Simply Dead Page 19

  Rees nodded in agreement. ‘Those earrings are worth many dollars,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe she would leave them behind.’

  ‘Do you think it is possible she went home?’ Rouge asked. ‘I mean, if she’s Wootten’s daughter, maybe she went back to the cabin in the mountains?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible,’ Rees said. ‘But it is a long way on foot. And it’s cold and there are packs of wolves …’ He shivered involuntarily, recalling his own journey down the mountain. ‘Even with the shortcuts.’

  ‘Maybe one of her brothers came for her?’ Esther suggested. ‘We know at least one of the boys was here.’

  ‘That must be what happened,’ Rouge agreed.

  ‘But Pearl seemed so frightened of Jake Wootten,’ Rees objected. ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘She didn’t want to go home,’ Lydia guessed, her voice lifted in inquiry.

  ‘And the sight of her brother searching for her scared her?’

  Rees considered that and shook his head. ‘I’m missing something,’ he said.

  ‘It’s too dark now to continue the search,’ Jonathan said. ‘We will have to resume tomorrow.’

  Rouge and Rees looked at one another. ‘Meet here tomorrow?’ Rouge asked. Rees nodded. But he hoped they did not find the girl’s frozen body after a night outside.

  As Rouge mounted his chestnut, Rees and Lydia crossed the street to the wagon. One of the boys had unhitched Hannibal upon Rees’s arrival and was now quickly and efficiently reversing the procedure, harnessing him back up to the wagon.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Lydia said as Rees helped her into the wagon. ‘I am very, very worried about that young girl.’

  Rees nodded. ‘Me too.’ He thought of Jerusha. ‘I hope everything is all right,’ he muttered, and flicked the whip over Hannibal’s back. The gelding broke into a trot.

  The following morning, Rees was in the barn milking when he heard Jerusha screaming from inside the house. He picked up the pail and walked as fast as he could to the kitchen door. As he’d surmised, Jerusha and Lydia were standing opposite one another, the tension between them almost visible. ‘She doesn’t want to go to school today,’ Lydia said, glancing at Rees. ‘Again.’

  ‘Please don’t make me go,’ Jerusha pleaded, her face wet with tears.

  Lydia and Rees exchanged glances. ‘I could use her help here,’ she said.

  ‘But she’ll never be able to settle this if she hides,’ Rees said.

  ‘I want to go home,’ Jerusha sobbed.

  ‘You are home,’ Lydia said.

  ‘Home to Dugard where David and Simon are.’ Jerusha wiped her hands over her eyes. ‘Why did we have to leave? And why can’t I go to school in Zion?’

  ‘This is home for now,’ Rees said. ‘I’ll drive you and your brother and sister to school and pick you up after.’

  ‘No, no. Please don’t make me go to school,’ Jerusha cried. Tears and snot ran down her face. Lydia took her handkerchief from her sleeve and handed it to Jerusha. ‘Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Go on, get ready,’ Rees said.

  ‘You want to be rid of me,’ she shouted. ‘Now that you have Sharon you don’t love the rest of us anymore. Neither of you.’

  ‘Why, Jerusha, that isn’t true,’ Lydia began.

  Jerusha hurled the handkerchief at her mother and ran upstairs. The thud of her feet on the steps sounded loud as cannon fire. Judah and Nancy began to wail and after a few seconds of hesitation Joseph joined them.

  Lydia turned a desperate glance upon her husband. ‘Please help.’

  ‘I’ll see to Jerusha,’ he said. As he followed his daughter up the stairs he wondered what he would say to her. He knew that any advice he might offer, based on the method – fighting – he had employed as a boy, would not work for her.

  He could hear her sobbing although the sounds were muffled. When he went into the room she shared with Nancy he found Jerusha lying on her unmade bed with her face buried in her pillow. The heat rising from the fireplace downstairs in the kitchen barely warmed the cold air.

  Rees sat down on the floor. She gave no sign that she knew he was present. After listening to her weep for a few seconds he cleared his throat. ‘I know I’m not the best father,’ he said, ‘and I know the move from Dugard and then from Zion was difficult.’ He paused, not because he thought Jerusha might want to speak but because he wasn’t sure what to say. ‘I was sorry too when Simon chose to stay with David. I miss him. I do love you and your brothers. I’m sorry.’ He hesitated. She cried even harder. ‘We will try to figure something out,’ he said. She pulled herself up. Her face was red and swollen with tears. She crawled into his arms and as he held her to him she relaxed.

