pulled back the covers. Immediately I started shivering. “The children are all afflicted, though nowhere near as badly as your mother.” I straightened my thin cotton shift while he smiled down at me. His gaze lingered as I searched for my slippers. “There’s hope for them yet, but I’ll need your help.”
“I gots to piss,” I said, though it wasn’t strictly true. My bloods were coming; I could feel their arrival as a pain in my lower back, a warm ache in my belly. I wanted to check they hadn’t started yet.
“No time,” he replied. “Come along, quickly.”
I followed him past Ma’s room—dead quiet now—to the lounge. Weird light streamed through the windows and the open front door, casting odd shadows across the room, tricking my eyes into seeing headstones instead of dining chairs, coffins instead of empty couches. Most times I’d find at least one or two of the neighbors snoring there come morning, sleeping off the bourbon and gin I could still smell in the air. But maybe they’d had less to drink, or they’d been called home early; either way, the only ones left that evening were Mister Pérouse and his gang.
“I’m gonna fetch my coat,” I said. Mister Pérouse shook his head. “Take nothing with you, ma chére. We don’t know what’s contaminated.” He pulled me behind him, offering reassurances that things would be better tomorrow. Outside, the high-beams of his black four-wheel drive, his companions’ sedans and pickup trucks, illuminated the house in a way I hadn’t seen before. My home looked so small, so forlorn in that artificial glare. Crouched in the spotlight, it cowered from menacing night.
If only Harl was awake, I thought, watching as he was buckled into the vehicle’s back seat. He always talks about riding in cars.
“Get in the front,” Mister Pérouse said, opening the door for me. The seats were leather, so cold they felt slimy, and the interior smelled of smoke and plastic. The odor was suffocating. I wanted to open a window but couldn’t figure out how to work the controls. Mister Pérouse walked around to the driver’s side while giving his friends orders, strobing the headlights with his movements.
“He’s not a ghost,” I said to Harl, who couldn’t care less, wrapped as he was in the ignorance of sleep. Directly behind me, Nellie and Ike Porter were huddled beneath a blanket, their rosy-cheeked faces now blank with illness. Like Harl, the flax farmer’s kids were unconscious, their necks smeared with red.
Mister Pérouse slid into the cab beside me and closed the door. “Ain’t no one healthy no more?” I asked. He ignored the question, rolled down his window with ease, and spoke to the tall splotchy-faced man waiting in the driveway.
“Jacques, drop by the farmstead two kilometers north. See who’s there then meet Théo at—” He turned to me, “What is the name of that couple, Ada? The ones who dip the chandelles for your mother?”
“Allambee.”
“Ah, oui.” He directed his attention back out the window and pointed at the squat, bald man who still cradled Bethany in his arms. “Join Théo at the Allambee farm. I’ll see you back at the Haven before dawn.”
Without a word, they accepted his directions and got into their cars. “Arianne,” Mister Pérouse continued, “go inside and collect the doctor. He’s done all he can for tonight.”
The old woman nodded. As her head bobbed up and down, the light played across her features: one moment she was wrinkled, the next smooth. A half-smirking, half-frowning Janus face that gave me chills as it glared first at me, then at Miah in the sedan’s passenger seat.
“Can’t we say goodbye ’fore we go? Ma’ll flip her top if she don’t know where we gone.”
“Non.” Mister Pérouse rolled up his window, cutting off the fresh breeze that was helping to clear my head. Reaching over, he patted my knee. My stomach cramped, and I felt a dampness, a slickness in my knickers. “It’s best if we leave her alone. But tomorrow.” He stopped, sniffed the air, stared at my legs, my hands fidgeting in my lap. “Tomorrow,” he repeated, “things will be different.”
Tears welled in my eyes as the pain in my belly increased. I looked down and two salty drops plinked onto my nightie. I hoped I hadn’t stained the seat with my blood—how could I hide leather upholstery? I hoped it hadn’t spread beyond my shift, beyond my skin. Ma would be so disappointed.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
Again, Mister Pérouse patted my knee. Patted