Winter Sisters

by Robin Oliveira

  The first strains of Heinrich von Biber’s Passacaglia for Solo Violin in G Minor immediately wrapped Emma and Claire in its consoling spell. No numbered concerto this—this was a composition without echo or match in the entire musical canon. Mournful and sublime, the desolate composition somehow acknowledged everything and everyone they had lost. For Emma and Claire, it was as if their parents had returned for a moment to say good-bye. Mary, William, and Amelia wept, too. Elizabeth’s evocative playing drifted from their small circle to Viola and Jakob, then farther down the hill to Harold and Vera, then beyond, to mourners at nearby gravesites. A pair of gravediggers paused in their exertions and rued the necessity of their vocation. With each variation, each eloquent turn of phrase, people throughout the cemetery lifted their heads and were comforted, even passing sightseers, who halted their carriages to listen.

  When Elizabeth finished, there was a long moment of ineffable silence, and then birdsong erupted from the branches of the surrounding white oaks and dogwood trees, warblers and wrens and titmice chorusing in appreciation. It broke the spell, and laughing, Elizabeth curtsied, and Emma and Claire, their faces newly alight, wiped their cheeks and tugged at their dresses and stood. William helped Mary and Amelia to their feet, and then they all descended the hill together. Halfway down, Viola and Jakob joined them, and they walked together to Indian Lake, where Vera had gone ahead to set up a picnic in a grove of oaks and Harold had taken the horses to water. Vera laid out quilts on a bed of fallen leaves. They all settled there and passed around sandwiches and ginger ale and summer strawberries.

  After they ate, Emma and Claire pulled off their socks and shoes to wade in the lake.

  “Lizzie, come with us,” Claire begged.

  “All right,” Elizabeth said, “but Jakob has to come, too.”

  The younger quartet started off toward the water, Emma and Claire holding hands, Elizabeth and Jakob following, fingers touching, while the older quartet, Viola, Amelia, William, and Mary, watched them go.

  Yesterday, Elizabeth and Jakob had married in Judge Thayer’s chambers, the same room where eighteen years before, Elizabeth’s mother and father had married. Both marriages had been hastened by extraordinary events: Jenny and Thomas’s by the War of the Rebellion, and Elizabeth and Jakob’s by the repercussions of a hideous crime. It was odd how pain could either annihilate or accelerate love: pain had driven Viola from Gerritt, but the collective pain of all of them had formed a new family, forged by newlyweds who would not wait, who had felt a need to surround Emma and Claire with support and love, and who knew the value of forgiveness.

  From the lake came the sound of Emma squealing with laughter. Claire had waded in and tied up her skirts and was cupping cool water and tossing it at her sister. Emma, her dress hem lifted to her ankles, bent down, drew her hand through the water, and retaliated with a tentative splash, dousing Claire in turn. Watching them from the quilts, the older foursome turned to one another with relief. When they’d told the girls that Gerritt had died, the news had seemed to give them both a great measure of relief. Jakob and Viola had apologized, saying how sorry they were about what Gerritt had done, and explaining that they hadn’t known. Then, before Elizabeth agreed to marry Jakob, she insisted that they also inform Emma and Claire that the Other Man had been Jakob’s father and Viola’s husband. It was an impossible fact, but one Elizabeth would not conceal, even if it meant her own unhappiness. She was adamant that the wedding would not take place if either Emma or Claire exhibited any distress. She would do nothing to make them afraid.

  Who knows what confusion the news had aroused? But Emma and Claire had nodded solemnly in reply and the marriage had taken place.

  And now Emma was playing: accepting teasing taunts from Claire, splashing Jakob and Elizabeth, no longer looking hunted. With her hat askew, her long red hair tousled by the breeze, her toes sinking into the mud, she looked like any child anywhere pleased to be on an outing,

  It was noon now. At one, they would all travel back into the city, gather their trunks, and go to the train station, where at six that evening, Viola, Amelia, Jakob, Elizabeth, Emma, and Claire would all board the train for Boston. Jakob had leased a house for them near the Boston Common and had found a position, thanks to Judge Thayer’s recommendation, with a firm located near Faneuil Hall. Elizabeth was to start at the Boston Conservatory next week. And Viola and Amelia would look after Emma and Claire. Viola was still shy among them, brittle with shame, but Amelia had taken over the work of making her feel welcome. They were quickly becoming friends. Viola’s solemn guilt had begun its release with that welcome, though under what undeserving banner of goodness she had fallen she would not come to terms with for years.

