young man caught your fancy?”

That was a complete surprise-the coy tone, the probing look. He’d never given the slightest indication that he cared if I was interested in another. “No,” I said, breathless, barely able to stammer out a response.

He took up the reins slowly, seemingly weighing them as he might weigh his words. “I know the day will come when I’ll see you with another boy, my Lanny with another boy, and I won’t like it. But it’s only fair.” Before I could recover from shock and tell him it was within his power to prevent that-surely he knew!-he had turned the horse and cantered into the woods, leaving me to stare after him in confusion yet again. He was an enigma. For the most part he treated me as a favorite friend, his attitude toward me platonic, but then there were times I thought I saw an invitation in the way he looked at me or a wisp of-dare I hope?-desire in his restlessness. Now that he’d ridden away, I couldn’t dwell on it or I’d go crazy.

I leaned against a tree and watched the preacher make his way to the center of a small clearing in front of the crowd. He was younger than I had expected-Gilbert was the only pastor I’d ever known and had arrived in St. Andrew already white-haired and crotchety-and walked ramrod straight, assured that both God and righteousness were on his side. He was good-looking in a way that was unexpected and even uncomfortable to see in a preacher, and the women sitting closest to him twittered like birds when he gave them a broad, white smile. And yet, watching as he gazed over the crowd, preparing to begin (as confident as though he owned them), I experienced a dark chill, as though something bad was in the offing.

He began speaking in a loud, clear voice, recalling his visits throughout the Maine territory and describing what he’d found there. The territory was becoming a copy of Massachusetts, with its elitist ways. A handful of wealthy men controlled the destiny of their neighbors. And what had this brought for the average man? Hard times. Common folk falling behind on their accounts. Honest men, fathers and husbands, jailed and land sold out from under the wives and children. I was surprised to see heads nod in the crowd.

What people wanted-what Americans wanted, he stressed, waving his Bible in the air-was freedom. We hadn’t fought the British only to have new masters take the king’s place. The landowners in Boston and the merchants who sold goods to the settlers were no more than robbers, demanding outrageous usury fees, and the law was their lapdog. His eyes glimmered as he surveyed the crowd, encouraged by their murmuring assent, and he paced within his circle of well-trod grass. I wasn’t used to hearing dissent spoken aloud, in public, and I felt vaguely alarmed by the preacher’s success.

Suddenly, Nevin was beside me, studying our neighbors’ upturned faces. “Look at ’em, slack-jawed mopes…,” he said, derisively. There was no doubting that he’d gotten his critical temperament from our father. He folded his arms across his chest and snorted.

“They seem interested enough in what he has to say,” I observed.

“Do you have the slightest idea what he’s talking about?” Nevin squinted at me. “You don’t know, do you? Of course not, you’re just a stupid girl. You don’t understand nothing.”

I frowned but didn’t reply because Nevin was right in one respect: I had no idea what the man was really talking about. I was ignorant of what went on in the world at large.

He pointed to a group of men standing to the side of the crowded field. “See them men?” he asked, indicating Tobey Ostergaard, Daniel Daughtery, and Olaf Olmstrom. The three were among the poorer men in town, although the less charitable might say they were among the more shiftless, too.

“They’re talking trouble,” Nevin said. “Do you know what a ‘white Indian’ is?”

Even the stupidest girl in the village would have attested to knowing the term: news had come up months ago of an uprising in Fairfax, when townsmen dressed as Indians had overpowered the town clerk when he tried to serve a writ to a farmer delinquent in his payments.

“The same business is afoot here,” Nevin said, nodding. “I heard Olmstrom and Daughtery and some others talk to Father about it. Complaining about the Watfords unfairly charging too much…” The details would have been beyond Nevin’s comprehension; no one explained to children about accounts and charges at the provisioner’s store. “Daughtery says it’s a conspiracy against the common man,” Nevin recited, sounding as though he wasn’t sure Daughtery might not speak the truth.

“So? What do I care if Daughtery won’t pay his debt to the Watfords?” I sniffed, pretending I didn’t care. Inside, however, I was shocked to think someone would willingly default on an obligation, having been taught by our father that such behavior was disgraceful and something only a person with no self-respect would consider.

“It could mean ill for your boy Jonathan,” Nevin sneered, delighted to have the opportunity to tease me about Jonathan. “It’s not just the Watfords who stand to be hurt if things go bad. The captain holds the paper to their property… What would happen if they refused to pay their rents? Them men fought for three days in Fairfax. I heard they stripped the constable and beat him with sticks, and made him return home on foot, naked as he was born.”

“We don’t even have a town clerk in St. Andrew,” I said, alarmed by my brother’s story.

“Most likely the captain would send his biggest, strongest axmen to Daughtery and demand he pay up.” There was a touch of awe in Nevin’s voice; his respect for authority and a desire to see justice prevail-our father’s traits, surely-outweighed his desire to see Jonathan suffer some ill fortune.

Daughtery and Olmstrom… the captain and Jonathan… even prim Miss Watford and her equally supercilious brother… I was humbled by my ignorance, and felt a grudging respect for my brother’s ability to see the world in its complexity. I wondered what else went on that I didn’t know about.

“Do you think Father will join them? Will he be arrested?” I whispered, worried.

“The captain don’t hold paper on our place,” Nevin informed me, a tad disgusted that I didn’t know this already. “Father owns it outright. But I think he agrees with this fellow here.” He nodded at the preacher. “Father came to the territory same as everybody else, thinking they would be free, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Some are having a hard time of it, while the St. Andrews are getting rich. Like I said”-he kicked at the dirt, raising a cloud of dry dust-“your boy could be in for trouble.”

“He’s not my boy,” I shot back.

“You want him to be your boy,” my brother said, teasingly. “Though God in heaven only knows why. You must have a backward streak in you, Lanore, to be taken with the nelly bastard.”

“You’re just jealous, that’s why you don’t like him.”

“Jealous?” Nevin sputtered. “Of that peacock?” He scoffed and walked away, not wanting to admit I was right.

About thirty townsfolk followed the preacher to the Dales’ place on the other side of the ridge where he would continue speaking to all who were interested. They had a good-size house but we were still packed in tightly, eager to hear more from this captivating speaker. Mrs. Dale lit a fire in the big kitchen fireplace, for even in the summer a chill came on in the evening. Outside the sky had darkened to a deep periwinkle with a bright band of pink at the horizon.

How angry Nevin must’ve been with me-I begged my parents to allow me to hear the preacher, which meant I needed a chaperone, so my father told Nevin he must accompany me. My brother fumed and turned red in the face, but could refuse my father nothing, so he stomped behind me all the way to the Dales’. But Nevin, for all his traditional sensibilities, had a streak of the rebel in him and I had to think he was secretly pleased to witness the rest of the gathering.

The preacher stood by the kitchen fire and studied us all, a wild grin on his face. This close, I saw that the preacher was less like a man of the cloth than he’d seemed in the big field. He filled up the room with his presence, made the air feel tight and thin, like at the top of a mountain. He started by thanking us for staying with him. For he had saved the greatest secret to share with us now, those who had demonstrated that we were seeking the truth. And that truth was that the church-whatever faith you followed, which in the territory was mostly Congregationalist-was the biggest problem of them all, the most elitist institution, and only served to reinforce the status quo. His last statement drew a sneer of contempt and agreement from Nevin, who prided himself on going to the Catholic service with Mother and not rubbing elbows on Sundays with the town fathers and more privileged families in the meeting hall.

What we must do is throw off the precepts of the church-the preacher said with that fiery glint in his eyes again, a glint that looked less peaceable up close-and embrace new precepts that were more in keeping with the needs of the common man. First and foremost among these outdated conventions was the institution of marriage, he said.

In the close room, with thirty bodies nestled snugly, you could hear a pin drop.

Before us, the preacher stalked his small circle like a wolf. It wasn’t the natural affection between men and women that he objected to, the preacher assured the group. No-it was the legal constraints of marriage, the bondage, that he railed against. It went against our human nature, he protested, gaining confidence as no one had tried to shout him down. We were meant to express our feelings with those with whom we felt a natural affinity. As God’s children, we should practice “spiritual wifery,” he insisted: choosing partners with whom we felt a spiritual bond.

Partners? a young woman asked, raising her hand. More than one husband? Or wife?

The preacher’s eyes danced. Yes, we’d heard right-partners, for a man should have as many wives as he felt spiritually drawn to, as a woman should be allowed to have more than one husband. He himself had two wives, he said, and had found spiritual wives in every town he had visited.

A titter ran through the group and the room became charged with suppressed lust.

He tucked his thumbs under his coat lapels. He didn’t expect the enlightened here in St. Andrew to take up spiritual wifery right away, on his advice alone. No, he expected we’d have to think about the idea, think about the extent to which we let the law dictate our lives. We’d know in our hearts if he spoke the truth.

Then he clapped his hands and dropped the serious expression from his face, and his entire demeanor changed as he smiled. But enough of this talk! We’d spent the entire afternoon listening to him and it was time for a little enjoyment! Let’s sing some hymns, lively ones, and get to our feet, and dance! That was a revolutionary change from our regular church service-lively singing? Dancing? The concept was heretical. After a moment’s hesitation, several people got to their feet and began clapping their hands, and before long, had started singing a tune that resembled more a shanty than a hymn.

I nudged my brother. “Take me home, Nevin.”

“Heard enough, have you?” he said, clambering to his feet. “Me, too. I’m tired of listening to that man’s nonsense. Wait while I trouble the Dales for a light; the road is sure to be dark.”

I stood conspicuously by the door, wishing Nevin would hurry. Still, the preacher’s words thrummed in my ears. I saw the looks of the women in the crowd when he turned his powerful gaze on them, the smiles that lit their faces. They were imagining themselves with him, or perhaps another man in town with whom they felt a spiritual bond… and could only wish that such desires could be acted upon. The preacher had professed the most alien concept imaginable, moral turpitude-and yet, he was a man of the Bible, a preacher. He’d spoken in some of the most august churches in the coastal area, from the gossip that had arrived in town before him. Surely that gave him some sort of authority?

I felt alit under my clothes with heat and shame, for if truth be told, I, too, would like the freedom to share my affection with any man I desired. Of course, at that moment, the only man I desired was Jonathan, but who was to say another wouldn’t cross my path one day? Someone perhaps as charming and attractive as, say, the preacher himself? I could see how a woman would find him intriguing; how many spiritual wives had the itinerant preacher known? I wondered.

As I stood by the door lost in my thoughts, watching my neighbors dance a reel (was it my imagination or were some desirous glances being exchanged between men and women as they spun past each other on the dance floor?), I became aware of the preacher’s sudden presence before me. With his piercing eyes and sharp features, he was beguiling and seemed aware of this advantage, and grinned so that I could see his incisors, sharp and white.

“I thank you for joining me and your neighbors this evening,” he said, bowing his head. “I take it you are a spiritual seeker, looking for greater enlightenment, Miss…?”

“McIlvrae,” I said, edging back a half step. “Lanore.”

“Reverend Judah Van der Meer.” He reached for my hand and gave my fingertips a squeeze. “What did you think of my sermon, Miss McIlvrae? I trust you weren’t too shocked”-here his eyes danced again, as though he was teasing me for his enjoyment-“by the frankness with which I present my beliefs?”

“Shocked?” I could barely choke out the word. “By what, sir?”

“By the idea of spiritual wifery. I’m sure a young woman like yourself can sympathize with the principle behind it, the idea of being true to one’s passions-for if I’m not mistaken, you seem a woman of great, deep passion.”

He picked up vehemence as he spoke, his eyes-and I do not believe I imagined this-running over my body as surely as if he’d used his own hands. “And tell me, Miss Lanore, you look a marriageable age. Has your family already bonded you in the slavery of betrothal? It would be a pity for a fine young woman such as yourself to spend the rest of her life in a marriage bed with a man for whom she feels no attraction. What shame to go through one’s entire life without feeling true physical passion”-here his eyes glinted again, as though he were about to pounce-“which is a gift from God to his children!”

My heart was near to bursting from my chest and I was like a rabbit drawn up in the wolf’s sights. But then he laughed, placed a hand on my arm, sending a tingle straight to my head, and drew close to me, close enough for me to feel his breath on my face and for an errant lock of his hair to brush my cheek.

“Why, you look as though you are about to faint! I think you need some air… Will you step outside with me?” He had my arm already and didn’t wait for me to answer, but whisked me to the porch. The night air was much cooler than the stuffy confines of the house and I took deep breaths until my stays wouldn’t let me draw in any more.

“Better?” When I nodded, he continued, “I must tell you, Miss McIlvrae, I was so happy that you joined us in this more intimate setting. I hoped that you would. I noticed you in the field this afternoon and I knew right away that I had to meet you. I felt a bond with you immediately-did you feel it, too?” Before I had a chance to answer, he took my hand in his. “I’ve spent most of my life traveling all over the world. I have a thirst to meet people. Every so often I meet someone extraordinary. Someone whose singularity can be seen, even across a field full of people. Someone like you.”

He had the glittery-eyed look of a man with a high fever, the wild look of someone chasing a thought but unable to focus, and I started to become frightened. Why had he singled me out? Or perhaps I hadn’t been singled out, perhaps this was an enticement he made to any girl impressionable enough to consider his offer of spiritual wifery. He pressed against me in a way too familiar to be polite, seeming to enjoy my distress.

“Extraordinary? Sir, you do not know me at all.” I tried to push him aside, but he continued to stand stubbornly in front of me. “There is nothing extraordinary about me.”

“Oh, but there is. I can feel it. You must feel it, too. You have a special sensibility, a remarkably primal nature. I can see it in your lovely, delicate face.” His hand hovered near my cheek as though he might touch me, as though he was compelled to do so. “You are full of want, Lanore. You are a sensual creature. You burn to know of this physical bond between man and woman… It is in the fore-front of your thoughts. You hunger for it. Perhaps there is a particular man…?”

