Alarms of Struggle and Flight 5 страница

Pushing away the thought, she bent her attention to the books on the shelf. Fergus had brought back three new books from his latest trip to Wilmington: a set of essays by Michel de Montaigne—those were in French, no good—a tattered copy of Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, and a very thin, paper-covered book by B. Franklin, The Means and Manner of Obtaining Virtue.

No contest, she thought, plucking out Moll Flanders. The book had seen hard use; the spine was cracked and the pages loose. She hoped they were all there; nothing worse than reaching a good part of the story and discovering that the next twenty pages were missing. She flipped carefully through, checking, but the pages seemed to be complete, if occasionally crumpled or stained with food. The book had a rather peculiar smell, as though it had been dipped in tallow.

A sudden crash from her mother’s surgery jerked her from her contemplation of the books. She looked instinctively for Jem—but of course he wasn’t there. Shoving the book hastily back into place, she rushed out of the study, only to meet her mother hurrying down the hall from the kitchen.

She beat Claire to the door of the surgery by a scant moment.

“Jem!”

The door of the big standing cupboard stood ajar, and the smell of honey was strong in the air. A broken stoneware bottle lay on the floor in a sticky golden puddle, and Jemmy sat in the middle of it, liberally smeared, his blue eyes absolutely round, mouth open in guilty shock.

Blood surged into her face. Ignoring the stickiness, she grabbed him by the arm and stood him on his feet.

“Jeremiah Alexander MacKenzie,” Brianna said, in awful tones, “you are a Bad Boy!” She checked him hastily for blood or injury, found none, and fetched him a smack on the bottom, hard enough to make the palm of her hand sting.

The resulting screech gave her an instant qualm of guilt. Then she saw the rest of the carnage in the surgery, and quelled the impulse to spank him again.

“Jeremiah!”

Bunches of dried rosemary, yarrow, and thyme had been pulled out of the drying rack and shredded. One of the gauze shelves of the rack itself had been pulled loose, the fabric ripped and hanging. Bottles and jars from the cupboards lay tipped and rolling; some of the corks had fallen out, spilling multi-colored powders and liquids. A big linen bag of coarse ground salt had been rifled, handsful of the crystals tossed around with abandon.

Worst of all, her mother’s amulet lay on the floor, the little leather pouch torn open, flat and empty. Scattered bits of dried plants, a few tiny bones, and other debris lay strewn round it.

“Mama, I’m so sorry—he got away. I wasn’t looking—I should have kept a better eye on—” She had nearly to shout her apologies, to be heard above Jemmy’s bawling.

Claire, flinching slightly at the noise, looked round the surgery, taking hasty inventory. Then she stooped and picked Jemmy up, disregarding the honey.

“Shhhh,” she said, putting a hand lightly over his mouth. This proving ineffective, she patted the hand over the gaping orifice, producing a “wa-wa-wa-wa” sound that made Jemmy stop bellowing at once. He stuck a thumb in his mouth, snuffling loudly round it, and pressed a filthy cheek to Claire’s shoulder.

“Well, they do get into things,” she said to Bree, looking more amused than upset. “Don’t worry, darling, it’s only a bit of a mess. He couldn’t reach the knives, thank goodness, and I keep the poisons up high, too.”

Brianna felt her heart begin to slow down. Her hand felt hot, pulsing with blood.

“But your amulet . . .” She pointed, and saw a shadow cross her mother’s face when she saw the desecration.

“Oh.” Claire took a deep breath, patted Jemmy’s back, and put him down. Her teeth set in her lower lip, she stooped and gingerly picked up the limp pouch with its draggled feathers.

“I’m sorry,” Brianna repeated, helplessly.

She could see the effort it cost, but her mother made a small dismissive gesture, before crouching to pick up the bits and pieces from the floor. Her curly hair was untied, and swung forward, hiding her face.

“I always did wonder what was in this thing,” Claire said. She gingerly began to pick up the tiny bones, collecting them carefully in the palm of one hand. “What do you think these are from—a shrew?”

“I don’t know.” Keeping a wary eye on Jemmy, Brianna squatted and began to pick things up. “I thought maybe they were from a mouse or a bat.”

