Winter Sisters Read online

  He held up his hand as she opened her mouth to dissuade him.

  “I’m not talking about your violin playing. Not even your beauty. Well, perhaps some of it is your beauty.” He smiled ruefully. “But I think you are very courageous. You were young when you went to Paris, and yet you survived Monsieur Girard’s tyranny. I admire you very much.”

  She shook her head. “I hardly survived. And you don’t know how much you exaggerate. Someone else—”

  “No one would have lasted as long.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I adore you, Elizabeth. I’ve met no one else like you. So, you must suffer my adoration. Will you?”

  His gaze was insistent and kind and even, yes, adoring. “You don’t know me very well,” she said.

  “But I want to get to know you well. Will you let me?”

  “Your experience has made you precipitate.”

  “I won’t deny it. But what does that matter? May I return tomorrow to see you? We’ll have to think of something to do other than the ice regatta. And besides, everyone’s sleds were lost in the floe.”

  “Forgive me, but I can’t see you tomorrow—”

  “Of course. I’m sorry I don’t mean to press. But you must get out sometime. May I call later this week to walk with you in the park?”

  She nodded.

  “Excellent.” And he rose and took his leave.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  That evening, in his book-lined study, Gerritt seized the Scotch decanter from the walnut sideboard and poured himself and Jakob each a glassful. Gerritt hadn’t changed out of the work clothes he’d donned to go out earlier. His pants’ hems were crusted with mud, his canvas shirt sweated through. The bandage on his forehead was ragged and bloodstained. He handed Jakob a glass and motioned him toward the worn leather armchairs that framed the large fireplace. Several logs crackled on the hearth, and the andirons glowed red. Jakob was grateful for the warmth. After returning from Elizabeth’s, he still hadn’t removed his muffler.

  Having summoned Jakob, Gerritt now proceeded to ignore him, staring off into the middle distance with the distracted air of someone who had forgotten his way. Surely, Jakob thought, his father was only gathering his energies to somehow call him to task for the hole in the office roof or for not saving more of their lumber. Jakob hoped not. His visit to Elizabeth, wonderful as it had been, had sapped his energy, and he was ravenous—a function of being exposed to the extreme cold, Doctor Stipp had warned him. The smell of roast beef wafted up the stairs, and with it the earthy scent of roasted potatoes and turnips, a fine dinner that reflected his father’s taste.

  Now Gerritt turned his gaze on Jakob. “Your mother said you went to the Stipps’.”

  “I wanted to tell Elizabeth something,”

  “I would think you would have spent the day asleep after the night you had. So does this mean that you are still taken with her?”

  “Very much.”

  Gerritt nodded and lifted his glass to study the refractions of the fire through the cut crystal. “Any repercussions for them from the flood?”

  “They seem to have had a bit of a shock.”

  “Shock?” Gerritt cocked his head, his eyes observant now. “Were they upset about your mishap?”

  “No, about someone else’s apparently.”

  His father shifted in his seat, concerned. “About whom?”

  “She didn’t say, and I didn’t pry. I probably shouldn’t have told you.”

  “Ah, Jakob the reticent. It’s good of you to keep a confidence.”

  Jakob felt slightly ashamed at this compliment, as if it were really an insult. He changed the subject. “Why did you go out? Doctor Stipp wanted you to stay in.”

  “I went to see Harley. And then someone had to see about the district. I wanted to see how much trouble we were in. The reports were true. The water is receding fast. If you’d waited another few hours, a boat could have reached you.”

  “Another few hours and I might have been dead.”

  Gerritt dismissed this sentiment with a wave.

  As sanguine as he had been earlier with Elizabeth, Jakob hated having to defend himself to his father, or impress on him the extremity of his situation. Walking home around the park from the Stipps’, the thought of what could have happened had overwhelmed him. In the moment, he had not hesitated to go out on the ice, but the whole thing had been fraught with immense danger. He had been lucky, and not a little foolish to attempt it. But he was alive. And also, he realized now, furious. Harley’s abdication of his responsibility had been nagging at him all day. Where had the man been? A hundred other workers had flooded into the district, and Harley had never shown.