Of course there was-Jonathan-but I thought the preacher was angling to see if I fancied him. “This talk is not proper between us, sir.” I stepped sideways and started to dart around him. “I should go inside…”

He put a hand on my arm again. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I apologize. I’ll speak of it no more… but please, indulge me for one more minute. I have a question I must ask of you, Lanore. As I took the field this afternoon, and I noticed you, I saw you were speaking to a young man on horseback. An exceptionally good-looking fellow.”

“Jonathan.”

“Yes, that’s the name I was told. Jonathan.” The preacher licked his lips. “I have since been told by your neighbors that this young man might be sympathetic to my philosophies. Do you think you might arrange an audience for me with Jonathan?”

I felt prickling along the back of my neck. “Why do you wish to meet Jonathan?”

He laughed in his throat, nervously. “Well, as I said, from what I’ve been told he seems a natural disciple, the kind of man who can appreciate the truth of what I say. Could take up the cause and, perhaps, be an outpost of my church up here in the wilderness.” I looked into his eyes and saw for the first time a true wickedness about him, a love of chaos and disruption. He meant to sow this wickedness in Jonathan, too, as he tried to sow it in this town. As he’d hoped to sow it in me.

“My neighbors are amusing themselves at your expense, sir, since you don’t know Jonathan as I do. I doubt he would have much interest in what you have to say.” Why I felt I had to protect Jonathan from this man, I don’t know. But there was something ominous about his interest.

The preacher didn’t like my answer. Perhaps he knew I was lying or he didn’t appreciate being thwarted. He gave me a long, intimidating stare, as though thinking about what to do next to get what he wanted, and I felt for the first time in his presence true danger, a sense that this man was capable of anything. Just then, Nevin appeared in front of us with a blazing torch in hand-and for once, I was glad to see him.

“Lanore! I was looking for you. I’m ready. Let’s go!” he bellowed.

“Good night,” I said, breaking away from the preacher, whom I hoped to never see again. His fiery stare bored into my back as Nevin and I left.

“Satisfied with your little outing?” Nevin grunted at me as we headed down the road.

“It wasn’t what I expected.”

“I would say so. The man’s daft, probably made so by the diseases he undoubtedly carries,” Nevin said, meaning syphilis. “Still, I hear he’s had followers down in Saco. Wonder what he’s doing this far north?” It didn’t occur to Nevin that the man might have been driven out by the authorities, that he might be on the run. That in his madness he could be given to visions and grandiose predictions, putting ideas into the heads of gullible young girls and threatening those less than willing to do as he wished.

I hugged my shawl tightly around my shoulders. “I would appreciate it if you’d not tell Father what the preacher said…”

Nevin laughed blackly. “I should think not. I can barely bring myself to recall his blasphemous talk, let alone repeat it to Father! Multiple wives! ‘Spiritual wifery’! I don’t know what Father would do-take to me with a whipping rod and lock you in the barn until you were twenty-one for even listening to the heathen’s words.” He shook his head as we walked on. “I tell you what, though-that preacher’s teachings sure would suit your boy Jonathan. He’s made spiritual wives out of half the girls in town already.”

“Enough about Jonathan,” I said, keeping the preacher’s strange interest in Jonathan to myself so as not to confirm Nevin’s poor opinion of him. “Let us talk no more about it.”

We fell quiet for the rest of the long walk home. Despite the cool night air, I still tingled from the dark look on the preacher’s face and the glimpse into his true nature. I didn’t know what to make of his interest in Jonathan nor what he meant by my “special sensibility.” Was my longing to experience what went on between a man and a woman so obvious? Surely that mystery was at the heart of the human experience; could it truly be unnatural, or especially evil, for a young woman to be curious about it? My parents and Pastor Gilbert would probably think so.

I walked down the lonesome road agitated inside and titillated by all of this open talk of desire. The thought of knowing Jonathan-of knowing other men in the village the way Magda knew them-left me hot and liquid inside. This evening I had awakened to my true nature, though I was too inexperienced to know it, too innocent to realize I should be alarmed by the ease with which desire could be sparked within me. I should have fought against it more staunchly, but perhaps there was no use, as one’s true nature always wins out.

SEVEN

Years passed in the way they do, with each year seeming no different than its predecessor. But little differences were evident: I was less willing to follow my parents’ rules and longed for a measure of independence, and I’d grown weary of my judgmental neighbors. The charismatic preacher was arrested down in Saco, tried, and imprisoned, then escaped and disappeared mysteriously. But his absence from the scene did little to quell the unrest gurgling just beneath the surface. There was an undercurrent of sedition in the air, even in a town as isolated as St. Andrew; talk of independence from Massachusetts and statehood. If landowners such as Charles St. Andrew were worried that their fortunes would be adversely affected, they made no show of it and kept their concerns to themselves.

I grew more interested in such important matters, though I still had few opportunities to exercise my curiosity. The only fit topics of interest for a young woman, it seemed, were her domestic domain: how to make a tender loaf of molasses bread or coax milk from an aging cow, how well you could sew or the best way to cure a child’s fever. Tests to prove our suitability as wives, but I had little interest in competition of this sort. There was only one man I wanted for my husband and he cared little for the tenderness of a bread crumb.

One of the household tasks I cared for the least was laundry. Lightweight clothing could be taken down to the creek for rinsing and wringing. But several times a year, we’d have to do a thorough washing, which meant setting a large cauldron over a fire in the yard for a full day of boiling, scrubbing, and drying. It was a miserable job-arms plunged in boiling water and lye, wringing out voluminous wool garments, spreading them to dry on bushes or over tree limbs. Laundry day had to be chosen carefully, for it required a stretch of good weather when no other laborious household task needed doing.

I remember one such day in the early autumn of my twentieth year. Oddly, my mother had sent Maeve and Glynnis to help my father with the haying, insistent that she and I could handle the washing by ourselves. She was strangely quiet that morning, too. As we waited for the water to boil, she fussed with the washing things-the bag of lye, the dried lavender, the sticks we used to push the clothing around in the pot.

“The time has come for us to have an important conversation,” my mother said at last, as we stood beside the cauldron, watching bubbles rise to the surface of the water. “It’s time to think about getting you started on a life of your own, Lanore. You’re not a child any longer. You are well into a marrying age…”

Truth be told, I was nearly past a good age for marriage and had been wondering what my parents intended to do about the situation. They’d arranged betrothals for none of their children.

“… and so we must address what to do about Master St. Andrew.” She held her breath and blinked at me.

My heart fluttered at her words. What other reason would she have to bring up Jonathan’s name in the context of marriage if she and my father didn’t intend to seek an arrangement for me? I was speechless from joy and surprise-the latter for knowing Father didn’t approve of the St. Andrew family, not anymore. Many things had changed since the families followed Charles St. Andrew north. His relationship with the rest of the town-with the men who’d trusted him-was strained.

Mother looked at me squarely. “I tell you this as a mother who loves you, Lanore: you must cease your friendship with Master Jonathan. The two of you are children no longer. To continue in this way will do you no good.”

I didn’t feel the flecks of boiling water alighting on my skin or the heat from the cauldron dampening my face. I stared back at her.

She rushed to cover my horror-struck silence. “You must understand, Lanore-what other boy will want you when you are so obviously in love with Jonathan?”

“I’m not in love with Jonathan. We’re only friends,” I croaked.

She laughed gently, but it stabbed at my heart all the same. “You cannot deny your love for Jonathan. It’s quite evident, my dear, as it is just as evident that he does not feel the same way toward you.”

“There’s nothing for him to show,” I protested. “We are just friends, I assure you.”

“His flirtations are the talk of the village…”

I brushed a hand over my sweaty brow. “I know of these. He tells me everything.”

“Listen to me, Lanore,” she implored, turning to me even as I turned away. “It is easy to fall in love with a man as handsome as Jonathan, or as wealthy, but you must resist. Jonathan is not to be your destiny.”

“How can you say that?” The protest broke from my lips though I hadn’t meant to say anything of the kind. “You cannot know what lies ahead for me, or Jonathan.”

“Oh, silly girl, do not tell me you’ve set your heart on him.” She took me by the shoulders and gave me a shake. “You cannot hope to wed the captain’s boy. Jonathan’s family would never allow it, never, nor would your father abide it. I am sorry to be the one to tell you this hard, hard truth…”

She didn’t have to. Logically, I knew that our families were unequal and I knew that Jonathan’s mother had high hopes as far as her children’s marriages were concerned. But a girl’s dreams are near impossible to kill and I’d harbored this one for as long as I could remember; it seemed I was born with the desire to be with Jonathan. I’d always secretly believed that a love as fierce and true as mine would be rewarded in the end, and now I was being forced to accept the bitter truth.

My mother returned to her work, picking up the long stick to stir the clothing in the boiling water. “Your father means to begin searching for a match for you, and so you see why you must end your friendship. We have to find your match before we make matches for your sisters,” she continued, “so you understand the importance of this, don’t you, Lanore? You do not want your sisters to end up unwed, do you?”

“No, Mother,” I said, dispirited. I was still turned away from her, looking off in the distance, willing myself not to cry, when I noticed movement in the forest beyond our house. It could be anything, benign or dangerous-my father and siblings returning from the hay field, someone traveling between farms, deer picking at greenery. My eyes followed the figure until I could make it out, large and dark, a graceful shimmering blackness. Not a bear. A horse and rider. There was only one true black horse in the village and it belonged to Jonathan. Why would Jonathan be riding out this way if not to see me, but he had passed beyond our house and was headed in the direction of our neighbors, the recently wed Jeremiah and Sophia Jacobs. I could think of no reason for Jonathan to call upon Jeremiah, none at all.

I raised a hand to tuck a few loose curls under my cap. “Mother, didn’t you say Jeremiah Jacobs was not at home this week? Has he gone away?”

“Yes, he has,” she said absently, stirring the pot. “He has gone to Fort Kent to look at a pair of draft horses and told your father he would return next week.”

“And he’s left Sophia by herself, has he?” The shimmering figure had slipped beyond my vision into the darkness of the woods.

My mother murmured in agreement. “Yes, but he knows there’s no reason to worry. Sophia is safe on her own for a week.” She lifted the wet garment out of the pot by the stick, a steaming, dripping mass. I took it from her and carried it under the tree, where we wrung the wool out together. “Promise me you will give up on Jonathan and will seek his company no more,” was the last she said on the matter. But my mind was on our neighbor’s tiny saltbox, Jonathan’s horse waiting restlessly outside.

“I promise,” I said to my mother, lying glibly, as though it meant nothing at all.

EIGHT

As autumn deepened and the leaves turned russet and gold, the love affair between Jonathan and Sophia Jacobs did not abate. During those weeks, my encounters with Jonathan were rarer than ever and painfully brief. While it wasn’t all Sophia’s fault-Jonathan and I each suffered demands on our time-I blamed Sophia entirely. What right had she to get so much of his attention? As far as I could see, she didn’t deserve his company. Her worst sin was that she was married, and by pursuing this relationship, she was forcing Jonathan to compromise his Christian morals. She was condemning him to hell along with herself.

But the reasons she didn’t deserve him did not stop there. Sophia was hardly the prettiest girl in the village; by my count, there were at least twenty girls comparable in age who were prettier than she, even if I excluded myself from this group on the basis of modesty. Further, she had neither the social position nor the wealth that would make her a suitable companion for a man of Jonathan’s status. Her housekeeping skills were lacking: her sewing was passable, but the pies she brought to church socials were pasty and unevenly cooked. Sophia was clever, without a doubt, but if one were pressed to pick the smartest woman in town, her name would not be among those to spring to mind. So what exactly was the basis for her claim over Jonathan, who should have only the best?

I spun the late summer flax contemplating this queer development, cursing him for being inconstant. After all, that day in the McDougals’ field, hadn’t he said he’d be jealous if I was to become attached to another boy in the village, and yet here he was secretly courting Sophia Jacobs. A less heartsick girl might have drawn conclusions from his behavior, but I wouldn’t, preferring to believe that Jonathan would still choose me if he only knew my feelings. I wandered by myself after church services on Sundays, casting unanswered glances in Jonathan’s direction, hoping to tell him how badly I wanted him. I walked the trails that led to the St. Andrews’ house and wondered what Jonathan might be doing at that moment, and in my daydreams I tried to imagine the feel of Jonathan’s hands on my body, what it would be like to be pressed beneath him, raw from his kisses. I blush to think how innocent my view of love was then! I had a virgin’s conception of love as chaste and courtly.

Without Jonathan, I was lonely. It was a preview of what my life would be like once Jonathan was wed and took over his family’s business and I was married to another. Each of us would be drawn increasingly into our own orbits, paths destined never to cross. But that day had not come yet-and Sophia Jacobs was not Jonathan’s lawful wife. She was an interloper who’d staked a claim on his heart.

It was just after the first frost when Jonathan came out to see me one day. How different he looked, as though he’d aged years. Or maybe it was only that the gaiety in his demeanor had gone; he seemed serious, very adult. He found me in the hay field with my sisters, pitching the last of the hay left to dry in the summer sun into the barn, where we stored the alfalfa that would feed the cattle through the long winter.

“Let me help you,” he said, springing down from his horse. My sisters-dressed as was I in old clothes and with kerchiefs tied around our heads to keep our hair back-looked askance at him and giggled.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, taking in his fine wool coat and doeskin breeches. Haying was miserable, sweaty work. Anyway, I was still smarting from his desertion and told myself I wanted nothing from him. “Just tell me what brings you out here,” I said.

“I’m afraid my words are meant for your ears only. May we at least walk a ways by ourselves…?” he asked, nodding at my sisters to show that he meant no disrespect. I threw my pitchfork to the ground and pulled off the gloves and started meandering in the direction of the woods.

He fell into step beside me, leading his horse by a slack rein. “Well, we haven’t seen each other in a while, have we?” he began in an unconvincing manner.

“I’ve no time for niceties,” I told him. “I have work to do.”