Her mother glanced up at her, surprised. “Aren’t you clever—look.” She plucked a small, papery brown object from the floor and held it out. Bending to look closer, Brianna could see that the thing that looked like a crumpled dried leaf was in fact a fragment of a tiny bat’s wing, the fragile leather dried to translucence, a bone slender as a needle curving through it like the central rib of a leaf.

“Eye of newt, and toe of frog/ Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,” Claire quoted. She spilled the handful of bones onto the counter, looking at them with fascination. “I wonder what she meant by that?”

“She?”

“Nayawenne—the woman who gave me the pouch.” Crouching, Claire swept up the crumbled bits of leaf—at least Brianna hoped they were real leaves—into her hand, and sniffed them. There were so many odors in the air of the surgery that she herself couldn’t distinguish anything beyond the overwhelming sweetness of honey, but evidently her mother’s sensitive nose had no trouble in making out individual scents.

“Bayberry, balsam fir, wild ginger, and Arsesmart,” she said, sniffing like a truffle-hound. “Bit of sage, too, I think.”

“Arsesmart? Is that a comment on what she thought of you?” In spite of her distress, Brianna laughed.

“Ha bloody ha,” he mother replied tartly, dusting the little heap of dried plant matter onto the table with the bones. “Otherwise known as water-pepper. It’s a rather irritating little thing that grows near brooks—gives you blisters and smarts the eyes—or other things, I imagine, if you happen to carelessly sit on it.”

Jemmy, rebukes forgotten, had got hold of a surgical clamp and was turning it to and fro, evidently trying to decide whether it was edible. Brianna debated taking it away from him, but given that her mother always sterilized her metal implements by boiling, decided to let him keep it for the moment, since it had no sharp edges.

Leaving him with Claire, she went back to the kitchen to fetch hot water and some cloths with which to deal with the honey. Mrs. Bug was there but was sound asleep, snoring gently on the settle, hands folded on her rounded stomach, her kerch comfortably askew over one ear.

Tiptoeing back with the bucket of water and a handful of cloths, she found most of the debris already swept up, and her mother crawling round on hands and knees, peering under things.

“Have you lost something?” She glanced at the bottom shelf of the cupboard, but didn’t see anything missing, bar the honey-jar. The other bottles had been neatly stoppered and replaced, and everything looked much as usual.

“Yes.” Claire crouched lower, frowning as she peered under the cupboard itself. “A stone. About so big”—she held out a hand, thumb and index finger circled, describing a sphere about the diameter of a small coin—“and a sort of grayish-blue. Translucent in spots. It’s a raw sapphire.”

“Was it in the cupboard? Maybe Mrs. Bug moved it.”

Claire sat back on her heels, shaking her head.

“No, she doesn’t touch anything in here. Besides, it wasn’t in the cupboard—it was in there.” She nodded at the table, where the amulet’s empty pouch lay beside the bones and plant debris.

A quick search—and then a slower one—of the surgery revealed no sign of the stone.

“You know,” Claire said, running a hand through her hair as she looked thoughtfully at Jemmy, “I hate to suggest this, but do you think . . . ?”

“Shi—I mean rats,” Brianna said, concern escalating to mild alarm. She stooped to look at Jemmy, who loftily ignored her, concentrating on the job of inserting the surgical clamp into his left nostril. “There were crumbs of dried plant matter stuck to the honey around his mouth, but surely that was just rosemary or thyme . . .”

Offended at the close scrutiny, he tried to whack her with the clamp, but she seized his wrist in a grip of iron, removing the clamp from his grasp with her other hand.

“Don’t hit Mummy,” she said automatically, “it’s not nice. Jem—did you swallow Grannie’s rock?”

“No,” he said, just as automatically, grabbing at the clamp. “Mine!”

She sniffed at his face, causing him to lean back at an alarming angle, but couldn’t be sure. She didn’t think it was rosemary, though.

“Come smell him,” she said to her mother, standing up. “I can’t tell.”

Claire stooped to oblige, and Jemmy shrieked in giggling alarm, preparing for an enjoyable game of “Eat me up.” He was disappointed, though; his grandmother merely inhaled deeply, said definitely, “wild ginger,” then leaned in for a closer look, seizing a damp cloth to rub away the honey smears, in spite of increasing howls of protest.

“Look.” Claire pointed at the soft skin around his mouth. Freshly cleansed, Brianna could see them clearly—two or three tiny blisters, like seed pearls.