  “Did you find out where Harley disappeared to during the ice break?”

  His father took a sip of the Scotch, keeping his eyes fixed on Jakob. “No. He was heavily medicated, in pain. He took quite a blow.”

  “If he had met me in the district like I thought he was going to, I wouldn’t have been stranded. I could have gone for the books right away and gotten out.”

  “Nonetheless, Harley’s a hero,” Gerritt said. “No one can figure out how he got hurt. He might have been unconscious for hours.” He set his emptied glass on a side table, resting his case.

  “Perhaps, and I’m sorry he’s hurt, but why did he go home first instead of going straight to the district?”

  “I don’t know. He must have had a good reason.”

  Jakob looked away. His father and Harley together were a bulwark. Jakob’s entrance after Harvard into their tight alliance had caused resentment on Harley’s part, though his father had dismissed Jakob’s concern as imaginary.

  Jakob touched his glass, balancing at the end of his armrest. He kept his tone light. “And where were you, Father?”

  “Damn this thing itches,” Gerritt said, ripping off the bandage on his forehead and revealing the thin red line of his gash and the garish stitches holding it closed. He tossed it into the fire.

  “I want to know where you were,” Jakob said. All at once, his exhaustion fell away and was replaced by pure, unfiltered rage.

  Gerritt glared at Jakob, and his voice turned harsh and remonstrating. “Where was I? Right behind you. But first we had to say good-bye to our guests, and then you’d taken the good carriage, so the other one had to be harnessed and readied, because your mother wanted to come, and that took time, too.” He waved a hand in irritation. “A cloak, her hat, some warm gloves. It was interminable. Do you know how long it takes to get her to move? Hours.”

  “You could have ridden Dolly. You could have been there when the district started to flood. I was alone. It was impossible to do everything by myself.” He never opposed his father absolutely. All his life, he’d been careful, respectful, and fearful of exposing his mother to the explosive tirades his father displayed at work, when labor mistakes or shipping problems—things outside of his control—upended his expectations. Jakob doubted he’d protected his mother from much, not when a sherry decanter had become her comfort and confidante. “I thought you were coming to help.”

  “You did well enough without me.”

  “You abandoned me.”

  “But you saved yourself. Son, all this complaining is out of character. Be proud.”

  Jakob was about to press for a better explanation, but he checked himself. He couldn’t tell whether his father was being obtuse or deliberately misunderstanding him. And if he had come, perhaps they both would have been caught, and would his father have been able to manage the ice? He doubted it. He decided to change the subject.

  “How much lumber did we save?” Jakob said. “Could you tell? We filled at least one of the barges. Did you find any of them?”

  “I didn’t go downstream. And by the time the riverfront and roads dry, and we retrieve whatever inventory we can, we may spend the
last penny in our coffers.”

  “I don’t think so, not since I last worked on the books, but I can look tonight.”

  “No need.” His father shrugged. “I’ll do it.”

  The books were Jakob’s responsibility, though Gerritt understood the business far better than Jakob, who had a good hold on it himself. Lumber was a great generator of cash, but it was also a seasonal commodity, and profits were dependent upon a steady flow of product, which was in turn dependent upon a thousand other things, not the least of which was ready access to one’s inventory and a navigable Hudson, which they didn’t have, and wouldn’t, for a while. They sold most of their lumber downriver, in Manhattan City, and beyond, as far as Boston and Europe, which they would not be able to do for at least a month.

  “I can find excess revenue somewhere.” Jakob recalled some outstanding receipts they could call in if necessary; Manhattanites tended to be delinquent on their bills unless pressed.

  “Not to worry, Jakob. We are better off than most. You saved those books, and I’ve got them now. Nothing for you to concern yourself with. Your job is to feel better.”