He abandoned his pretext altogether. “Ah, Lanny. I have never been able to fool you. I have missed your company, but that’s not why I’ve come out here today. I need your advice; I’m no good at judging my own problems and you always seem to see a way clear, no matter what’s at issue.”

“You can stop trying to flatter me,” I said, wiping my brow against a dirty sleeve. “I’m hardly King Solomon. There are far wiser people in this town you could turn to, so the fact that you have come to me means you are in trouble of some kind that you don’t dare share with anyone else. So, out with it-what have you done now?”

“You’re right. There’s no one I can confide in, except you.” Jonathan turned his handsome face from me, embarrassed. “It’s Sophia-you’ve guessed that much, I’m sure, and I know hers is the last name you wish to hear-”

“You’ve no idea,” I muttered, tucking a fold of my skirt into my waist to lift the hem from the ground.

“It’s been a happy enough union between us, Lanny. I never would have guessed as much. We are so different and yet I’ve come to enjoy her company immensely. She has an independent mind and isn’t afraid to speak it.” He spoke, oblivious to the fact that I’d stopped dead in my tracks, mouth agape. Hadn’t I spoken my mind to him? Well, perhaps I hadn’t spoken my mind plainly to him on all matters, but hadn’t we conversed as equals, friends? It was maddening that he thought Sophia’s demeanor so singular and remarkable. “It’s all the more extraordinary considering the family she comes from. She tells stories of her father, that he is a drunkard and a gambler, and beats his wife and his daughters.”

“Tobey Ostergaard,” I said. It surprised me that Jonathan had not known of Tobey’s poor reputation, but it only went to show how sheltered he was from the rest of the village. Ostergaard’s problems were well known. No one thought much of him as a father or a provider. A poor farmer, Tobey dug graves on the weekends to earn extra coin, which he usually wasted on drink. “Her brother ran away a year ago,” I said to Jonathan. “He fought with his father, and Tobey hit him in the face with his gravedigger’s shovel.”

Jonathan seemed genuinely horrified. “This rough upbringing has toughened Sophia, and yet she has not become hardened and bitter, not even after her grievous marriage. She regrets very much having agreed to the match, especially now that…” He trailed off.

“Now-what?” I prodded, fear rising in my throat.

“She tells me she is pregnant,” Jonathan blurted out, turning back to me. “She swears the baby is mine. I don’t know what to do.”

His expression was a sheet of terror and, yes, trepidation that he’d had to tell me this. I would have slapped him if it weren’t so plain that he truly didn’t wish to hurt me. Still, I wanted to throw it back in his face: he’d been carrying on with this woman for weeks, what did he expect? He’d been lucky that it hadn’t happened sooner. “What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Sophia’s wish is plain: she wants us to be married and to raise the babe together.”

A bitter laugh burst from my lips. “She must be mad. Your family would never allow it.”

He gave me a quick, angry look that made me regret my outburst. “What is it,” I tried again in a more conciliatory tone, “that you wish to do?”

Jonathan shook his head. “I tell you, Lanny, I do not know my own mind on this matter.” I wasn’t sure I believed him, however. There was a hesitancy in his tone, as though he held thoughts that he didn’t dare speak. He seemed much changed from the Jonathan I knew, the scoundrel who’d planned to remain unfettered as long as possible.

If he only knew how conflicted I was by his dilemma. On one hand, he seemed so miserable and helpless to see his way clear that I was moved to pity. On the other hand, my pride stung like newly flayed skin. I paced around him, a knuckle pressed to my lips. “Well, let’s think this through. You know as well as I that there are remedies for this sort of predicament. She needs to make a trip to the midwife…” I thought of Magda: surely she would know how to deal with this calamity, an eventuality in her line of work. “A tincture of herbs or some procedure, I’ve heard, will take care of the problem.”

Face flushed, Jonathan shook his head again. “She won’t. She means to have the baby.”

“But she cannot! It would be madness to flaunt her wrongdoing so.”

“If such behavior would be madness, then she is indeed not in her right mind.”

“What about… your father? Have you thought of going to him for advice?” The suggestion wasn’t completely ridiculous: Charles St. Andrew was known for chasing his servant girls and had probably been in Jonathan’s position once or twice himself.

Jonathan snorted like a shying horse. “I suppose I will have to tell old Charles, though I don’t look forward to it. He will know how to deal with Sophia, but I fear what the outcome might be.” Meaning, I guessed, that Charles St. Andrew would make his son break all ties with Sophia and, baby or no, they’d not see each other again. Or worse, he might insist Jeremiah be told, and Jeremiah might demand a divorce from his adulterous wife and start proceedings against Jonathan. Or he could extort hush money from the St. Andrews, agreeing to raise the babe as his own if he was paid for his silence. What might happen once St. Andrew stepped in was anyone’s guess.

“My dear Jonathan,” I murmured, my mind scrabbling for a piece of advice to give him, “I am sorry for your misfortune. But before you go to your father, let me think on it a day. Perhaps a solution will come to me.”

He looked over his shoulder at my sisters, who were now obscured from us behind a pitched stack of hay. “As always, you are my salvation.” Before I knew what was happening, he clasped me by the shoulders and pulled me to him, fairly lifting me to my toes to kiss me. But it was no brotherly peck; the forcefulness of his kiss was a reminder that he could conjure up my desire at will, that I was his. He held me tight to him and yet he trembled, too; we were both panting when he released me. “You are my angel,” he whispered hoarsely in my ear. “Without you, I would be lost.”

Did he know what he was doing, saying such things to someone desperately in love with him? It made me wonder if he had meant to set me to take care of this unsavory business of his, or if he had merely come seeking reassurances from the one girl he could depend on to love him no matter what he did. I liked to think that a part of him loved me purely and was sorry to have disappointed me. I cannot honestly say I knew Jonathan’s true intentions then; I doubt if he himself knew. After all, he was a young man in serious trouble for the first time; perhaps Jonathan wishfully believed that, if God would forgive him this indiscretion, he would mend his ways and be satisfied with one girl who would love him completely.

He climbed back in the saddle and nodded politely to my sisters before turning his horse in the direction of home. And before he had ridden to the edge of the field and disappeared from my sight, a thought came to me, for I was a clever girl and never more focused in intent than when it involved Jonathan.

I decided to visit Sophia the next day and speak to her in private. I waited until I had shut our chickens in the coop for the night, so my absence wouldn’t be noticed, before setting out for the Jacobses’ farm. Their property was much quieter than ours, mainly because they owned fewer livestock and there were no children to help tend to all the chores. I crept into the barn, hoping I would not run into Jeremiah, and found Sophia penning their three raggedy sheep in a stall for the evening.

“Lanore!” She started in surprise, hands flying up to cover her heart. She was lightly dressed for being outside, with only a woolly shawl over her shoulders instead of a cloak to ward off the cold. Sophia had to know of my friendship with Jonathan and God knows what he might have said to her about me (or perhaps I was foolish to believe that he gave a thought to me once he’d left my presence). She gave me an icy look, undoubtedly worried about why I’d come. I must have seemed a child to her for being not yet wed and still living under my parents’ roof although I was only a few years younger.

“Forgive me for coming to see you unannounced, but I had to speak to you alone,” I said, looking over my shoulder to be sure her husband wasn’t close by. “I will speak plainly, as there is no time for niceties. I think you know what I have come to discuss with you. Jonathan shared with me-”

She crossed her arms and gave me a steely look. “He told you, did he? He had to boast to someone that he has made me with child?”

“Nothing of the sort! If you think he is pleased that you are going to have a baby-”

“His baby,” she insisted. “And I know he’s not pleased.”

I saw my opening. I’d been thinking about what I would say to Sophia from the moment Jonathan had ridden away from me the day before. Jonathan had come to me because he needed someone who could be ruthless with Sophia on his behalf. Someone who could make clear to her the weakness of her position. Sophia would know that I understood what she faced; there would be less room for conjecture and appeal to emotion. I wasn’t doing this because I hated Sophia, I assured myself, nor because I resented that she’d usurped my place in Jonathan’s life. No, I knew Sophia for what she was. I was saving Jonathan from this wily harridan’s trap.

“With all due respect, I must ask you what proof you have that the baby is Jonathan’s? We have only your word, and…” I trailed off, letting my implication linger in the air.

“What are you, Jonathan’s solicitor now?” Her face reddened when I didn’t rise to the bait. “Aye, you’re right, it could be either Jeremiah’s or Jonathan’s, but I know it’s Jonathan’s. I know.” Her hands wrapped around her belly though she showed no sign of pregnancy.

“You expect Jonathan to ruin his life on your assurances-”

“Ruin his life?” she shrieked. “What about my life?”

“Yes, what about your life,” I said, drawing myself up as tall as I could. “Have you thought what will happen if you publicly accuse Jonathan of fathering your baby? All you will accomplish is to let it be known that you are a loose woman-”

Sophia chuffed, spinning on her heel away from me, as though she couldn’t bear to hear another word.

“-and he will deny the affair. Deny that he could be the father of the child. And who will believe you, Sophia? Who would believe that Jonathan St. Andrew would choose to dally with you when he can have his pick of any woman in the village?”

“Jonathan will deny me?” she asked, incredulous. “Don’t waste your breath, Lanore. You’ll not convince me that my Jonathan would ever deny me.”

My Jonathan, she’d said. My cheeks burned, my heart hammered. I do not know where I found the nerve to say the evil things to Sophia that I said next. It was as though another person was hidden inside me, one with qualities I’d never dreamed I possessed, and this hidden person had been summoned from inside me as easily as a genie is conjured from a lamp. I was blind with rage; all I knew was that Sophia was threatening Jonathan, threatening to ruin his future, and I would never let anyone harm him. He wasn’t her Jonathan, he was mine. I’d claimed him years ago in the vestibule of the church, and foolish as it may seem, I felt that possessiveness rise in me, fierce and primordial. “You’ll make yourself a laughingstock-the homeliest woman in St. Andrew claiming that the most eligible man in town is the father of her child, not the oaf who is her husband. The oaf she despises.”

“But it is his child,” she said, defiant. “Jonathan knows that. Does he not care what would happen to his own flesh and blood?”

That gave me pause; I felt a guilty twinge. “Do yourself a favor, Sophia, and forget your mad scheme. You have a husband-tell him the child is his. He’ll be glad for the news. I’m sure Jeremiah has wished for children.”

“He has-for children of his own,” she hissed. “I cannot lie to Jeremiah about the child’s lineage.”

“Why not? You’ve lied to him about your fidelity, no doubt,” I said ruthlessly. Her hatred was so palpable at that moment, I thought she might strike at me like a snake.

The time had come to drive the stake through her heart. I looked her up and down with hooded eyes. “You know, the punishment for adultery for the female partner, if she is married, is death. That is still the position of the church. Consider this, if you insist on going through with your decision. You will seal your own fate.” It was a hollow threat: no woman would be put to death for being an adulteress in St. Andrew, nor in any frontier town where women of childbearing years were scarce. The punishment for Jonathan, if the townspeople decided by some wild chance that he was guilty, would be to pay the bastardy tax and perhaps be ostracized by some of the town’s most pious for a short while. Without a doubt, Sophia would bear most of the burden.

Sophia whirled around in circles as though searching for unseen tormentors. “Jonathan!” she cried, though not loudly enough for her husband to hear her. “How could you treat me like this? I expected you to behave honorably… I thought that was the kind of man you were… Instead, you visit upon me this viper”-she shot me another venomous look through teary eyes-“to do your evil work for you. Don’t think I don’t know why you do this,” she hissed, pointing a finger at me. “Everyone in town knows you’re in love with him but that he will not have you. It’s jealousy, I say. Jonathan would never send you to deal with me in this way.”

I had prepared myself to be cool. I backed a few steps away from her as though she was mad or dangerous. “Of course he told me to see you-otherwise, how would I know you are with child? He has despaired of being able to make you see reason and has asked me to speak to you, as a woman. And as a woman, I tell you: I know what you are up to. You are using this misfortune to better your lot, to trade in your husband for someone with means. Perhaps there is not even a baby. You look the same as always to me. As for my relationship with Jonathan, we have a special friendship, pure and chaste and stronger than that of brother and sister, not that I would expect you to understand it,” I said, haughtily. “You don’t seem to be able to comprehend a relationship with a man that doesn’t involve lifting your skirts. Think hard on it, Sophia Jacobs. It is your dilemma and the outcome is in your hands. Choose the easiest path. Give Jeremiah a child. And do not approach Jonathan again: he doesn’t wish to see you,” I said firmly, then left the barn. On the path home, I trembled with fear and with triumph, burning from spent nerves despite the cold air. I had summoned all my courage to defend Jonathan and had done so with a single-mindedness I didn’t know I possessed. I had rarely ever raised my voice and had never forced my position so vehemently on anyone. To know I had such an inner power was frightening, and yet also thrilling. I walked home through the woods, light-headed and flushed, confident that I could do anything.

NINE

It was the noise that woke me the next morning, a musket fired, ball and powder. A musket shot at this hour meant trouble: a fire at a neighbor’s house, a raiding party, a terrible accident. This shot came from the direction of the Jacobses’ farm; I knew it as soon as I heard it.

I pulled the blanket over my head, pretending to be asleep, listening to the murmurs coming from my parents’ bed below. I heard my father rise and dress, and go out the door. My mother followed, probably wrapping a quilt around her shoulders as she went about the tasks she did every morning, stoking the fire and starting a pot of water to boil. I swung around to sit upright, reluctant to put the soles of my feet on the cold plank floor and start what seemed heralded to be a strange and ill-fortuned day.

My father came back inside, his expression grim. “Get dressed, Nevin. You must come with me,” he said to the groaning lump in the bed downstairs.

“Must I?” I heard my brother ask in a voice heavy with sleep. “There’s the cattle to feed-”

“I’ll go with you, Father,” I called down from the loft, pulling on my clothing hastily. My heart was already beating so hard that it would be impossible to remain in the house and wait for news of what had happened. I had to go with my father.

