“Don’t Josephine know that he pays you?”
“Doesn’t. Doesn’t Josephine know.”
“Doesn’t Josephine…”
“Yes, but I pretend that it’s just a little bit. Pocket change. I told her it’s fun for me. Fun to work on the little houses.”
Flora knelt and slid the sock back beneath the floorboard. She wished, suddenly, that Enid were younger, a little girl she could tuck into bed, a child who would do everything she asked her to do, who would believe anything she told her.
She climbed into bed and pulled up the blanket. She folded her hands on her chest. Enid, too, settled beneath her covers. They listened to the crickets.
“He were just a little boy,” Enid murmured, sleepily. She yawned, rolled over and burrowed into her pillow. “One time there was a screaming in the night and I thought it was a woman. He come into my bed and we pulled the covers over our heads. He said it was a bobcat.”
Flora waited, but heard only Enid’s slow, deepening breathing.
“We pretended he was my little brother,” Enid murmured.
“Did he do that often? Come under the covers?”
“Only that one time.” Her voice grew faint with sleep. “I wasn’t supposed to talk to him.”
—
Josephine was wakened by a sharp cry. A fox. She lay, listening, but the sound did not come again. It was too early to get up. Even the dawn chorus had not yet started, only the first tentative chirps. She lay in the hard, narrow bed watching as the wallpaper, the dresses and petticoats hanging on hooks and the pine chest of drawers gained colour in the rising light. She pondered her life. It drained away, the status she had enjoyed—daughter of a factory owner, wife of a sea captain. Now she was becoming—who? what? The matron of a boarding house. Would she grow old in this house? Would she and Ellen become like an old married couple, growing closer and closer as their roles merged?
She heard the sound again. Human, not fox. An anguished, half-strangled shriek.
She threw off the covers, ran into the hall. The cries increased in volume, coming from Flora’s room. She rushed in, found the sisters on Enid’s bed, Flora holding Enid in her arms, rocking her.
“Shh, Enid, Enid, it’s only a dream.”
Josephine slid onto the bed, stroked Enid’s head.
“Night terrors, they are so awful. You’re awake now, Enid, aren’t you? You’re here with me and Flora.”
“Fred,” Enid choked. She drew a long, shuddering breath. “Freddie.” She sat, covering her face with her hands, rocking forward and back. Wailed. “Can’t stop it, can’t stop it.”
Flora took Enid’s hands and drew them from her face. “Look at me, Enid. Look. You are in our bedroom. Josephine is here with us.”
Enid’s eyes were stricken.
“I see it over and over and over and over. The same—”
“Tell us,” Flora said, softly. She stroked her sister’s cheek. “It will make it stop if you tell us.”
“We made a swing, in the barn. It was a rope, to haul things up into the loft. We swang on it. He were sleeping in the barn, they didn’t want him in the house. I found kittens, I knew Mallory would send us to drown them so I got up early and I took one out to him.”
Hands, gripping her mouth. She began to rock and moan.
“Tell me. Tell me.”
“He hanged hisself. He hanged hisself on our swing. Oh, Flora. His feet were…I run in and told them.”
“Oh. Oh, Enid.”
“I seen him carry Fred off. Fred under one arm. Shovel in the other hand. Doreen and me, we watched from the door. He said he’d kill me and her if we ever told. It happened the day before you come, Flora.”
“Oh, Enid.”
“I should’ve gotten up earlier. Oh, Flora, if only I’d gotten up earlier.”
—
Later that day, Josephine walked to Harland’s store and told him the story.
“And this happened the day before Flora arrived. It accounts for the man’s violence.”
He sat at his desk, hands in fists on either side of the blotter. He watched her, barely blinking, his mouth drawn down at the corners. When she had finished, and fallen silent, he dropped his forehead in his hands.
Josephine heard the voices of his daughter and a customer. She saw the pages of a ledger, opened to today’s date.
He drew a long breath and sat up.
“I will contact the Pictou constabulary,” he said. “If I need to go to Nova Scotia, I will.” His voice was grim and she imagined that this time he would brook no objections from Permelia.
His face hardened and he did not see her, even though he stared straight into her eyes.
—
The next morning, Josephine slid her legs over the side of the bed and stood, all in one motion. She stretched her arms over her head.
For the first time, she did not think immediately upon waking about Simeon’s absence, but rather about Enid and the boy in Nova Scotia. The words themselves had been so difficult. They did not relate to one another. Boy. Rope. Hanging.
She tried to imagine what could make a child want to die. We look forward. Like reading a book, we want to know what comes next. Fred, she thought, knew the answer—what came next was only despair, and he could no longer face it. There was no one he could turn to for help, and never would be. Like a kitten drowned in a pillowcase, he knew he would vanish without anyone noticing his absence.
Josephine slid open a drawer and studied its contents.
No child should ever have such feelings.
The boy had not a single person to love him save Enid, whose friendship had been forbidden. His life was of value simply to service the man: milking, weeding, lugging, even—Josephine closed her eyes and drew a breath—fulfilling his sexual urges.
I am choosing my clothing, she thought, suddenly realizing that this was a step forward. She had not taken the wrinkled bombazine mourning dress from its hook—a
