The Invisible Hour, page 18
Sarah opened the front door but kept the screen latched. “This is private property, sir.”
“I know all about private property,” Joel Davis said. Sarah didn’t like the look on his face, or his tone. But she acted as if it was perfectly normal to have a man station himself in her driveway. “The government is trying to take my land away. The deed is missing and guess who has it?”
“It’s really none of my business,” Sarah told him.
“You made it your business when you stole the girl.”
Sarah then made the mistake of looking into his eyes. He had a way of looking into you and making you feel as if there was nowhere to go, as if he had you in his grasp and you had best not try to oppose him.
“Mia has the deed and I want it,” Joel Davis announced.
Sarah forced herself to meet his gaze. She thought of all the harm he’d done and all the lives he’d set off course and suddenly she didn’t feel the least bit afraid. A man like Joel fed off fear and insecurity. “For your information, Mia doesn’t live here anymore, so you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“I know where she lives in New York, and I know she’ll come back here to visit you. Maybe I’ll just stay for a while. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind, Sarah.”
It was the fact that he said her name, as if he knew her, and had power over her, that set her off. There was no way she would allow herself to be at his mercy.
“I’m calling the police,” she announced. Sarah had already taken her phone out of the pocket of her skirt, and behind her back she had already punched in 911. There was a crackle as the police dispatcher answered. “I’m being robbed,” Sarah said loudly before announcing her address. “Come right away.”
“I’m the one who’s been robbed,” Joel said in response. All the same, now that the police were on their way, he had no choice but to leave. “You tell Mia I want it back and I intend to get it. I’ll find her here, or in New York, or wherever the hell she goes.” He gave Sarah a long look before he got into his truck and took off.
Sarah had been so rattled that she didn’t think to take down the license plate number. Afterward, she’d had a talk with the police, and they had contacted the authorities in Blackwell. That was how she’d discovered there had indeed been a court case, and Joel had lost. The police had come to claim the land and arrest him for setting fire to several of the buildings, but right before they arrived, Joel Davis disappeared into the woods. He would rather have the buildings burn than have the town take them, and on the night of the burning there was so much smoke that deer were seen racing down Route 17, and a bear was found on the town green, hidden behind the bushes.
“The Blackwell authorities said the farm is mostly deserted now,” Sarah told Mia. “Most of the younger people have left, and Joel is angry about that. Nobody listens to him anymore.”
The story hour that Constance used to lead now let out and children ran across the lawn carrying copies of Magic by the Lake.
“They questioned a woman who said she’d been the schoolteacher,” Sarah added.
Evangeline.
“Did they?” Mia nodded, not at all surprised that Evangeline would be among those who had stayed on the farm. The tattletale, always so jealous of Ivy, who always had to be second in command, the one they had fooled when Ivy took the slip of paper from Mia and had eaten it rather than let Evangeline have proof that rules had been broken.
“She said you stole the deed that proves he owns the property. She said she was there in the office when you did it, and that you were always sneaky.”
“I was,” Mia admitted.
“No, you weren’t.” Sarah was firm on this. “You were a survivor.” Sarah handed over a leather satchel she’d brought along. “I think it would be wise if you relocated from your apartment for a while. I wish you could stay here, but it’s the first place he’ll look. He could still be in Concord waiting for you to show up. I should have come to New York, but there was something here I knew you would want.”
Inside the bag Sarah had brought was Mia’s copy of The Scarlet Letter. Ivy’s letter was folded inside, along with the watercolor she’d found in the Community files and the pearls that had belonged to Constance, and the gold earrings that had been a birthday gift. All of her treasures.
“Evangeline was right about me. I stole this book from the library in Blackwell.” Mia was admitting this for the first time.
“I know. I found your keepsake box years ago.” Sarah patted Mia’s arm with affection. “If not returning a book to the library is the worst you ever do, dear girl, then you’re an angel. ‘Time hides no treasures; we want not its then, but its now’,” she said, quoting Thoreau. “This is your now. A treasure is a treasure if you think it is. The book is your treasure, and Joel thinks you have his treasure as well.”
