‘Only,’ said Jane, ‘I have lost so many, you see. I have become superstitious about it all. I can’t bear to tempt fate once more.’
Angela took Jane’s hand in hers. ‘I have forgotten it already.’
Jane sent word down the mountain by her husband soon after that she could not attend knitting group. She was once more struck down by illness. There was much tutting and sympathy and it reminded the ladies that they should each have a glass of wine to preserve their own health.
Angela waited for word, good or bad. Nothing came which was an answer in itself.
In the spring Jane was there again at the pre-knitting luncheon, pale and wan. Angela looked at her, and Jane bit her lip and shook her head and Angela bit hers too and that was all that needed saying on that matter.
‘Let us lower ourselves to crochet, for once,’ Angela said brightly. ‘We deserve a respite.’
But there was something subtly wrong about Jane’s body – it sat and moved and stayed still in all the wrong ways. Angela knew this well, the rhythm of fear.
‘Your crochet is very elegant, Jane.’ Angela laid her hand on Jane’s for a brief moment.
After that Angela watched her friend closely. She saw that Jane knew some of the same terrible truths about the world that she herself did. She would never ask Jane about it, of course. Everything depended on not remembering [those things hands in the dark].
Occasionally members of the knitting circle brought gifts to the lunch – delicious preserves or candies or a set of intricately embroidered handkerchiefs. After that day it always seemed to come about, by consensus, that Jane should be the one who took home the preserve or had first pick at the candy.
One Wednesday Jane was not at the lunch – but she had not sent word. The group waited the poached chicken for twenty minutes, but she did not appear. Nor did she arrive afterwards to knit. She had always sent word in advance when she would be absent, always, the ladies said to one another, but life is life. So they went on with their work.
The next Wednesday Jane did not come again, nor was there any communication from her. There were some pursed lips but everyone knitted and talked as usual and no one made a business of it, because mountain people hate a business.
On the third Wednesday, the women assembled and ate their cold beef. All of them glanced, at intervals, at the empty place where Jane should be.
Usually after lunch had finished and the table was cleared they picked up their knitting and began the real talk. But today everyone lingered, meeting each other’s eyes. No one took out their knitting and there was a burdened silence in the air.
At length Angela cleared her throat. ‘Is there any word from Jane? No one has seen her?’
There was a chorus of ‘no’s’ and a flurry of shaken heads.
‘And Mr Dunning?’
‘He has not been in town these three weeks,’ said Juniper Nailey. ‘He buys tobacco from my Andrew at the store each Wednesday without fail. But he has not come the past three.’
‘And no one has seen or heard from the Dunnings in all that time?’ Angela kept her voice level.
Again, the company shook their heads.
‘Very well,’ said Angela. ‘I am sorry to say it, but I fear that we must involve the men.’
Around the circle, the women nodded. They gathered their gloves and hats and knitting bags and filed out of the front door. They dispersed through Ault, fetching husbands and brothers and sons from the mill and the convenience store and the sheriff’s office and the bank.
Ben was splitting logs behind their house.Crack, went the axe, opening the wood’s white flesh to the air.Crack.He stopped and smiled when he saw Angela.
‘They need our help up at Nowhere,’ Angela said to her husband.
He looked at her for a moment. ‘All right.’
A mounted expedition of twelve set out. Angela rode her old grey cob to the square, where the search party had assembled.
‘Are you—?’ asked her husband.
‘Yes, I am coming with you,’ she replied.
Angela leant forward, patting her horse on the neck. ‘Quick as you can, Storytime,’ she whispered in his flickering ear. Storytime turned and gently bit the folds of her riding habit.
They went up the mountain, pushing the horses hard.