A snow had fallen in the night, the first of the season, and I tried to clear my mind as I walked behind Father, concentrating only on stepping into the footsteps he made in the fresh snow. My breath hung in the crisp air and a drop of mucus beaded on the tip of my nose.

Sitting in the hollow before us was the Jacobses’ farm, a brown saltbox on the broad expanse of white snow. People had begun to congregate, distant small dark shapes against the snow, and more were coming to the farm from every direction, on foot and on horseback; the sight made my heart start to race again.

“We’re going to the Jacobses’?” I asked of my father’s back.

“Yes, Lanore.” A taciturn reply, with his customary economy of words.

I could barely contain my anxiety. “What do you think has happened?”

“I expect we’ll find out,” he said patiently.

There was a representative present from every family-except the St. Andrews, but they lived at the farthest reach of town and could scarcely have heard the shot-everyone in mismatching layers of dress: dressing gowns, uneven hems of a nightshirt peeking out from beneath a coat, hair uncombed. I followed my father through the small crowd until we’d nudged our way to the front door, where Jeremiah kneeled in the muddied, chopped snow. He’d obviously shoved himself hastily into breeches, boots unlaced on his feet, and a quilt draped over his shoulders. His ancient blunderbuss, the gun that had fired the alarm, leaned against the clapboard siding. His great ugly face contorted in agony, his eyes red, his lips cracked and bleeding. He was usually such an emotionless man that the sight was unnerving.

Pastor Gilbert pushed his way to the front, then crouched low so he could speak softly into Jeremiah’s ear. “What is it, Jeremiah? Why did you sound the alarm?”

“She’s missing, Pastor…”

“Missing?”

“Sophia, Pastor. She’s gone.”

The hush of his voice sent a wave of murmurs through the crowd, everyone whispering to the person on either side of them, except for me and my father.

“Gone?” Gilbert placed his hands on Jeremiah’s cheeks, cradling his face. “What do you mean, she is gone?”

“She is gone, or someone has taken her. When I awoke, she was not in our home. Not in the farmyard, not in the barn. Her cloak is gone but her other things are still here.”

Hearing that Sophia-angry, perhaps feeling she had naught to lose-had not revealed my visit to Jeremiah eased a tightness in my chest that I hadn’t realized was there. At that moment, may God forgive me, I was worried not so much for a woman wandering bereft in the great woods as I was for my own part in her undoing.

Gilbert shook his white head. “Jeremiah, surely she has just stepped out for a bit, a walk perhaps. She will be home soon and sorry to have caused her husband worry.” But even as he spoke, we all knew he was mistaken. No one went walking for recreation in weather this cold, first thing in the morning.

“Calm yourself, Jeremiah. Let us take you inside, to warm yourself before you get a bone chill… Stay here with Mrs. Gilbert and Miss Hibbins, they’ll see to you while the rest of us search for Sophia-won’t we, neighbors?” Gilbert said with false enthusiasm as he helped the big man to his feet and turned to the rest of us. Speculation passed in the sideways glances of husband to wife, neighbor to neighbor-so the new bride has left her husband?-but no one had the heart to do anything but take up the pastor’s suggestion. The two women escorted Jeremiah, stumbling and dazed, into his house and the rest of us broke up into groups. We looked for a line of footprints in the snow leading away from the house, hoping that Sophia’s path had not been trampled by those who had answered Jeremiah’s shot.

My father found one set of tiny footprints that could have been Sophia’s and the two of us began to trace her steps. With my eyes trained on the snow, my mind raced ahead, wondering what had drawn Sophia from her house. Perhaps Sophia had stewed over my words all night and woke with her mind made up, to have it out with Jonathan. How could our confrontation not have something to do with her disappearance? My heart beat fiercely as we followed the footprints that I feared would lead to the St. Andrews’ house, until the snow disappeared in the deeper woods and with it, Sophia’s tracks.

Now we followed no discernible path, my father and I, the forest floor a dizzying patchwork of bare, hard ground and thinly scattered scabs of snow and dead leaves. I had no idea if my father was picking up telltale signs of Sophia’s path-snapped branches, crushed leaves-or if he pushed on out of a sense of duty. We traveled parallel to the river, the sound of the Allagash to my left. Usually I thought the sound of water rushing over rock comforting, but not today.

Sophia had to have been moved strongly by something to venture into the woods by herself. Only the hardiest villagers went into the forest alone because it was easy to lose your way in the sameness. Acre after acre of forest unfurled in a repetition of birch and spruce and pine, and the regularity of boulders pushing their way up through the forest floor, all covered with extravagant mosses or crackled with celadon lichens.

Maybe I should have spoken to my father earlier, to let him know that his neighborly sacrifice was unnecessary and that in all likelihood Sophia had gone to see a man, a man whose company she should not keep. She could be safe and warm in a room with this man while we tramped through the cold and damp. I pictured Sophia rushing along the trail, stealing away from her unhappy home to Jonathan, tenderhearted and confused, who would undoubtedly take her in. My stomach twisted at the thought of her tucked in Jonathan’s bed, the thought that she had won and I had lost and that Jonathan was now hers.

Eventually we turned toward the river and walked a ways, following its contours. My father paused at one point, breaking a hole through a thin patch of ice to dip his hand in for a drink. Between sips, he eyed me not without curiosity.

“I don’t know how much longer we will need to search. You can go home now, Lanore. This is no place for a girl. You must be freezing with cold.”

I shook my head. “No, no, Father, I’d like to keep on a while longer…” It would be impossible to wait at home for news. I would go out of my mind or abandon all propriety to race to Jonathan’s house and confront Sophia. I could picture her, smug, triumphant. At that moment, I don’t think I’d hated anyone as much as I hated her.

It was Father who spotted her first. He had been scanning the way ahead while I had kept my eyes trained on the dizzying ground underfoot. He found the frozen body trapped in an eddy formed by a fallen tree, almost hidden in a tangle of reeds and wild vines. She floated prone, caught in a mass of frozen cattails, her delicate body outstretched, the folds of her skirt and her long hair bobbing on the surface of the water. Her cloak sat on the riverbank, neatly folded.

“Look away, girl,” my father said as he tried to turn me by the shoulders. I couldn’t tear my eyes from her.

Father sounded the call while I stared dumbly at her corpse. Other searchers came crashing through the woods, following my father’s voice. Two of the men waded into the frigid water to pull her body from the embrace of the frozen grasses and the thin shelf of ice that had started to claim her. We spread her cape on the ground and laid her body on it, the sodden fabric clinging to her legs and torso. Her skin was blue all over and her eyes, mercifully, were closed.

The men wrapped her in her cloak and took turns holding the edges, using it as a sling to carry Sophia’s body back home, while I walked behind them. My teeth chattered and my father came up to me to rub my arms in an attempt to warm me, but it did no good, for I shook and shivered from fear, not cold. I held my arms tight to my stomach, afraid I would be ill in front of my father. My presence dampened the discussion among the men and they refrained from speculating as to why Sophia had taken her life. They generally agreed, however, that Pastor Gilbert would not be told about the cape set deliberately aside. He would not know that she had been a suicide.

When my father and I made it home, I ran straight to the fireplace and stood so close that the fire toasted my face, but even that heat could not stop my shaking. “Not so close,” my mother chided as she helped me take off my cloak, afraid no doubt that the cape might catch on a spitting ember. I would have welcomed it. I deserved to burn like a witch for what I’d done.

A few hours later, my mother came up to me, squared her shoulders, and said, “I’m going to the Gilberts’ to help with the preparations for Sophia. I think you should come with me. It’s time you started taking your place among the women in this town and learned some of the duties that will be expected of you.”

By now I had changed into a heavy nightgown, curled by the fire, and had drunk a mug of hot cider with rum. The drink helped to numb me, to tamp down the urge to cry out loud and confess, but I knew that I would come undone if I had to confront Sophia’s body, even in the presence of the other women in town.

I rose up from the floor on an elbow. “I couldn’t… I don’t feel well. Still cold…”

My mother pressed the back of her fingers to my forehead, then my throat. “If anything, I’d say you were burning with fever…” She looked at me cautiously, skeptically, then rose from the floor, tossing her cloak over her shoulders. “All right, this one time, seeing what you went through earlier…” Her words trailed off. She looked me over one more time, in a way I couldn’t quite figure out, and then slipped out the door.

She told me later what had happened at the pastor’s house, how the women prepared Sophia’s body for burial. First, they set it by the fire to thaw, then they rinsed the river silt from her mouth and nose and gently combed out her hair. My mother described how white her skin had become from the time in the river, and how she’d been scraped with thin, red scratches after the current had dragged her corpse over submerged rocks. They dressed her in her finest dress, a yellow so pale as to be almost ivory, embellished with embroidery by her own needle and tailored to her slender frame with pin tucks. No mention was made of Sophia’s body, no abnormality, no remark of the faintest swell to the dead woman’s abdomen. If anyone noticed anything, it would be attributed to bloat, no doubt, water the poor girl had ingested as she drowned. And then a linen shroud was tucked into a plain panel coffin. A couple of men who had waited while the women completed their work loaded the coffin into a wagon and escorted it to Jeremiah’s house, where it would lie in wait for the funeral.

As my mother calmly described the state of Sophia’s body, I felt as though nails were being driven into me, exhorting me to confess my wickedness. But I held on to my wits, if barely, and cried as my mother spoke, my hand shielding my eyes. My mother rubbed my back as though I were a child again. “Whatever is it, Lanore dear? Why are you so upset for Sophia? It is a terrible thing and she was our neighbor, yes, but I didn’t think you even knew her very well…” She sent me up to the loft with a goatskin filled with warm water and went to chide my father for taking me with him into the woods. I lay with the goatskin pressed against my stomach though it brought me no comfort. I lay awake, listening to all the sounds of the night-the wind, the shaking trees, the dying embers-whisper Sophia’s name.

As had been the case at her wedding, Sophia Jacobs’s funeral was a mean affair, attended by her husband, her mother, and a few of her siblings, and not many others. The day was cold and overcast, snowfall promising to drift down from the sky as it had every day since Sophia had killed herself.

We stood and watched from a hilltop overlooking the cemetery, Jonathan and I. We watched the mourners press around the dark, hollow plot. Somehow they had managed to excavate a grave site though the ground was beginning to freeze, and I could not help but wonder if it had been her father, Tobey, who had dug the grave. The mourners, specks of black against a white field far in the distance, shifted to and fro restlessly, as Pastor Gilbert pronounced words over the deceased. My face was tight, swollen from days of crying, but now, in Jonathan’s presence, no tears came. It felt surreal to be spying on Sophia’s funeral-I, who should be down there on my knees, begging Jeremiah for forgiveness, for I was responsible for his wife’s death as surely as if I’d pushed her into the river myself.

Next to me, Jonathan stood silently. Snow began to fall at last, like the release of a long-pent-up tension, tiny flakes swirling on the cold air before landing on the dark wool of Jonathan’s greatcoat and in his hair.

“I cannot believe she is gone,” he said, for the twentieth time that morning. “I can’t believe she took her life.”

I choked on my words. Anything I could say would be too weak, too palliative and altogether untrue.

“It is my fault,” he croaked, raising a hand to his face.

“You mustn’t blame yourself for this.” I rushed to comfort him with the words I had said to myself over and over the past few days, as I’d hidden in feverish guilt in bed. “You knew her life was miserable, from when she was a child. Who knows what unhappy thoughts she carried with her, and for how long? She finally acted on them. It’s hardly your fault.”

He took two steps forward, as though longing to be down in the graveyard. “I can’t believe she had been carrying thoughts of self-injury, Lanny. She had been happy-with me. It seems inconceivable that the Sophia I knew was fighting the desire to kill herself.”

“One never knows. Maybe she had an argument with Jeremiah… perhaps after the last time you saw her…”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “If she was troubled by anything, it was my reaction when she told me of the baby. That is why I blame myself, Lanny, for my thoughtless reaction to her news. You said”-Jonathan lifted his head, suddenly, looking in my direction-“that you might think of a way to dissuade her from keeping the baby. I pray, Lanny, that you didn’t approach Sophia with any such plan-”

Startled, I jerked back. I’d thought these past few days about telling him everything, as I’d struggled with my guilt. I had to tell some-one-it was not the kind of secret a body can keep without doing irreparable harm to the soul-and if anyone would understand, it would be Jonathan. I’d done it for him, after all. He’d come to me for help and I had done what was required. Now I needed to be absolved for what I had done; he owed me that absolution, didn’t he?

But as he searched me with those dark, willful eyes, I realized I could not tell him. Not now, not while he was raw with grief and capable of being carried away by emotion. He would not understand. “What? No, I came up with no plan. Why would I approach Sophia on my own, anyway?” I lied. I hadn’t intended to lie to Jonathan, but he surprised me, his guess like an arrow shot with uncanny precision. I would tell him one day, I resolved.

Jonathan turned his three-cornered hat in his hands. “Do you suppose I should tell Jeremiah the truth?”

I rushed up to Jonathan and shook him by the shoulders. “That would be a terrible thing to do, for yourself as well as poor Sophia. What good would it do to tell Jeremiah now, except to appease your conscience? All you would accomplish would be to ruin Jeremiah’s illusion of her. Let him bury Sophia thinking her a good wife who honored him.”

He looked at my small hands clasping his shoulders-it was unusual for us to touch each other now that we were no longer children-and then looked into my eyes with such sorrow that I couldn’t help myself. I collapsed against his chest and pulled him toward me, thinking only that he needed comfort from a woman at that moment, even if it wasn’t Sophia. I will not lie and say I didn’t find the feeling of his strong, warm body against mine comforting, too, though I had no right to comfort. I nearly wept with happiness at the touch of him. Holding his body against mine, I could pretend that he had forgiven me for my terrible sin against Sophia, although, of course, he knew nothing of it.

