As always, Johann was the first to speak. "She would have loved this night."
There was a clatter of agreement, and then the horde fell silent again. Waiting, always waiting for Ian to say something, as if by words he could make the horror less painful, spin the reality into a grand, elaborate fiction.
He slowly opened his eyes and was struck again by the beauty of the night, struck again by loneliness. In the two days that she had been gone, he'd spent hours upon hours sitting alone, trying to find the root of his grief. He kept thinking that soon-any second-he would hit rock bottom and it would change his life. He would either come out on the other side or he would sink into the darkness and never emerge again.
But there was no end in sight. The more he looked, the deeper he fell. Until now, finally, unless he thought of Selena directly, he felt nothing at all. Even drinking didn't help this time, and he'd only tried the one time. A half bottle of scotch-a drop by his former standards-and he'd curled into a ball in the shadowy corner of his room and wept. Tears that cleansed nothing, eased nothing.
Maeve sat down beside him, knees creaking. Her hair brushed along his cheek, brought with it the scent of lavender. She pressed her chin into the vee between her bent knees and sighed audibly.
Johann plopped down on Ian's other side, while the queen and Lara and Andrew sat down behind them.
"She was only here for a few months," the queen said, and he could hear the strain in her voice. How hard she was looking for solace.
"Ah," Johann said, "but what a few months it was."
Was.
Such a simple little word, nothing really, and yet it struck Ian like a slap. Was. Loved. They were speaking of her as if she were dead, grieving for her as if she
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were dead. Two short days and already she was slipping into the lexicon of a memory.
"She made me think about life again," Johann said with a sad laugh. "And just when I was enjoying my impending death."
"She was never very practical," the queen said. "You are dying."
Lara tugged on Ian's sleeve and whispered, "She's not dead."
"She is to us," Andrew said.
Lara tugged harder. "No."
Ian turned to the child, surprised at the ferocity of her tone. "Lara?"
Lara swallowed. "This . .. now . . . We would make Miss Selena so sad, she would cry."
"Lara's right," Johann said softly. "Selena believed so much in all of us. It would kill her to know how we've fallen apart."
For a few minutes, no one said anything. Each of them stared out at the night.
And suddenly Ian discovered something, a gift that Selena had left behind. She was there, deep down inside, in the pit of his loneliness and his grief and his sorrow, she was there, sharing it with him, smiling up at him.
"We have to go on," Ian said quietly, and in his mind he heard her voice, echoing his, he felt the heat of her smile in the last rays of the setting sun. "As much as it hurts-and it's going to hurt for a long, long time-we have to go on. If we don't, we'll forget her. Day by day, one selfish word at a time, we'll go back to our own solitary lives, and one day we'll wake up and no one will remember Selena. There will be nothing in us to mark her time here. But if we listen to the part of her she's left in our hearts, she'll never be gone."
Maeve got to her feet and held out her hands. One by one, wordlessly, they joined in a circle. Ian was the last to stand, the last to reach out. He felt a split second's
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hesitation to touch them, but the fear was overshadowed by his greater fear of facing this loss alone, of facing every moment in his life alone from here on out.
He looked around, at the sad faces of his housemates, and felt a stunning gratitude for them. Maeve was right; they needed to touch each other now, to connect and share and admit the grief. He'd tried it alone, long ago when his father died, and he knew from experience that grief ignored could eat a man up from the inside and leave nothing behind.
Slowly, squeezing his eyes shut, he reached out his hands. Maeve took one; Lara took the other.
Images hit Ian hard, so hard he staggered back. For a second, he was caught up in the swirling pain of their emotions. A headache started at the base of his skull, radiated to his eyes.
You will teach yourself not to hear the voices. ...
Selena's words came back to him. He concentrated on other things: the feel of the wind, the taste of the sea in the air, the quiet rustling of the leaves all around. Gradually the pounding images faded, the voices merged into a dull, droning murmur not unlike the sound of the ocean at low tide.
He could almost hear Selena's voice in the gentle ebb and flow of their breathing. It is a beginning, Ian.
