None of us mentioned Saul at all, and no one asked. Sallywent home to her family so it was just the four of us, and the sheriff never even searched the house.
It was a strange time. None of us knew what was going to happen next. Halder died without a will, so everything would have gone to his next of kin, namely Louisa, wherever she had vanished to. The lawyer, with much hemming and hawing, allowed us to draw our last month’s wages from the bank, but made it clear that no more would be forthcoming.
I should probably have been looking for another job, but it felt as if I would be abandoning Jackson and Rose to their fate. And for some things, at least, it was useful to be a white woman with a large vocabulary. The lawyer had not unbent until I spoke to him sternly about the terms of our employment and the estate’s duty to pay outstanding debts. It shouldn’t have mattered that I knew the right words to say, but it did, and it shouldn’t have mattered that I was white, but the lawyer was that sort of man, so that did too.
Saul also needed my help. His back was healing at a frightening rate, but the way that the skin had torn meant that there were long stringy bits hanging down that had to be dealt with. I was a poor choice compared to Rose or Ma Kersey, but I was also the one who wouldn’t be surprised by how fast he healed. So I gritted my teeth and cut the ragged ends free, feeling like a torturer’s apprentice. In time, that too healed.
There was also the matter of the botflies. New warbles appeared on Saul’s skin for almost a week after he was freed, and I removed the ones he couldn’t reach himself. “Farmers do this for cattle,” he told me, on the third or fourth day. “I never quite appreciated how the cattle must feel about it.”
“I hope they feel grateful,” I grumbled.
“Rest assured, Miss Wilson, I am far more grateful than any cow has ever been.” He swept me a bow that might have been more charming if he weren’t shirtless and if I weren’t holding a jar with half-grown larvae wriggling at the bottom.
“Hmmph!” I said, handing him the jar.
Truth was, we joked about it because otherwise neither of us would ever stop screaming. There was a stretch where the new skin on his back was so fragile that it was transparent, and I could actually see the wolf worms moving under it. I learned how to skewer each one and pull it out with as little damage to Saul as possible, and then I’d joke and he’d joke and then I would go sit somewhere with my head between my knees until I was sure I wouldn’t be sick.
But I got off lightly, all told. I spent five days checking my skin obsessively for new lumps. My own collarbone sent me into a panic at least twice. I boiled endless amounts of water and took baths so hot that I shrieked when I lowered myself in, but I had to besure.
“Oh honey,” said Rose, when she found me with the scissors, cutting my hair down to a ragged fringe so that I could better feel my scalp.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling wretched and pathetic and more than a little mad. “I’m sorry. I just can’t handle all thisstuffin the way.”
Rose sighed and set down the bundle of towels she had been carrying. “Come here. Let’s see what I can do.”
I hung my head while she worked, hearing thesnick-snick-snickof the blades. More hair fell away. “Shame you’re a white girl,” she said absently. “When I did this, my mama managed to braid it so you couldn’t hardly tell.”
I raised my eyebrows. The back of my neck felt prickly and exposed. “You did this once?”
“Sure… back when I was eight.”
I hung my head. Rose snorted. “And once again when I was about twenty. Found my man cheating on me and just knew I needed to cut my hair off. Mama said it was easier to fix when I was eight though.”
“I can’t imagine you cutting your hair off over a man,” I admitted.
“Yeah, well. He did me a favor in the end. Met Jackson not too long after that.” She finished and set the scissors down. “There. Can’t say it’s fashionable, but it looks more like you’ve been sick than like somebody took a knife to it.”
“You keep saving me,” I said, running my hands through the shorn ends. “I’m sorry you keep needing to. I swear, I’m not normally so…” I trailed off, not sure what word I wanted.Helpless. Useless. Lost.
Rose snorted again. “You got that lawyer to hand over the money. That’s worth a lot more than a haircut, hon.”
“Yes, but…”
“The rest was Halder, not you. Don’t be too eager to take up the blame.” She handed me a dustpan and we swept up the cuttings together. She left me running my fingers over my skull, waiting for the wolf worms to rise.
My dreams, after that first night, were endless and vivid and terrible. The doctor from Siler City came out and diagnosed me with disordered nerves, and told Jackson (for lack of anyone else, I suppose) that it wasn’t to be wondered at, given what had happened to Halder. He gave me laudanum. I took it for a week, found myself craving it too much, and dumped the rest of it out. I could not afford a laudanum habit. The dreams returned. I endured them, because there was no other choice.
Once or twice, I even thought about asking Saul to bite me, the way that he had Halder. Then I thought about getting addicted to someone’s saliva and how much more inconvenient that would be than laudanum, and I didn’t.
After a week, it seemed like I had gotten away uninfected. I cried a little in my room, then washed my face and went to help Rose in the kitchen.
And so we waited, all four of us, like an indrawn breath. Waited for healing or for something to happen. I finally wrote a letter to Headmistress Silverton, asking if my old position was still open. It cost me a great deal of pride to write it, and when Ireceived an answer in the post, the envelope sat, unopened, on the studio table.
We might have waited until the house fell down, or at least until the contents of the larder ran out, but then, nearly three weeks after Halder died, Louisa arrived.
I recognized her immediately when I walked into the studio and saw an unfamiliar woman standing there. She fit into the place as I never had. You only had to take one look at her face to recognize that she had come home.
She wasn’t beautiful. That surprised me. It shouldn’t have, I suppose. Halder had married her for her money and her skill with watercolors. It was just that Saul loved her, and so some part of me assumed that she must have been beautiful as well. But Louisa had broad hips and a broad face, her skin dusted with old measles scars, and her teeth were crooked when she smiled.