I’d kept my cheek against his chest, listening to his heart beat beneath layers of wool and linen and breathing in his scent. I didn’t want to release my hold of Jonathan, but I sensed he was looking down at me, and so I looked up at him, too, ready for him to tell me again of his love for Sophia. And if he did, if he said her name, I resolved, I would tell him what I had done. But he didn’t; instead, his mouth hovered over mine for an instant before he kissed me.

The moment for which I’d waited went by in a blur. We slipped into the protection of the woods, steps away. I remember the wonderful heat of his mouth on mine, its hunger and forcefulness. I remember his hands pulling on the ribbon that closed my blouse over my breasts. He pressed my back against a tree and bit into my neck as he fumbled with the fall of his breeches. I lifted my skirts so he could claim me, his hands on my hips. I regret that I didn’t have even a glimpse of his manhood for all the clothing between us, coats and cloaks, skirts and petticoats. But I felt him in me, suddenly, a great firm hotness pushed up inside me, and him bucking against me, grinding me into the bark of the tree. And at the end, his groan in my ear sent a shiver through me, for it meant he had found pleasure with me, and I had never been so happy and feared I would never be so again.

We rode together on his horse through the woods with me holding tight around his waist, as we had as children. We took the least-traveled trails lest we be seen together without a chaperone. We didn’t exchange a word and I kept my hot face buried in his coat, still trying to come to grips with what we’d done. I knew of plenty of other girls in town who had given themselves over to a man before marriage-with Jonathan often the recipient-and had looked down on them. Now I was one of them. A part of me felt that I had disgraced myself. But another part of me believed I’d had no choice: it might have been my only chance to capture Jonathan’s heart and prove that we were meant to be together. I couldn’t let it pass.

I slipped from the back of his horse and, after a squeeze of his hand, hiked the short distance to my family’s cabin. As I walked, however, doubts began to set in as to what our tryst had meant to him. He swived girls with no thought to any consequences: why did I imagine he would attach consequences this time? And what of his feelings for Sophia-or my obligation, for that matter, to the woman I had driven to take her own life? I had as good as murdered her and here I was fornicating with her lover. Surely a more wicked soul did not exist.

I took a few minutes before proceeding to my home, to compose myself with deep breaths of cold air. I couldn’t go to pieces in front of my family. I had no one with whom I could talk this over. I would have to keep this secret hidden inside until I was calm enough to think on it rationally. I pushed it down, all of it, the guilt, the shame, the self-hatred. And yet, at the same time, I was filled with tremulous excitement, for though I didn’t deserve as much, I’d gotten what I’d wanted. I exhaled, dusted the fresh snow from the front of my cloak, squared my shoulders, and trudged the rest of the way to my family’s cottage.

TEN

Sounds are heard out in the hall.

Luke looks at his wristwatch: 4 A.M. The hospital will come to life before long. The mornings are busy with injuries common to farm country-a rib shattered by a kick from a dairy cow, a slip on a patch of ice while lugging a bale of hay-followed at six by the shift change.

The girl looks at him the way a dog might regard an unreliable master. “Will you help me? Or are you going to let that sheriff take me to the police station?”

“What else can I do?”

Her face glows pink. “You can let me go. Close your eyes while I slip out. No one will blame you. You can tell them you went down to the lab, left me alone for just a second, and I was gone by the time you returned.”

Joe says she’s a murderer, Luke thinks. Can I let a murderer walk out the door?

Lanny reaches for his hand. “Have you ever been in love with someone so badly that you’d do anything for them? That no matter what you want, you want their happiness more?”

Luke is glad she can’t see into his heart because he has never been that selfless. He’s been dutiful, yes, but he’s never been able to give without a tug of resentment and he doesn’t like how that makes him feel.

“I’m not a threat to anyone. I told you why I… did what I did to Jonathan.”

Luke looks into those ice blue eyes filling with tears and he tingles from his scalp to his gut. The pain from loss overcomes him quickly, as it tends to since his parents’ deaths. He knows she is feeling the same sadness as he, and for a moment they are together in this bottomless grief. And he’s so tired of being imprisoned by grief-the loss of his parents, his marriage, his entire life-that he knows he must do something to break free of it, do it now or he never will. He’s not sure why he’s going to do what he’s about to do, but he knows he can’t think about it in advance or he won’t do it.

“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Luke slips down the narrow corridor to the doctors’ locker room. Inside his dented gray locker he finds a pair of scrubs, wadded up and forgotten. He rummages through a couple of other lockers and comes up with a white lab coat, a surgical cap, and, from the pediatrician’s locker, a pair of women’s running shoes so old that they curl at the toes. Luke brings these back to the examination room.

“Here, put these on.”

They take the shortest route to the back of the hospital, pushing through janitors’ passages to the loading dock in the service area. An orderly coming in for the day shift waves as they cross the parking lot, but when Luke waves back his arm feels rusted tight with anxiety. It isn’t until they’re in the parking lot, standing beside his pickup truck, that Luke remembers he’s left his keys in his parka back in the doctors’ lounge.

“Damn it. I have to go back. Don’t have my keys. Hide in the trees. I’ll be right back.”

Lanny says nothing but nods, hunched against the cold in her thin cotton scrubs.

The walk from the parking lot to the ambulance entrance is the longest of his life. Luke hustles because of the cold and his nerves. Judy or Clay may have already noticed he is gone. And if Clay is still asleep on the couch, Luke might wake him when he goes into the lounge to retrieve his keys and then he’d be caught. Each step gets harder and harder, until he feels like a water-skier being dragged under the surface after something has gone horribly wrong with the tow line.

He pushes back the heavy glass door, so on edge that his shoulders are pinched high around his ears. Judy, at the nurses’ station, frowns at her computer, not even looking up when Luke walks by. “Where have you been?”

“Having a smoke.”

Now Judy is paying attention, fixing Luke with the beady eyes of a crow. “When did you start smoking again?”

Luke feels like he smoked two packs last night, so what he’s told Judy doesn’t feel like a lie. He decides to ignore her. “Is Clay up?”

“I haven’t seen him. The door to the lounge is still closed. Maybe you ought to wake him up. He can’t sleep here all day. His wife will be wondering what happened to him.”

Luke freezes; he wants to make a joke, to act as though everything is normal in front of Judy, but then of course, Luke has never joked with Judy in the past and that in itself would seem abnormal. His inability to lie and cover his tracks only makes him more self-conscious. He feels like he’s fallen through the frozen skin of a pond and is drowning, sucking frigid water into every crevice of his lungs, and Judy sees nothing. “I need coffee,” Luke mumbles as he heads off.

The door to the lounge is just a couple of steps away. He sees immediately that it is slightly ajar and dark within. He nudges it open another ten degrees and plainly sees the empty sag on the couch where the policeman should be.

Blood rises to his ears, the glands in his throat swell to four times their normal size. He can’t breathe. It’s worse than drowning: it feels as if he’s being strangled.

His parka hangs to the right from a hook on the wall, waiting for him to reach into the pocket. The jingle tells him that the keys are right where he expected them to be.

On the way back, his walk is direct and purposeful. Head down, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his lab coat, he decides not to take the service hallway, it’s too indirect, and marches toward the ambulance entrance instead. Judy’s head jerks up as Luke passes the duty station.

“I thought you were getting coffee.”

“Left my wallet in the car,” he tosses over his shoulder. He’s almost at the door.

“Did you wake Clay?”

“He’s already up,” Luke says, backing into the door to push it open. And at the far end of the hall, there is the deputy, seemingly having materialized at the mention of his name. He sees Luke in return and raises his arm the way he’d hail a bus. Clay wants to talk to him and starts jogging down the hall in Luke’s direction, hand waving… Stop, Luke. But Luke doesn’t. Throwing all his weight into the hip check, Luke knocks the door back.

Cold slaps his face as he bursts out on the other side, bobbing to the surface of his real life. What am I doing? This is the hospital where I work. I know every tile and plastic chair and gurney as well as I know my own house. What am I doing, throwing away my life by helping a suspected murderer escape? Have I lost my mind? But he continues, compelled by a strange itching in his blood, ricocheting through his veins like a pinball, driving him forward. He speed-walks across the parking lot, frantic and off-kilter, like a person trying to remain upright while descending a steep hill, knowing he must look like a lunatic.

Luke squints anxiously at his truck, but the girl is gone, not a speck of the telltale aqua of hospital scrubs to be seen. At first, he panics-how could he have been so stupid, leaving her outside unattended? But a small kernel of hope expands in his chest as he realizes that if the prisoner is gone, so are his worries.

The next minute she is there, wispy, ethereal, an angel dressed in hospital clothing… And his heart leaps at the sight of her.

Luke fumbles with the ignition while Lanny slouches low, trying not to watch and further the doctor’s nervousness. Finally, the engine turns over and the truck leaps out of the parking lot, launching recklessly onto the road.

The passenger stares directly ahead, as though her concentration alone is keeping them from being discovered. “I’m at Dunratty’s hunting lodge. Do you know where that is?”

Luke is incredulous. “Do you think it’s smart to go there? I’d think the police would have tracked you to your hotel by now. We don’t get many strangers this time of year.”

“Please, just swing by. If it looks suspicious, we’ll keep going, but all my things are there. My passport. Money. Clothing. I bet you don’t have anything that would fit me.”

She is smaller than Tricia but larger than the girls. “You’d win that bet,” he confirms. “Passport?”

“I came over from France, where I live.” She curls on her end of the bench seat like a cat trying to conserve its warmth. Suddenly, Luke’s hands on the steering wheel feel large, outlandishly huge and clumsy. He’s having an out-of-body experience from the stress and has to concentrate not to jerk the wheel and send them hurtling off the road.

“You should see my house in Paris. It’s like a museum, filled with all the things I’ve collected over many, many years. Want to go there?” Her tone is sweet and as warming as liquor, and the invitation is intriguing. He wonders if she’s telling the truth. Who wouldn’t like to go to Paris, stay in a magical house. Luke feels his tension start to melt, his spine and neck begin to relax.

There are hunting lodges like Dunratty’s all over this part of the woods. Luke has never stayed in one but remembers seeing the inside of a couple when he was a kid, for some reason he can’t recall now. Cheap cabins dating back to the 1950s, nailed together from plywood and filled with thrift shop furniture and mold, cheap linoleum and mouse droppings. The girl directs Luke to the last cottage on Dunratty’s gravel driveway, and the cabin’s windows are dark and empty. She extends a hand to Luke. “Give me one of your credit cards and I’ll see if I can open the lock.”

Once inside, they draw the shades and Lanny snaps on a light. There is a chill on every surface they touch. Personal belongings are strewn about, left out, as though the inhabitants had been forced to flee in the night. There are two beds but only one is unmade, the crumpled sheets and dimpled pillows looking wanton and incriminating. A laptop with a digital camera attached to it via a cord sits on a shaky table that was once part of a kitchenette set. Open bottles of wine litter the side table, two tumblers smudged with fingerprints, lip prints.

Two bags, open, rest on the floor. Lanny crouches next to one, stuffing loose items into it, including the laptop and camera.

Luke jingles his keys, nervous and impatient.

The girl zips the bag shut, stands upright, then turns to the second suitcase. She fishes out an item of men’s clothing and holds it to her nose, breathing in deeply.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

As they go down the drive past the front office (surely closed at this hour of the morning, Dunratty Junior upstairs asleep), Luke thinks he sees the red gingham curtains move, as though someone might have been watching them. He imagines Dunratty, in his bathrobe, coffee cup in hand, hearing the sound of tires on gravel and going to see who’s driving by; would he recognize my truck? Luke wonders. Forget it, it’s nothing, just a cat going by the window, or so Luke tells himself. No sense in looking for trouble.

Luke is a little unnerved as the girl changes clothing while he drives, until he remembers that he’s already seen her naked. She slips on blue jeans and a cashmere sweater more luxurious than anything his wife had ever worn. She drops the scrubs to the car floor.

“Do you have a passport?” she asks Luke.

“At home, sure.”

“Let’s go get it.”

“What-we’re going to fly off to Paris, just like that?”

“Why not? I’ll buy the tickets, pay for everything. Money is not a problem.”

“I think we should get you to Canada, now, before the police put out a bulletin on you. We’re fifteen minutes from the border.”

“Will you need your passport to cross the border? They’ve changed the regulations, haven’t they?” the girl asks, a note of panic in her voice.

Luke tightens his grip again on the wheel. “I don’t know… I haven’t crossed the border in a while… Oh, okay, we’ll go to my house. But only for a minute.”

The farmhouse stands in the middle of an open field, like a child too stupid to know to come in from the cold. His truck climbs and bucks over the churned mud, now frozen into peaks like cake frosting.

They enter through the back door into a sad, shabby kitchen that hasn’t been changed in the past fifty years. Luke flips on the overhead light and notices it makes no appreciable difference in the level of light in the room. Used coffee mugs sit on the dinette table and crumbs crunch underfoot. He is disproportionately embarrassed by the disarray.

“This was my parents’ house. I’ve been living here since they died,” he explains. “I didn’t like the idea of the farm going to a stranger, but I can’t run it like they did. Sold the livestock a few months ago. Have someone lined up to rent the fields, to plant next spring. Seems a waste to let them go fallow.”

Lanny drifts around the kitchen, running a finger over the chipped Formica countertop, the back of a vinyl-cushioned kitchen chair. She stops at a drawing hanging from a magnet on the refrigerator, made by one of his daughters when she was in preschool. A princess on a pony; the pony is recognizable as some type of horselike creature but the princess is an approximation, with bushy blond hair and blue eyes, wearing a pink gown to go horseback riding. Except for the long gown, it could be Lanny.

“Who drew this? Do you have children at home?”

“Not anymore.”

“Gone, with your wife?” she guesses. “No one taking care of the place for you?”

He shrugs.

“You don’t have any reason to stay,” she says, stating a fact.

“I still have obligations,” he says, because that is how he’s used to thinking about his life. A farm he won’t be able to sell in this economy. He has his practice, mostly elderly as their children and grandchildren move out of town. His caseload shrinks every month.