Mia recalled the day she had worked in the office and found Carrie’s painting, hidden in the back of the file cabinet. She now turned the painting over to read the inscription. I leave my husband everything, all of my land as far as the eye can see.
“I never knew what this meant, but I do now,” Mia told Sarah. “It’s the deed. It’s what he’s been looking for all this time.”
Sarah brought a small paper grocery sack out of her purse. “He left this in the driveway.” Inside the bag were a dozen Look-No-Further apples, not yet ripe.
There was one place where he would never find Mia, and that was the place she’d always wanted to be. Now that she considered it, she thought Elizabeth was wrong, and that a fish could live with a sparrow after all. They would be in different elements yet remain close, as far away as a leaf, or a whisper, or a kiss. If she could have Nathaniel for her own, Mia didn’t care if she remained at the edges of his life, in a cottage in the woods, hidden away and invisible. She would not freeze during a cold winter as the previous tenant had; she would not care if no one from town ever spoke to her. As for Nathaniel, he could still live as he was meant to, be married, have children, write his books, but every now and then he could be hers. She could tell Nathaniel all he must do to make certain he would live the life he was meant to have and write the books he would have written if she’d never returned. She would show him lines and chapters if need be; she would recite his own words to him.
Sarah clasped the pearls around Mia’s throat, and they embraced, but they didn’t prolong their farewell. Goodbyes were too final, and so they said nothing at all, as they had when they drove to Concord all those years ago, when they both knew that Mia would never return to Blackwell. They understood there were things that a person must forsake when she was running away.
Mia walked across town. It was still hot, but the season would soon change, and purple September asters were already blooming in the fields and yards. In a few brief weeks, summer would be over, the air would be crisp and cool, and out in Blackwell the leaves would turn red. Mia quickly made her way to the north side of town, where there was a bus stop outside Crosby’s market. She didn’t dare return to the cemetery for fear that Joel was still in town, but if she had reached Nathaniel in the place where he’d been buried, she believed she could reach him again at the house where he’d been born, and that was her destination now. She was going to Salem.
When the bus arrived, Mia stepped on and paid her fare, then made her way to the rear. Only a few other passengers followed her on, a woman with a baby, a boy of sixteen or so, a man who buried his face in his copy of the Boston Globe, two girls chatting about school. Mia sat down, and as the bus set off, she began to read Nathaniel’s book for comfort. She was reminded that nothing was written in stone, and that fate could change, and that not everyone who filled her pockets with river rocks drowned. After a while, Mia stowed the book in the leather satchel and looked out at the road. Concord already seemed like a dream to her, and her apartment in New York might as well have been on the moon. She would go as far as she needed and she would never be found. She would walk invisible into a world in which impossible things had happened and would most certainly happen again.
* * *
IN SALEM, MIA EXITED at Bridge Street. She heard the shrill cry of a child being comforted in his mother’s arms and a teenage boy calling out to the friends who were meeting him, but all she thought of was her own destination as she made her way along the twisting streets, turning onto Williams Street. Finally, there was Washington Square, framed by eighteenth-century mansions. The route then took her to the House of the Seven Gables at Derby Street. Mia had visited the museum with Constance when she was in school, but now as she approached, she felt a wave of fear. It was what she’d always felt when Joel was near, and she didn’t understand until she looked over her shoulder.
There was the man who had been reading the newspaper on the bus following a block behind her. She hadn’t bothered to look at him before, but now she recognized Joel. She was instantly chilled, as if he had arisen from the underworld and brought winter with him. She might be walking through drifts of snow, or skating on the blue ice of the river with Ivy, nearly invisible, but not quite. Joel hadn’t aged well, he looked shrunken and bitter, but she knew him all the same. That was when she took off running. Her breath was shallow in her chest as she raced on, desperate to keep as much distance between herself and Joel as possible.
