I end the call, fuming. How dare he do this? How dare he tell her he was coming, give her false hope. I know they’re still close. I know they’ll still be in communication. That he’s been in my mom’s life for decades, and they will always be family. I don’t want them to hate each other, but I don’t want them tohaveeach other, either. She’s supposed to take my side in this.
It’s the bare minimum.
Bitter tears sting my eyes as I prepare for the confrontation.
If he wants to be in my life, and not just Taylor’s, he has to keep our private life private. He can’t tell my mom everything. Every conversation and every visit. I won’t allow it. He knows how complicated our relationship is.
I open the door, ready to confront him, but I’m met with Lewis standing in Taylor’s doorway, looking my way, eyes wild.
“Were you eavesdropping?”
“What? No, I?—”
“She was all too pleased?—”
“Corinne—” He holds up a hand, cutting me off, and then I hear it. The panic in his voice. Something’s wrong. Something is very wrong. His voice breaks when he speaks next, pushingthe door open farther so I can see into our daughter’s room. “Taylor’s gone.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EMMA WILDE - 1731
I hear them before I see them. The horses’ hooves on the muddy path, the men’s boots heavy on the ground. They are dressed neatly, in Sunday coats despite the warming weather.
From the window, I watch as they descend upon the house, feeling a terrible dread in my stomach. The wind seems to deliver them to me, bringing them slowly from a distance and then all at once. They arrive like a murder of crows, dark and important. The man in the front carries a paper in one hand, hubris in the other.
I step out onto my porch before they get the chance to call for me, hands folded tight behind my apron.
I remember the stories my gran told me about her mother, about how the men came for her, too. Men just like these before me. I don’t dare let them see the way my hands shake beneath the cloth.
Inside, the girls are watching from atop wooden stools at the parlor window. Though they are quiet as shadows, I can feel their presence without looking, without even hearing a creak of the floor underfoot.
They radiate nervous energy, like field mice caught in a storm.
“Evening, Mrs. Wilde,” says the first man, his hat pressed carefully against his chest as if he’s here to mourn something not yet dead.
Up close, I recognize him as Mr. Clemens, a local shop owner. When I do not respond or bid him well, he goes on. “We’re here on account of concern from the village. Real concern. For you and your daughters.”
“Are you now? I don’t recall sending for any concern, real or otherwise.”
That seems to silence him for a moment, but then he just gives me that smile that men often give you when they mean to talk over you. When they think you’re just a foolish woman who says foolish woman things. “Be that as it may, Mrs. Wilde, we’ve convened a special meeting on your behalf.”
“Very kind of you, but unnecessary, you can be assured.”
He’s growing irritated with me now, as his men become restless. “We’ve spoken with Reverend Hawkins, and he’s in agreement. As is the town council.” He braces himself, his feet shuffling about like a turkey. “It’s not proper, nor is it safe, for a woman—a widow—to hold land alone. Now, we’re only looking out for you.”
“Your concern is very decent, Mr. Clemens, but I assure you, you need not worry. Foxglove’s stood without a man on its deed as long as it has stood, more than my seven and twenty years of living. More than my gran’s. It’ll stand for a few more, God willing.”
He squeezes the paper in his hand, balling his fingers into a fist at his side. “You must have a husband, Mrs. Wilde. Or male kin to see to your wellbeing. It’s only right.”
Now it is my turn to smile, for I have been warned about these men and their rules all my life.
My eyes scan the crowd, the others there prepared to tell me what is fit and right and proper for my own life. Among them arefarmers and shopkeepers, nearly ten of them—though one is just a boy who has not grown into the hair on his chin. They watch me with wild expressions, nodding and clucking their agreement like the hens in the coop.
Their greedy eyes take in Foxglove, then me, and I see the fire of which I’ve heard tales. The hatred.
“I have a brother,” I say. “Many of you know Henry. And my late husband, James. But their names have never been on the deed. Will never. Foxglove is and has been mine from the moment my mother was placed into her grave.”
“Henry is a good man,” Mr. Clemens says. “But he is not taking responsibility for you and your daughters in your time of grief.”
