The Endless Forest

by Sara Donati

  His voice was a little more strained as he told the rest of the story; how Jemima had stepped in to comfort Mr. Wilde in his loss, how quickly they had wed, and what life had been like for Levi, still mourning his mother, once Jemima came into the household.

  When he seemed to have finished, Bookman looked at him over the top of his reading spectacles. “Mr. Fiddler, what you have got here is a sad story about a mean and vindictive woman, but the law requires more before a person can be charged with murder. Motive, method, and opportunity are the cornerstones of such an accusation. Are you saying the motive in this case was simple hatred?”

  “No, sir,” Levi said. “I’m saying she was a widow woman and wanted a husband and Mr. Wilde was her object. She did what she had to do to make that possible, and that meant getting rid of my mother so she could get shut of the first Mrs. Wilde.”

  Bookman made a grumbling noise that rattled in his throat. “This still leaves the matter of method and opportunity, but let’s put that aside for the moment. Mrs. Focht, what do you say to these accusations?”

  Jemima looked surprised to be asked. “I’ve heard them all before. What is it you want me to say? That I needed a husband? A woman with a child to raise and no money must have a husband. Of course.”

  The magistrate worked his jaw as if he were chewing something tough.

  “Mr. Fiddler, you are by my observations a careful man and fastidious. Surely you must see that if I send Mrs. Focht to Johnstown for trial, there’s little chance she’d live long enough to stand before a judge, and it’s almost a certainty that if she did, the judge would throw out the case. Can you be satisfied with the knowledge that she’ll be standing before her Maker soon enough, and that he’ll be better able to mete out punishment than we are?”

  “I want to hear her admit it,” Levi said. “Then I’ll be satisfied to let the devil deal out her due.”

  “Anything to say, Mrs. Focht?”

  “Let Callie talk next.” She said this with no emotion, as though she were asking him to open a window or pass the salt.

  “Mrs. Middleton,” said Jim Bookman. “Did you want to make a statement?”

  “Yes,” Callie said. “I have some evidence to give. I should have given it long ago, and I’ll ask Levi to forgive me for holding back. Jemima did kill Cookie Fiddler, and I know because I saw her do it.”

  The sharp silence that followed was broken by Levi. He said, “You weren’t even in Paradise that night.”

  “I was. I’ll tell the whole story now if you want to hear it.”

  Bookman said, “You saw Mrs. Fiddler die, and you never told anyone? Mrs. Middleton, why would you keep such information to yourself?”

  Callie looked directly at the magistrate. “I was a little girl. I was afraid. And nobody ever asked me. Martha they called down to the meetinghouse to give testimony, but not me. It never occurred to them to ask me. And later … I don’t have an excuse. There is no excuse. I can only ask for pardon.”

  “There’s a difference between an excuse and an explanation,” said the magistrate.

  Ethan cleared his throat and the magistrate shot him a strict look.

  “Mr. Middleton, your wife is capable of answering this question.”

  “Yes,” Callie said. “I suppose I am. The closest I can come to an explanation is just that I was angry. I was so angry, it filled me up and pushed everything else out, every reasonable thought. I was angry at Jemima and at the whole world.”

  The magistrate pushed out a sigh. “What of the claim that you were not in Paradise at that time?”

  “That’s what I wanted people to think,” Callie said. “But let me tell you the whole story from the beginning.”

  68

  “I never thought I’d ever tell this,” Callie began. “I tried to put it out of my head, but it just wouldn’t go. So I’m only going to look at you, Mr. Bookman, and nobody else and maybe I’ll get through it. I’m also going to ask Ethan and Martha and anybody else who gets the urge not to speak up. To leave me the telling of this.

  “This is what happened. I was supposed to go to Johnstown with my father, that much is true. But Ma was poorly and Levi was away, so at the last minute Da said I should stay to help Cookie.

  “Late that afternoon Ma was getting worse, as bad as I ever saw her. The day got darker and colder and she started talking to herself, talking loud. About all kinds of things, but mostly just rambling. She was running a fever too, and Cookie decided she had to go fetch help. She said I was to stay behind because Ma was quietest when I sat with her.

