He won’t be missed; the man was an ostentatious snoot who liked nothing more than the sound of his own voice and the clinking of coin in his pocket. He could have spared some grain, but instead he beats a man attempting to feed his family. He met with God’s wrath, nothing more. But this business with O’Cuiv’s own family, that I find tragic.” Pa paused for a second, retrieved the pipe from his breast pocket, and began to pack the bowl with tobacco from the little brown bag he always kept on his person. “Even without hope in sight, I cannot imagine a father willing to take the lives of his own wife and children when faced with the inability to provide.”
Richard began to fuss, and Ma reached over and stroked his hand. “Perhaps he was already at a low then and couldn’t bear to face a worse place after killing his employer. After all, if an employed man is unable to feed his family, what is an unemployed man guilty of murder to do?” Richard let out a burp. Ma frowned. “Any mention of their daughter? The one who escaped?”
“Nothing today.”
“I wonder who took her in. I don’t think the O’Cuivs had family in the area. I believe Siboan O’Cuiv said her family resided in Dublin, but I could be mistaken.”
“I imagine she is being well looked after.”
“Maybe she can stay with us,” Matilda suggested. “I wouldn’t mind a sister.”
Pa peeked across the table over his pipe but said nothing.
Ma patted her hand. “I have often told your father that very thing! We ladies are far outnumbered in this household. If the Good Lord doesn’t see fit to bless this family with another daughter, maybe we should consider recruiting one.”
“Do you think she saw what happened?” I asked.
Pa let a small ring of smoke drift from his lips, then said: “She most likely saw it all; why else would she run? Such a thing leaves a mark on a child, one that can never be wiped or washed away. She’ll awaken twenty years from now with those images in her mind. To witness your own father take the lives of your mother and siblings, that is an unimaginable atrocity from which there is no escape. I can only hope she one day finds a happiness strong enough to balance out the evil that man committed.”
From the corner of my eye, I watched Nanna Ellen take her seat before her own bowl of soup. Her hand shook slightly as she lowered her spoon into the broth and raised it to her mouth. Although her lips parted, the soup never passed them. Instead, I watched as she lowered the spoon back into the bowl. A moment later, she repeated the gesture, the soup never entering her mouth. Matilda was watching her, too, and when she looked across the table at us, we both turned away—I fumbled with my own spoon and nearly dropped it to the floor.
Nanna Ellen slid her bowl forward. “I believe this illness truly has gotten the better of me; please excuse me.” With that, she rose from the table and ascended the stairs without so much as a glance back.
* * *
? ? ?
LATER—“What is she doing?” Matilda whispered as I crept back into my room, carefully closing the door behind me.
“I couldn’t hear anything,” I said softly.
Matilda sat on my bed, sketchbook in hand, carefully re-creating the maps from Nanna Ellen’s room. How she recalled them in such detail, I’ll never understand.
“Maybe she’s sleeping,” Matilda said without looking up.
After dinner, Matilda and I had returned to my attic room, the eyes of the others on our backs as we ascended the stairs. Although they were my family, I was an outsider amongst them. In truth, I don’t believe they ever thought I would survive my first year, much less my first seven. They thought I was to die—perhaps not today or tomorrow, but sometime soon, and that prevented them from getting too close. Even Ma, who spent much of her time with me, did so at a distance—an unspoken chasm between us always. I rarely saw Pa, and Thornley avoided me entirely. And so