a whole other conversation. “Sure, they live for just a few weeks. Not much at all in the grand scheme of things. But while they’re there, the beauty of them, well, it takes your breath away.” He ran a thumb over the ridge of her knuckles. “You get to see the world in a whole new way. And then you have that beautiful picture burned onto the inside of your head. To carry it wherever you go. And never forget it.”
Before he had even said the next words Alice felt the tear begin to slide down her cheek.
“I worked it out sitting here. Maybe that’s the thing we need to understand, Alice. That some things are a gift, even if you don’t get to keep them.”
There was a silence before he spoke again.
“Maybe just to know that something this beautiful exists is all we can really ask for.”
* * *
• • •
She wrote to her parents confirming her return to England, and Fred drove the letter to the post office, on the way to delivering a young colt to Booneville. She saw the stiffening of his jaw as he registered the address and hated herself for it. She stood, arms folded in her white linen shirtsleeves, as he climbed into the back of his dusty pickup truck, the rattling trailer attached to the back and the horse kicking impatiently to be gone. She watched them head the whole way up Split Creek until the truck was out of view.
Alice squinted at the empty road for a while, at the mountains that rose on each side of it, disappearing into the haze of summer, at the buzzards that wheeled lazily and impossibly high above them, her hand shielding her brow. She let out a long, shaky breath. Finally she dusted her hands on her breeches and turned to walk back into the library.
TWENTY-ONE
The call came at a quarter to three in the morning, on a night so warm that Alice had barely slept, but instead wrestled, sweaty and fitful, with a sheet through the small hours. She heard the rapid banging on the door and sat immediately upright, her blood chilled, ears straining for clues. Her bare feet met the floorboards silently and she shrugged on her cotton robe, grabbed the gun she kept by the side of the bed and tiptoed toward the door. She waited, her breath tight in her chest, until the noise came again.
“Who’s there? I’ll shoot!”
“Mrs. Van Cleve? That you?”
She blinked and peered out of the window. Deputy Dulles was standing there in full uniform, one hand rubbing anxiously at the back of his neck. She moved to the door and unlocked it. “Deputy?”
“It’s Miss O’Hare. I think it’s her time. I can’t raise Dr. Garnett and I don’t feel happy with her laboring down there alone.”
It took Alice a matter of minutes to haul her clothes on. She saddled a sleepy Spirit and followed the treads of Deputy Dulles’s tire marks, her determination overriding any natural hesitation Spirit might have had about negotiating the deep woods in the black of night. The little horse trotted out into the darkness, ears pricked, wary but willing, and Alice wanted to kiss her for it. When she got to the mossy track by the creek bed she was able to break into a gallop, and she pushed the mare as hard as she could, grateful for the moonlight that illuminated the path.
When she reached the road she did not head straight for the jail, but turned, urging Spirit down toward William and Sophia’s house at Monarch Creek. She had changed in her time in Kentucky, yes, and, true, she wasn’t afraid of much. But even Alice knew when she was out of her depth.
* * *
• • •
By the time Sophia reached the jailhouse, Margery, slick with sweat, was pushing against Alice like someone in a rugby scrum, doubled over and moaning with pain. Alice could only have been there for twenty minutes but felt as if it had already been hours. She heard her own voice as if from a long distance—praising Margery for her bravery, insisting that she was doing so well, that the baby would be here before she knew it, even as she knew that only one of those things might possibly be true. The deputy had lent them an oil lamp and the light flickered, sending uncertain shadows up the cell walls. The scents of blood, urine and something raw and unmentionable filled