Great, bloated gray clouds rolled across the sky, cast lengthening shadows across the wagon. The road up ahead, pockmarked by muddy puddles, twisted around a bank of shivering red maple trees and disappeared.
Selena sat with her elbows braced on her knees, and her cheek cradled in one damp palm. An open umbrella was cocked above her head. The sky was ominously low, so close she thought she could reach up and trace a finger along its swollen underbelly. Only moments ago the rainy drizzle had stopped. She could still hear the rhythmic plop-plop of water down the sides of the wagon. Rivulets slid down the star points of her black
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umbrella and splashed on her gingham skirt. The fabric stuck in huge, moist patches along her thighs.
She missed the air at the coast already, and it had only been three days since she left.
There, the air was sharp and diamond-clear and smelled of salt and earth and sea. Here, in the wild inlands of Maine, the air was humid and heavy, as colorless and bland as a glass of watered milk. No breeze whispered through the endless acres of trees, and sunlight only broke through in patches of dazzling gold. And even when it rained, it was hot.
They turned the corner, and for the first time in three days, they were out of the forest. Green pastures rolled out away from them in several directions. Trees existed only in carefully planned pockets amidst the grass.
She cast a sideways glance at Elliot. He sat hunched foreward, the reins slack through his big, hairy fingers, his wet hat drawn low on his forehead.
She wanted to say something to him, but as usual, could think of nothing worth saying. She couldn't be cruel enough to speak to him of Lethe House or her family there, and without that, she had nothing at all to talk about. She'd tried to talk to him about poetry and literature, but he'd stopped that with a curt declaration, I don't know how to read.
After that, she hadn't known what to say, so she said nothing, kept her feelings padlocked inside her. Just sat there, mile after mile, unsmiling, watching the scenery change.
"That there's our community," Elliot said.
Selena turned, followed the invisible line of his pointing finger. Far away, nestled deep amid the rolling fields of green and gold, lay a huddled group of clapboard buildings, barely distinguishable from the gray sky. They looked different somehow from the other towns they'd passed through.
All white, she realized suddenly. The buildings were all white. Not some, not most. All.
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"Is that not odd?" she asked him. "All of the buildings are the same color. In the last town-"
He turned to her, looked at her for the first time in three days. "You really don't remember, do you?"
She wasn't certain how to answer. Perhaps she'd misunderstood. "I told you-'
"I know what you told me. I just thought ..." His massive shoulders shrugged. He turned his gaze back to the road. "I thought you might be lying."
"Oh, no. I do not lie."
He nodded, but didn't look at her this time.
She stared at the town, watching with increasing curiosity as the houses got bigger and bigger. What kind of house would they live in? What kind of people would be their friends and neighbors? "The town is well taken care of."
He jerked his hat down on his head suddenly,
in a nervous gesture. "It's not really a town, Agnes. Not in the ordinary sense."
She waited for him to say more, to explain, but he said nothing. Nerves jangled in the pit of her stomach, and for no reason that she could fathom, she started to talk. "I cannot imagine living with other people so closely. Lethe House is so isolated. I shall miss the beach. How far are our neighbors?"
It was a second before he answered, but in that second, she knew that something was wrong. "I haven't made myself clear, Agnes. We are members of a religious group known as the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. Believers, for short. Although, in the world, they call us Shakers."
He was talking so quickly, using so many words she didn't know. "I misunderstand."
"Whoa, girl." He drew back on the reins and brought the wagon to a halt. Ahead, the sleepy little village awaited them, long rows of white buildings on either side of the road, the buildings perfectly alike, perfectly spaced. It was gray and cloudy, but even at this distance,
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Selena could see that there were no flowers growing along the fence lines, no gardens in front of the houses.
"There is much you will need to relearn about our ways, but I haven't time to teach you now." His gaze skittered to hers, then darted away. "I suppose I should have been teaching as we drove."
"You can tell me all of it once we get home."
"No. We aren't allowed to speak on such an intimate level. It's contrary to order."
She frowned. "I misunderstand. We are married, you and I, are we not?"
