Picking herself up, she pulled her skirt high and ran again.
Sam was on the far side of the field, walking in the furrow behind the plow. Brown earth turned from the blade, folding back, dark and rich. Birds wheeled behind, eyes sharp for worms and grubs in the new-plowed soil. He was coming toward the farm buildings, looking directly at Sarah over the horse’s rump. He gave no sign that he saw her. Able to run no farther, she stopped and waited. She rubbed her eyes and pressed her hands to her chest to still her rapid breathing. The plow pulled the land under its blade until there was less than fifteen feet between them, and still Sam gave no indication that he was aware of her.
“Sam!” she cried, and a gull, circling overhead, cried in raucous answer. Reaching the boundary of the field, Sam heaved on the plow handles and worked the lines. The horse turned and pulled back the other way. Sarah ran after him. “Sam!” She was no more than three yards from him, but he didn’t turn or seem to hear her call. She stumbled out across the furrows to walk beside him, keeping up as best she could. “Sam, you’ve got to hear me. Please, Sam, you’ve got to talk to me. I want to come home. Please, I want to come home. I want my baby, Sam. Let me come back.”
He clucked to the horse and called out, “Steady there,” as it shied at a weed tumbling before the wind.
“Sam!” Sarah screamed. “Where’s my baby? Where’s Matthew?” He plodded on, his eyes fixed on the trees at the end of the field. “Where is he?” Frantic, she threw herself at him, her thin hands clawing, her small fists glancing harmlessly off his round chest and beefy shoulders. The stone of his face broke and he flung her off.
“You’re an unnatural woman. You’ve got no child.” He picked the reins out of the dirt and called to the horse.
Sarah lay where she had fallen, the wind blowing her hair out over the ground like winter wheat. Twice more, Sam’s plow passed her before she dragged herself to her feet and limped back to the road. Sam never looked at her.
It was nearly midday when Sarah reached the Tolstonadge home. She turned off the road and came slowly up the drive. Inside, Lizbeth was laughing and Mam was visible through the kitchen window. The porch door slammed behind her and there was a murmuring within, followed by silence. Sarah turned the knob. The door was locked.
There were no more tears; she leaned wearily against the familiar wood of home and rested. Behind the door, someone started to speak and was hushed.
“Mam?” Sarah said softly.
No answer came. Sarah turned from the thin comfort of the porch and, looking back every few yards, returned to the road.
Mam Tolstonadge overtook her before she’d gone half a mile. Pulling her to the side of the road where a thicket sheltered them from the wind, she hugged her and cried over her. “Sam’s been over,” Mam said, “and your pa says you’re an Ebbitt now if you’re anything, and we’re not to interfere by so much as talking to you. Emmanuel hasn’t the right to lose another child to me, husband or not, so I came after you.”
“My baby, Mam.”
“Sam took him this morning, long before sunup. I don’t know where he’s got him. Sam said as how he’d found you and Imogene like the letter had said. But I don’t believe he’s got the sense he was born with. That man! He sees just as far as the end of his nose and makes the rest up to suit himself.” Sarah’s knees gave way. Mam caught her to her breast and held her close. “Hon, Sam’s bound to give him back to me. Lord knows, he can’t care for him alone, nor go paying some woman. I’ll take care of him like he was my own till you get Sam turned around and go home.”
“There’s no turning him, Mam. He’s set.”
“Maybe not,” Mam said comfortingly, but above her daughter’s bent head, her eyes were bleak. “Here,” she said after a while, setting Sarah away from her. “I got ways of doing things your pa don’t know nothing about. If you need anything, you just leave a note by Mrs. Thomas’s and I’ll get it. I’m not losing another child to that man’s mulishness.” Margaret held her close again, her wide, pillowed frame supporting Sarah easily. “You’re burning up, Sare. You’d best get yourself back to the schoolteacher’s quick like a bunny and get in out of the wind. She oughtn’t have let you go out, hot as you are.”