The grand sea captain’s house at the front of the museum had been built in 1668 and was purchased in 1782 by Samuel Ingersoll, a wealthy, well-known sea captain himself. His daughter Susanna, a second cousin of Hawthorne’s, inherited the property, which was said to be haunted. Mia knew that Nathaniel had visited Miss Susanna frequently and that the stories she’d told of his ancestors’ greed when some members of his family did their best to take the house from her would later inspire his novel The House of the Seven Gables.
Nathaniel’s birthplace was modest by comparison; originally built in 1750 on Union Street, it had been moved in 1958 to what was now a museum campus. Nathaniel had been born in a room above the parlor, and had lived there for four years, until his father died at sea. The gardens outside the houses were comparatively new, having been laid out in 1909 in the Jacobean style, with four centuries of garden varieties, gray-green in tone, planted with herbs used for healing, and masses of flowers, including lavender, artemisia, tarragon, bee balm, and thyme. There were snapdragons and impatiens, coral bells and delphinium, hollyhocks, Canterbury bells, and an extraordinary arbor of twisting wisteria of a variety introduced to Massachusetts during the nineteenth-century China trade. Visiting hours were over, but Mia saw a young man readying the museum for closing and she urgently signaled to him.
“Hello!” Mia called. Her hands were wrapped around the gate posts. She thought of the day when her mother’s body was carried across the field and then of how Joel had locked her in the barn. Her heart was beating too fast. “I’ve lost something. Please! Hurry!”
Mia gestured for the employee to come closer, and he did, curious, for she was a stunning figure with her red hair loose, nearly reaching her waist, and her old-fashioned black dress. The summer intern was a college student who had written a paper on The House of the Seven Gables.
“I was here earlier, and I lost an earring in the garden,” Mia told him as he drew near. She sounded so distressed. “May I look? Please, I’m in a terrible rush.”
The intern glanced over his shoulder. He was meant to set the alarms and lock the doors, then set the bolt on the gate after he’d left. It was his first time closing up alone. According to the rules, no one was allowed on the grounds after hours, but he found himself moved by this woman’s plight.
“They were a gift from a dear friend,” Mia confided. “She’s passed on and they’re all I have left of her.”
Joel was on the property now. She spied him on the corner, coming towards them.
“Can you open the gate?” Mia sounded truly desperate now.
“Sure,” the young man said, won over when he saw tears brimming in her black liquid eyes. He leaned in to unlock the latch. “Can you do it quickly?”
“Absolutely,” Mia assured him. She ran into the garden. The trellis was abloom with the last of the fading roses, climbing New Dawn, a delicate pink variety of small rose that did well in salty soil. Mia knelt down. She would not let one man ruin her life. She would not be bound by history or fate.
“Stop right now,” she heard Joel shout.
Mia thought of her mother kneeling before him, she thought of the days when women had to confess their sins. Finally, she held the fern-seed and was at last invisible. A haze descended, and the young employee of the Seven Gables disappeared in that murky light, as if a fog had rolled in from the sea and nothing was as it had appeared to be. She heard the gate slam open, and her name shouted out, but she didn’t have to obey Joel anymore. The young man who worked at the museum shouted Hello! Are you still there? but by then Mia was curled up beside the hedges outside Nathaniel’s house, there in the bright sunlight in the summer of 1837.
* * *
THE SALEM OBSERVER WAS being delivered by a young boy who nearly tripped over Mia. He hadn’t noticed her on the brick walkway, where she now sat cross-legged, her head aching, overheated and starving. She felt as if she’d traveled halfway around the world. The air was lazy and yellow and thick, and it wasn’t easy to breathe.
“Miss,” the newsboy said, unnerved in her presence. “Should I direct you to the Seamen’s Widow and Orphan Association?”