  “All I can say in my own defense is that I was young and disappointed about Da leaving me behind. When Cookie said I couldn’t even go into the village I got mad and I decided I’d go anyway.

  “It was full dark when she left. I waited a few minutes and made sure Ma was quiet—she was resting just then, half asleep—and then I set out to follow Cookie. I knew she would send me home so I hung back a ways, but not very far. I didn’t want to lose sight of her lantern. I remember thinking I would catch her up by the bridge because she’d have to stop and scatter sand—you remember how icy the floorboards on the old bridge got in midwinter? But when I got that far I saw Jemima was coming across from the other side, and I stopped right where I was. They both had lanterns and I could see just that much of them, faces and hands that caught the light.

  “I have thought it through for years now, and I’m pretty sure it was just a coincidence that they met up on the bridge. But then once they saw each other neither one of them was going to back down. I wasn’t close enough to make any of it out but they were both fighting mad. I could see it in the way they were standing.

  “Just when I was going to run for help, Cookie tried to push past Jemima and she slipped and fell. She fell real hard.

  “I was so scared, I could hardly breathe. I was scared Cookie was bad hurt and I was afraid that if I showed myself the same thing would happen to me. I wanted to run away but I couldn’t move my feet. I wanted to yell for help, but I was sure if I did Jemima would come after me.

  “It wasn’t even a couple heartbeats before I heard a rider coming. Jemima heard it too, by the way her head came up sharp. And then—That’s when she leaned down and just pushed Cookie over the edge. One shove and she was gone. Sometimes I still dream about it, and in the dream I can hear the splash.

  “I stayed in the shadows for a long time and then when I was sure Jemima was gone, I went down by the lake. It was too dark to see anything and it was cold, but I had to look. I think I was hoping that Cookie might have swum away, but there was no sign of her. So I went back home.

  “Now I have got to confess something that has bothered me every day of my life since then. I loved Cookie and I was worried out of my head, but I was just as much worried for me as I was for her. I was thinking, Please don’t be dead. Please don’t leave me alone with Ma, please don’t. I can’t take care of her myself.

  “Once I got home I climbed into bed with Ma because I was so cold and scared. I wanted to tell somebody what I saw, but I was so tired and Ma wouldn’t have understood anyway. And when I woke up the next morning, Ma was gone and the blizzard had just started up. I was so scared I was shaking, but I got on my clothes and I went out after her.

  “I don’t know if anybody will recall that when my ma wandered off she often went to call on Daisy Hench. She always liked Daisy and somehow or another Daisy was good at calming her down. So I set off to see if I could catch her up. I got about three quarters of the way when I realized I wasn’t dressed warm enough. I thought for a minute I might die myself, and that I wouldn’t mind so much if Ma and Cookie were both gone. I might as well go too.

  “Just then I came to the Steinmeissen place. I suppose something in me wasn’t ready to die yet because I knocked, thinking they’d let me set by their fire until the weather let up a little.

  “But they weren’t home. I was so beside myself I forgot that Margery died the winter before, and Anton had gone off
into the bush to drink himself into a stupor.

  “So there I was in the Steinmeissen cabin. It was so dark with the blizzard coming on, and not a single candle anywhere, nor a bit of oil for the lamp. But there was wood stacked right outside the door and a tinderbox on the mantel, and I managed finally to get a fire going. I just wrapped up in every cover and blanket I could find and I lay down in front of the hearth and I fell asleep.

  “Martha, if you keep weeping like that I won’t be able to finish, and I need to tell all of this. Let me tell it.

  “Even after the blizzard let up, I couldn’t make myself go out. I found a crock of bacon grease and a few crackers, and I melted snow to drink. So I stayed another night and then the next day when I was going to give up and go on home I heard my da’s sleigh bells. I ran right out in the middle of the road, and I scared him bad so that at first all he could do was yell at me and ask what was I thinking, being so careless and what was I doing all the way on this side of the village.

