Miss Maeve told me she’d been about my age when she’d arrived in Wheeler—the age Mary Eve Mayhew was when she left. I struggled to marshal my thoughts. “Thank you for speaking with me, Mrs. Mayhew,” I said, rising on unsteady legs.
When Mrs. Mayhew stood, I scooped her into a hug. “I’m so very sorry.” There was nothing else to say. Not yet, anyway.
She placed her hands on either side of my face, scrutinizing me. “You’re quite like Elizabeth.” She seemed to debate whether to continue, then added, “But I can see some of him in you, too. You favor both your folks.”
“Did you know my father?” It shouldn’t have surprised me. Argenta was a small town.
“I did. Matthew boarded with a local farmer, not very far from our house.” She spoke with care. “When Matthew moved to Argenta, he began visiting our church. He, Elizabeth, and Mary were fast friends. But with Mary…”
My breath quickened. I didn’t want to hear what I feared she would say next.
“Well, for Matthew and Mary, it became far more than friendship. Franklin said Matthew was no better than a vagabond, a Yankee boy drifting from town to town, never settling down. I think he feared Matthew would try to take our Mary away.” She sighed deeply. “And he was right. They eloped one night in early summer, but Franklin caught up with them just over the county line before they could be married. I never knew what Franklin said to Matthew.” She swallowed hard. “Or what he did to him, maybe. But I never saw Matthew again.”
Mrs. Mayhew shook her head, the regret and loss still achingly fresh on her lined face. “I feared Mary would grieve herself to death. Elizabeth came to see her, brought her little gifts and things to cheer her. Nothing helped. I hoped Matthew would come back, and they’d try to sneak away again.” Her voice rang with an unexpected ferocity. “I’d rather her set up house across the country, alive and well, than live here, caged like a broken-winged bird.”
My pulse thundered in my ears. The idea of my father having loved another woman had never occurred to me. Mary Eve Mayhew had been his first love, not my mother. And now I wondered if I’d been right about at least one thing—that Mary’s story hadn’t ended as her parents, and the town at large, believed.
What if Mary Eve had taken the name her mother intended for her, invented a false history with long-dead parents and a deceased sister called Aurelia after her childhood imaginary friend, and moved one town over to become Miss Maeve Donovan?
My new theory was still speculation, but there was one undeniable fact in this tragic tale. Papa had fathered a child and left the expectant mother behind. Had he known of Mary’s condition before he left Argenta, and deliberately abandoned her?
“My word, you’ve gone white as a sheet,” Mrs. Mayhew said. She disappeared into another room, returning seconds later with a small glass of amber liquid. “Drink this,” she said firmly.
The burn of whiskey and bitter herbs shocked me back to alertness. I choked down two swallows before Mrs. Mayhew took the glass from my limp fingers. “Thank you,” I mumbled.
“My apologies, Verity. I only wanted you to know the rest of the story. Maybe that was wrong of me, but Matthew was a part of Mary’s life, and mine. I don’t hold ill will for your daddy. I forgave him long ago. I suspect he had”—her brow furrowed and her eyes darted to the door through which Reverend Mayhew had exited—“reasons for leaving. And I doubt he knew about the baby. Franklin and I certainly didn’t.”
“I’m sure he didn’t know,” I whispered, hoping I spoke the truth. I wished I had the glass of whiskey and herbs back.
If Maeve was truly Mary Eve, then Papa’s first love still lived. And she had his youngest daughter in her home. An uneasy weight settled in my stomach. Miss Pimsler said she’d put us on the orphan train to Arkansas because Mama and Papa had a connection to the state. That might’ve been accurate, yet out of an entire state, the odds of us coming to this specific small town by pure coincidence seemed minuscule.
“I heard Elizabeth moved to New York shortly after that awful winter,” Mrs. Mayhew said. “She and Matthew had been good friends, so I wasn’t surprised at the news of their marriage.” She patted my hand. “I was glad of it. They deserved a chance for a happy life.”
They had been happy. For a while. Until Papa’s mind began unraveling, and Mama spent her days worrying over what he’d do next and how far away the madness would carry him.