"Not to the Believers. There is no such thing as marriage here. There is only the community. We live as one big family, the men separated from the women. You and I came to the community married, but we don't live as man and wife here. We're just Brother Elliot and Sister Agnes."
Selena got a sick, sinking feeling in her stomach.
"You'd best get in the back of the wagon now," Elliot said, getting down and offering her his hand.
"In the back?"
"It isn't permitted for a woman and man to sit so closely. I ... I'll tell them you rode in the back the whole way."
Selena gripped her umbrella in cold fingers and placed her other hand in Elliot's big, callused palm. Lifting her skirts, she climbed down the squeaky step and plopped onto the wet road. Her boots sank into the oozing mud.
She looked up at Elliot, trying to think of what to say now, what to do. But no words came.
Elliot squeezed her hand. "I'll always be here for you, Agnes. Always." He made the vow in a quiet, solemn voice, then led her back to the tail of the wagon and helped her climb in. She settled on the cold, wet planks and drew her legs in tight to her chest.
Elliot started to turn away.
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She reached out for him, grabbed him by the wrist. "Elliot?"
"Yes?"
"Was ... was I happy here?"
The question seemed to surprise him. For a second, he looked frightened, but of what, she couldn't imagine. He waited so long to answer that she thought he wasn't going to. Then he yanked down his hat again, shielding his eyes. "I reckon."
"What does that mean, 'I reckon'?"
His voice fell to a throaty whisper. "It means I hope you were, Agnes."
With that, he turned away from her and shambled back to the front of the wagon, climbing slowly aboard. He sat on the plank seat with a grunt and a thump. His massive shoulders rounded, his head tilted so far forward that she could see the untanned strip of neck beneath his cropped gray hair.
Without seeing his face, she knew what he would look like right now, defeated and alone and lonely, and she wondered why a return home would affect him so.
It means I hope you were, Agnes.
She didn't doubt his words, but she had enough brains to know that there was a hidden meaning to the sentence. It meant he didn't know if she'd been happy; it meant that perhaps she hadn't been, and perhaps he'd known it.
As she stared at his broad back and hunched shoulders, she thought about what he'd said about Shakers, about them.
We don't live as man and wife here.
Fear settled in the pit of her stomach, cold and hard and sharp. She realized suddenly that this man, Elliot, this husband whom she'd known for three days and spoken to for less than an hour, was the only face she'd recognize in this new world. And it was contrary to order for them to speak.
She was alone now, more alone than she could ever
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imagine being. She knew one person in the whole wide world, and he wouldn't speak to her.
She reached for her only belonging, the doll named Sarah, and drew the pretend baby into her lap. She put her nose in the doll's hair and drew a deep breath, but all she smelled was yarn and wood and wet linen. There was no lingering scent of Lethe House or Lara in the doll. It was just an inanimate object with one button eye and threadbare lips.
Chapter Twenty-four
They approached the village slowly. To their right, a fruit orchard fanned out from the road, defined on all sides by a pristine white picket fence. Apple, peach, pear, and cherry trees marched in precise lines through the undulating fields.
When they reached the center of the town, people began appearing, walking toward the wagon. Smiling, waving, murmuring greetings in quiet, controlled voices.
They were all dressed alike. Women in plain, ankle-length pleated dresses in dark, somber colors, with large shoulder capes that fastened at the throat, their upswept hair covered by starched, white net caps or bonnets. Men in dark pants, linen shirts that closed at the throat, and button-up vests.
Elliot brought the wagon to a stop and got out. The crowd enclosed him. He shook hands with several of the men, then walked back to Selena and offered her his hand.
She squeezed the doll tighter to her chest and stared down at this man, this husband, and felt wretchedly out of place. She shouldn't, she knew. She was supposed to be home. All around her, people were waving and smiling and offering her a welcome. But it didn't feel like home. Home was an isolated mansion on the edge of
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the sea with dark, primeval forests that hemmed you in. Home was louder than this place, wilder, more free.
Swallowing hard, she took Elliot's hand and climbed down from the wagon, dangling the doll in her other hand.
