Текст книги "Beauty"

Автор книги: Robin McKinley

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

It wasn’t until we were inside the house and in the light that something that had been bothering me obscurely struck me with full force. I looked at Hope, who was still standing near me: “You’ve shrunk,” I squeaked. I was looking down at her, and seven months ago I had looked up, several inches. Hope laughed; “My dear, you’ve grown!” Grace, die taller of the two, came to stand next to me; I was even an inch or so taller than she. “There! We always told you you’d grow; you were just too impatient, and wouldn’t believe us,” she said, smiling.

“Seven inches in seven months isn’t bad,” said Ger. “I hope this trend will not continue too much longer.”

“Oh, stop it, spoilsport,” Hope said. “And look at the roses in your cheeks!” she said to me. “Enchantments agree with you. I’ve never seen you look prettier.”

I grinned. “That’s not saying much, little sister.”

“Now, children,” said Grace mock-seriously. “No fighting. Let’s eat.”

“Do we have to wait till after dinner to hear your story?” said Father plaintively. “At least tell us: Are you home for good and ever now?”

“No,” I said, as gently as I could. “I’m afraid not. It’s just a visit.” In the joy of coming home the real reason for my visit had been brushed aside and buried; now I recalled it, I cast a quick glance at Grace, who was smiling at me. “I’ll tell you all about it after dinner,” I said. “I’m hungry.... You could tell me about what’s been happening here since I’ve been gone. It seems like years, I half-expect to see the babies all grown up,”

“Not yet,” said Hope, rescuing Mercy’s cup just before she knocked it on the floor.

It had been a good year for them, happy—except for the loss of the youngest daughter—and certainly prosperous. Ger’s reputation had spread till he had more work than he could do. “I could just about keep abreast of it—I hate turning people away, particularly if they’ve come from a distance—but then, a month ago, Ferdy was called away. He’d become nearly indispensable to me in those six months; but an uncle in Goose Landing was badly hurt by a falling log, and they needed somebody to help look after the farm; their children are all very young. So Ferdy went, and I’m afraid we won’t be getting him back. I have Melinda’s oldest boy working for me now; he’s a little young, but he’s doing well. But it’ll take time for him to learn everything he needs—I need him—to know.”

“And what’s suffering for it worst is the extra room we’re trying to build on the house,” said Father. “We’d hoped to have it finished by winter, but we won’t now,” Father’s carpentry business had improved to the point where he could specialize in what he could build at home, in the shop. “I’m too old to crawl around on other people’s roofs,” he said, “and I like working at home. Beds and trunks and cradles, and chairs and tables, and the occasional wagon or cart, mostly. And some repairs. I seem to make a terrible lot of wheels. I get a little fancy work now and then—that’s what I like best—scrollwork on a desk, carved legs on a table.”

“Nothing much new from us,” said Hope. “I run after the babies, and Grace runs after me. This year’s cider turned out really well—even better than Melinda’s, if you can believe it—we’ll all have some, after dinner.”

“That’s where the new mare gets her name, as you might expect,” said Ger. “We were all feeling so smug about it, and then this horse comes along—we bought her from Dick Johnson, you remember him?—with a coat of just the right colour.”

“We couldn’t resist,” said Hope.

“Yes,” said Ger. “And I was very unfairly accused of buying her for her colour.” Hope laughed. “You may not have noticed,” he continued, “but we have a cow byre now too, built onto the other wall of the stable. Rosie has the rabbits and chickens to keep her company. Odysseus doesn’t seem to like cows for some reason, so we had to build her her own stable.”

“You’re wealthy,” I said admiringly.

“You haven’t seen the new carpet in the parlour yet, either,” added Grace.

“Not so wealthy as you,” said Hope, “judging from that wonderful dress you’re wearing.” I hadn’t bothered to change that morning, at the castle, into riding clothes; the dress I was wearing was rich and heavy, and quite ridiculous for traveling. “Come on now,” Hope continued, “we’re all finished eating. What’s happened to you?’

“The Beast is kind to you, just as he promised?” said Father.

“Yes, Papa,” I said, and paused. Pictures of the gardens, the castle, the incredible library, and the Beast himself crowded into my mind, “I don’t know where to begin.”

“Begin in the middle and work outwards,” said Hope. “Don’t be stuffy.”

