The Immortal American

Each day Hannah woke with more color and her smile grew. I showered her with the wild flowers that were growing in the forest. I wrote her silly little notes and created stories, like I had when we were both children. I sang to her, which she might have regretted ever asking me to do, since my voice was nowhere as glorious as hers or Mrs. Jones’s.

  Mrs. Jones would spend hours with Hannah too, sewing and making lace and doing everything in her realm to make Hannah laugh.

  A week after the incident, Hannah informed me that she wanted to go shopping for fabric, and if I wouldn’t mind going with her. Two hours after she’d asked, I had the horses ready with shining coats and a clean wagon with fresh straw for my sister. I had also laid out my father’s green and black plaids from Scotland, and wildflowers mixed with peach blossoms pinched into any crevice available. Waiting for my sister on our porch, I danced an antsy waltz in a green dress, while I waited for her to emerge from the house.

  Hannah wore a dull brown gray dress she had once detested, but I wouldn’t argue with her about her choice. Not today. In time, she’d wear her pretty dresses again.

  Jonah drove all of us, including his wife and my mother, to the general store in Concord that didn’t have a great selection of fabric, but would have to do. Both Mrs. Jones and I sat next to Hannah, one of us always keeping our hands on her while the cart jostled in time with the horses trot, and bounced even more from the holes in the highway dug from the heavy spring showers.

  Hannah closed her eyes and leaned her head against Mrs. Jones’s small shoulder. Spying across my sister, I cracked a smile at Mrs. Jones. She grinned back, yet I knew her smile, like my own, like my mother’s and Jonah’s too was a facial exercise to force our faces to show exactly what we dared not: impotent desperation. Around my sister I reached out for Mrs. Jones’s hand. We clutched onto each other through my sister, holding our breath.

  My mother hadn’t stopped crying for a week, but now tried everything in her power to stop her tears on this trip, resulting in her trembling shoulders, quivering chin, and clutching at her handkerchief. She covered her emotions with a feigned sneeze or cough, but Hannah wasn’t fooled. She pointedly looked at my mother and asked if she was coming down with a cold. Midway to Concord, my mother nodded and said she thought she was coming down with something.