Flora came up close to his bench. She wiped a hand on her skirt and reached out to touch the bright wood, reminding herself that this was not a dollhouse but a work of art—to be displayed in parlours, set in windows, lit at night and admired by passersby.
“One day, I would like to have one of your houses,” she said.
“Well. You will, then. Strikes me that you’re a girl that makes things happen. Like you do around here.” He grinned. His look was sly, containing a hidden, alternate conversation, not with her, she sensed, but with what she looked like. What people called her beauty. He was missing a wolf tooth. He slid his tongue up to cover the gap. His eyes were the colour of silty water.
“When my parents died, I learned how to make do,” Flora said.
He set down the hammer. His eyes bored into hers and she looked down, suddenly wishing she had not come here. He reminded her of men she and Enid had encountered in the village, after their parents died. Leaning against cottage walls. Coming up lanes. Their eyes crafty, their hands like spades.
“My parents died,” he said. “What do you think of that? You and me are alike. How old were you?”
“About seven.”
He was silent. She looked up; he was studying her. Her heart skipped a beat and she turned to leave, but his next words arrested her.
“That’s how old I was. Seven years old. My mother and father were drowned.”
“Oh. That’s terrible.”
“Ferry. The river ferry. Bashed in by a floating log.”
“I’m very sorry,” she said.
He returned to the meticulous, almost mincing tap tap of the hammer. She felt that he had left an opportunity for her kindness. That she should ask him if he had a brother or a sister and why he had come to this town. She hesitated, not wanting to be the subject of his scrutiny.
He looked down at the side of the little house, held in the vise. He ran his finger along the row of nail heads. His eyebrows raised and vanished under hair that had escaped his cloth cap.
“You could help if you want,” he remarked, offhand. “You got them little fingers, you could set glass into the windowpanes.”
She waved away the suggestion with a blood-speckled hand.
“I…I’ll try, but I probably can’t. I got too much to do.”
He shrugged, resumed hammering. Tap tap tap. Gentle. Like tiptoeing instead of striding.
She went back outside, relieved, conflicted.
Josephine faithfully gave her the quarterly stipend sent by the government. Other than that, Flora had only free room and board. Nothing had been said about letting her go or about her position in the household. She was pleased to find that Mrs. Beaman and Miss Harvey and Mr. Sprague often came to her for advice or information; they even complained, which she did not mind, for she was in a position to reassure, to make improvements. Mr. Tuck, now, was asking for her help, even though he usually did not need anything. He brought energy into the house. She felt it emanating from his shoulders when she set the teapot on the table. She felt it breathing from the sheets of his bed, when she stripped it.
She buried the chicken’s head. The air smelled of soil chilled by morning frosts, dead grass, blood. Lifting the carcass from the bucket, she walked back towards the house carrying it by cold claws. She flung her thoughts forward only as far as was necessary to keep her momentum, as she had when Mr. Fairweather showed her how to ride a bicycle. She saw a rolling succession of chores: Strip, gut, then drop the chicken in boiling water, add dried rosemary from the bunch; bake the squash; bring up potatoes from the root cellar. Mend Mrs. Beaman’s pillow. Put oatmeal and candles on the shopping list. And hovering, always, was a tiny image of Enid—a river, an elm tree, a farm.
A carriage was coming up the lane. Mr. Fairweather held the reins in one hand, the other lifted to greet her.
“Flora,” he called. “Wait, please.”
He climbed down and clipped a line to the horse’s bridle, looping it around the hitching post. She approached and stood holding the headless chicken, watching, curious, as he pulled an envelope from his pocket.
“I have heard from Miss Rye at last. I was forced, finally, to have my lawyer contact her, threatening consequences if she did not investigate, and so she did.”
His fingers trembled, slightly, as if with excitement, and he had some difficulty extricating the letter from the envelope.
“We have, finally, some news about your sister.”
The house, suddenly, seemed like a painting—trees flat against a sullen sky, she herself a girl in a book about Canada, standing by a wood-shingled house before a man in a long frock coat and a beaver hat. She clutched her waist with her free hand. Her belly cramped with a swoop of fear.
“Miss Rye confirms the date that an Enid Salford arrived in Halifax. She said only that Enid went to some trusted friend of hers who found a situation and sent her off on a train. She did not name the trusted friend, nor tell me anything about the ‘situation,’ so I will have to ask my Halifax acquaintances if they have any ideas who that friend might have been. Less than I hoped, Flora, but we can surmise that she is in Nova Scotia.”
Nova Scotia, Flora thought, stunned. The sky itself seemed to come closer, now that she knew for sure that her sister was alive and living in the next province.
He tapped her on the shoulder with the letter, smiling. “I’ll let you know when I hear anything. You’ll say hello to Mrs. Galloway for me, won’t you?”
She watched his carriage retreat down the lane beneath the