“All right,” I said. So I told them about Lydia and Bessie, and the candles that lit themselves, and the way my room was always down a short hallway and around a corner from wherever I was as soon as I felt lost. I told them about how big and grand the castle was, and the enormous table where I ate dinner every night, where I could have anything I pleased by asking for it, and the way the serving trays jostled one another in their enthusiasm to decant their contents onto my plate. I told them about the little friendly birds at my bird-feeder. I told them about the huge library, with more books in it than I could ever begin to read.

“I didn’t think there were that many books in the world,” Grace said drily. I smiled and shrugged. I found that I couldn’t quite say to them: “Well, you see, most of the books don’t exist yet.” I found that there was quite a lot that I skipped over because I didn’t feel that I could explain it.

My greatest difficulty was the Beast himself. I couldn’t leave him out of my narrative, yet I had tremendous trouble bringing him into it; and when I did mention him I found myself pleading in his defense. The ogre my father had met was the Beast they all believed in; and while they were relieved to hear that he was “good” to me I didn’t seem to be able to tell them how good and kind he really was. I stumbled over explanations of how fond I had come to be of him, and what a good friend I found him. It seemed disloyal, somehow. It was he who had cruelly taken me away from my family in the first place; how could they or I forgive him that? How could I make excuses? I couldn’t tell them that I—loved him. This thought came to me with an unpleasant jolt. Loved him?

I fell silent and looked at the fire. I was holding a cup of warm spiced cider; they were right, it was very good. It was strange to cope with dishes that Say where you set them, and didn’t jump up and hurry over to you if you beckoned. And the food was very plain, but I didn’t mind that; what I did mind was a sense chat I no longer belonged here, in this warm golden kitchen. You’re only just home, I told myself. It’s been a long time; of course you’ve accustomed yourself to a different life. You’ve had to. Relax.

“How long can you stay?” asked Hope. “You said that you have to go back.”

I nodded, The warmth of the kitchen seemed to retreat from me, leave me isolated. I looked around at the faces of my family. “Yes. I’m here for—for just a week.”

“A week?” Father said. “Only a week? That’s all?”

“Surely you’ll come back again?” said Grace.

I was a traitor, questioned pitilessly by a beloved enemy. I twisted my hands in my lap; the cider tasted bitter. “Well—no,” I said, and my words dropped like knives in the silence. There was a sharp edge to the firelight I hadn’t noticed before, staining the corners with blood. “I—I promised I wouldn’t ask to leave again.” What can I tell them? I thought desperately. The Beast had said, “I cannot live without you.” They wouldn’t understand that I must go back.

“Forever?” said Hope, and her voice disappeared on the last syllable.

“Why did he let you go at all?” Father said angrily.

This wasn’t the time to tell diem. “Just to—well, to let you know I’m all right,” I said lamely, “so you wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore.”

“Worry—but we love you,” he said. “We can’t help worrying if we never see you.”

“Well—the dreams you have about me”—I faltered—“they’re true. They help, don’t they?”

“How do you know about that?” demanded Father.

“The Beast sends them. He told me.”

“He sends dreams—very kind of him, I’m sure—bur he keeps you. What kind of a bargain is that? Oh, that I had never seen his castle, nor accepted his lying hospitality!”

“Oh, please, Father,” I said, “don’t be angry. You don’t understand. I miss you all, of course, but I don’t mind that much anymore—I mean, I’d rather be here, of course, but ...” I couldn’t think how to go on.

“Understand? Understand what?”

“The Beast is lonely too,” I said desperately, and there was an aghast silence.

“You can have—sympathy—for this monster, after what he’s done to you?” said Father at last. I nodded unhappily, and there was more astonished silence.

“AH right,” said Ger, in the tone of one trying very hard to be reasonable. “I don’t understand what’s going on, but we know this much: There’s magic mixed up in all of this—these invisible servants you talk about, and so on—and none of us can understand magic, I guess what you’re trying to tell us now, Beauty, is that the Beast you know is not the same monster that your father met. Is that right?”

I smiled with an effort. “It will do.” And I added with unforced gratitude: “Thanks.”

Richard and Mercy had fallen asleep in their chairs, and Grace and Hope picked them up to carry them to bed. “It’s a funny thing,” said Hope, brushing a curl off Mercy’s forehead. “She said her first sentence just this morning, at breakfast. She said: ‘When is Beauty coming home?’” And a tear crept down Hope’s cheek.