Mrs. Mayhew smiled sadly. “I’m sorry to hear Matthew’s gone now.” She assumed my arrival on the orphan train meant I had no living parents. I didn’t correct her misapprehension. I had no room in my head for any words, any thoughts but these: Her daughter might still be alive.
“Thank you,” I said at last. “For telling me Mary’s story, and for your kind words about my parents.” I stared down at my fingers. “I’d certainly understand if you felt bitter toward Papa.”
“We must forgive as the Lord forgives us. Nothing kills a soul faster than bitterness and hate.” Mrs. Mayhew put her arm around me. I wished I’d been right about my mother being her missing girl. Mrs. Mayhew would’ve made a fine grandmother.
I said my goodbyes and made my way outside.
“Well?” Abel asked, glancing back to where Mrs. Mayhew watched from the front porch.
I could only shake my head. “I was wrong. My mother wasn’t their daughter.”
Abel took my hand in his, helping me into the buggy. “I’m sorry, Verity.” I wanted to tell him everything, what I knew and what I suspected. But I found I couldn’t speak the words just then.
As we crested a rise in the road, I looked back. Reverend Mayhew stood at the edge of the graveyard behind the church. Hands clasped, head bowed, he looked down at a small stone marker.
I watched until the minister and the cemetery were lost from sight, swallowed up by the rustling grass. If Maeve really was Mary, I hoped time had softened his feelings toward his daughter. And that I’d be able to convince her to come home.
20
I bided my time until Saturday morning, thinking it would be easier to talk to Miss Maeve at her house than at the school. I’d worked myself to the bone, knowing Hettie and Big Tom would be more inclined to let me go visiting if my chores were done well.
Neither Abel, Big Tom, nor Hettie asked for more details about my visit to the Mayhews. Curiosity buzzed around them like flies, but they cared about my feelings enough not to pry for specifics beyond my vague “I was wrong about having family in Argenta.”
The weekend dawned fair and hot, and after breakfast, I caught a ride to Miss Maeve’s house with Abel. He dropped me off at the Lybrand property before heading into town to visit Jasper. “Tell Lilah I said hello,” he called as I watched him ride away on Merlin.
Soon enough I’d be able to tell him this stop wasn’t about seeing Lilah. It was about seeing the woman I thought could be Mary Eve Mayhew, and possibly bringing a family back together. I’d lost my mother to the grave and my father, at least as he’d once been, to the cruel torments of a broken mind. Miss Maeve didn’t need to live without her parents. That was one tragedy in her sad story that could be rewritten.
I found her kneeling in the dirt of a rose bed. Her fingers moved deftly among the thorns, breaking off withered blossoms faded to the color of old parchment. She stood as I crossed the shade-dappled lawn. Her face betrayed a flicker of confusion, and maybe a bit of annoyance, at my unexpected arrival. “Why, Verity, how nice to see you. I’m afraid Lilah just went inside to rest. We’ve been gardening since sunup.”
Why had she chosen my sister in particular, and not any other eleven-year-old orphan girl? It struck me as strange that I’d never asked myself the question before. Did she know Lilah was Matthew Pruitt’s child, and the connection appealed to her?
“I’m sorry for coming without an invitation,” I said. “Actually, it’s you I’d like to speak with, not Lilah.”
She tilted her head, sending a lock of silvery blond hair slipping from beneath her kerchief. This decidedly
not-red hair was enough to make me question my theory that Miss Maeve was Mary Mayhew. Perhaps, as with Marie-Antoinette before her execution, Miss Maeve’s hair had lost its color during a time of extreme duress.
I hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. “Miss Maeve, was your hair red when you were younger?”
Her laugh sounded breathy, and a little nervous. “What an odd question. As a matter of fact—and I can’t imagine how you guessed—it was. I believe it began turning light when I was around your age.”
She picked up a pair of hedge clippers, avoiding my eyes as she turned her attention to the climbing roses. “I’ve been told it is the result of a rare medical condition. The name of it escapes me.” Her knuckles around the handles were white. “I’ll have to ask Uncle Reuben. I’m sure he remembers.”