  A maid tapped on the doorjamb and knotted her hands together in the nervous tic that Jakob had noticed all the maids exhibited when they encountered his father. “Mrs. Van der Veer is waiting for you at table,” she said. Her face registered no disapproval of the clumps of dried mud that had fallen from Gerritt’s pants onto the Turkish rug, even though she or someone else would have to deal with it as soon as he exited the room.

  At table, Viola made no mention of Gerritt’s attire. And to Jakob’s relief, his mother seemed much more self-possessed that she usually did at this late hour, her gestures more deliberate. Tonight, no sherry glass glimmered in the candlelight, no decanter stood in wait on the pantry sideboard. He caught his mother’s eye, and she looked up from her plate and nodded confirmation to his silent inquiry. Dinner often passed like this for them, in mute conversations of subtle nods and glances.

  Gerritt never noticed, and he didn’t again tonight. “Why didn’t you order champagne, Viola? Both of your beloveds have been rescued from Poseidon’s grasp. That’s worth celebrating, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” Viola said, and rang the bell.

  Later, when she refused to drink even a drop, Gerritt finished the bottle himself and had to be carried to bed.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The next morning, Mary woke to sun streaming through the window of the girls’ bedroom. She had slept in an armchair that William had brought up from the parlor. The sour vapor of sleep still permeated the room, though at some point during the long night, she had cracked open a window.

  At midnight, when Emma and Claire had stirred, Mary had administered a third dose of narcotic. Above all, she believed they needed rest, because consciousness carried its own dangers; weighted down with intolerable realities, people often gave up. And memory had a way of feeding itself. Starving it through insensibility, interrupting it for a short while, would delay recollection, and she wanted to avoid a repeat of yesterday morning’s hysteria.

  Mary pulled a shawl over her shoulders and went to the girls’ bedside, trying not to wake them. The two sisters lay entwined and inert under the counterpane, their lips and cheeks reassuringly pink, their breathing measured and deep. The strands of their copper hair were damp with perspiration and seemed darker somehow. How much lasting damage the two would suffer was impossible to determine. Over the years, Mary had discovered that the hardest part of being a physician was to wait for possibility to become fact, for the corporeal to repair or declare itself, for a rested soul to emerge from a wounded body—or not.

  William brought her a cup of tea and reported that it was eight thirty. Farmers’ wagons and carriages were already bustling up and down the avenue, punctuated by the periodic percussions of the sledgehammers still pounding away on the row houses. And still the girls slept on. Amelia and Elizabeth looked in, and they all took turns going down to the kitchen to eat breakfast. Toward ten, they were all there when first Emma’s, then Claire’s eyes blinked open. They seemed to register nothing of where they were—an effect, no doubt, of the medication. Their bodies roused one limb at a time, first a twitching finger, then a jerk of an elbow, then a shifting leg, until finally they drew themselves sleepily up in bed, their eyes filmed with a glazed, wary numbness.

  To Mary’s repeated assurances—You remember us, Auntie Amelia, Aunt Mary, Elizabeth, Uncle William; We’re taking care of you; You’re safe; We love you—Emma and Claire said nothing. And they were careful not to draw attention to themselves. Claire’s small hand brushed sleep from her eyes, her pale face an unreadable mask. From time to time, she laid her head on her sister’s shoulder. They both held themselves very still. It was the stillness of a wary hope, a kind of disbelief that mistrusted itself.

  Everyone defaulted to doing concrete tasks, except William, who pretended to read a book in the corner out of fear that his maleness would frighten them. Elizabeth fetched food: buttered bread and chicken broth. Amelia poured tea. Mary tucked a sheet here, smoothed a wrinkle there, while observing the girls out of the corner of her eye, relieved that they displayed no signs of nausea from the morphine. Emma and Claire accepted these ministrations with a wary eye, withdrawing into themselves at any quick gesture. Even the moving of a dish or a walk across a floor threatened. Emma grimaced whenever she extended a leg or shifted in bed. She had not yet discovered her stitches.