We resettled ourselves in the parlour while the babies were put to bed; none of the rest of us said anything till Grace and Hope returned, bringing with them a jug of cider and a plate of gingerbread. We all had our glasses refilled; but then the silence seeped back and filled the room so closely that it was difficult to see through, like flame. Hope stirred restlessly and sighed, then reached over to pluck at a fold of my long skirt and rub it between her fingers. “You’re dressed like a queen,” she said. “I suppose you have wardrobes full of clothing like this?”

“Oh, more or less,” I said, embarrassed, although there was nothing in Hope’s face but gentle curiosity; and it was slowly being borne in on me that my stories about the castle and my life there had little reality for my family. They listened with interest to what I told—or

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tried to tell—them, but it was for ray sake, not for the sake of the tale. I could not say if this was my fault or theirs, or the fault of the worlds we lived in. The only thing they had understood was that I would be leaving them again, to return to a fantastic destiny; and I began to see how horrible this must appear to them. And I also began to sense that there was little I could do to help them.

I smiled at Hope, as she looked pleadingly at me, and in answer to her look I said: “A lot of them are too fancy for me, and I won’t wear them. I wish I’d thought to bring you some of them; they’d look lovely on you two.” I thought of the silvery, gauzy dress I had refused to wear a few weeks ago.

My commonplace words cleared the air, “From the weight of your saddle-bags I thought you brought half the castle with you,” Ger said cheerfully.

“I—what?” I said. “Where are they?” Ger pointed to the table in a corner of the room, and I walked over to them. There was certainly more in them than I had put there. I threw back the flap of the first, and a dull gold brocade with tiny rubies sewed on it looked up at me. “Thank you, Beast,” I said under my breath; and I had a sudden, dizzy, involuntary glimpse of him leaning over the far-seeing glass in the dark room in the castle. It was night; the curtains behind him where he stood were open, and I could see a few stars. There was a fire burning in the fireplace, turning the chestnut-coloured velvet he wore to a ruddier hue. Then the vision faded. I had both hands laid flat on the table in front of me, and I shook my head to clear it. “Are you all right?” said Father, “Yes, of course,” I said. Apparently my new ways of seeing rested uneasily in my old world. Then I knew where I was again, and I was looking at golden brocade.

I pulled it out. It was a ball-dress, with satin ribbons woven into the bodice, and rubies alternating with pearls. “This must be yours,” I said, and tossed it at Grace. She reached a hand out for it only at the last minute, and yards and yards of skirt cascaded across her shoulders and lap. There were shoes that matched the dress, call ruby-studded combs for her hair, and ropes of rubies to wind around her throat.

Underneath all this was a jade-green dress, hemmed with emeralds, for Hope; then two long embroidered cloaks and hoods, and soft leather gloves lined with white fur. Underneath these were fine clothes for Father and Ger; and in a little soft satchel at the back where I almost overlooked it were dresses and caps for the babies, little pearl and sapphire pins, and tiny blankets of the finest wool.

The parlour glittered like a king’s treasure house. I had taken more out of that saddle-bag than could ever have fit into it in the first place; and there was the second saddle-bag, still full, that I had not yet touched. Hope, with a string of emeralds around her neck and a green shawl over one arm, the silken fringe trailing to her feet, picked up one of the little dresses I had laid on the table, and sighed. “I’ve wanted to be able to dress the twins in something really fine; but it’s impractical when they grow so fast—and these are far more beautiful than I was dreaming of. I don’t know, indeed, what we’re going to do with all this—but I love just looking at it. Thank you, Beauty dear,” and she kissed me.

“I want no presents from the Beast,” said Father. “Is he trying to buy us off? Let him take his rich gifts back, and leave us our girl.”

“Please, Father,” I said. “Think of them as presents from me. I’d like you to keep them, and think of me.” Father dropped his eyes, and reluctantly put out a hand and stroked the fur collar of his new jacket.

