Between this and the remains of the malaria, I woke up barely more rested than when I went to sleep. Still, I didn’t want to complain. The Kents had had to save me once already, and I would have been embarrassed to go whining about bad dreams.
I did use the excuse of recovery to avoid painting again immediately. I rambled around the gardens instead. It was June and it was hot but not as punishing as it would be in August. The heat was part of what made the late summer malaria flare-ups so brutal. (Not that they were fun at any time of year, mind you, but it’s easier to bring down a fever when the air isn’t hotter than the patient.)
I wondered if I’d have another flare-up in August. It seemed desperately unfair to have two in short order. Of course, I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d had this one. A doctor would probably tell me it had been “excitement of the nerves” that caused a relapse.
Between the possum and this job, I’ve certainly had plenty of excitement, it’s true. Though I didn’t think I had any nerves to speak of. Oh well, we live and learn.
When it was too warm to wander, I looked through Louisa’s sketchbooks. I found myself poring over the face of the man in the last few books, the one with the lean face. Saul Gregor, the man she’d fallen in love with? It struck me as likely. There was tenderness etched into the lines, but she had never written anything beside his face. Perhaps even then, she had been too frightened of what Halder might do if he found out to commit anything to paper.
She was more right than she could have known.I sat up, rubbing my back, which ached from hunching over the wooden chest. I don’t know what I was hoping to find.
Well, no, that wasn’t true. I washopingto find a note left by Louisa that said something like:Hello, artist reading this, please feel free to keep working for my husband even though he killed mylover, I really don’t mind and you’re not a bad person.I wasn’texpectingto find it, but it would have been nice.
I snorted.Idiot. Still looking for absolution, aren’t you?
The books had none to give me. The air had cooled a trifle though, and perhaps nature could give me what humans couldn’t. I picked up my own sketchbook and went back outside to the gardens.
Jackson was working over by the vegetable garden. Well, I sayworking, but it mostly consisted of standing, staring at something by his feet, walking in a circle, stopping, staring up at the sky, and scratching the back of his neck. I ambled in his direction.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Nah, just varmints being too clever for their own good.” He gave me a sheepish grin. “The doc telegrammed and told me to see if I couldn’t trap another couple possums, preferably with the wolf worms.”
“And?”
He nudged the object on the ground with his foot. It looked like a wooden box with a few extra attachments and a lid hanging by one leather hinge. “Caught one, sure enough, but it got out again. Since then, no luck at all. Something’s springing ’em and taking the bait though.”
“Raccoon?” I asked. Raccoons are as clever as the Devil and they can figure out a simple latch in no time at all.
“That’s all I can think of. Got to be a pair of them together though. One couldn’t do it all by itself.”
I remembered the one that I had seen staring at me from the tree before the possum had showed up. Had it been infected with the same strange larva? There had been something odd about its face, but it had been too far away to tell. Somehow I couldn’t regret the distance.
No, there’s no lack of excitement of the nerves to go around…
I walked back to the garden. Fat bumblebees careened intoflowers, which swayed under their weight. Beetles rolled in the golden stamens of oakleaf hydrangea and tiny striped hoverflies hung suspended by the bottlebrushes of giant blue hyssop. I did not know the species of most of them. Normally I would have been eager to learn, but I had a gloomy feeling that if I did, I’d find out that they were parasitic on some other species. I sat down on a bench and leaned my head back, admiring the plants instead. There are parasitic plants, but not many of them, and so far as we know, beech trees don’t much care if aMonotropa uniflorasets up among its roots.
A shadow fell over my face. I looked up, startled, and saw the unlovely face of Phelps looking down at me. I squawked and scrambled to my feet.
“Miss Wilson,” he said.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “You startled me.”
He nodded gravely. His eyes didn’t leave my face, and after a moment, it started to get uncomfortable. I looked away, telling myself thatI broke into the shedwas not actually written on my forehead.
It was something of a relief, therefore, when he slid a hand under the bandage on his head and began scratching at it.
“If you keep picking at that, Ma Kersey will yell at you,” I said.
“Forgive me,” he said, dropping his hand. “It itches abominably.”
“That probably means it’s healing.”
He said nothing. He was standing too close, but the bench was already pressing against the backs of my legs. Unless I wanted to climb over the seat, I had no immediate way to retreat.
“Can I help you, Mister Phelps?” I asked, not entirely kindly.
Phelps gave this the lengthy consideration that he gave everything. “Will you walk with me, Miss Wilson?”