  Mary and William were staying behind in Albany. Their fates were no less clearly defined. Jakob had asked Mary to direct the House of Shelter, and she was going to relocate her clinic for prostitutes there. She had already applied for hospital privileges at St. Peter’s, and there were promising indications that they would accept her. Thomas Hun had written her a formal letter of apology and asked her to come back to City Hospital, but she had refused. William too had resigned, leaving them short the best orthopedic surgeon in the city.

  Now Mary and William watched Emma stooping to inspect a bed of moss on the lakeshore. She had not once looked over her shoulder to make certain of their whereabouts. She showed a new ease in the world. They would miss her. They would miss all of them. It would be one more leave-taking in a lifetime of leave-takings. Of course they would visit them in Boston, and often. They trusted Jakob to take care of them—Jakob, who had discovered the truth and unmasked his father and now must live with the horror of it. It was lucky that he did not resemble his father in any way. And it was fortunate that he had the courage of a man twice his age. Or maybe the young have more courage than the old. Mary and William could name a thousand reasons why this new family, founded in despair and trouble, might go wrong, but how different was this regrouping from the strange regroupings of families that the war had forced? When love drives change, doubt can have no place.

  Mary reached over and touched William’s face. For the first time in their married lives, they would live alone, without extended family to worry over or care for. Theirs was a tenacious kind of love, as solid and true as granite. Neither of them could think of a time in their life together when either had let the other down.

  The miracle of that eclipsed even the miracle of Emma’s and Claire’s resurrection.

  Another chorus of laughter echoed from the pond. Emma had fallen into the shallow water, and her dress was soaked through, and Claire was trying to help her out, and then she too fell in. Sunlight dappled the ruffling surface of the lake as Jakob plunged in to haul each one of them out. Emma took his hand without recoil. She bent over giggling, and the adults all looked on, astounded.

  And then it was time to gather up the quilts and wrap the soaking girls in them and pack them into the carriage to be carried away, back along the river gleaming in the summer sunlight, to the house to change clothes and bid Vera good-bye, and then on to the train station, where they huddled together before the train was called, conscious of the moment of leaving everything behind. And then at the conductor’s whistle, William and Jakob went ahead and stowed food hampers and Elizabeth’s violin in the overhead luggage racks and then the rest followed, save Mary, who observed their progress through the opened windows of the train, until the conductor called all aboard, and William hurried off and Emma and Claire leaned out and Mary and William lifted their hands to touch theirs.

  “Try not to be afraid,” Mary and William said to Emma together after Claire had drawn her hand back in and climbed into Amelia’s arms.

  And Emma, alone in the window, answered, “One hundred thirteen.”

  They shook their heads in confusion.

  “The name of my concerto is one hundred thirteen,” she said. The train began to pull away. Th
ey walked alongside, still touching hands.

  “What do you mean, darling?”

  “Yesterday was one hundred twelve days since we were taken and today is one hundred thirteen and today is the first day I’m not afraid. One day, I’m going to write a violin concerto and call it Number One Hundred Thirteen, and Elizabeth will play it.” Emma drew her hand in and pressed it against the glass until the train pulled out of the station to begin its crawl over the South Bridge, the bridge that had rid them all of Gerritt.

  Unable yet to say good-bye—how silly, they were going to Boston next week, would stay with them in their new home on the Common, would get to see their new lives—Mary and William dashed into the street and hurried southward to watch the train cross the Hudson. The evening sky had gone pink and light blue and the paling sunlight outlined the caboose as the train snaked away to the other side of the river and was gone.

  —

  On the train, Emma looks out the window. She counts the iron struts of the bridge as they pass and then forgets the number as soon as the train breaks free. They are heading south and the sun is setting over the western hills. The light is golden and full and it makes the river, seen through leafy thickets, so peaceful and beautiful that she cannot imagine leaving it behind now. It came to their rescue, hers and Claire’s, a watery hand in the darkness when she was so frightened that nothing seemed real anymore, not the present, not the past.

