Yes, it was a noisy night. But these aren’t man-made noises. They are the sweet sounds of nature’s creatures going about their private business in the dark: earning a living, calling out to lovers and friends, singing to the moon, escaping a pursuer, surviving to fish another night along the creek or dig for grubs among my peppermint and lemon balm. Individual armadillos and tree frogs and poor-wills and coyotes may perish, but in all its vast and wonderful variety, life goes on.
And on and on. As it had for the family in the photographs on my kitchen table, who had spent their lives in the house where I now spend my working days. As it would, I passionately hoped, for a young boy with a brain tumor who—if life was fair—should be worried about nothing more important than getting an A in math and protecting his concertmaster chair from his talented girlfriend. Who, no matter how cheerful he might pretend to be, must be deeply worried about the fearful possibility of dying before he could graduate high school. So, too, his family and friends. One little friend in particular, Caitie, who was already far too well acquainted with death.
I thought about these things as the moon rose higher and the cicadas and the crickets and the coyotes and the poor-will continued to sing. I thought about houses that held the impressions of lives—happy, sad, long, short—that had been lived within their walls. About the bridges that the past sometimes builds to a distant future, embodied in photographs and pieces of antique lace and babies’ dresses. And about eyes that seemed to follow me, to watch me, out of the past.
No wonder, then, that I dreamed about her again. About the woman in the pale taffy-colored wedding dress, who (in my dream) stepped out of the photograph and came toward me, holding out her hands, fixing me with those remarkable eyes that wouldn’t let me go.
Who seemed to want, desperately, to tell me something, but couldn’t speak, couldn’t find the words.
Chapter Twelve
Pecan Springs, Texas
October 1888
Annie had been apprehensive about her first encounter with Adam’s wife after her return from Galveston. Deeply conscious of what she and Adam had done, she felt as if her skin were as transparent as glass, and that Delia would see right through her to the truth of what had happened.
But Annie needn’t have worried. Their meeting didn’t occur until some two weeks after Delia’s return home—on the day after Annie saw the mustached stranger in the brown frock coat climbing the porch steps next door. Delia breezed into the workroom with her usual haughty carelessness, moved a chair closer to Annie’s, and began to chatter gaily about the glamorous parties she had attended in Galveston, about the cost of the two new dresses her sister’s dressmaker (“the very best in the city”) had made for her, the musical entertainments at the famed Beach Hotel, and the men who had asked her to dance at every party. Annie thought that there was something oddly high-pitched and brittle about her chatter, and she seemed more nervous than usual.
“Really, Annie, you should go to Galveston,” Delia advised at the end of a long tale about a friend who had found an exciting new beau at a luncheon party at the Beach Hotel. “You’d be sure to snag a husband there, and one with a better future ahead of him than anyone here in Pecan Springs.” She leaned forward, her expression avid. “Why, there are bankers and lawyers and doctors there, and ever so many of them! My sister Clarissa says that the men outnumber the women almost three to one, and I do believe it. Wherever I went, I found several of them just as eager as they could be for conversation with a woman they find attractive.”
“It sounds like everyone has a great deal of leisure time,” Annie said noncommittally. She understood that the society women might not have much to do at home, but didn’t the men have to work?
“Well, of course,” Delia said, as if it were a silly observation, and hurried on. “One of those gentlemen—a Mr. Simpson—even followed me here, to Pecan Springs. Why, he actually came to call!” She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Of course, it was very silly of him. He came bringing a box of candy, but I didn’t give him the time of day. I sent him on his way immediately. The poor fellow didn’t even have a chance to set foot in the house.” She leaned forward and added, in a confiding voice, “I just wanted you to know, in case you might have seen the gentleman at my front door and thought I might be entertaining him.”
Well, that explains it, Annie thought, remembering the stranger she’d seen. She wondered why Delia was going to such lengths to make a point of how peremptorily she had treated the man—and why she cared about her neighbor’s opinion anyway. But Annie wasn’t going to flatter Delia by asking for details, even though the report contradicted what she had seen. The man had set foot in the house, although