Sarah held on to her mother, her face buried in the soft bosom. Gently, Margaret put her arms from her neck. “I’ve got to go. Walter’s home and he’ll be wondering where I’m off to and go telling his pa. I got to go now. I’ve been gone longer than’s smart already.” She kissed Sarah and left her. “You get yourself to Imogene’s now,” she called over her shoulder.
Calliope was bustling with people and wagons when Sarah reached the edge of town. A band of boys had collected in front of the Beards’ house and played at hitting a fist-sized rock with sticks, whooping and swooping at it as though they were mounted on swift ponies. A wagon lumbered down the middle of the street and another, its team unhitched, awaited repairs in front of the blacksmith’s shop.
Sarah stood by the side of the road, the weight of her outsized garments and the wind bearing her down until it seemed she would fall. She looked from the boys at their game to Imogene’s door, to the wagon driver with his children on the seat beside him. The town was too full of eyes. Losing her courage, she crawled on her hands and knees up the dirt embankment and into the underbrush until she was out of sight.
It was after sunset when she ventured from her hiding place. A cloud cover had blown in, obscuring the early stars and warming the evening. She had secreted herself less than a quarter-mile from the school buildings, and although she was stiff from the cold and confused with fever, she was there in a few minutes. Imogene had the door open and was out on the steps at the first sound of her tread.
Sarah stopped at the foot of the walk, a dark shape swaying in the last light. Imogene ran to her, arms outstretched, ready to catch her if she fell.
“Don’t touch me!” Sarah croaked. “Please, God, don’t touch me!” Her frightened eyes darted to the windows of the neighboring houses, but they were all closely draped to keep out the night air. Imogene dropped her arms as though she had been struck, and abruptly returned to the house, leaving Sarah to follow unaided.
The place was a jumble of crates and boxes. Some were half-filled, piled on top of others already sealed and labeled. A trunk took up the middle of the floor, its lid propped open. Sarah’s clothes, dry but for the seams, hung from a line stretched from the mantel to the peg by the door. The desk was covered with old letters sorted into untidy stacks.
Imogene threaded her way through the confusion and poked up the fire. The door shut softly and Imogene put the poker away. When she turned to Sarah, the anger and hurt were gone from her face. “I’ve been so worried. I woke up and you were gone.”
Sarah hadn’t come into the room, but stood with her back to the door. “You’re packing,” she said. “You’re leaving. You’re going to leave me.” With startling energy, she grabbed things from the trunk and hurled them to the floor. She pulled the boxes of letters from the desk and dumped them over. “You sneaked all the boxes in. You were getting everything ready to go when I wasn’t here.” She laughed as tears poured down her cheeks, and collapsed in the mess she had made. Imogene fell to her knees and tried to gather the young woman into her arms, but Sarah flailed at her. “You’re leaving me!” she cried. “You’re going away.”
“No, my dear. No. Not now, not ever.” Sarah wouldn’t be comforted, but continued to cry.
Imogene left her and ran into the bedroom. She jerked a hatbox from the closet shelf and reached behind it to pull out a metal box the size of a book. She ran her hand down the length of the shelf, dislodging some half-dozen boxes and a lamp chimney that shattered when it hit the floor. Finally her fingers found what they were looking for: a small key on a nail driven into the back of the closet. Haste making her fumble, she unlocked the box and hurried back into the other room. Sarah still lay amid the clothing and papers.
Imogene knelt in front of her and spilled the contents of the box onto the floor between them. Coins rolled off under the chairs. The cat, perched on the mantel, roused herself to chase one but it settled quickly and she lost interest. Bills tumbled out in a heap. Imogene picked up a fistful and pressed them into Sarah’s hand, folding the narrow fingers around them. “The money left from the sale of my house. Take it.” She pushed another handful of money into the pocket of Sarah’s coat. “Everything I have is yours.” She unpinned the silver brooch that closed the collar of her dress and pinned it on Sarah’s bodice. “Everything. I won’t ever leave you.” Sarah stopped crying, her interest caught like a child’s. “I would never hurt you,” Imogene said. “I love you. You needn’t earn it or even deserve it, it’s just there. No matter what you do, it won’t change. If I never saw you for a hundred years. It just is.”
“Like air?”