  Gradually the wild weeping diminished to shudders and hiccups.

  ‘Did you begin the quarrel with Babette?’ he asked. ‘That’s what the widow told us.’

  After a long hesitation Jerusha nodded. ‘I threw a book at her,’ she admitted in a very small voice. ‘And then I slapped her.’

  ‘A book?’

  She nodded. ‘It hit her and the pages came out. That was in September. She told me she was the one the widow always chose to help and to not even try. Then Babette smiled at me with that fake sweet smile. I could tell she didn’t like me.’ Jerusha heaved a sigh. ‘So I threw the book.’

  Rees nodded, wishing Lydia were here. He did not doubt that he would have reacted in exactly the same way as his daughter.

  ‘And from then on you were blamed for everything?’ he said.

  Jerusha nodded against his chest. Then, exhaling a heavy sigh, she said, ‘Well, not everything. Widow Francine spoke to Babette a few times. But mostly she scolded me.’

  Rees hesitated, wanting to comfort his daughter but not sure what to say.

  ‘Let’s talk to your mother,’ he said at last. ‘Maybe you can stay home today.’ He knew many parents would accuse him of being soft and encouraging disobedience but he understood, with painful clarity, her experience with Babette and her subsequent actions.

  Oh, how he hated to see his daughter so upset. And she was in danger of losing her love of learning. That was something he did not understand; he had never been a scholar. But she had loved attending school in Zion.

  ‘We’ll see what we can do,’ he went on. He did not want to explain exactly why she could not return to Zion. Jerusha – and her siblings – had already lived through enough frightening situations.

  They went downstairs together. Lydia had succeeded in quieting the younger children and they were all seated at the table eating. She looked up. When she met Rees’s gaze the worried frown puckering her brow smoothed out.

  ‘I told Jerusha she could stay home from school today,’ he said.

  Lydia grimaced and shook her head at him but she did not contradict his decision. ‘Very well. But I’ll accept no excuses tomorrow.’

  ‘All right,’ Rees agreed, turning to smile at his daughter. She was safer here at home anyway. ‘I hope the Shakers have found Pearl,’ he added anxiously.

  ‘Well,’ Lydia said now, ‘if Jerusha can mind the babies for a few hours, we can join the search for the girl.’

  ‘Today we will comb the fields,’ he agreed with a nod. ‘Just in case Brother Jonathan and his fellows missed her.’

  Lydia swallowed and managed a tiny nod. If they found Pearl in the fields she would likely be dead.

  ‘It was very cold last night,’ she said. Rees said nothing. He did not believe Pearl was still in Zion. He hoped she had gone home to the Woottens but he feared, considering the treasures found under the mattress, that something much worse had happened to her.

  Nancy and Jerusha went outside together: Nancy to feed the chickens and gather their eggs while Jerusha fetched water. Rees returned to Daisy and sat down to finish his milking. In the peace of the barn, with no one clamoring for his attention, he was able to think. The jumbled pieces of his experiences this past week began to settle. And, as his thoughts sorted themsel
ves into a rough order, he realized that at the center of the mystery stood the Wootten family. Of that he was certain, although he still didn’t have all the pieces. Or rather he did, but so many people had lied to him that he couldn’t winnow the truth from the false. And who, among those to whom he’d spoken, had told the truth? That was the question. Once he knew whose information he could trust he would be better able to separate out the false from the true.

  THIRTY

  When Rees and Lydia arrived at Zion, Elder Jonathan and several of the Shaker Brothers were already out in the fields, walking across the snowy ground and calling for Pearl. Although the recent storm had dropped a couple of inches on the ground, the dry stalks of last fall’s harvest stood above the white like pins in a pin cushion. While Lydia joined Esther and some of the Sisters, Rees walked across the fields until he found Jonathan.

  ‘We’ve covered all the property and the orchards near the village,’ the Brother said as Rees approached. ‘Now we are looking in the more distant fields.’