“Jeremiah,” she said sternly, attempting to look him in the eye. “Tell Mummy. Did you eat Grannie’s rock?”

Jeremiah avoided her gaze and wriggled away, putting both hands protectively behind him.

“No hit,” he said. “Nod nice!”

“I’m not going to spank you,” she assured him, grabbing an escaping foot. “I just want to know. Did you swallow a rock about this big?” She held up thumb and forefinger. Jemmy giggled.

“Hot,” he said. That was his new favorite word, applied without distinction to any object he liked.

Brianna closed her eyes, sighing in exasperation, then opened them to look at her mother.

“I’m afraid so. Will it hurt him?”

“Shouldn’t think so.” Claire regarded her grandson thoughtfully, tapping a finger against her lips. Then she crossed the room, opening one of the high cupboards and withdrawing a large brown-glass bottle.

“Castor-bean oil,” she explained, rummaging in a drawer for a spoon. “Not quite as tasty as honey,” she added, fixing Jemmy with a gimlet eye, “but very effective.”

CASTOR OIL MIGHT BE EFFECTIVE, but it took a while. Keeping a close eye on Jemmy, who was set down to play with his basket of wooden blocks after being dosed, Brianna and Claire used the waiting time to tidy the surgery, and then turned to the peaceful, but time-consuming, job of compounding medicines. It was some time since Claire had had time to do this, and there was a staggering profusion of leaves and roots and seeds to be shredded, grated, pounded, boiled in water, steeped in oil, extracted with alcohol, strained through gauze, stirred into melted beeswax or bear grease, mixed with ground talc or rolled into pills, then jarred or bottled or bagged for preservation.

It was a pleasantly warm day, and they left the windows open for the breeze, even though this meant constantly swatting flies, shooing gnats, and picking the occasional enthusiastic bumblebee out of some bubbling solution.

“Be careful, sweetie!” Brianna reached hastily to brush away a honeybee that had lighted on one of Jemmy’s blocks, just before Jem could grab it. “Bad bug. Ouchie!”

“They smell their honey,” Claire said, waving away another. “I’d better give them some of it back.” She set a bowl of honey-water on the windowsill, and within moments, bees were thick about the rim of it, drinking greedily.

“Single-minded, aren’t they?” Brianna observed, blotting a trickle of sweat that ran between her breasts.

“Well, single-mindedness will get you a long way,” Claire murmured absently, frowning slightly as she stirred a solution warming over an alcohol lamp. “Does this look done to you?”

“You know a lot better than I do.” Still, she bent obligingly and sniffed. “I think so; it smells pretty strong.”

Claire dipped a quick finger into the bowl, then tasted it.

“Mm, yes, I think so.” Taking the bowl off the flame, she poured the dark greenish liquid carefully through a gauze strainer into a bottle. Several other tall glass bottles stood in a row on the counter, the sunlight glowing through their contents like red and green and yellow gems.

“Did you always know you were meant to be a doctor?” Brianna asked curiously. Her mother shook her head, skillfully shredding a handful of dogwood bark with a sharp knife.

“Never thought of it when I was young. Girls mostly didn’t, then, of course. Growing up, I always assumed that I’d marry, have children, make a home . . . does Lizzie look all right to you? I thought she was looking a bit yellow round the edges last night, but it might only have been the candlelight.”

“I think she’s all right. Do you think she’s really in love with Manfred?” They had celebrated Lizzie’s betrothal to Manfred McGillivray the night before, with the entire McGillivray family traveling from their homestead for a lavish supper. Mrs. Bug, who was fond of Lizzie, had given of her best; no wonder she was asleep today.

“No,” Claire said frankly. “But as long as she isn’t in love with anyone else, it’s probably all right. He’s a good lad, and quite good-looking. And Lizzie likes his mother, which is also a good thing, under the circumstances.” She smiled at the thought of Ute McGillivray, who had taken Lizzie at once under her capacious maternal wing, picking out particularly delicious tidbits and poking them assiduously down Lizzie’s gullet, like a robin feeding a puny nestling.

“I think she may like Mrs. McGillivray more than she likes Manfred. She was really young when her own mother died; it’s nice for her to sort of have one again.” Brianna glanced at her mother from the corner of her eye. She could remember all too well the feeling of being motherless—and the sheer bliss of being mothered once more. By reflex, she glanced at Jemmy, who was holding an animated if mostly unintelligible conversation with Adso the cat.