  But now this is what is real, Emma thinks. Not that other thing that happened to her, but Elizabeth, who is smiling at her now, and Jakob, who helped her in the trial, and Mrs. Van der Veer, who likes to read to them and who looks at them both with such kindness, and Auntie Amelia, who can make anywhere feel like home, even a rattling train car. And Aunt Mary and Uncle William love her, too, and they will come to see them every month. And Claire is already asleep, her head nestled in Elizabeth’s lap, her hair combed back from her face.

  Her mother and father are gone. Gone. This, too, is real, but she will never forget the last moment she saw them, when she turned at the top of the school stairs and the falling snow was still just a lark, before everything terrible that followed, and they looked back at her, holding hands, and said to her, “Emma, take good care of your sister.”

  And she had.

  Author’s Note

  In 1888, a blizzard engulfed the entire Northeast, arising without warning in that age of little forecasting, killing four hundred people. For the purposes of this narrative, I moved that deadly blizzard to the year 1879.

  In 1879, the age of consent in New York State was ten years old. The NY State Statute regarding rape read, in part: “Every person who shall be convicted of rape, either, 1. By carnally and unlawfully knowing any female child under the age of ten years; or, 2. By forcibly ravishing any woman of the age of ten years or upwards; Shall be punished by imprisonment in a state prison not less than ten years.”

  In 1883, the first fledgling attempts were made in the New York legislature to raise the age of consent. It wasn’t until 1886 that the state raised the legal age for females from ten to sixteen, though no mention of the same protection was yet afforded to males.

  Acknowledgments

  A lucky writer is never alone. The following women provided the best kind of support an author needs to thrive: the freedom to explore and a helping hand when needed. Marly Rusoff, my extraordinary agent, is always my earliest and best reader. Her suggestions on the first six chapters of Winter Sisters sent the manuscript in a much more hopeful direction. My wonderful editors Kathryn Court and Sarah Stein provided astute editorial feedback on the very long, very wordy first draft I submitted. Their feedback was instrumental in helping me to reshape the story into a stronger, better version of itself. I am indebted to these women. They, and all the Viking team—from the president to the marketing department—have astonished me with their enthusiasm for Winter Sisters. Sarah Stein’s assistant, Shannon Kelly, helped immensely with some of the technical complications of copyediting and production. And Kathryn Court’s assistant, Victoria Savanh, always answered my innumerable questions, no matter how random or ill-timed.

  While writing this book, I met weekly for more than a year with two brilliant women writers who were also working on their own novel drafts. Joan Leegant and Randy Sue Coburn have become the dearest of friends. This book would not be what it is without their abundant generosity, multiple kindnesses, and shrewd observations.

  Rich Farrell, Julie Barton, and Rena Pitasky read different forms of early drafts, providing much needed feedback and perspective. Before I sent my final draft to my editors, Rena went through it with a very red pencil. Amazing the number of typos and inconsistencies a fresh set of extremely sharp eyes can find.

  I am equally indebted to Louise Crowley, former director of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program, for arranging for me a much-needed retreat at the eponymous Crowley Center, named after her because she is and always has been a true friend to writers. Melissa Fisher, Miciah Bay Gault, Ann Hagman Cardinal, and Ellen Lesser kept me sane during my long days of writing there. And I must mention, as I do in all my books’ acknowledgments, that the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts is among the most convivial and supportive educational environments I have ever been a part of.

  My great thanks to the research librarians at the Schaffer Law Library at Albany Law School for their tireless help with chasing down arcane trial procedure and 1879 New York State law statutes. Profound gratitude to David Danielson, JD, for his eloquent elucidation of the right of any person, no matter how despicable, to legal counsel. I am also grateful to the members of the Listserv of the American Musical Society, especially Styra Avins, Jonathan Bellman, and Geoff Chew. Merci to the kind people at the Le Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique, who admitted me to the old concert hall of the Conservatoire de Paris and let me poke around for a while. The research librarians at the New York Public Library were of great help. The research assistants at the Albany Institute of History and Art are unfailingly generous when I have questions. Thanks to Colleen Ryan of the Preservation League of New York State for leading me to Stuart Lehman, assistant curator of the Office of General Services for the State of New York, who pinpointed details about the construction of the capitol building. And to Anthony Opalka, the Albany City Historian, my deep and abiding thanks for our discussions about the transportation system of nineteenth-century Albany.

  About the Author

  Robin Oliveira is the New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter and I Always Loved You. She holds a BA in Russian and studied at the Pushkin Language Institute in Moscow. She received an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a former registered nurse, specializing in critical care. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

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