2
Her dress enveloped by an apron, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, Ivy Jackson worked at the kitchen counter, kneading bread dough. While her hands knew the familiar rhythm, her mind ranged over the dissatisfaction she felt about her life.
She was twenty-one years old, unmarried, and trapped in her father’s house with no prospects and no hope of escape. He gave her a meager allowance for food and supplies, nit-picked everything she did—or everything henoticedshe did—and never once considered that she might want something more from life than scrubbing floors, dusting, sweeping, cooking, baking, mending, and helping her sister, Katie, with their mother’s care.
This task was a case in point. She didn’t particularly like cooking and baking, even though from long practice she was competent at both. But, mostly, she disliked her efforts being taken for granted. No compliments, nor even any acknowledgments. Against all manners, her father would read the paper or a book at the table, mechanically eating, while she and Katie were expected to remain quiet. For all her father knew, he could be eating hay.
Sometimes, Ivy was tempted to make the bread tasteless and hard. Maybe then he’d notice. She sighed and let go of the idea.He’ll notice, all right.
She winced, thinking of how he’d criticize. Healwayscriticized, his blue eyes ice cold and his tone chilly. Her efforts, no matter how hard she tried, were never good enough. And she’d upset her sister, who was sensitive and fearful of their father and tended to tiptoe around the man. Ivy loved her sister, but they had very little in common, only music—Katie the piano, and Ivy her Celtic harp. Not like Cora….
Tears threatened. Ivy stopped kneading, sniffed back the moisture, and formed the bread into a loaf shape. She missed her best friend so much. Letters couldn’t begin to fill the hole left by Cora moving with her aunt to the Montana town of Sweetwater Springs.
To give her thoughts another direction, Ivy glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. Two more hours before she had to leave for today’s tutoring session—the only bright spot in her day.
Tutoring children had been her salvation—her secret act of rebellion. Her father had taught her Latin and Greek along with her young brother, as if she was another son in disguise, capable of following in his scholarly footsteps. The lessons continued even after her brother, Max, died at age thirteen, even as her father longed for another son. When the years passed with her mother miscarrying three times and the death of a stillborn boy, those hopes had faded.
Grief had caused her parents to retreat—her father into rigid control and miserliness, and her mother into self-pitying illness. He’d lost interest in Ivy’s education. But the languages had remained, locked away in her mind like buried treasure.
She’d started tutoring almost by accident, when a neighbor had mentioned that her sons were struggling with their Latinlessons at school. Ivy had offered to help, just once, and discovered something unexpected: she was good at teaching. Better than good. She could take a struggling student and find the key that unlocked his or her understanding. She could make dry grammar come alive by using stories and games and creative exercises.
For two years, she’d built a small roster of pupils, always meeting them at their homes. The money had accumulated slowly, coin by coin, hidden in a box beneath the floorboards in her bedroom. Enough for a train ticket to a town in need of a teacher. Enough for a few months’ rent in a boardinghouse. Enough, maybe, to start fresh somewhere away from her father’s cold eyes and colder voice and her mother’s peevish invalidism.
Lately, her students had drifted away, having caught up on their studies and no longer needing her. While Ivy was proud of each one’s accomplishments, she couldn’t help feeling anxious as her income dwindled.
The oppressive silence in the large townhouse lifted with the sound of the piano. “Für Elise.” One of Katie’s favorites. Her sister tended to vary each day, sometimes sticking to one composer, other times choosing music by country, or by century. Or she’d play her own beautiful compositions.
Listening to her sister play like an angel made the baking and other kitchen tasks less arduous.How sad to only ever have an audience of one.Their mother’s room was too far away to hear the piano, and their father didn’t care for music. He made sure his daughters had music lessons, for being able to perform in polite company was a necessary ladylike accomplishment. But he didn’t want to hear the results.
As much as the man was a miser at home, he made sure his daughters appeared well presented in society. So they did have some nice clothing and accessories to be wornonlyfor church and rare social activities or when he had business colleaguesover to dine. But at twenty-one and eighteen, both of them were old enough to be married and have their own households—something that neither of her parents would make an effort to see happen.
When a glance at the clock showed the two hours had almost passed, Ivy removed her apron. On the days she tutored, she wore one of her better day dresses, so all she had to do was check in the mirror next to the hat rack to be sure her hair remained in a neat coiffure. Her battered leather satchel, an old one of her father’s, that contained her teaching materials, rested on the table.
She followed the sound of music to the parlor, where her sister was practicing. Katie bent over the keyboard, a dreamy expression on her face. The light from a nearby window burnished her dark-gold curls.
A small coal fire burned in the fireplace, sending out feeble heat, just enough to keep her sister’s hands from stiffening from the cold. How Ivy longed to have a real teaching job—to afford to send Katie money for extra coal to burn during her practice time.
As she approached the piano, Katie lifted her hands, setting them in her lap, her dreamy expression becoming more alert. “I read to Mama until she fell asleep.”
The two divvied up the chores. Ivy took on the majority of the household tasks, and Katie danced attendance on their invalid mother, who tended to be fractious.
Ivy figured she had the easier job. Not for the first time, she gave thanks for her sister’s gentle nature.If I were Mama’s primary caretaker, I might commit matricide.“It’s good for Mama to rest, so you can practice. I’m off. Enjoy the peace.”
Katie smiled, and before Ivy had left the room, she was already playing again, this time one of her own compositions—something spring-like, sweet and lilting.
In the entryway, Ivy donned her coat and wrapped her green knitted scarf around her throat. Just as she was about to pull her gloves from her pocket, she noticed a letter on the floor below the mail slot and stooped to pick up the envelope, hoping for a letter from Cora.
But instead, in unfamiliar handwriting, her name was scrawled, almost sloppily, across the front.
The sender:Mr. Torin Rees.
Brian Bly’s neighbor? Why would he be writing?
Her first thoughts were he’d responded with a polite thank-you note. Then, with a clench of her heart, her imagination jumped to something bad happening to Cora. Fingers shaking, she tore the envelope open and pulled out a single sheet of paper, doing a quick scan.
So relieved was Ivy that nothing was wrong, she almost didn’t take in the contents. Then she did another read, only to immediately reject the offer.
Travel to Sweetwater Springs. Live a reclusive life. Absolutely not!