Ger sighed. “I still don’t understand—and I don’t like not understanding. It makes me feel like a child again, with my mother telling me bogey stones. But I will do as you say—and, since it pleases you—” He picked up his cap, and twirled it on one finger. “Your Beast must be very fond of you, to be so kind to your family.” Father snorted, but said nothing, “Thank you both,” Ger said, and he kissed me too. “I’ve always wondered what h would be like to dress like a lord; here’s my opportunity,” He put the hat on backwards, and pulled it low on his forehead so that the feather tickled his chin. “I feel different already,” he said, blowing at the feather, and Hope laughed. “You look different,”

“Yes, I will cause quite a stir wearing this hat and white satin breeches to shoe horses. It’s a pity I didn’t ask for a new pair of bellows to be thrown in with this deal. The price of the feather alone would probably buy them.” He put the hat on straight, and Hope picked up his cloak and put it around his shoulders, and arranged the golden chain and clasps. Ger stood still while she fussed over him, with a bit of a smile pulling at his mouth. We looked at him as Hope stepped back. He still looked like Ger as we all knew him, but he was different too; you could imagine this Ger commanding armies. With his heavy hair pushed back under the cap, you noticed the height and breadth of his forehead, and the straight proud lines of his eyebrows and mouth.

“I feel silly,” he said. “Don’t stare at me so”; and he took the cap off, and the cloak, and dwindled again to Hope’s husband and the finest blacksmith in a half dozen towns.

“You looked like a lord,” said Hope, smiling.

“Fond wife,” he replied, putting an arm around her waist.

Grace had left her chair, the gold dress heaped over the back of it and spilling across the seat, to light several candles and lamps to augment the firelight, “If we’re going to be grand, we should see what we’re doing,” she said, and as she passed me, she kissed me and whispered in my ear: “Thank you, dear heart. I don’t care that I can’t wear it; I shall look at it every night, and think of you, I’ll even try and think kindly of your dreadful Beast.” I smiled.

Father stood up and smiled at me too, but it was a sad smile. “Very well, my dear, you win the day—as you seem always to do. As Ger says, I don’t understand; but there’s magic at work, so—well, I’ll do what you say, and try to be glad of what we have—of what you tell us. We shan’t let you out of our sight for the week, you know.”

I nodded. “I hope not.”

We all went to bed shortly after this. I realized that I still hadn’t told Grace about Robbie. “Tomorrow,” I thought. “Tonight would have been too soon, too much.

But I mustn’t put it off anymore.” My attic looked just as I remembered it, only somewhat cleaner; Grace kept it much better than I ever had. The sheets on the bed were fresh and clean, not stiff and musty with six months’ neglect, and the bed was made up very neatly, which was not at all how I had left it. I sac on the trunk, under the window, and stared out across the meadow and into the forest.

My thoughts went back to the evening just past, of the scene around the parlour fire, when I had tried to plead for my Beast against my family’s animosity. I knew now what it was that had happened—I couldn’t tell them that here, at home with them again, I had learned what I had successfully ignored these last weeks at the castle; that I had come to love him. They were no less dear to me, but he was dearer yet. I thought of the enchantment that I didn’t understand, of the puzzle Lydia and Bessie expected me to fit together; but suddenly these things mattered very little. I did not need to push them out of my mind, as I had been doing; they simply dropped into insignificance.

And in the meantime I was with my family for a week.

The house fell silent; but the quiet here was simpler than the kind of quiet I had lived in for the last six months. I stared at shadows that moved only with the moon, and my ears strained after echoes that weren’t there. I crept downstairs again and went out to the stable, where I found Greatheart flirting delicately with the new mare, who wasn’t quite ignoring him, “I’m not sure a foal next summer is on the schedule,” I told him. He rubbed his head against me. “But you’re not listening,”

I added. I took his bridle down from its hook and he raised his head at once and watched me intently. I freed the red rose that hung from the strap across the forehead, and replaced the bridle, and the horse relaxed. “Good night, little one,” I said, slapping his massive hindquarters, and made my way softly back to the house. I took a deep bowl from the kitchen, filled it with water, and tiptoed back upstairs. I put rose and bowl on the window sill; and suddenly I realized that I was exhausted. I pulled my clothes off, and fell asleep as soon as I lay down.

5

Two days passed as quickly as a sigh. On the third day Greatheart and Cider were discovered to have escaped the stable, and were grazing, side by side, by the enchanted stream. Greatheart, to everyone’s surprise, was inclined to get a little huffy and snorty when Ger went to catch him, and wouldn’t let him near the mare, who stood still, ears forward, and awaited developments. I had been watching the show from the kitchen door, chewing lazily on a piece of bread and Grace’s blackberry jelly, but then I went across to join them. “Your overgrown lapdog has some temperament after all,” said Ger with a rueful smile.

“I’ll try,” I said. “We could be all day chasing them.