Claire nodded, rubbing the shredded bark between her hands into a small round jar full of alcohol.

“Yes. Still, I think it’s as well they wait a bit—Lizzie and Manfred, I mean—and get used to each other.” It had been agreed that the marriage would take place the next summer, after Manfred had finished setting up his shop in Woolam’s Creek. “I hope this will work.”

“What?”

“The dogwood bark.” Claire stoppered the bottle and put it in the cupboard. “Dr. Rawlings’ casebook says it can be used as a substitute for cinchona bark—for quinine, you know. And it’s certainly easier to get, to say nothing of less expensive.”

“Great—I hope it does work.” Lizzie’s malaria had stayed in abeyance for several months—but there was always the threat of recurrence, and cinchona bark was hideously expensive.

The subject of their earlier conversation lingered in her mind, and she returned to it, as she took a fresh handful of sage leaves for her mortar, bruising them carefully before putting them to steep.

“You didn’t plan to be a doctor when you were young, you said. But you seemed pretty single-minded about it, later on.” She had scattered, but vivid, memories of Claire’s medical training; she could still smell the hospital smells caught in her mother’s hair and clothing, and feel the soft cool touch of the green scrubs her mother sometimes wore, coming in to kiss her goodnight when she came in late from work.

Claire didn’t answer at once, concentrating on the dried corn silk she was cleaning, plucking out rotted bits and flicking them through the open window.

“Well,” she said at last, not taking her eyes off her work. “People—and it’s not just women, not by any means—people who know who they are, and what they’re meant to be . . . they’ll find a way. Your father—Frank, I mean—” She scooped up the cleaned silk and transferred it to a small woven basket, small fragments scattering across the counter as she did so. “He was a very good historian. He liked the subject, and he had the gift of discipline and concentration that made him a success, but it wasn’t really a . . . a calling for him. He told me himself—he could have done other things just as well, and it wouldn’t have mattered a great deal. For some people, one thing does matter a great deal, though. And when it does . . . well, medicine mattered a great deal to me. I didn’t know, early on, but then I realized that it was simply what I was meant to do. And once I knew that . . .” She shrugged, dusting her hands, and covered the basket with a bit of linen, securing it with twine.

“Yes, but . . . you can’t always do what you’re meant to, can you?” she said, thinking of the ragged scar on Roger’s throat.

“Well, life certainly forces some things on one,” her mother murmured. She glanced up, meeting Brianna’s eyes, and her mouth quirked in a small, wry smile. “And for the common man—or woman—life as they find it is often the life they lead. Marsali, for instance. I shouldn’t think it’s ever entered her mind that she might do other than she does. Her mother kept a house and raised children; she sees no reason why she should do anything else. And yet—” Claire lifted one shoulder in a shrug, and reached across the table for the other mortar. “She had one great passion—for Fergus. And that was enough to jar her out of the rut her life would have been—”

“And into another just like it?”

Claire bent her head in a half-nod, not looking up.

“Just like it—except that she’s in America, rather than Scotland. And she’s got Fergus.”

“Like you have Jamie?” She seldom used his given name, and Claire glanced up in surprise.

“Yes,” she said. “Jamie’s part of me. So are you.” She touched Bree’s face, quick and light, then turned half away, reaching to take down a tied bundle of marjoram from the array of hanging herbs on the beam above the hearth. “But neither of you is all of me,” she said softly, back turned. “I am . . . what I am. Doctor, nurse, healer, witch—whatever folk call it, the name doesn’t matter. I was born to be that; I will be that ’til I die. If I should lose you—or Jamie—I wouldn’t be quite a whole person any longer, but I would still have that left. For a little time,” she went on, so softly that Brianna had to strain to hear her, “after I went . . . back . . . before you came . . . that was all I had. Just the knowing.”

Claire crumbled the dried marjoram into the mortar, and took up the pestle to grind it. The sound of clumping boots came from outside, and then Jamie’s voice, a friendly remark to a chicken that crossed his path.

And was loving Roger, loving Jemmy, not enough for her? Surely it should be. She had a dreadful, hollow feeling that perhaps it was not, and spoke quickly, before the thought should find words.

“What about Da?”

“What about him?”

“Does he—is he one who knows what he is, do you think?”

