~*~
I woke with a start. I didn’t scream or holler. I clawed the air hoping to catch hold of some apparition within my dream that I forgot immediately upon awakening.
The sun was bleeding orange and crimson in the dark purple sky. Hannah was already gone.
My sister always woke before me, getting to the morning meal before I was even out of bed. Usually I would read late into the night, sometimes into the witching hours, which would make the morning a drudgery for me. But last night I’d just curled my toes around my sister’s, like we usually did, and let anxiety-filled sleep wash over me.
I rinsed my face with cold lavender water that lay in our shared basin on our side table. I wondered just when my sister had had the time to fill the bowl with so much perfumed liquid. Then I saw my sister’s elegant handwriting on the parchment I’d brought to bed last night.
3 April in ye Lord’s year 1775, midnight
My dearest Sissy,
I am so very sorry to have been secretive with you. Nothing pains me more than to keep something from you, but my Mark thought it best to not tell until it was all done and said. I’m running away with him to elope. Mark has made all the plans, and my part was just to meet him, which I’ve asked him to find me at the heart-tree.
I know you and I, dear sister, had made plans to marry together, but I couldn’t wait. Besides, although I am now keeping a secret from you, I’ve known for the last month you’ve been keeping a secret from me—something that would postpone you from getting married, perhaps?
I’ll come back to you a married woman, darling-girl. But I’ll come back to you. I promise.
Your ever loving sissy,
Hannah Beatrice Buccluech, soon to be Mrs. Hannah Kimball
I shook as I finished reading. Did she really run away? How could she leave me?
In one move I flung my night chemise off. Binding myself in my stay took a few seconds longer than I’d intended, but soon enough I was in my breeches and work shirt. I fisted my sister’s lovely written note and scrambled for my mother’s room, but she wasn’t there either.
I raced down the stairs to the kitchen. It was as silent as a grave. Where was my mother? If my sister wasn’t starting breakfast, than my mother or Mrs. Jones was usually busy humming and stirring something.
As if she had read my thoughts, in walked Mrs. Jones with Jonah. They burst through the kitchen door laughing, but their laughter subsided the minute they saw me.
“What is it?” Jonah asked.
Should I tell them? Eloping, although my idealistic sister would think it romantic, was something that many in my hometown would frown upon, scrutinize about, and the gossip mill of Concord could ostracize my sister for her act.
Jonah reached for my arm, the one that held my sister’s note now crumpled in my fist. He was the closest man I’d ever had to a brother. He was a good, cherished friend as well.
Timorously I gave him the wrinkled note. His wife, he’d told me, was only learning to read now that she lived with us. Bethany looked to Jonah for answers to my silence.
“Lord,” Jonah whispered.
My mother rushed through the kitchen doorway, a basket full of eggs in one hand and our one goat’s milk in a pail in the other.
“Violet, go get that ingrate sister of yours awake. I had to do all her chores this cold morning. A frost on everything, including my hands now. How ever did I manage without you girls to retrieve the milk from that sour old goat? And that rooster has got to go. Why, he tried to chase me down, black scoundrel, he is.”
After she placed the pail and basket on the counter space provided by a large blue pantry, she finally turned to me.
“What is it, darling-girl? Are you not all the way awake yourself?”
“Mama . . .” I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t say another word.
My mother’s smile disappeared as Jonah handed her the note. He rasped to his wife what the note indicated as my mother read. She grasped at her heart as she finished the letter, seized her chest as if the emotional pain were physical, was a lynch tightening around her chest. Her child had run away, perhaps the pain was physical.
Tears sprang to my eyes. I had been so obsessed with my grief at losing Jacque that I hadn’t noticed my sister as of late, wasn’t able to tell that she would rather give up her family and run to her mystery man than stay one more minute where she was being ignored. I had given up Jacque, love, for her! I had sacrificed, but it wasn’t enough or mayhap it came too late. I’d been paying no heed to her, in a sense turning my back on her. I was a traitor in so many ways, and she must have sensed it. The strange line about postponing my marriage was answer enough that I hadn’t been giving her the regard due her.
If I’d been a better sister than I would have protected her more, told her the dangers of eloping with a man she hardly knew. Their correspondence was every week, but still, what could she learn of a man through his letters? He could have lied about every detail, and she would have never known the difference. Why hadn’t I talked to her more? Why hadn’t I shared more of the world with her?
Because I’d been thinking too much of myself and my heartache as of late. Because, quite simply, I had betrayed every single soul I knew when I allowed myself to fall in love with Jacque.
Even admitting the plain truth to myself as I did just then, I also yearned for Jacque. How I wished I could lean on him at that very moment, have him help me figure out what to do, how to find my sister.
“Mrs. Buccleuch,” Jonah interrupted my shame, “shall I go to Lexington and fetch Mr. Adams? He could help us.”
My mother shook her head. “We can’t risk having people know.”
I blinked through the biting sand in my eyes. “He—he’s going to be my husband, Mother. He’s basically been a member of this family since I was eight years old. He wouldn’t tell a soul.”
My mother began to slump toward one of the chairs surrounding a long wooden table that I’d had every meal at since I could remember. Jonah helped her to a seat. My mother’s eyes became glazed and she sat mute, looking out the thick glass of our eastern window, as if searching for Hannah. I guessed she was too overwhelmed to talk anymore, to think anymore. Her daughter had run away.