“Here, you great idiot,” I continued, walking towards the horse, who stood in front of his mare, watching my approach, “you’ve had your fun, a proper night of it I daresay. Now you can behave. Duty calls.” I stopped a few feet away, and held my hand out, palm up, with the last of the bread and jelly. “I’ll put you in with the cow if you’re not good,” I added. We held each other’s eyes for a moment, then Greatheart dropped his head with a sigh, and ambled over to me, and put his nose in my hand. “Cart-horse,” I said affectionately, and slid the halter I had thoughtfully brought with me over his head. Greatheart only flicked an ear as Ger slid a rope around the docile Cider’s neck, and we returned them to the stable, Greatheart investigating all my pockets for more bread. “This should be quite a foal,” said Ger. “I hope it takes after its daddy.”

“Maybe she’ll follow the family precedent and have twins,” I suggested. The father of the twins gave me a pained look, and we went in to breakfast.

I still hadn’t told Grace about Robbie; I dreaded it, knowing the heartache she had already been through, and while I knew that what I had seen in the Beast’s glass was true, it was so little, so very little to ruin Grace’s precarious peace of mind. And since die Beast was persona non grata at home anyway, I disliked the prospect of explaining the source of my information; my family would not have the faith I did in his veracity, and the possibility of truth in what I had seen would cause an uproar in several different directions at once. So I continued to put it off, and continued to scold myself feebly for so doing.

But that afternoon the minister came to call, Hope and Grace and I were all in the kitchen, and Grace asked us with a look to stay. I had not seen Pat Lawrey since my return, and I found myself estimating his worth with the cold calculation Ger used on a fresh load of pig iron, as he smiled and shook my hand and told me how well I was looking and how glad everyone was to see me. He was a nice young man, to be sure, I thought, but not much else. Grace can’t marry him, I thought with a touch of fear; no wonder she still remembers Robbie. Tonight, I thought. No more delays.

Melinda’s son John, the boy who worked for Ger, had spread the word of my return the day after my unexpected arrival, and the house since then had seen a steady stream of visitors, some of them old friends like Melinda and her large family, and some merely acquaintances curious to see the prodigal. All wanted to know what life in the city was like, and I put most of their questions off, and lied uncomfortably when I had to. Everyone thought it was very odd that I had turned up so suddenly, like a mushroom, or a changeling in a cradle.

Melinda had come the very first day; John had gone home for his dinner at noon, instead of eating with us, so he could start broadcasting the news as soon as possible. Melinda came back with him in the afternoon, and kissed me and shook me by the shoulders and told me I looked marvelous and how I’d grown! Her questions were the hardest to turn aside; she wanted very much to know why she hadn’t seen me coming through town—everything that happened in Blue Hill happened in front of the Griffin—and what my aunt meant by letting me come alone, and whether there really had been no warning. She obviously thought I was being treated very shabbily, and only her good manners prevented her from saying so outright. I tried to explain that I’d left the party I traveled with for only the last few miles, but she refused to be mollified. Then she was shocked that I could stay only a week—“After six, seven months, and a six weeks’ journey to come here at all? The woman’s mad. When are you coming again?”

“I don’t know,” I said unhappily.

“You don’t—” she started, saw the expression on my face, and stopped abruptly. “Well, I’ll say no more. These are family matters, and I’ve no call to be meddling. There’s more here than you care to tell me, and that’s as it should be; I’m no kin of yours. But I’m fond of you, child, so I hope you’ll excuse me; I’d have liked to have seen more of you, but you’re here for so little I’ll have to leave you to your family.”

I was glad to see her, but her common sense and my inability to answer her straightforward questions distressed me, and I was relieved when she took her leave. The only bright spot was watching her and Father together: They spoke for a few minutes apart from the rest of us, after she had already bid us good-bye. They were smiling at each other in a foolish sort of way that they obviously weren’t aware of; and I caught Hope watching them narrowly. She caught my eye, smiled just enough for me to recognize it as a smile, and winked slowly. We turned our backs on them and returned to the kitchen, where Grace had gone already, soberly discussing the dyeing of yarn.

John also took home the tale of the wonderful new bellows—brass-bound!—that I had brought from the city, which served to soften the opinions of people like his mother toward my evil-minded aunt. Ger had found the bellows hung mysteriously in the place of the old ones, which had disappeared, a scant few minutes before John had arrived that first morning after I had come home, and had just the presence of mind to explain where they were from. John swore they were more than twice as easy to pump as the old ones, for all they were so much bigger.