Claire’s hands stilled, the clanking pestle falling silent.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “He knows.”

“A laird? Is that what you’d call it?”

Her mother hesitated, thinking.

“No,” she said at last. She took up the pestle and began to grind again. The fragrance of dried marjoram filled the room like incense. “He’s a man,” she said, “and that’s no small thing to be.”

LONESOME ME

BRIANNA CLOSED THE BOOK, with a mingled sense of relief and foreboding. She hadn’t objected to Jamie’s notion that she teach a few of the little girls on the Ridge their ABC’s. It filled the cabin with cheerful noise for a couple of hours, and Jemmy loved the cosseting of a half-dozen miniature mothers.

Still, she was not a natural teacher, and always felt relieved at the end of a lesson. The foreboding came on its heels, though. Most of the girls came alone, or under the care of an older sister. Anne and Kate Henderson, who lived two miles away, were escorted by their older brother, Obadiah.

She wasn’t sure when or how it had started. Perhaps from the first day, when he had looked her in the eye, smiling faintly, and held the glance for a moment too long before patting his sisters’ heads and leaving them to her care. But there had been nothing she could reasonably object to. Not then, not in the days since. And yet . . .

Stated bluntly to herself, Obadiah Henderson gave her the creeps. He was a tall lad of twenty or so, heavily muscled and not bad-looking, brown-haired and blue-eyed. But there was something about him that was somehow not right; a sense of something brutal about the mouth, something feral in the deepset eyes. And something very unsettling in the way he looked at her.

She hated going to the door at the end of a lesson. The little girls would scatter in a flutter of dresses and giggles—and Obadiah would be waiting, leaning against a tree, sitting on the well-coping, once even lounging on the bench outside her door.

The constant uncertainty, never knowing where he would be—but knowing that he was there, somewhere, got on her nerves nearly as much as that half-smiling look of his, and the silent smirk as he left her, almost winking, as though he knew some dirty little secret about her, but chose to keep it to himself—for now.

It occurred to her, with a certain sense of irony, that her discomfort near Obadiah was at least partly because of Roger. She had grown accustomed to hearing things that weren’t spoken aloud.

And Obadiah didn’t speak aloud. He didn’t say anything to her, made no improper motions toward her. Could she tell him not to look at her? That was ridiculous. Ridiculous, too, that something so simple could cause her heart to jump into her throat when she opened the door, and make sweat prick beneath her arms when she saw him.

Bracing herself, she opened the door for the girls and called goodbye as they scattered, then stood and looked around. He wasn’t there. Not by the well, the tree, the bench . . . nowhere.

Anne and Kate weren’t looking; they were already halfway across the clearing with Janie Cameron, all three hand in hand.

“Annie!” she called. “Where’s your brother?”

Annie half-turned, pigtails bouncing.

“He’s gone to Salem, Miss,” she called back. “We’re going home to sup with Jane today!” Not waiting for acknowledgment, the girls all skipped away, like a trio of bouncing balls.

The tension melted slowly from her neck and shoulders as she drew a long, deep breath. She felt blank for a moment, as though she weren’t quite sure what to do. Then she drew herself up and brushed down her rumpled apron. Jemmy was asleep, lulled by the girls’ nasal singing of the alphabet song. She could take advantage of his nap to go and fetch some buttermilk from the springhouse. Roger liked buttermilk biscuits; she’d make them for supper, with a little ham.

The springhouse was cool and dark, and restful with the sound of water running through the stone-lined channel in the floor. She loved going in there, and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, so she could admire the trailing fronds of dark-green algae that clung to the stone, drifting in the current. Jamie had mentioned that a family of bats had taken up residence in the springhouse, too—yes, there they were, four tiny bundles hung up in the darkest corner, each one barely two inches long, as neat and tidy as a Greek dolmade wrapped in grape leaves. She smiled at the thought, though it was followed by a pang.

She had eaten dolmades with Roger, at a Greek restaurant in Boston. She didn’t care all that much for Greek food, but it would have been a memory of their own time to share with him, when she told him about the bats. If she told him now, she thought, he would smile in response—but the smile wouldn’t quite reach his eyes, and she would remember alone.

She left the springhouse, walking slowly, the bucket of buttermilk in one hand balanced by a wedge of cheese in the other. A cheese omelette would be good for lunch; quick to cook, and Jemmy loved it. He preferred to use his spoon to kill his prey, then devour it messily with both hands, but he would feed himself, and that was progress.