  Rees turned to look in that direction. He had already driven down the road by these fields and parked his wagon in the village. Joining the men here meant walking back – toward the Ellis farm where Rees and his family now lived.

  The temperature today was not bitterly cold but still, after two hours of walking slowly over snow-covered ground, the chill began to seep through Rees’s coat and set his fingers and toes tingling. And they found nothing: no sign that Pearl or anyone else had come this way.

  ‘The girl has run off,’ Jonathan said, speaking with absolute certainty. ‘She was a light-minded girl, more concerned with frivolity than honoring God.’

  Although Rees thought Jonathan’s assessment of Pearl’s character essentially correct, he did not believe she had just run away. Wouldn’t she have taken her treasures? In any event, now Rees – and Constable Rouge as well – would have to go up Gray Hill again.

  He found Lydia enjoying a hot cup of tea in the kitchen. Since this was the domain of the Sisters, Rees, as well as the Brothers, waited outside until she donned her cloak and gloves. He thought longingly of hot coffee and the warm kitchen in which Lydia sat but he knew he would not be permitted inside.

  And there was still the long, cold ride home.

  ‘I spoke to Annie,’ Lydia said as they walked across the road to the barn. ‘She will be coming for a visit soon.’

  He nodded, barely listening. ‘I suppose you found no sign of Pearl,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t either.’ He sounded grim.

  She took his arm. ‘And no one has seen her since breakfast yesterday.’ Lydia directed an anxious look upon her husband. ‘She’s already been missing twenty-four hours.’ She added in a lower tone. ‘What if this was Jerusha?’

  ‘I know,’ Rees said, squeezing her arm against his side. ‘Do you think she’s run away?’

  ‘I know that’s what everyone else thinks. But of course she hasn’t,’ she replied. ‘Not without her mother’s earrings. Do you think she went home? To the Woottens?’

  ‘Probably,’ he said.

  She heard the uncertainty in his voice and, pausing in the middle of the street, turned to look at him. ‘You think her father took her, however unwillingly she wished to go?’ Lydia said in a soft worried voice.

  Heaving a sigh, Rees looked down into her blue eyes. ‘Perhaps he did.’ And Pearl would not have wanted to go; he was certain of that. ‘But the alternative – that she started out on her own and got lost in the woods – is far, far worse.’

  Lydia sighed.

  They did not speak again on the journey home.

  Rees helped his wife down from the wagon in the yard. ‘I’ll heat up the stew for dinner,’ Lydia said. Rees nodded gratefully. Cold and tired and very hungry, all he wanted at the moment was a hot cup of coffee and something to eat. He led Hannibal to the barn and unhitched him from the wagon. He began walking the horse around the yard to cool him. Poor Hannibal had been worked very hard this past week. But Rees had barely completed one lap when Lydia ran out of the house. She’d taken off her cloak but did not seem to feel the cold. Her face was bloodless.

  ‘Will. Will. Jerusha is missing.’

  ‘What?’ He almost dropped the reins but then thought better of it. He hurried Hannibal into his stall in the barn and closed the door. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I went into the house. Only Nancy and the little ones are inside. Oh dear God.’

  ‘And the boys?’

  ‘They’re there. Sharon still needs her diaper changed. I didn’t do it before I came outside.’ Lydia buried her face her in her hands.

  Seeing that she was distraught, Rees put his hand on her neck and guided her toward the house.

  ‘Where is Sharon now? Is she all right?’

  ‘Sitting on the floor eating a biscuit.’ Lydia managed to smile. ‘That child can always be quieted with food. Just like her father.’ Rees could not manage a smile.

  He took a quick look around the yard but saw nothing. ‘Perhaps she’s in the outhouse. Go on inside and I’ll check.’

  She nodded, some of the color returning to her cheeks. As she went up the steps Rees climbed the slope to the outhouse. A line of firs screened the shed but he knew even before he circled them and tapped on the door that the privy was empty.

  Now even more worried, he retraced his steps to the house. When he went inside Lydia was changing Sharon’s diaper. She looked up with hope but when she saw his expression her hands stilled. ‘Oh no,’ she murmured.