“No, thank you,” Mia said, rising and brushing off the rose petals that clung to the fabric of her black dress. It was the last burst of summer, and the day would be blistering. Mia wished she had thought to wear lighter clothing. It occurred to her that she hadn’t properly prepared, just as when she had run away from the Community, for she’d taken nothing with her but the painting, the book, and her mother’s letter tucked inside a canvas bag worn over her shoulder. Travel light. Don’t look back. Take only what you need most of all.
The newsboy helped Mia to her feet, then awkwardly bowed, as if he stood before a queen. He found the stranger extraordinary, with her loose red hair and strange crimson-colored boots. The boy thought perhaps he’d found a fairy who lived beneath the hedge, and perhaps he’d have three wishes granted, but he wasn’t bold enough to stay. “Good luck to you, miss,” he declared, before he took off running.
Nathaniel’s sister Louisa watched the encounter between the newsboy and the stranger from the window; curious and nervous, she called her sister to her. Elizabeth always knew what to do. But when Elizabeth came into the room and looked out the window, she said, “Oh, damn!” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and studied the scene on the path leading to their house. Of course, Mia couldn’t leave well enough alone. People in love were such fools, they made up excuses, they wound up doing as they pleased no matter how much good advice they’d been given. A small part of Elizabeth was impressed by Mia’s recklessness. If she had some of that herself, perhaps she’d be in Barbados right now.
“Do you know who she might be?” Louisa asked of the woman in the black dress.
There’d been good reason not to inform Louisa about Mia’s existence; Elizabeth’s younger sister was too softhearted, and if given free rein, she would have likely invited the stranger to move in with them. She pursed her lips, as she always did when she was thinking deeply, which was much of the time. She wore a plain muslin dress and a quilted jacket, having planned to do nothing but read all afternoon. Obviously, those plans had now been interrupted, but she’d gotten rid of Mia once, so it was likely that she could do so again.
“You stay here,” Elizabeth told Louisa. “Keep Eta up in her room,” she added, using their nickname for their sensitive mother. “She doesn’t need to be involved in this.” As so often happened, the children had become the caretakers of their fragile parent. Frankly they had been ever since the death of their father at sea, and Elizabeth, for one, resented her position in the family, not that she would ever shirk her duties as Nathaniel often did, forgiven by one and all, including his older sister.
Elizabeth went outside and shook her head as she glared at Mia. “You did the right thing, yet now you’ve seen fit to return and do damage. Did we not discuss applying logic to the situation?”
Mia felt quite dizzy standing in the sun in her long black dress. “I’m not here to do damage,” she said. “And I had no choice, Ebe.”
“There’s always a choice,” Elizabeth said briskly, grateful that her brother was not at home. He was a romantic and a fool and a genius and the person she loved best in the world, and he needed absolute concentration so he might focus on his great gift. She had thought she and Mia had agreed upon that.
“Really?” Mia said. “Do you have the choice to attend Harvard?”
“No more than you would if you stay here,” Elizabeth shot back. “I thought you understood you needed to go back. He was ill for weeks after you left, he talked about you in his fevered dreams. Do you think that is helpful to him or to his work?”
“I’ve thought of a way to be a fish and still breathe air,” Mia said.
“Have you now?” Despite herself, Elizabeth was curious, then she was immediately distracted when she heard a tapping behind her. There was Louisa at the window, trying to get her attention. Elizabeth waved to her sister, who reluctantly drew the curtain. All the same, if Elizabeth knew her sister, and she did, Louisa would have already arranged breakfast at their table for this unknown guest.
“And I have used logic.”
“Really? I seriously doubt it.”
“I won’t hurt him,” Mia said.
Elizabeth shook her head. “Open your eyes. Someone always gets hurt.”
* * *
ELIZABETH RELUCTANTLY BROUGHT MIA inside, and both sisters studied Mia as she ate. She was ravenous and had the manners of a sailor. She poured warm milk on her oat porridge, a portion enough for three people rather than one, and ate two slices of bread with butter.
