Swinging the heavy bag before her with two hands, Flora caught sight of Mr. Linden at one of the front windows, scowling. He would not want it getting around town that his daughter was accepting charity.
“Thank you, Mr. Franklin,” Flora said. “Thank you very much.”
She stalked up the lane past the house, disgusted by this factory- owning father. Ellen, once, had hissed into Flora’s ear, furious. She’d overheard a conversation in which Mr. Linden told Josephine she was paying the piper for her husband’s mistake.
“He sees fit to let her get by,” Ellen muttered, “since he is giving so much to George…”
Remembering this now, heading for the barn, Flora wondered if Ellen’s dislike of George had begun only after Simeon’s death, when the contrast between son and daughters had been laid bare. Or if it were a part of a disliking of men in general.
Simeon, of course, and Mr. Dougan excepted…
“Shush,” she commanded the chickens, who had burst into violent squawks.
—
The following Sunday, after church, Josephine and Maud walked home together. Josephine paused in the outer vestibule, gathering herself for the ordeal of passing the boarders, who occupied the parlour. She fussed at her gloves, watching as Maud entered the house and strode down the hallway, pausing to wave at the boarders in their armchairs, reading books, perusing the newspapers, waiting for their dinner to be served.
Young people learn to accept change so easily.
She felt tears pricking her eyes.
I can’t keep telling myself that it is not fair. I have to accept, as the minister said. Be grateful for what I have. She had not recovered from the smallest of moments, grown larger in her mind as she walked up the street, when a circle of friends outside the church had taken just an instant too long to admit her, as if without Simeon she were invisible.
She slid quietly into the house, brushing at her skirt. Smell of roast chicken and apple pie. Chinking of porcelain plates being set down. She forced herself to stop in the parlour door. Peered in, made a tiny wave. The boarders looked up. Mr. Sprague placed a finger, ostentatiously, on the passage of the newspaper he was reading, his eyes clouded with some salacious story.
“Did you enjoy your services?” asked Josephine.
Mrs. Beaman went to the Catholic church. Miss Harvey and Mr. Sprague were Baptists. She did not know if Mr. Tuck attended church.
“It was lovely, yes, Mrs. Galloway.”
“Very nice, Mrs. Galloway. And you?”
They, too, like the people outside the church, made a community, like a family, and their politeness to her was another exclusion; she was their landlady, and their money gave them the privilege of coming in at the front door, using their own keys. Of spreading their belongings in the parlour. Of going up the front stairs, not bothering to tiptoe if they came in at a late hour. Mrs. Beaman slept in the marital bed. The children’s rooms were littered with the possessions of strangers. The women used the large bathroom with its hot and cold running water.
They cannot see it as my house. Mine and Simeon’s.
She went down the hall towards the kitchen. The incident at the church had quickened her grief, making her steps waver, her hand seek the wall for support. There was no room in her mind to make decisions, to consider the needs of simple living. She was, like Simeon, suspended in waters that rendered her helpless, floating without volition. She felt a kind of shame, and a rage, that she could not share her grief. It was neither wanted nor comprehensible, and no one could understand its weight, so heavy that she did not wish to rise from bed, knowing that she must take it up.
Nor could anyone understand that all the endeavours of life—polishing brass, mending, peeling apples, sewing hems—seemed now as strands in a web of deceit, netted in as fine and elaborate a mesh as possible, all for the purpose of obscuring death’s dominion.
Stop. Breathe. Look at one thing. One small thing.
She leaned against the wall for a moment, watching closely as she turned the ring on her finger. Straightening with a long breath, she opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. The dog scrambled to his feet in one convulsive motion of gladness.
—
Winter crept, seeped, silenced. Skies were grey for a week. Mornings, the grass bore a blanket of frost.
Josephine appeared in the kitchen door.
“I couldn’t sleep again last night,” she said. “Could I have a cup of tea?”
She wore a long muslin nightgown, her hair loosely braided.
Flora and Ellen were drowsy in the warmth of the wood stove, the steamy, sweet air. Their desire to gather Josephine into their contentment quivered, an arrow held to string. Ellen wiped floury hands, reached for the kettle. Flora lifted cup and saucer from a shelf. Unnecessarily, they made the tea together, Ellen pouring, Flora holding.
“Warm milk didn’t help, then?” Ellen said, handing Josephine the cup of tea.
Josephine shook her head.
“I lay awake ever so long.”
She lifted the saucer so that the steam caressed her cheek. Flora and Ellen exchanged a knowing look as she left the room and trod heavily up the stairs.
“Oh, they loved each other, they did,” Ellen murmured. She returned to the table, where she set hands back on the pillow of dough, pulling it forward, then folding it back into itself. Her face was warped, mouth awry, eyes yearning. “You never saw it, Flora. The way she could be. Laughing, like. Coming in all blowed about by the wind and never a care.”
—
Flora tipped the hen gently so that its head lay on the block. She brought the hatchet down on the cord-thin neck, saw the head drop into a bucket, golden eye still fixed on her. It was a Saturday and she could hear the tap tap of a hammer. She set the carcass upside down in another bucket and went into the barn. Jasper Tuck had