Luke goes up the stairs and to his bedroom, and finds his passport in the drawer of a bedside table. He moved into his parents’ old bedroom after his wife left him: the bedroom of his childhood had also been his marital bed and he wants no part of that anymore.

He flips the passport open. Never used. He’s never had the time to travel, not since his residency, and even then it was only in the U.S. He’s never been to even one of the faraway places he used to dream about seeing when he was a teenager, spending long hours on the tractor, his daydreaming time. His empty passport makes him feel a little ashamed in front of somebody who has been to all these exotic places. His life was supposed to turn out differently.

He finds Lanny in the dining room inspecting the family pictures, placed on a low bookcase. His mother had the photos out for as long as Luke could remember and he didn’t have the heart to put them away, but his mother was the only one who knew who these people were and how they were related to him. Old black-and-white photographs, with stern, long-gone Scandinavians staring back, strangers to one another. There’s one color picture in a thick wood frame, a photo of a woman and her two daughters nestled among the relatives as though they belong there.

Luke turns off the lights and sets the thermostat very low, just enough to keep the pipes from freezing. He checks the locks on the doors, though he doesn’t know why he is being so careful. He plans to come right back after dropping this girl off over the border, but the touch of his hand on the light switch makes a lump rise in his throat. It feels like he is saying good-bye-which he hopes to do one day, for which he’s planned and pictured in his more sensible moments, maybe in the spring when he can think more clearly-but right now he’s just helping a girl in trouble, a girl with no one else to turn to. As for today, he’s coming right back.

“Ready?” Luke asks, jingling the keys once more, but Lanny reaches into the bookcase and pulls out a small book, barely larger than her hand. The dust jacket is missing and the hard covers are worn at the corners, so that the cardboard is visible, like a bud among the fraying yellow fabric. It takes a minute before Luke recognizes the book: it had been his favorite as a boy and his mother must have kept it all these years. The Jade Pagoda, a classic child’s tale, like Kipling but not Kipling, a British expatriate’s story set in a faraway locale, a story with a Chinese prince and a European princess, or a Caucasian girl in any case, set with pen-and-ink illustrations done by the author’s own hand. Lanny flips through the pages.

“Do you know the book?” he asks. “I used to love it… Well, you can see the use it got. The binding is just about shot. I don’t think it’s in print anymore.”

She is holding it out to him now, open, pointing to one of the illustrations. And he’ll be damned if it isn’t her. She’s in a period dress and her hair is pinned up like a Gibson girl’s, but that is her heart-shaped face and her slightly haughty, bemused eyes. “I met Oliver, the author, when we both lived in Hong Kong. He was just a British civil servant then, and known as a drinker, begging the officers’ wives to pose for his ‘little project,’ as he called it. I was the only one who would do it; they all thought it was scandalous and some kind of ruse, just an excuse to get one of us alone with him in his apartment.”

There’s a stirring in his diaphragm. He feels his heart leap possessively. The girl in the illustration stands before him in the flesh, and it is like the strangest kind of magic to have something he’s known only as incorporeal suddenly manifest itself before him. He is afraid, for a moment, that he might faint.

In an instant, she is at his side, hurrying to the door. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

ELEVEN

I’d gotten my heart’s one desire-for Jonathan to behold me as a woman and his lover-but nothing more. I lived in a state of uncertainty because I hadn’t been able to communicate with him since that thrilling, frightening afternoon.

Winter had intervened.

Winter was not to be denied in our part of Maine. We would endure blizzard after blizzard, snow piled waist deep within a day or two, negating any possibility of travel. All attention and energy was directed toward keeping warm and fed, and taking care of the livestock. Every common task outdoors required wading in snow, an exhausting prospect. By the time a path to the barn and pasture was cleared, a clearing chopped through the icy surface of the stream for both livestock and household use, and the cattle had gotten used to negotiating the snowdrifts in the field, and it looked as if life might return to normal (or, at least, routine), another storm would descend on the valley.

I sat by the window and stared down the wagon trail, unsullied snow standing nearly two feet deep. I prayed fervently for the snow to settle and become compact enough for us to be able to travel on it, so that we could go to services on Sunday, my only opportunity to see Jonathan. I needed him to assuage my fears, to tell me he had not swived me only because he could not have Sophia but because he desired me. Perhaps because he loved me.

Finally, after several weeks of being housebound, the snow had condensed to a passable depth and Father said we would go into town on Sunday. While any other time of year such news would be met with mere tolerance if not indifference, this time you would have thought Father had told us we were going to a ball. Maeve, Glynnis, and I spent the days in a tizzy, deciding what we would wear, how to scrub a stain out of a beloved chemise, and which of us would fix the others’ hair. Even Nevin seemed anxious for Sunday to come so he could escape from our tiny cabin.

My father and I deposited my sisters, brother, and mother at the Catholic church and then drove to the congregation hall. Father knew why I went to service with him, so he must have had an inkling of why I was more anxious than usual as we approached the hall. And after service, as the snow was too deep on the common for socializing, the congregation remained indoors, packing the aisles, hallways, and staircases. The air was loud with the bright chatter of people who had been confined with their families for too long and were anxious to speak to someone new.

I squeezed through the crowds, searching for Jonathan. My ears caught snippets of my neighbors’ conversations-how dreary it had been, how boring, how sick everyone was of dried peas in molasses and salt pork-and they bounced off me like pellets of sleet. Through a narrow window, I caught sight of the churchyard and Sophia’s grave. The recently turned ground had settled and sunk, and the snow over the grave dipped a good inch or two lower than the rest of the cover, leaving an irregularity on the landscape.

Finally, I saw Jonathan weaving through the crowd, too, looking as though he might be searching for me. We met at the foot of the staircase to the balcony, packed shoulder to shoulder with our neighbors, aware that we couldn’t speak freely. Someone was bound to overhear.

“How charming you look today, Lanny,” Jonathan said, politely. A harmless statement, the casual eavesdropper might think, but the Jonathan of my childhood had never remarked on my appearance, any more than he would remark on the appearance of another boy.

I couldn’t return the compliment; I could only blush.

He leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “The past three weeks have been unbearable. Go out to your barn an hour before sundown tonight and I will contrive to meet you there.”

Of course, under the circumstances I could ask him no questions nor seek any reassurances for my uncertain heart. And, to be honest, I don’t think anything he could have said would have kept me from going to him. I burned to be with him.

That afternoon, my fears were assuaged. For an hour, I felt I was the epicenter of his world, all I could wish for. The whole of his being was in his every touch, from the way he fumbled with the tapes and ties that bound my clothing, to his fingers pulling gently through my hair and his kisses on my bare, goose-prickled shoulders. Afterward, we nestled together as we returned to our bodies and it was bliss to be encircled in his arms, to feel him pressed tight against me, as though he, too, wanted nothing to come between us. No happiness can compare to the happiness of getting what you have begged and prayed for. I was exactly where I’d longed to be, but now was aware of every second ticking by and how my family would be wondering after me.

Reluctantly, I pried his arms from my waist. “I can’t stay. I must go back… though sometimes I wish there was somewhere else for me… a place I could go rather than home.”

I had meant to say only that I wished I didn’t have to leave the sweet harbor of his company but this truth slipped out, a truth I’d kept smothered inside me. It felt shameful, a secret fear to which I should not admit, but the words had escaped and there was no taking them back. Jonathan looked at me quizzically. “Why is that, Lanny?”

“Well, sometimes I feel-I have no place within my family.” I felt a fool having to explain it to Jonathan, perhaps the one person in the village who had never gone unloved or had ever felt undeserving of happiness. “Nevin’s the only son, so he’s invaluable to my parents. And he’ll inherit the farm one day. Then there are my sisters… well, they’re so pretty, everyone in town admires them for their prettiness. Their prospects are good. But me…” I couldn’t say, even to Jonathan, the heart of my secret fear-that my happiness mattered to no one, that I mattered to no one, not even to my father or mother.

He pulled me down next to him in the hay and drew me into his arms, holding me fast as I tried to pull away, not from him but from my shame. “I can’t bear to hear you say these things, Lanny… well, you’re the one I choose to be with, aren’t you? The only one I seem to feel comfortable with, the only person I reveal myself to. I would spend all my time in your company, if I could. Father, Mother, my sisters, Benjamin… I’d give them up, all of them, for it to be just you, just the two of us, together forever.”

I ate up his pretty tribute, of course; it cut through my shame and went straight to my head like a draft of strong whiskey. Don’t mistake what I am saying: at the time, he believed he loved me and I was sure of his sincerity. But now, with hard-earned wisdom, I understand how foolish we were to say such dangerous words to each other! We were arrogant and naive, thinking we knew what we felt then was love. Love can be a cheap emotion, lightly given, though it didn’t seem so to me at the time. Looking back, I know we were only filling in the holes in our souls, the way the tide rushes sand to fill in the crevices of a rocky shore. We-or maybe it was just I-bandaged our needs with what we declared was love. But, eventually, the tide draws out what it has swept in.

It was impossible for Jonathan to give me what he’d claimed to wish for; he couldn’t give up his family or his responsibilities. He didn’t have to tell me that his parents would never let him settle for me as a wife. But that late afternoon, in that cold barn, I possessed Jonathan’s love, and having it, I was all the more ferocious to hold on to it. He’d declared his love for me, I was assured of mine for him, proof that we were meant to be together and that, of all the souls in God’s universe, we were bound to each other. Bound in love.

We met that way only twice more over the next two months, a sorry record for lovers. On each occasion, we spoke very little (except for him to confess how he’d missed me), rushing to lovemaking, our haste owing to the fear that we would be discovered as well as due to the cold. We stripped each other as bare as we dared go, and used mouths and hands to knead, caress, and kiss. Each time, we coupled as though it would be the last time for either of us-perhaps we intuited an unhappy future, hovering at our elbow, counting down the seconds until it would wrap us in a dread embrace. Both times, we parted in haste, too, the scent of him slithering up from under my clothes, wetness between my legs and a burn on my cheeks that I hoped would be mistaken by my family for a nip from the cold.

Each time we parted, however, doubt began to nibble at the back of my mind. I had Jonathan’s love-for now-but what did that mean? I knew Jonathan’s past better than anyone. Hadn’t he loved Sophia, too, and yet I had made him forget about her-or so it seemed. I could pretend that he would be true and faithful to me, choose to be willfully blind, as many women do, and hope that in time this would come to pass. My blindness was aided by a stubborn conviction that a bond of love was ordained by God, and no matter how inconvenient, how unlikely or painful, it could not be changed by man. I had to have faith that my love would triumph over any imperfection in Jonathan’s love for me; love, after all, is faith, and all faith is meant to be tested.

Now I know only a fool looks for assurances in love. Love demands so much of us that in return we try to get a guarantee that it will last. We demand permanence, but who can make such promises? I should have been happy with the love-companionable, abiding-that Jonathan had had for me since childhood. That love was eternal. Instead, I tried to make his feelings for me into what they were not and, in trying, I ruined the beautiful eternal thing that I had.

Sometimes the worst tidings come as an absence. A friend who does not visit at the usual time, and who quickly thereafter withdraws from the friendship. An awaited letter that does not arrive, followed at some distance by news of an untimely death. And, in my case that winter, the cessation of my monthly flowers. First, one month. Then a second.

I prayed there might be another cause. I cursed Sophia’s spirit, sure that she was paying me back. Once bidden, however, Sophia’s spirit was not so easy to contain.

Sophia began visiting me in my dreams. In some, her face would merely appear in a crowd, jarring and accusatory, then disappear. In one recurring dream, I would be with Jonathan only to have him leave me abruptly, turning from me as though by silent command, ignoring my pleas that he stay. He’d then reappear with Sophia, the two walking hand in hand in the distance, Jonathan without even a thought for me. I’d always wake from these dreams feeling hurt and abandoned.

The worst dream would throw me out of sleep like a bucking horse and I’d have to stifle my cries or risk waking my sisters. The other dreams might have been my guilty mind playing tricks, but this dream could be nothing else but a message from the dead girl herself. In this dream, I walk through an empty village, the wind rippling at my back as I travel down the main carriage trail. There’s not another person to be seen, no voice or sound of life, no chopping of wood or clanging of the blacksmith’s anvil. Soon, I’m in the woods, white with snow, following the half-frozen Allagash. I stop at a narrows in the river and see Sophia standing on the opposite shore. She is the Sophia who committed suicide, blue, her hair frozen in clumps, heavy wet clothing weighing on her. She is the forgotten lover, moldering in the grave, at whose expense I have made my happiness. Her dead eyes settle on me and then she points to the water. No words are spoken but I know what she is telling me: jump into the river and end your life and the life of your child.

I dared not speak to anyone in my family about my condition, not even my sisters, with whom I was normally close. My mother commented once or twice that I seemed moody and preoccupied, though she jested that I must be suffering greatly from the monthly curse, to judge by my behavior. If only I could have spoken to her about my situation, but alas, my loyalties were to Jonathan; I could not reveal our relationship to my parents without consulting him first.

I waited to meet with Jonathan at Sunday services, while again nature intervened. Several weeks elapsed before the trails into town were passable again. By then, I felt the press of time upon me: if I were forced to wait much longer, I would not be able to keep my secret to myself. I prayed during every waking moment for God to give me the opportunity to speak to Jonathan, soon.

The Lord must have heard my prayers, for at last the winter sun came out in its fullness for several days running, melting a goodly portion of the last snowfall. Finally, that Sunday we were able to hitch up the horse, bundle ourselves in cloaks, scarves, gloves, and blankets, and pack ourselves together, tightly, in the back of the wagon for our trip into town.

In the congregation hall, I felt conspicuous. God knew of my condition, of course, but I fancied everyone else in town did, too. I feared that my abdomen had begun to swell and all eyes were upon the unsightly bulge under my skirt-though surely it was too soon for that, and in any case it was doubtful that anyone could find anything amiss, given the layers of winter clothing. I pressed near my father and cowered behind a post throughout the service, wishing to be invisible, waiting for the opportunity to speak to Jonathan afterward.