When Jonah straightened, I reached for his shoulder. “Yes, please go get Mathew. He could help. Do you think we should go to Boston to hunt her down? She doesn’t state that that’s where she’s getting eloped, but I’d imagine her lieutenant can’t leave Boston, even if to get married.”
Jonah nodded, but it was his wife that spoke first. “My old master knows the admiral of the Navy’s boats docked in Boston. I met the man on several occasions. I’m sure he’d remember me. I could ask him to help.”
A tear of mine strayed from my eye as I realized that Mrs. Jones was not only offering her help, but to call upon a man she’d served when she had been a slave must have been a terrifying thought, but she easily volunteered. I knew that my sister had made her mark on Mrs. Jones. My sister was impossible not to love, not to adore. Hannah had already made two dresses for Mrs. Jones, and the first time Mrs. Jones had tried on one of the dresses she clutched a fist at her mouth and started to huff. My sister had raced to her, declaring that if Mrs. Jones didn’t like it she could make another she’d favor more. After a few moments of gasping for air, tears sprang out of Mrs. Jones eyes. She had never been allowed to wear anything remotely like what my sister had made for her. My sister had rolled her eyes. “Why, this is just your cooking gown, Mrs. Jones. This isn’t near the glamour I plan to prepare for you.”
After that Mrs. Jones started to sing while she made us maple cakes.
And now Mrs. Jones was proffering so much. I numbly nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Jones. Let us hope that Hannah comes back before we have to play that card.”
Jonah left after that for Lexington, and Mrs. Jones busied herself in the kitchen, while my mother kept watch out the window. It had been at least three ye
ars since I’d been very much help in the kitchen but I tried to assist Mrs. Jones. After breaking a bowl, she took my hands in hers.
“Honey.” She’d never called me something so sweet, and it was as comforting as my mother had been when I was a child in need of a kiss and a cleaning after I skinned my knees. “You need to go outside. Go make those horses do some running. Plow the field again. Just do something with your arms and your legs.”
I nodded and obeyed.
Slipping into my boots, I decided to run through the woods, north of the farm. It was still early morning, and indeed there had been a frost. The few sprigs of green grass that shot up around the porch of the house were laced in white. I looked out to the copse. The trees looked a dull gray. As uninviting as the forest appeared, I knew I would burn off my nervous energy by running.
I jogged past the black field almost ready to be planted, wondering what life would be like now that my sister had run away. Would she ever come back to me? Would her husband let her? What if I was all alone in this world now?
Of course I had Mathew, my soon-to-be husband, whom I never gave enough credit. I had taken him for granted time and time again. I’d betrayed him by loving another. No matter how I had ended things with Jacque, I’d let myself fall in love with someone other than my fiancé. Mathew was a good man, but I’d always thought of him more as an end to a means. I knew I had to get married. There were no other choices, no other options. I was a woman who couldn’t be seen forever in breeches, plowing her field. I was already risking so much because I didn’t know how to fit into my station, whatever that was.
I decided, as I began to run in earnest, hardly paying attention to where I was heading, that from there on out, I’d love Mathew. He deserved my heart. He was a very good man, very intelligent, very giving.
But I needed my sister back. I needed Hannah.
She gave my life purpose, my lovely sister.
It was then that I realized I had started to run on the trail that led to the forked walnut tree, the heart-tree as my sister and I had called it when we discovered it as children. She somehow trotted through the forest in the dead of night to find her love.
I stopped myself suddenly, almost tripping in my haste to halt. From my periphery I thought I saw a gem as I ran by it, but now standing in front of it I recognized my sister’s blue ribbon that she always wore with one of her favorite white dresses. It shone in the early morning light, making it stand out and the background appear dreary, dead. The ribbon went around her waist and she had a smaller matching one that looped through her hair. The ribbon was the exact same color as her eyes.
Picking up the limp satin, I noticed the chill on it. I threaded the fabric between my fingers until I came to a blotch in the material. A dark mark smeared my sister’s ribbon.
Oh God.
I looked up, expecting an answer, but found only the cold forest. I searched the floor of the woods. Indeed, I found the track of my sister’s silly shoes, because of their little heel that would make for walking through the copse difficult. I wondered if she’d taken a torch or lamp, for her tiny heel prints were strong and never veered off the trail. But soon enough I couldn’t see any more prints. I looked up and around, searching, hoping. What darkened my sister’s ribbon?
I kept walking toward the heart-tree, the tree of my secret meetings with Jacque, where I fell in love for the first time in my life, where my sister was going to start a new life. As I walked, I searched the ground for her tracks. Then I saw beside the trail the grass had been broken. It was a large area of grass that lay down and the frost had grown on the grass in an odd way. Did a moose rest here? I looked up. Then I saw one of my sister’s dainty shoes. Empty of its owner, lying on its side.
My heart ascended to my throat as I raced to the shoe and picked it up. It was one of her best shoes, but still the heel was worn and painted over by my sister in hopes no one would know that I couldn’t afford to buy her newer ones. I searched the ground for its mate and bent down to crawl on the frozen earth. What felt like an hour passed, but I finally found her other shoe.
As soon as I found the missing shoe I looked up at the tree, the loving tree. I saw her white naked legs first.
Chapter Eleven: So Cruel