The smooth white road that had brought me to my own back door had disappeared as though it had never been. That morning, while Ger was discovering his new equipment, I was walking along the edge of the forest. I could find Greatheart’s hoofprints, where he had jumped over the thorny hedge that grew irregularly it the forest’s border, but behind it, nothing. Nothing but rocks and leaves and dirt and pine needles: no road, no hoofprints, no sign even of arty large animal forcing its way through the underbrush.

I was still staring at Greatheart’s hoofprints as though they were runes when the first visitors arrived with work for Ger and Father, and discovered the lost Iamb returned to the fold. The house was full of people for that day, and the day after, and the day after; I’d forgotten there were so many people in Blue Hill. But my mysterious arrival piqued their curiosity, and many of the men still remembered Greatheart’s strength, and came out to wish us well, and to drink some of our cider.

That third day, Molly arrived shortly before Mr. Lawrey left, ostensibly to deliver a big jar of Melinda’s famous pickles, which she remembered I was fond of, but actually to ask me again about the city. “She must keep you locked in the attic,” Molly said impulsively. “You haven’t seen anything.”

“Well, mostly I study,” I said apologetically.

Molly shook her head in wonder; and then some men who had come to consult with Father and Ger were brought in for tea. It wasn’t till after dinner that evening, the dishes washed and the candles lit, that we were alone, and had time to talk. I had been seeing Robbie in my mind all afternoon, since the minister had left: his thin face lit up by the old happy-go-lucky smile I remembered from the city, when he was making the final preparations for the journey that would make him a fortune and win him a wife.

We were sitting around the parlour fire, busy with handwork, just as I remembered from the days before Father’s fateful journey. I was mending harness; everyone had protested against my working, when I was only a few days home, but I had insisted; and it felt good to be doing this homely work again, although my fingers were slower than they once had been. Everything seemed very much as I remembered it: I derived much comfort from looking around me and reiterating this to myself. I wanted to take as much of this contentment and security back with me as I could.

Hope finished a seam on the dress she was making, and dragged me away from my bits of leather to use me as a dressmaker’s dummy, pinning folds of green cotton around me. “This isn’t going to help you much,” I said, holding my arms out awkwardly as she pinned a swath across my chest. “I’m the wrong shape.” Hope smiled, and spoke through a mouthful of pins. “No you’re not,” she said. “All I have to do is shorten the hem. Aren’t there any mirrors in that grand castle of yours? I don’t understand how you could help noticing something....”

“She’s never noticed anything but books and horses since she was a baby,” said Grace, golden head bowed over a shirt she was making for Richard.

“An ugly baby,” I said.

“Let’s not start that again,” said Hope. “Don’t fidget, I’ll be finished sooner, you silly thing, if you’ll stand still.”

“The pins stick me,” I complained.

“They wouldn’t, if you would stand still,” Hope said inexorably. “But didn’t you grow out of your clothes, and have to have new ones?”

“Well, no,” I said. “Lydia and Bessie always tend to my wardrobe, and one way or another whatever they put on me fits.”

“Whew,” said Hope. “I wish the twins’ clothes would do that.”

“Mmm,” said Grace, biting off a thread.

“But that even you shouldn’t notice anything” said Hope, kneeling to fold up the hem.

“Well—the day after I came home I looked at Great-heart’s saddle,” I offered, trying to be helpful, “I remember that the stirrup leathers were replaced the first day I was there. I’m using them three holes longer now than I did then. Funny though, I don’t at all remember moving them.”

“What did I tell you?” said Grace, starting on another seam, “Only Beauty would think to measure herself by the length of her stirrups,” and everybody laughed. “Oh dear,” said Hope. “I’ve lost a pin. Richard’s foot will find it tomorrow. All right, foolish girl, you can take it off now,”

“How?” I said plaintively.

After J had been extricated I sat down on the edge of the stone hearth, where I had set my cup of cider, near Grace’s knee. I hated to break the comfortable silence. “I—there’s another reason I came home, just now,” I said; and everyone stopped whatever they were doing and looked at me. The silence was splintered, not just by my words. I looked down into my cup. “I’ve been putting off telling you. It’s—it’s about Grace.”

My oldest sister laid the little shin on her knees and crossed her hands over it before she looked at me; and then her eyes were anxious. “What is it?”