As soon as Pastor Gilbert dismissed us for the day, I hurried down the stairs, not waiting for my father. I stood on the last step, searching for Jonathan. He emerged, soon enough, and made his way through the crowd toward me. Without a word, I took his hand firmly and drew him behind the staircase where we’d have more privacy.

The bold move made him nervous, and he glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone had taken notice that we’d stolen away. “Good God, Lanny, if you are thinking I should kiss you here-”

“Listen to me. I am with child,” I blurted out.

He dropped my hand, and his handsome face shifted through a series of expressions: shock, a flush of surprise, a creeping realization that brought on pallor. Although I hadn’t expected Jonathan to be happy with my news, his silence frightened me.

“Jonathan, speak to me. I do not know what to do.” I tugged at his arm.

He took a sidelong glance at me, then cleared his throat. “Dear Lanny, I am at a loss to know what to say-”

“That is not what a girl wants to hear at a time like this!” Tears strained at my eyes. “Tell me I am not alone, tell me you will not desert me. Tell me that you will help me figure out what to do next.”

He continued to behold me with great reluctance but said, stiffly, “You are not alone.”

“You cannot imagine how frightened I’ve been, confined with this secret at home, unable to speak of it with anyone. I knew I had to tell you first, Jonathan. I owed you that.” Speak, speak, I willed him; tell me that you will confess your part in my downfall to our parents and that you will do right by me. Tell me that you still love me. That you will marry me. I held my breath, tears rolling down my cheeks, almost faint with wishing to hear him speak those words.

But Jonathan could look at me no longer. His gaze fell to the floor. “Lanny, I have something I must tell you, but believe me when I say I would rather die than have to share this news with you right now.”

I felt light-headed and a chill of fear broke over me like sweat. “What could be more important than what I have just told you-”

“I’ve been engaged. It was settled this week. My father is in the hall making the announcement now, but I had to find you and tell you myself. I didn’t want you to hear from anyone else…” His words trailed off as he realized how little his courtesy meant to me now.

As we were growing up, we’d sometimes made light of the fact that Jonathan had not been betrothed. This business of betrothal was difficult in a village as small as St. Andrew. The best prospective brides and husbands were snapped up early, marriages arranged for children as young as six, so if your family hadn’t acted promptly, there might not be a good choice to be had. One would think a boy of Jonathan’s means and social stature would be an attractive candidate for any of the families in town with daughters. And he was, but a match had never been made, nor for his sisters, either. Jonathan said it was due to his mother’s social aspirations: she didn’t think any family in town would be advantageous enough for her children. They would surely do better among his father’s business associates or through her own family’s network in Boston. There had been flurries of inquiries over the years, some looking more solid than others, but they all seemed to peter out and Jonathan had approached his twentieth birthday with no bride in sight.

I felt as though my stomach had been opened with a butcher’s knife. “To whom?”

He shook his head. “Now is not the time to speak of these things. It is your condition we should be talking about-”

“Who is it? I demand to know,” I cried.

There was hesitation in his eyes. “It’s one of the McDougal girls. Evangeline.”

Even though my sisters were close to the McDougal girls, I struggled to recall which of them was Evangeline, because there was no shortage of them. The McDougals had seven daughters in all, a gaggle, all very pretty in a hardy Scots way, tall and sturdy, with ginger hair in coarse curls, and skin that freckled like copper trout in the summer. I could picture Mrs. McDougal, too, practical and good-natured, with her shrewd eye, perhaps more capable than her husband, who made a passing living as a farmer, but everyone knew it was Mrs. McDougal who made the farm turn a nice profit and had raised their standing in the town. I tried to see Jonathan with a woman like Mrs. McDougal at his side, and it made me want to fall in a heap at his feet.

“And you intend to proceed with the engagement?” I demanded.

“Lanny, I don’t know what to say… I don’t know that I cannot…” He took my hand and drew me back farther into a dusty corner. “The contract with the McDougals has been signed, the announcements made. I don’t know what my parents will make of our-situation.”

I could argue with him but knew that it would be futile. Marriage was a business arrangement, meant to enhance the prosperity of both families. An opportunity such as allegiance to a family like the St. Andrews would not just be given away, not for something as common as a pregnancy out of wedlock.

“It pains me to say this, but there would be objections to our marriage,” Jonathan said as kindly as possible. I shook my head wearily; he did not have to tell me. My father may have been respected by his neighbors for his quiet good judgment, but we McIlvraes did not have much to recommend us to prospective spouses, being poor and half the family practicing Catholics.

After a while, I asked hoarsely, “And Evangeline-is she the one after Maureen?”

“She’s the youngest,” Jonathan replied. Then, after hesitating, he added, “She is fourteen.”

The youngest-I could only picture the toddler brought by her sisters when they came to visit our house and work with Maeve and Glynnis on cross-stitch samplers. She had been a small pink-white thing, a pretty doll with gossamer gold tendrils and an unfortunate tendency to cry.

“So, the betrothal is set but the wedding date, if she is fourteen, that must be far off…”

Jonathan shook his head. “Old Charles wants us to wed this fall, if possible. By the end of the year, without fail.”

I gave voice to the obvious. “He is desperate for you to continue the family name.”

Jonathan wrapped his arm around my shoulders, holding me up, and I wished to cling to his strength and warmth forever. “Tell me, Lanny, what would you have us do? Tell me and I will do my best to make it so. Do you want me to tell my parents and ask them to release me from the marriage contract?”

A cold sadness washed over me. He said what I wanted to hear but I could tell that he was afraid of my answer. Although he had no desire to wed Evangeline, now that the inevitable had been arranged, he had reconciled himself to it. He didn’t want me to take him up on his offer. And in all likelihood it would be unsuccessful anyway: I was unacceptable. His father may have wanted an heir, but his mother would insist on an heir who had been conceived in wedlock, a boy born free of scandal. Jonathan’s parents would insist he go ahead with the marriage to Evangeline McDougal, and once word of my pregnancy got out, I would be ruined.

There was another way. Hadn’t I said as much to Sophia, those few months ago?

I squeezed Jonathan’s hand. “I could go to the midwife.”

A look of gratitude lit up his face. “If that is what you want.”

“I will-find a way to visit her as soon as possible.”

“I can help with the expense,” he said, fumbling at his pocket. He pressed a large coin into my hand. I was sickened, and resisted the urge to slap him, but I knew it was only out of anger. After staring at the coin for a second, I slipped it inside my glove.

“I am sorry,” he whispered, kissing me on the forehead.

They were calling for Jonathan, his name echoing from the cavernous congregation hall. He left to answer the summons before we were discovered together, and I crept back up the stairs to the loft so I could see what was going on.

Jonathan’s family stood in the aisle outside their box, the one closest to the pulpit as the place of honor. Charles St. Andrew was at the top of the aisle, arms raised as he made an announcement, but he looked more piqued than usual. He had been this way since the autumn, said it was exhaustion or too much wine (if anything, it would be a combination of too much wine and too much dallying with the servant girls). But it had been as though one day he suddenly turned older, grayer, and sagging of flesh. He tired easily, falling asleep in congregation as soon as Pastor Gilbert opened the Bible. He soon couldn’t be bothered to attend the town council meetings and sent Jonathan in his place. None of us guessed at the time that he could be dying. He had forged the town with his own hands; he was indestructible, the courageous frontiersman, the prescient businessman. Looking back, that was probably why he’d pressed Jonathan to marry and start producing heirs: Charles St. Andrew sensed his time was running out.

The McDougals rushed down the aisle to join him in the formal announcement, Mr. and Mrs. McDougal like a pair of harried ducks followed by their ducklings, in a row, more or less descending in age. Seven girls, some properly tied and bowed, others windblown and tousled, with a hem or lace peeking from their garments.

And, at the very end, the baby of the family, Evangeline. A lump formed in my throat at the sight of her, she was that beautiful. No sturdy farm girl, Evangeline was just beginning to cross from child to woman. She was graceful and willowy, with modestly budding breasts and hips, and a cherub’s lips. Her hair was golden still, and fell down her back in long ringlets. It was evident why Jonathan’s mother had picked Evangeline: she was an angel sent to earth, a heavenly figure worthy of her eldest son’s attentions.

I could have wept, there in the church. Instead, I bit my lip and watched as she brushed by Jonathan, giving him the faintest nod, stealing a glance up at him from under her bonnet. And he, pale-faced, nodded back. The entire congregation followed this minute exchange and understood what had transpired between the two young people in the fluttering of an eye.

“It’s about time they found a wife for ’im,” someone behind me muttered. “Now mebbe he’ll quit chasin’ after the girls like a dog in heat.”

“A scandal, I say! The girl is but a child-”

“Hush now, the difference ’tween their years is but six, and a good many husbands are older than their women by more’n that…”

“True, in a few years’ time it will make no difference, when the girl is eighteen or twenty. But fourteen! Think of our own daughter, Sara-beth; would you wish to see her married off to the St. Andrew boy?”

“Good heavens, no!”

Below, the rest of the McDougal girls formed a loose chain around Jonathan and their parents, while Evangeline stood shyly a pace behind her father. Now is no time to be coy, I thought at the time, straining to hear what was being said below. You are the one he will wed. That handsome man is to be your husband, the one who will take you to his bed every night. He is a hard man to give your heart to, and you must prove yourself up to the challenge. Go stand next to him. Eventually, with much urging from her parents, she stepped out awkwardly from behind her father, like a newborn foal trying out its legs. It wasn’t until they stood side by side that it struck me: she was still a child. He towered over her, so much larger than she was. I pictured them lying together in bed, and he looked as though he could crush her. She was small and trembled like a leaf at his slightest attention.

He took her hand and stepped closer to her. There was something gallant about the gesture, almost protective. But then Jonathan leaned over and kissed her. It was not his usual kiss, the one I had memorized, the one so powerful that you’d feel it down to your toes. But he’d signaled that he’d accepted the marriage contract by kissing her in full sight of their families and the congregation. And in front of me.

I understood Sophia’s message to me, then, from the dream. She wasn’t exhorting me to kill myself in recompense for what I had done to her. She was telling me that I had a life of disappointment before me if I continued to love Jonathan as I did, as she had. A love that is too strong can turn poisonous and bring great unhappiness. And then, what is the remedy? Can you unlearn your heart’s desire? Can you stop loving someone? Easier to drown yourself, Sophia seemed to be telling me; easier to take the lover’s leap.

All this reverberated in my mind as I watched from the balcony, tears forming, my fingers digging into the soft pine railing. I was high above the congregation floor, high enough to take the lover’s leap. But I didn’t; even then I was mindful of the baby inside. Instead, I turned and ran down the steps and away from the wrenching scene before me.

TWELVE

I rode home from church in silence in the wagon with my father. He kept an eye on me, wrapped in my cloak and scarf but shivering and with teeth chattering, even though the winter sun had come out and painted us both in sunlight. He said nothing, undoubtedly attributing my ill appearance and reticence to the news of Jonathan’s betrothal. We stopped at the tumbledown Catholic church and found my mother, sisters, and Nevin waiting in the snow, blue-lipped and chiding us for being late as they climbed into the wagon.

“Hush now, we have good reason for the delay,” my father said to them in a tone that meant he would brook no nonsense. “Jonathan’s betrothal was announced after the service today.” Considerately, there was no merrymaking among the rest of them, only glances from my sisters and a sneer of “Pity the girl, whoever she be!” from my brother.

When we arrived at our farm, Nevin unharnessed the horse while Father went to check on the cattle, and my sisters took advantage of the sunny day to see to the chickens. I followed my mother desultorily into the house. She bustled around the kitchen, getting ready to work on the evening meal, while I sat on a chair in front of a window, still in my cloak.

My mother was no fool. “Would you like a cup of tea, Lanore?” she called from the hearth.

“I do not care,” I said, careful to keep a warble of sadness out of my voice. My back to her, I listened to the clatter of a heavy pot hung on the hook over the fire and the splash of water poured from the bucket of drawn water.

“I see you are upset, Lanore. But you knew this day would come,” she said at length, firmly but kindly. “You knew one day Master Jonathan would marry, as will you. We told you having such a strong friendship with a boy was inadvisable. Now you see what we meant.”

I let a tear dribble down my face since she couldn’t see me. I felt weak, as though I’d been trampled on and battered by one of the bulls in the field. I needed to turn to someone; I knew at that moment, sitting there, that I would die if I had to keep this secret to myself any longer. The question was, who could I trust in my family?

My mother had always been kind to us children, defending us when my father’s upright sensibility got the better of him and his scolding grew too harsh. She was a woman and had been pregnant six times, with two babes buried in the churchyard; surely she would understand how I felt and would protect me.

“Mother, I have something I must tell you, but I am terrified of how you might react, you and Father. Please promise me that you will still love me after I have said what I must,” I said, my voice quaking.

I heard a muffled cry escape my mother, followed by the sound of a mixing spoon clattering to the floor, and I knew I had to say no more. For all her advice to me, for all her pleading and nagging, her worst fear had come true.

Nevin was made to hitch the horse up to the wagon again and go with my sisters to the Dales’ house on the other side of the valley, and stay there until our father fetched them. I was left alone with my parents in the darkening house, sitting on a stool in the middle of the room as my mother cried softly to herself by the fire and my father paced around me.

I’d never seen my father so enraged. His face was red and bloated, his hands white from clenching them into fists. The only thing that kept him from striking me, I believe, were the tears flowing down my face.

“How could you do it?” my father railed at me. “How could you give yourself to the St. Andrew boy? Are you no better than a common harlot? Whatever possessed you?”

“He loves me, Father-”

My words were too much provocation for my father; he lashed out and struck me hard across my cheek. Even my mother sucked in her breath in surprise. The pain radiated sharply from my jaw, but it was the rawness of his anger that stunned me.

