Ma Kersey wiped her mouth. “Anyway, lost track of them and their granddaddy, but I didn’t think much of it. Lost track of plenty of people after the war, after all. Didn’t even occur to me they might be behind all the killings, I’ll tell you that.”
“Jackson said they were pretty bad,” I said hesitantly.
“Bad enough. When they finally did catch ’em, I still didn’t think of it at first. Shouldn’t have been more’n about twelve,and what those men caught sure looked older. But later I got to thinking, if it only took ’em three months to get born, maybe it didn’t take ’em that long to get grown either.” She stood up, and this time it was clear that the interview was over. I went meekly to the door.
“What happened to their grandfather?” I asked.
Ma Kersey’s voice followed me down the steps. “It was pretty clear he’d been keeping them locked up. Inside an old shed on his property, like dogs.”
CHAPTER 12
It doesn’t mean anything, I told myself on the long walk home.It’s not as if it’s the same shed.Jackson had said that the two responsible for those strange murders had been caught and killed over near Bynum, which I was pretty sure was thirty-odd miles as the crow flies. Just a coincidence. Hell, not even as much as a coincidence.There are lots of reasons people have sheds. Some of them aren’t even particularly nefarious.
Anyway, the story was absurd. Or, not absurd exactly, but there were obvious explanations. The children Ma Kersey delivered doubtless had some deformity. It’s tragic, but it happens. And she’d said herself that the culprits caught in Bynum had seemed much older than the children she’d delivered would have been. She’d probably conflated the two out of guilt for not following up on those babies during the war, particularly if it turned out that their grandfather had been mistreating them. Which is also tragic and also happens.
This was depressing. I tried to turn my thoughts to other things, which wasn’t hard. There was enough to turn my mind into a perfect froth of anxiety.
I couldn’t imagine how Mrs. Kent must feel. Trapped in a situation she must hate, with a man she’d watched shoot her friend’s lover… God. I wondered if there was anything I could do to help, but my mind was a perfect blank. I couldn’t even help myself.
I exhaled slowly as I turned up the rutted drive to the doctor’s house. The doctor, who’d shot a man in… if not cold blood, atleast something like it. And here I’d been stalking him through the woods, thinking that at most he’d fire me.
Lord, maybe Ishouldleave. Now would be a perfect time. Halder was gone to Raleigh. I could leave without explaining myself to anyone but the Kents.
Leave and go where?
It had been nearly two months. Surely my position at the school had been filled already. Respectable but penniless young women were in near-endless supply, as the daughters of war widows sought employment. Headmistress Silverton only needed someone with enough skill to teach the basics of watercolor to her students. I had been almost absurdly overqualified for my post.
I had enough money to take the train… somewhere. Perhaps a town where a friend of my father’s had lived. I knew a few who would likely put me up for the night. Perhaps if I stayed with one of them, made myself useful in small ways, they would keep me on.
Which was exactly what I had tried to do after my father’s death. It had landed me in Wilmington, with a man who studied seashells. His wife had been in a family way, and I had seen a future as an unpaid nursemaid stretching ahead of me, a fate which she desired no more than I did. She had found me the spot at Silverton’s school, for which I was grateful. I was unlikely to be as lucky a second time.
Halder had not offered me violence. Indeed, it seemed that his violence had been reserved for Louisa’s lover. I could not forgive that, but I also did not imagine for a moment that he felt any jealous passion for me.
In another year though, I could save enough of my wages to travel for several months. I could write to Father’s friends and perhaps this time some of them would remember to write back. Or if I could see the project through, if Halder’s book did well, perhaps I might even make enough of a name for myself as an illustrator that I would not be dependent on their charity.
(another year working for a murderer)
I don’t like it, I told myself,but not working for him won’t bring back the dead either. And wondered if Mrs. Kent had said the same thing to herself a year ago.
I was glad to reach the house, to take a long drink of water still cold from the well. I handed off the jar of tonic to Mrs. Kent, who took it with a smile. I studied her form as she turned to put it away, feeling the guilt lodged in my skin like a parasite.
You’re trapped here too. And it’s worse for you. And I didn’t know.
“You all right?” she asked. “That old woman didn’t tear any strips off you, did she? She’s got a tongue on her, but you shouldn’t take it too serious.” She frowned. “You look a bit flushed.”
“I’m fine,” I said, ducking my head. “Just tired from the walk, that’s all.”
I could hear Ma Kersey as I climbed the stairs.It ain’t easy to swallow some things down. Makes you feel like maybe you aren’t who you thought you were.
I stared at my paints for half a minute, then went outside to find Jackson and ask him what his wife’s favorite flower was.
I entered the kitchen the next morning to find two men sitting at the table, and that was sufficiently odd that I paused in the doorway. The tension in the room was so thick that you could have sliced it and fried it up like bacon. Mrs. Kent was pressed back against the stove in a way that put me in mind of an animal at bay—still dangerous, perhaps even more dangerous, but, for the moment, cornered.
What onearthis going on here?
“Good morning,” I said cautiously, half afraid that the phrase was going to precipitate a hail of gunfire. It was that kind of tension.
Mrs. Kent looked up and met my eyes, and relief flashed soclearly and unexpectedly across her face that it got me moving again.