She was still smiling when she looked up from the path to see Obadiah Henderson sitting on her bench.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was sharp, but higher than she’d intended it to be. “The girls said you’d gone to Salem.”

“So I had.” He rose to his feet and stepped forward, that knowing half-smile on his lips. “I came back.”

She suppressed the urge to take a step back. This was her house; damned if he’d make her back away from her own door.

“Well, the girls have gone,” she said, as coolly as she could manage. “They’re at the Camerons’.” Her heart was thumping heavily, but she moved past him, meaning to put the bucket down on the porch.

She bent, and he put his hand on the small of her back. She froze momentarily. He didn’t move his hand, didn’t try to stroke or squeeze—but the weight of it lay on her spine like a dead snake. She jerked upright and whirled around, taking a step back, and to hell with not letting him intimidate her. He’d already done that.

“I brought ye something,” he said. “From Salem.” The smile was still on his lips, but it seemed completely disconnected from the look in his eyes.

“I don’t want it,” she said. “I mean—thank you. But no. It isn’t right for you to—my husband wouldn’t like it.”

“No need for him to know.” He took a step toward her; she took one back, and the smile grew wider.

“I hear your husband’s not home much, these days,” he said softly. “That sounds lonesome.”

He put out a large hand, reaching toward her face. Then there was an odd, small sound, a sort of meaty tnk!, and his face went blank, his eyes shocked wide.

She stared at him for a moment, completely unable to grasp what had happened. Then he turned those staring eyes to his outstretched hand, and she saw the small knife stuck in the flesh of his forearm, and the growing stain of red on the shirt around it.

“Leave this place.” Jamie’s voice was low, but distinct. He stepped out of the trees, eyes fixed on Henderson in a most unfriendly manner. He reached them in three strides, put out his hand, and pulled the knife from Henderson’s arm. Obadiah made a small sound, deep in his throat, like a wounded animal might make, baffled and pitiable.

“Go,” Jamie said. “Never come here again.”

The blood was flowing down Obadiah’s arm, dripping from his fingers. A few drops fell into the buttermilk, floating crimson on the rich yellow surface. In a dazed sort of way, she recognized the horrid beauty of it—like rubies set in gold.

Then the boy was going, free hand clamped to his wounded arm, shambling, then running for the trail. He disappeared into the trees, and the dooryard was very still.

“Did you have to do that?” was the first thing she managed to say. She felt stunned, as though she herself had been struck with something. The blood drops were beginning to blur, their edges dissolving into the buttermilk, and she thought she might throw up.

“Should I have waited?” Her father caught her by the arm, pulled her down to sit on the porch.

“No. But you—couldn’t you just . . . have said something to him?” Her lips felt numb and there were small flashing lights in the periphery of her vision. Remotely, she realized that she was going to faint, and leaned forward, her head between her knees, face buried in the sanctuary of her apron.

“I did. I told him to go.” The porch creaked as Jamie sat down beside her.

“You know what I mean.” Her voice sounded odd to her own ears, muffled in the folds of cloth. She sat up slowly; the red spruce by the big house wavered slightly in her vision, but then steadied. “What were you doing? Showing off? How could you count on sticking somebody with a knife at that distance? And what was that, anyway—a penknife?”

“Aye. It was all I had in my pocket. And in fact, I didna mean to stick him,” Jamie admitted. “I meant to throw into the wall o’ the cabin, and when he looked to see what made the noise, hit him from behind. He moved, though.”

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose, willing her stomach to settle.

“Ye’re all right, a muirninn?” he asked quietly. He laid a hand gently on her back—somewhat higher than Obadiah had. It felt good; large, warm and comforting.

“I’m fine,” she said, opening her eyes. He looked worried, and she made an effort, smiling at him. “Fine.”

He relaxed a bit, then, and his eyes grew less troubled, though they stayed intent on hers.

“Well, then,” he said. “It’s no the first time, aye? How long has yon gomerel been tryin’ it on wi’ you?”

She took another breath, and forced her fists to uncurl. She wanted to minimize the situation, moved by a sense of guilt—for surely she should have found some way to stop it? Faced with that steady blue gaze, though, she couldn’t lie.

“Since the first week,” she said.