  ‘Did you check upstairs for Jerusha?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ Lydia’s voice took on a snap. But Rees had to search himself. He ran up the steps two at a time, as fast as his sore ankle would allow. But of course his wife was right; there was no sign of Jerusha. Fear began to spread cold fingers into his body. He couldn’t believe she had willingly left her younger brothers and sisters alone.

  He hurried down the stairs. ‘Nancy,’ he said. ‘Nancy.’ Seated next to Sharon, she was eating a big bowl of stew. She paused with her spoon halfway to her mouth.

  ‘Where’s Jerusha?’ he asked, his voice rising. When Nancy froze and her expression changed to one of worry, he took a deep breath and forced himself to speak slowly and calmly. ‘Where’s your sister?’

  ‘A man took her,’ she said as gravy dripped onto the table.

  Lydia uttered a quickly stifled gasp.

  ‘A man?’ The coldness in Rees’s belly began to spread. ‘What man? What did he look like?’ Forcing himself to pretend to be calm he knelt by her chair. ‘This is important, sweetheart. What color hair did he have? Red like mine? Or black like Constable Rouge?’

  ‘Black. And long,’ Nancy said. Her face crumpled. ‘He was scary.’

  ‘One of the Woottens,’ Rees said, looking at Lydia. He knew even Jake and Jem would appear big and frightening to these little children. But it wasn’t one of the boys, he was certain of that. The image that appeared in his mind’s eye was Bernadette, saying with white-faced horror, ‘He tried to force himself on Hortense.’

  ‘She cried,’ Judah said in his light treble.

  Nancy nodded gravely. ‘And shouted,’ she agreed. ‘She didn’t want to go. But you’ll bring her back, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ Rees said. He rose to his feet. ‘I have to go after her,’ he said to Lydia. She nodded, biting her knuckle. He thought she was barely keeping herself from screaming.

  ‘On dear Lord, what does he want with her?’ She pressed her hands to her mouth, the teeth marks on her finger red against the white skin. ‘What if he hurts her?’ Tears flooded her eyes.

  ‘If he touches one hair on her head I’ll kill him,’ he said simply although he hoped this situation would not come to that. ‘I’ll bring my rifle.’

  ‘You’ll need help,’ Lydia said. She sounded as though she could barely force out the words and her voice was unrecognizable.

  ‘I’ll stop in town and tell Cons
table Rouge when I go through on my way to the road up Gray Hill,’ he said. He knew there were faster paths up the mountain including the cleft Granny Rose had brought him down, but he was not sure of the entrances to any of them.

  At least it was still daytime; he hoped he would not see the wolves.

  While he fetched his rifle, powder horn and bag of shot, Lydia made him a mug of coffee to drink before he left and a napkin of bread and cheese to eat on the way.

  He drank the coffee down in several swallows, too anxious to enjoy the beverage. It was lukewarm anyway. He picked up his food, kissed his wife goodbye, and went out to harness Hannibal once again to the wagon.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Rouge, busy with customers, tried to persuade Rees to wait. ‘I’ll join you shortly,’ the constable said. ‘It’s dinner time.’ He gestured to the crowded tavern. ‘Maybe another twenty minutes?’ But Rees shook his head, too frightened for his daughter to pause any longer than he had already. It had taken a supreme effort of will to stop and speak to Rouge for even these few minutes.

  ‘I can’t. She’s up there all alone—’ He stopped abruptly, too choked with fear to continue.

  ‘You know another storm is coming?’ Rouge asked. When Rees nodded the constable sighed. ‘All right. I’ll bring all the men I can round up,’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Rees said.

  ‘We’ll meet you there, at the Bennetts’ place,’ Rouge said. And then, quite unexpectedly, he reached across the bar and clapped his friend on the back. ‘She’ll be all right,’ he promised, clumsily offering what little comfort he could.

  Rees didn’t speak; he couldn’t. He managed a sharp ragged nod and then he turned and ran outside to his wagon.

  The snow began falling before he made his turn onto North Road. At first just a few flakes whirling lazily down from the sky, the flurry rapidly intensified until Rees could barely see Hannibal’s ears. If he had been on the road for any other reason he would have turned back. But his fear for his daughter pushed him forward.