I watched her in profile. I could easily imagine her as a girl of my own age. In fact, she looked much younger than Papa, though they must be nearly the same age. When he left, why hadn’t she gone after him?
Miss Maeve fixed me in an intense stare. “Surely you didn’t come all this way to ask about my hair?”
“No. I went to Argenta this week and spoke with Mrs. Mayhew.” Miss Maeve began deadheading the roses once more. “My mother, Elizabeth Sutter, lived there when she was young. She was good friends with the Mayhews’ daughter, Mary.”
The clippers went still. I had to force the next words from my throat. “Mrs. Mayhew told me Mary ran away from home nineteen years ago. Into a blizzard.” I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “She said Mary had lost a baby.”
Miss Maeve reached among the glossy green foliage to pluck away a crumbling brown leaf. “I’ve heard the story. Small towns do love a scandal.”
“Everyone thinks she froze to death in that storm.” The morning sun peered from behind Miss Maeve’s shoulder, casting her face in shadow. I leaned closer, wanting to gauge the reaction in those pale eyes, so like Mrs. Mayhew’s. Compassion swelled in my chest. “But I’m not sure that’s true.”
Miss Maeve’s expression was bemused, as though I were a primary grade student spinning a clever story. “Oh, really?”
“It was a dreadful shock, but I learned that Mary’s beau was my father. Matthew Pruitt.” Miss Maeve drew in a sharp breath, as if the sound of his name were a knife between her ribs.
“At first, I thought she had run off to be with her suitor. But now I have a different idea. I believe Mary Eve did start a new life, but not with the young man she loved. And not so far away from her home in Argenta.”
Miss Maeve went deathly still. A vein pulsed erratically in her temple, betraying the turmoil under her calm surface. Softly, I said, “Your mother misses you, Mary.”
I braced myself for her to be furious that I’d exposed her well-tended secret, or to seem confused if I’d gotten it all wrong. Instead, her shoulders rounded, like she wanted to turn inward on herself and disappear. Her lashes dropped slowly, and her eyes stayed closed as she spoke.
“I named her Genevieve,” she whispered. “She was so tiny”—Miss Maeve lifted her dirt-caked hands to measure off a small space in the air—“but she was perfect. She had hair just the color of Lilah’s, just like her daddy’s.”
I wanted to look away from Maeve’s anguish, but found I couldn’t. It seemed my responsibility somehow, to witness the despair my father hadn’t stayed to see himself.
She sank back to her knees in the freshly dug earth. “If I could’ve carried the baby longer, she would have survived. But the strain was too much.… I was terrified Mother and Father would find out, that everyone would know what we’d done.” Her words gathered speed, rushing over one another. “I tried to leave, but I couldn’t get away. Matthew went back home and never answered my letters pleading for him to come back for me. It was as though I never even existed. Like I wasn’t alive at all.”
The last remnants of her carefully crafted mask shattered. In her face was the suffocating hopelessness that had driven her out into the snow that night. “I was wild with the loss of him,” she said.
She looked at me then, a question in her eyes. “Could you survive such betrayal? If you found yourself truly and utterly forsaken?”
I couldn’t speak, struck mute at the mere thought. Losing Mama to the grave and Papa to madness had been brutal. I couldn’t fathom the hurt I’d feel if they’d left me by choice. “No,” I whispered at last. “I can’t imagine it.”
Her smile was an upturned scythe, bright and sharp. “I’ll tell you how it goes, then. You force yourself to get up, morning after blank morning. Alone. You make yourself swallow your tasteless food and remind yourself to breathe in and out. It takes all the energy you have just to keep living.”
She leaned in, her face inches from mine, ice-blue eyes desolate. A shiver ran across my shoulders. “I barely survived Matthew’s betrayal. Then I held our baby girl in my arms. I saw she wasn’t breathing. I had no one.” Tears glittered on her white lashes. “And there was no more of me.” One hand rose to clutch at her heart. It was the same gesture Mrs. Mayhew had used when she spoke of her own lost daughter, of her Mary Eve.