  Claire pulled Emma close and whispered into her ear, and Emma shook her head. Her eyes, large and round, were socketed above a bony expanse of high cheekbone and deep hollows. Like Claire’s, Emma’s face was all architectural angle and spare beauty, unmarred even by the yellowing bruise on one cheekbone. Mary could see Emma sorting the past from the present, trying to decide what and who to trust. She recognized the vigilance. Recovering soldiers at Antietam had followed her movements with the same heedful gaze. Whoever had taken the girls shackled them still.

  How much to push? Stories of pain never came out straight. They emerged in bits and pieces, and only when the teller could tolerate the telling. Soldiers she had treated often relived their experiences in distracted and disconnected tales that made little sense to anyone but them. Push them too hard, and they broke. Fail to push them enough, and they receded into darkness. Getting to the center of the pain to alleviate it, to free it, took a deft touch.

  No one knew exactly what to do or what to say.

  It was then that Elizabeth gathered her skirts and sat on the edge of the girls’ bed. They looked at her with widening eyes, moving even closer together.

  Elizabeth cleared her throat. “Once upon a time, not very long ago, a dragon who lived in a dark cave found two wonderful little sisters. He was greedy and mean and wouldn’t let them go outside. He hurt them and scared them and said that no one cared about them anymore.”

  Emma and Claire turned rapt and attentive. Everyone listened in amazement. Elizabeth was compiling her story from clues: from the girls’ pale skin and darkened hair, their mute terror.

  “But the dragon was wrong. People who loved them searched and searched. Days and weeks went by. To the girls it seemed like a very long time. They began to lose hope. They feared all was lost. But these were clever girls. Smart girls. Like you, Emma and Claire! One night they were strong enough and smart enough to escape! They ran out into the night, into the streets. Bells were ringing and it was so loud and they were very afraid and they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know where they were.” Clever Elizabeth was weaving in details they had gleaned from Officer Farrell. “Then a good policeman found them and brought them to a safe place. A house a lot like this one. But the sisters were still frightened. What if they said the wrong thing and the dragon found them again?

  “But I want you to believe me now, girls. That dragon can’t ever find you again. You’re safe now. Do you understand?”

&
nbsp; Claire nodded—an incremental dip of the chin that would hardly register as agreement in anyone else. She nudged Emma, and Emma, her voice scratchy from deep sleep, turned wordlessly to Claire. They looked at one another for a long time before Emma turned and said, “Where are Mama and Papa?”

  For the eternity of several seconds, no one said anything. Elizabeth, so competent a moment ago, could find nothing now to say.

  Amelia stepped in, kneeling on the floor and reaching for the girls’ hands. She said, “Do you remember the big storm? The one when you got lost? Well, your mama and papa got lost, too.”

  “Did the Other Man find them?” Claire said.

  “The other man?” Amelia said, assuming the measured cadence of the master midwife, who had captained hundreds of women through every shoal of labor, and who confronted every disastrous surprise as if it were no surprise at all.

  Emma put a restraining arm on Claire, but Claire persisted. “The one who found us. The bad man. Why didn’t he find Mama and Papa?”

  “The bad man?”

  “The one who hurt Emma,” Claire said.

  Emma tried to silence Claire with a hand to her mouth, but Claire pulled it away.

  “There were two men? A bad one and a good one?” Amelia’s steadfast control did not falter, even as Mary and William glanced at one another. Two men.

  “Did the bad one find Mama and Papa like he did us?”

  Amelia said, “No, Claire. No, sweetheart. No one found them.”

  Claire said, “But where are they?” She turned to her sister. “Emma? Emma? Where are they?”

  For Claire, there was no leap of understanding, couldn’t be one. She was too young. Emma could no longer meet Claire’s eyes. She looked as if she were detaching herself from any further responsibility, as if she had claimed too much before and was now exhausted from the effort and could no longer summon the energy to perform one more act of succor for her little sister. She shut her eyes as Claire tugged at her sleeve, imploring her to answer. When Emma opened her eyes again, it was in wide-eyed supplication for Amelia’s intercession.