  “To this day I don’t know how much I told him, or what he understood. Didn’t matter anyhow, because not five minutes later we were in the middle of the village and people were running from all directions shouting at us to stop, stop, something terrible had happened. And that’s when we heard Ma had died on Hidden Wolf and that Cookie was missing. That’s what people said, and that’s what they believed, that Cookie was missing and nothing more.

  “Da and me, we never talked about it, after that. Why I was at the Steinmeissen place all alone, or what happened to Cookie, or how Ma had wandered off to die on the mountain. I don’t think he even thought about it, he was so broke up about Ma and Cookie. Levi came back and he was so upset, I was afraid to talk to him for fear he’d run off and kill Jemima and then they’d hang him.

  “If I had known Da was going to end up marrying Jemima, I would have made myself tell him. But I didn’t. Sometimes I wonder what the world would be if I had obeyed Cookie and stayed behind that evening. I wouldn’t have slept so deep, and Ma couldn’t have wandered off, and Jemima couldn’t have got my da to marry her, and all the trouble later about the orchard would never have happened. They might still be alive today, both my folks. I am sorry to say that no matter how hard I looked at it, I couldn’t find a way to save Cookie. There wasn’t anything I could have done. When she and Jemima got within striking distance of each other, it was like fire and gunpowder. Something was going to happen.

  “That morning after Cookie died, when I woke up and found Ma gone, I knew right then. I knew that if Ma was dead, it would be my fault. And so she was, and so it is.”

  Martha held Daniel’s hand tight, and her gaze cast downward. If she concentrated, she might be able to clear her mind and find some way to think clearly. Some way to rid herself of the images Callie had put there, of blowing snow and dark water and of Jemima, standing on the old bridge looking down at the water closing over Cookie.

  For all those years Martha had a different image, one she had never told Callie about, though she had testified to it in front of the village. Mrs. Wilde, underdressed for the weather, her hair flowing loose down her back, walking up the mountain on the morning of that same blizzard. Standing at the kitchen window Martha had seen it all very clearly. The woman in a dress the color of dried blood, bent forward a little as she walked into the wind and first gusts of snow. Her skin already translucent, as if she were melting away into the weather.

  She tried. She asked again and again. Ma, Mrs. Wilde’s got out somehow; let me take her home. Ma, there’s something wrong with Mrs. Wilde. Ma, let me go get Cookie.

  Her mother’s answer she remembered clearly, and the tone: firm, cool, inflexible.

  That’s her concern and none of ours.

  Knowing that Cookie was dead, Jemima had said that.

  Now Martha looked at the woman who had borne and raised her, sitting wrapped in blankets on the hottest of July afternoons. Her face composed, even blank. The idea came to Martha that the spark that animated her mother for all her life was already gone, and the woman who sat there was somebody else entirely.

  Callie was sitting down again. Levi put his hand on her shoulder, leaned over and asked her something. She shook her head. Then Ethan came to her and crouched in front of her and took her hands. He talked for at least a minute, in a hushed voice. The kind of voice you might hear someone use in a church or a sickroom. Again Callie shook her head.

  Martha wondered if it was her own turn now to go and comfort Callie. To tell her that she wasn’t responsible, that she wasn’t to blame. To say, I don’t mind that you kept all that to yourself all these years, that you didn’t speak up back then. I’m happy that you made that decision for yourself without asking me what I wanted. But those were things she couldn’t say. She might have said something closer to the truth of what she was feeling: Look at all the pain and trouble we might have been spared if you had told somebody what you saw.

  Jim Bookman was saying, “Mrs. Focht, do you wish to respond?”

  Jemima raised her head as if the sound of his voice had called her up out of a daydream. “What?”

  “Do you wish to respond? Tell your own story?”

  “My story.” The idea seemed to amuse her. “Of course, I’ll tell you my story.”