“You let your parents believe you died all those years ago. Why?” My voice sounded weaker, more uncertain now.
Her voice held the finality of a crypt door closing. “Mary Mayhew is dead and gone.”
I hesitated, aware that I’d never comprehend what she’d been through. I knelt beside her in the dirt. “I know your mother still loves you. And misses you. And I think your father might be happy to see you again, too.”
There was a loud crash as Miss Maeve hurled the clippers against the house. “You know nothing!” Her laugh was bitter as vinegar. “I was their greatest shame. Do you think I care to bring a bit of happiness to my dear, aging parents? Father put the first nail in my baby’s coffin when he stopped my elopement. Mother added another when she buried her head and wouldn’t see my condition. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I was pregnant, but she knew. She let out the waist of my skirts, never letting herself face the fact that her daughter had played the whore.”
“Miss Maeve!” Her words shocked me into speech. “Don’t speak of yourself that way. You can’t believe the people who loved you most in the world could be that unfeeling.” I realized, though, that she did believe it. Her grief over the baby’s death and my father’s departure had turned to a scattershot blast of anger and blame.
And I understood too late that I was in the line of fire.
“I will not go back to being Mary Mayhew.” Her lips twisted with scorn. “And how do you think the good people of Wheeler would react to finding out the girl from that cautionary tale, the one they pray their daughters won’t become, is teaching their children?”
“No one thinks that, Miss—”
She struck like a snake, reaching forward to grasp my chin with cold, gritty fingers. I gasped as her nails dug into my skin. “I’d lose my position, my good name, then my home. It won’t take long for them to work out that Reuben isn’t really my uncle. What will they say then? ‘That Mary Mayhew, she never learned to keep her legs shut.’”
My eyes went wide. Chills slithered down my arms at Miss Maeve’s grim laugh. “No, he’s not my lover. But no one likes to let truth stand in the way of a juicy, shameful story.”
Miss Maeve eased closer, putting her lips to my ear. “You look just like your mother.” Her breath stirred my hair as she spoke in a voice both hollow with hurt and brimming with hate. For whom, I couldn’t be sure.
“You will not tell a soul about any of this.” Her command carried the crackling charge that comes before a lightning strike. “Do you understand?”
When I managed a tight nod, she released me and patted my face. A tear slid down my cheek. She’d do anything to protect her secret. Anything. She had Lilah, and I had much to lose.
Her gaze shifted to something over my shoulder. In the instant it took me to blink, Miss Maeve’s demeanor shifted back to the kind schoolteacher. “Why, Abel … this mo
rning is just full of pleasant company.”
I turned to see Abel approaching, leading his horse. “Merlin threw a shoe before I got halfway to town,” he said. “Do you mind if I leave him here while I fetch the farrier?” He looked longingly at Mr. Lybrand’s Ford parked alongside the house. “Since y’all don’t have horses, you won’t have the supplies here.”
“I’ll come with you,” I said, hurriedly. “Lilah is asleep, so I’ll visit another time.” The violent seesaw of Miss Maeve’s emotions had rattled me to the bone. I had no idea if she’d once again turn menacing when Abel left.
Miss Maeve’s laugh chimed like bells. She’d switched to this charming persona with practiced, unnerving ease. “Oh, don’t be silly. I’ll drive you both to town in the car. It’s such a nice day, after all.” She stood, gesturing to the cloudless sky, its blue so intense it hurt my eyes. “Uncle Reuben is inside reading his newspaper. He can stay here in case Lilah wakes up. I know how to drive the Ford. The only trouble is I can’t crank it.” She turned to Abel. “Do you think you could manage?”
Abel tied the horse to a tree and looked over to where the automobile stood, green and shiny as a holly leaf. “I’ve never tried it before, but I bet I can figure it out.”
I stepped in front of him. “It won’t take long to walk to town,” I said, still eager to make my escape. “I hate to trouble Miss Maeve.”
“Lucky for you, I’m in charge today, and I insist on driving y’all,” Miss Maeve said, almost playfully, before switching to her authoritative teacher voice. “All you need to start it is a good grip and an arm stronger than my own.”
Eventide Page 15