"Welcome home," he said in a voice so soft that only she could hear. "I missed you."
Then he swiftly withdrew his hand and plunged it back in his pocket.
The dark-clad crowd buzzed in around her, talking in subdued voices.
A tall, elderly woman pushed through the horde. When she saw Selena, her narrow, wrinkled face broke into a bright smile. "You are home."
Selena looked at Elliot quickly. She didn't know what to say, what to do. She saw the welcome in the old woman's eyes and knew it was a true welcome, but she couldn't feel it.
"Sister Agnes was injured, Eldress Beatrice," Elliot said. "She has no memory of us."
The crowd fell silent. Selena felt their eyes on her.
It was a moment before Beatrice spoke, and when she did, her voice was whispery and soft. "No wonder you were gone so long. Someone will show you around and get you reacquainted. You will want to change from your worldly clothes and cover your hair as a proper sister should. You may rest for the remainder of this day, then begin your rotation in the laundry tomorrow morning." She smiled at Selena and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. "I'm sure it will come back to you in no time. You have lived with us for many, many years."
"Her injury is extensive," Elliot said. "She will perhaps need help from the women."
The eldress gave her another quick smile. "Our Sister Agnes always did need extra help." She turned. "Sister Lucinda. Show Sister Agnes to the dwelling house and get her settled in."
A small, birdlike woman with jet black hair and twin-
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kling blue eyes slipped through the crowd. She was dressed in
the same fashion as the other women, but her gown was a velvety shade of blue that matched her eyes. "Hello, Sister Agnes," she said, offering Selena a genuine smile. "I've missed you."
Another welcome that should have warmed Selena and didn't. She did her best to smile. "Hello ... Sister
Lucinda."
The woman winked and slipped her arm through Selena's, drawing her close. "Call me Lucy," she whispered, leading Selena through the crowd.
Selena passed Elliot, and he didn't say a word, didn't reach out to touch her. She got a quick look at the taut, controlled expression on his face, and wondered what he was so angry about, but she didn't have a chance to ask. Lucy maneuvered them at a rapid pace through the people, through a white picket fence and up a well-tended path toward a huge, white house.
The dwelling sat on a little knoll, hemmed in by old, broad-leafed trees. Precisely spaced windows, framed by dark green shutters, marched in two even rows across the first and second floors. Two front doors, accessed by two separate sets of steps, were in the middle
of the building.
"The men use the east door," Lucy said brightly. "And the women use the west."
Before Selena could remark on the oddity of this, Lucy was pulling her up the west steps. Lucy twisted the doorknob and opened the door to reveal a spacious, wooden-floored foyer. The entryway led into two separate, side-by-side hallways that ran the length of the house. At the end of the corridor an old grandfather clock stood guard between two identical open doors. Through the doors, Selena could see identical rooms, filled with wooden benches.
"Women on the west," Lucy said again, leading Selena through the left door, down the hallway, and up the stairs-also divided by a spindly railing.
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At the top of the stairs, the split hallway continued, leading to four equally spaced rooms, two on the right, two on the left. Lucy guided Selena toward the first of these doors and led her through.
It was a big, bright, airy room, with a wooden floor that reflected the sunlight. Selena liked it immediately. Warm, creamy walls framed the room, unadorned by pictures or paintings. A thin strip of wood ran in a straight line at eye level along each wall. The plank was set with wooden spikes, and from these evenly spaced spikes hung mops, brooms, and two elegantly simple ladder-back chairs. One whole wall was exquisite built-in drawers. In the center of the room sat a small cast-iron woodstove, its pipe running straight to the ceiling, then across the room in a perpendicular line. Narrow single beds occupied each corner. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a commode with a water pitcher and basin. Four neatly folded hand towels hung on hooks beside it.
Not a thing was out of place. Not a thing was unnecessary or ornamental, and yet the craftsmanship of the woodwork made it seem elaborate.
"This is our retiring room," Lucy said. "You and I share it with Sister Bertha and Sister Theresa."
Lucy glanced quickly back at the door, then darted over and closed it. "Is it true?" she whispered.