  69

  “First before I start, John Mayfair has drawn up a last will and testament and I’ve signed it. The little bit I have in the world—and it is just a very little bit—I am leaving to my boy. To Nicholas. I have asked my daughter Martha and her husband to act as guardians until the boy reaches his majority, but I have named Susanna as the person who should take over his upbringing. She has agreed that she will take him in and raise him here at Lake in the Clouds.

  “You can tell yourself I am doing this because I want to keep Nicholas away from Callie just to make her mad, but the fact is I don’t want the boy raised by somebody who hates me. If that causes Callie pain, why, that’s an added bonus and nothing more.

  “See how Susanna is looking at me, so’s I remember that I promised her to be civil. I will try harder, I promise.

  “As a girl the thing I wanted most was to be here. Right here, at Lake in the Clouds. When Hannah started home after school everyday, I wanted to follow her. I never let on, of course, but this place was like some kind of palace in my mind, back then. Maybe because I knew I didn’t belong and never could belong. Don’t things out of reach just glow in your mind? And then sometimes when you do get what you’ve been hoping and planning and fighting for, the glow is gone. Rubbed off in the getting of it.

  “Most things I fought for turned out that way. I’d think, that’s what I need to be safe and happy, and I’d fight and fight, and then when I got it in my hands, it wasn’t gold but brass needing to be polished and polished if it was to give any service at all. That’s the way it was marrying Isaiah. I knew he didn’t want anything to do with me and that was fine. I thought the money would be enough. I thought I could withstand anything if I had nice clothes and enough food and firewood and a house to call my own and servants. I told myself it didn’t matter how he hated me or if I disgusted him, as long as he kept up appearances. But I found out soon enough, pity is much harder to swallow than hate. You all think I’m made of stone, but I never was.

  “The thing is, everybody I ever wanted, every single person, wanted somebody else and only made do with me. My father was mad I wasn’t born a boy and the minute my brothers came along, he couldn’t see me anymore. Liam Kirby was bound heart and soul to Hannah, who didn’t even want him back. I took what he wouldn’t give me of his own free will, and to this day I’m glad I did it. If you’re honest you’ll admit you’re glad of it too, all of you, or Martha wouldn’t be sitting there, precious as she is to you.

  “Nicholas wanted Lily, he wanted her so bad he was sick with it, but she didn’t want him. Not really, or she wouldn’t have fallen so hard in love with that Scot. So I took things into my own hands. Yes, I did. Levi wants to hear me say it, and so here it is: I di
d what needed to be done. When Cookie fell and knocked her head I did the rest. I lied to Nicholas about Lily, and I let Callie’s ma walk away into a blizzard. I did all that because I knew I could be a good wife to Nicholas and that he would take care of us. By that time I had given up the idea of an easy life. I just wanted to know there’d be food and firewood.

  “A man goes out and fights and kills sometimes for his family, and that’s honorable. Nathaniel knows what I’m talking about, don’t you? That’s what it means to be a man. A woman is supposed to take what fate hands her and be satisfied with that. She’s supposed to be thankful for that. If I had any strength left that idea would still make my blood boil.

  “When things went bad and Nicholas was close to losing his mind for grief and anger and hurt male pride—because that’s what it was, even if you refuse to see the truth of it—I knew I had to go before he killed me or I killed him. Of course I left the girl behind. I couldn’t look after her. If I had taken her, you would have raged about that. Sometimes I wonder who got the brunt of your anger once I was gone.

  “It didn’t matter that I left without Martha. She wouldn’t have wanted to come with me anyway. Can’t say as I blame her, to tell the truth.

  “So I went. I went and I found my way and I had my boy.

  “You’ll be surprised to hear me admit this, but there’s something sour in me. Something spoiled. It has been there since I was a girl, since Ma and my brothers choked to death with the quinsy. I nursed them as best I could. I went to Curiosity and got tea and medicine, and none of it did any good. I begged them, but they died anyway. Something settled on me then, and I never did get rid of it. Like a tattoo on my face, I could scrub at it but it wasn’t going nowhere. And after a while, I liked myself like that. I looked in the mirror and I liked what I saw. I’m crabbit and mean and vindictive, always have been.