“Is that what he told you? Are you stupid enough to believe him, Lanore?”

“You’re wrong. He really does love me-”

He drew his hand back to hit me a second time but stopped himself. “Do you not think he’s said as much to every girl who’d listen to him, to get them to give in to his desire? If his feelings for you are true, why is he betrothed to the McDougal girl?”

“I don’t know,” I gasped, wiping tears from my cheeks.

“Kieran,” my mother said sharply, “don’t be cruel.”

“It’s a hard lesson,” my father said back to her, looking over his shoulder. “The McDougals have my pity, and ’tis a shame for the wee Evangeline, but I’d not have St. Andrew for a son-in-law.”

“Jonathan is not a bad man,” I protested.

“Listen to yourself! Defending the man who made ye pregnant and hasn’t the decency to be standing here beside ye, giving your family the news!” my father bellowed. “I take it the bastard knows about your state-”

“He does.”

“And what about the captain? Do you think he had the spine to tell his father?”

“I-don’t know.”

“I doubt it,” my father said, resuming his pacing, his heels clattering loudly against the pine floorboards. “And it’s just as well. I want no part of that family. Do you hear me? No part. I’ve made my decision, Lanore: you will be sent away to have your baby. Far away.” He stared straight ahead, not even a glance in my direction. “We will send you to Boston in a few weeks, when the road is passable, to a place where you can have your child. A convent.” He looked to my mother, who stared at her hands as she nodded. “The sisters will find a home for it, a good Catholic home, to ease your mother’s heart.”

“You’re going to take my child away from me?” I started to rise from the stool but my father pushed me back down.

“Of course. You cannot bring your shame back with you to St. Andrew. I won’t have our neighbors knowing you are another of the St. Andrew boy’s conquests.”

I started crying again, violently. The baby would be all I had of Jonathan; how could I give it away?

My mother crept over to me and took my hands in hers. “You must think of your family, Lanore. Think of your sisters. Think of the shame if word were to get out in town. Who would want their sons to marry your sisters after such a disgrace?”

“I would think my failings should be no reflection on my sisters,” I said, hoarsely, but I knew the truth. The righteous townsfolk would make my sisters-and my parents-suffer for my misdeeds. I lifted my head. “So… will you not tell the captain of my condition?”

My father stopped pacing and turned to face me. “I’ll not give the old bastard the satisfaction of knowing that my daughter could not resist his son.” He shook his head. “You may think the worst of me, Lanore. I pray that I am doing the right thing by you. I only know that I must try to save you from complete ruin.”

I felt no gratitude. Selfish as I was, my first thought was not of my family and their hurt but of Jonathan. I would be forced to leave my home and I would never see Jonathan again. The thought was a blade pushed into my heart.

“Must I leave?” I asked, misery breaking my voice. “Why can’t I go to the midwife? Then I could stay. No one would know.”

My father’s cold stare wounded me more deeply than another blow. “I would know, Lanore. I would know and your mother would know. Some families may condone it but… we cannot let you. It would be a monstrous sin, even worse than the one you’ve already committed.”

So I was not only a bad daughter and a helpless puppet for Jonathan’s desires, but I had it in my heart to be a godless murderer as well. I wanted to die at that moment, but shame alone was insufficient. “I see,” I said, wiping at the cold wetness on my cheeks, determined to cry no more in front of my father.

Oh, the shame and the terror I felt that night. Today, looking back, it seems ridiculous to be so ashamed, so terrified. But then, I was just another victim of propriety, shaking and crying in my parents’ house, crushed under the weight of my father’s demands. A helpless soul about to be exiled to the cruel world. It would take many years for me to forgive myself. At the time, I thought my life was over. My father knew me for a harlot and a monster, and he was sending me away from the only thing that mattered to me. I couldn’t imagine going on.

The worst of winter passed; the short, dark days lengthening and skies that had been perpetually overcast, the color of old flannel, beginning to lighten. I wondered if I, too, was changing incrementally with the baby inside me or if any changes to my body were all in my head. After all, I’d always been slender, and in my predicament had lost my appetite. My clothing did not bind me, as I’d expected it would, but perhaps that was only guilt fanning my imagination. In odd moments, too, I wondered if Jonathan thought about me, if he knew I was being sent away and was sorry for having abandoned me. Perhaps he assumed I’d done as promised, seen the midwife and gotten purged. Perhaps he was distracted by his impending wedding. I had no way of knowing: I was no longer allowed to go to Sunday services and so my only chance to see Jonathan was taken away from me.

The days passed in dreary sameness. My father kept me employed every minute, from when we woke in the semidarkness of a new day until I laid my head on my pillow at night. Sleep brought no respite, for I frequently dreamed of Sophia: rising from the frigid Allagash, standing like a plume of smoke in the graveyard, circling my house in the darkness as a restless ghost. Perhaps her ghost found some comfort in my suffering.

I knelt at my bedside before retiring in the evening and wondered if it would be blasphemous to ask God to extricate me from this predicament. If banishment was to be my punishment for my grievous sins, oughtn’t I accept my lot rather than petition God for clemency?

My sisters grew sad as winter waned and the day of my leaving grew closer. They spent as much time as they could with me, not speaking of my departure, but sitting with me, hugging me, pressing their foreheads against mine. They worked furiously with my mother to mend my wardrobe, not wanting to send me away looking so rustic, and even made me a new cloak of last year’s spring wool.

The inevitable would not be delayed forever, and one night, when the thaw had settled on the valley in earnest, my father told me that the arrangements had been made. I would leave the next Sunday on the provisioner’s wagon, escorted by the town tutor, Titus Abercrombie. From Presque Isle, we would ride in a coach to Camden, then travel by ship to Boston. The family’s one trunk was packed with my belongings and left by the door, a paper with the name of all my contacts-ship’s captain, mother superior of the convent-sewn into the lining of a petticoat along with all the coin my family could spare. My sisters spent that night huddled against me in our wide bed, unwilling to let go of me.

“I don’t understand why Father is sending you away.”

“He wouldn’t listen, no matter how we begged.”

“We shall miss you.”

“Will we see you again? Will you come to our weddings? Will you stand beside us at our babies’ baptisms?” Their questions brought tears to my eyes, too. I kissed them gently on their foreheads and held them tightly.

“Of course you’ll see me again. I’ll only be gone a short while. No more tears, eh? So much will happen while I’m away, you won’t notice my absence at all.” They cried out in denial, promising to think of me every day. I let them cry themselves to exhaustion before lying awake the rest of the night, trying to find peace in the last few hours before dawn.

When we arrived, the drivers were hitching the horses to the wagons, now empty, having delivered loads of dry goods-milled flour, bolts of fabric, fine needles, tea-to the Watfords’ store the day before. Three large wagons, and six brawny men made the last adjustments to the harnesses and doubletrees, and watched sheepishly as my family huddled around me. My sisters and mother were pressed tight, tears streaming down their faces. My father and Nevin stood to the side, gruff and emotionless.

One of the drivers coughed, reluctant to impose but anxious to depart on schedule.

“Time to be going,” Father said. “Into the carriage with you, girls.” He waited while my mother embraced me a last time, as Nevin helped the driver load my trunk into the empty wagon bed. My father turned to me.

“This is your opportunity to redeem yourself, Lanore. God has seen fit to give you another chance, so do not be frivolous with his beneficence. Your mother and I will pray that you safely deliver your child, but do not think about refusing the sisters’ assistance in placing the baby with another family. I am ordering you to not keep the child, and if you see fit not to heed my orders, you would do just as well to not return to St. Andrew. If you do not transform yourself into a proper God-fearing Christian, I wish never to hear from you again.”

Stunned, I went to the wagon, where Titus waited for me. With a chivalrous dignity, he helped me climb onto the bench next to him. “My dear, it is my pleasure to chaperone you as far as Camden,” he said in the stiffly formal, though friendly, tone I’d heard Jonathan mock. I didn’t know Titus well as I’d never taken a class with him and only had stories from Jonathan by which to judge him. He was an older gentleman, on the delicate side, with the constitution of a scholar: bandy arms and legs, a little potbelly that had grown over the years. He’d lost most of his hair, and what was left had turned gray, leaving his bald pate with a wispy fringe in the style of Benjamin Franklin. He was one of the few men in town to wear spectacles, a spindly pair of wire frames that made his pale gray eyes seem smaller and even more watery. Titus spent the summer months in Camden tutoring his cousin’s children in Latin in exchange for his keep, since all of his students in St. Andrew worked on their family farms until school began in the fall.

As the wagon lurched to life, I cried copiously, returning my mother’s and sisters’ frantic waves through my tears.

As the town rolled by, the aching in my throat and heart intensified as I watched the only place I’d ever known shrink into the distance and said good-bye to everyone-and to the only one-I’d ever loved.

THIRTEEN

The border crossing is not far away. Although Luke hasn’t driven there in years, not since taking the family on some half-assed vacation to the Appalachian Range trail, he’s pretty sure he can still find it without looking at a map. He takes back roads, which are slower and will take longer, but he figures they’ll be less likely to run into any state troopers or other police officers; there are too few of them to watch secondary roads or bother with small towns. The highway, that’s where the trouble is, speeders and overweight long-haul truckers, the money offenses that will bring in revenue for the state.

He grips the steering wheel in the dead center and steers with one hand. His passenger stares doggedly at the road in front of them, biting her lower lip. She looks even more like a teenager, burying concern under a veil of impatience.

“So,” he says, trying to warm the air between them. “Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

“Be my guest.”

“Well, can you tell me what it feels like to be-what you are?”

“It doesn’t feel like anything special.”

“Really?”

She leans back and puts her elbow on the armrest. “I don’t feel any different, not that I can remember anyway. I don’t notice change on a day-to-day basis and not in the ways that matter. It’s not like I have superpowers or anything. I’m not a character in a comic book.” She smiles to let him know that she doesn’t think it’s a stupid question.

“That thing you did in the ER, cutting yourself? Did that hurt?”

“Not really. The pain is very minor, just feels sort of dull, maybe like how surgery would feel if you got a low dose of anesthesia. Only the person who made you like this can hurt you, can really make you feel pain. It’s been so long I’ve forgotten what pain feels like-almost.”

“A person did this to you?” Luke asks, incredulous. “How did it happen?”

“I’m getting to that,” she answers, still smiling. “Be patient.”

The revelation that this miracle is man-made almost makes Luke dizzy, like suddenly looking at a landscape from a different perspective. It seems all the more impossible-more the chance that this is a deception by a pretty and manipulative young woman.

“Anyway,” she continues, “I’m pretty much the same as I was before except I don’t really get tired. I don’t get exhausted physically. But I get emotionally tired.”

“Depressed?”

“Yeah, that’s probably what it is. There are a lot of reasons, I suppose. Mostly, it just gets to me every once in a while, the futility of my life, having no choice but to live through every day, day after day. What is the point of enduring all this time alone, I wonder, except to make me suffer, to be reminded of the bad things I’ve done or the way I might have treated people? It’s not like I can do anything about it. I can’t go back in time and undo the mistakes I’ve made.”

This is not the answer he expected. He repositions his hand on the wheel while it vibrates hard in his palm as they travel over a rough patch of macadam. “Do you want me to prescribe something for you?”

She laughs. “Antidepressants, you mean? I don’t think it would do much good.”

“Medications have no effect on you?”

“Let’s just say I’ve built up a pretty high tolerance.” She shifts away from him now, facing the window. “Obliteration is the only way out of your head, sometimes.”

“Obliteration-you mean alcohol? Drugs?”

“Can we stop talking about this?” Her voice wavers at the end.

“Sure. Are you hungry? It’s probably been a while since you’ve eaten… Want to stop for a bite? There’s a place that makes good doughnuts over near Fort Kent…”

She shakes her head noncommittally. “I’m never hungry anymore. I can go for weeks before I think about eating. Or drinking, for that matter.”

“And what about sleeping? Do you want to take a nap?”

“Don’t sleep much, either. I just forget about it. After all, the best part of sleeping is having someone next to you, isn’t it? A warm body, a heavy weight leaning against you. It’s very comforting, don’t you think? How your breathing falls into a rhythm together, gets synchronized. It’s heavenly.” Did that mean there hadn’t been a man in her bed in a while? Luke wondered. Then what of the dead man in the morgue, the mussed sheets at the cabin-what did it all mean? Or maybe she was playing him, covering up what she is really like.

“Do you miss having your wife with you in bed?” she asks, after a beat, prodding him.

Of course he did, even though his ex-wife had been a light, restless sleeper and frequently jolted him awake when she tried to get comfortable or acted out in a dream. By the same token, he loved seeing her asleep in their bed when he came home from a late evening at the hospital, her long, elegant body draped by the covers, all gently rising and falling curves. The crush of golden hair looped about her head, her mouth slightly open; there was something about seeing her, unaware, that made her beautiful to him, the memory of those intimate scenes forcing a knot to rise in his throat. That is too much to confide to a stranger, his loneliness and regret, so he says nothing.

“How long has she been gone? Your wife?” Lanny asks.

He shrugs. “Nearly a year now. She’s going to marry her childhood sweetheart. She moved back to Michigan. Took our two daughters.”

“That’s-terrible. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t waste your sympathy on me. It sounds as though you’re dealing with something much, much worse.” He has that feeling again, the same one he had outside the morgue, disorientation at the clash of her story with the world as he knows it. How could she possibly be telling the truth?

Just then, he thinks he sees the flash of a black-and-white patrol car in the rearview mirror as he makes a right turn. Had it been following them the whole time, Luke wonders, and he hadn’t noticed? Could the police be after them? The thought carries a special kind of discomfort for a man who has never been in trouble with the law.

“What is it?” Lanny asks suddenly, straightening up. “Something’s happened, I can tell by the look on your face.”

Luke keeps his eye on the rearview mirror. “Take it easy. I don’t want you to be alarmed, but I think we’re being followed.”