The Invisible Hour, page 20
“I’m sorry, miss. If the library becomes public, then you will be more than welcome. Until that time, I must ask you to leave.”
* * *
WALKING BEYOND TOWN, ON the dirt road that would someday become Route 17, Mia easily found her way, even without the landmarks—the fence that ran the length of the Community’s property, the road signs to Lenox and the Mass Pike, the mailboxes of distant neighbors to whom they weren’t allowed to speak. Mia now understood that Joel was well aware that once a girl walked into a library she could never be controlled again.
When she entered the woods, she spied a red fox running through the shady glen, leaping for no reason other than to celebrate the joy of being alive. Such a sighting always meant good luck. See a fox and you’ll see your future, that was what Ivy had once told her. There were chokeberries and mulberries in the thickets, and the sky was a luminous blue. Mia hiked through the meadow filled with tall plumy grass and was soon flushed from walking hard and fast. Her skirts caught on thorns, and she’d had to tear the fabric away from the brittle limbs of the bramble bushes. Bees were everywhere, and they rumbled around her as if she were a flower moving through the fields.
Every now and then enormous flocks of sparrows could be seen flying south. In Berkshire County, summer was brief. Nights here were already chilly. The present was always overtaken by the future, spring by summer, and summer by fall. Already, the leaves on some twisted vines in the woods were turning yellow. Mia remembered searching to find the first red leaf of the season. Here, in the deep woods, there was jewelweed along the damp, muddy banks of streams, as well as patches of cardinal flowers, which bloomed scarlet.
When she came up the hill, Mia lifted her skirt, for the grass was wet with mist. She certainly remembered the Jack Straw Tavern, and how she’d sneaked into the bar, relishing her brief time spent there, when she could feel that she was an ordinary girl. As she drew closer, she spied a tin pail outside the door, and when she reached it, she crouched down to have a look. She saw that it was empty, and that no fish had been caught, and then she was sure Nathaniel was inside, for he’d boasted that he’d never once killed a living creature and never kept his catch when out fishing.
Mia went to the window and peered inside. There he was alone at a table, his dark, beautiful face knotted with absolute concentration as he wrote in a small leather notebook, a plate of food before him left untouched. Her heart lurched as she lightly rapped on the window. At first Nathaniel thought he heard the bumblebees hitting the glass. Then he looked up and his attention was riveted. He thought he was dreaming; perhaps he was asleep on his small metal bed in his room, napping just as his uncle was, and had only dreamed that he had walked downstairs and ordered supper and a whiskey. Mia waved to him, another dream surely, or so he thought until he pinched his hand and felt the smart under his skin.
When Nathaniel came outside, it was late in the day and the light was silvery and pale. They were beyond words and recriminations. He had been stung by her disappearance, but she had returned, and he was unable to resist her. Without a word, they went inside the Jack Straw and took the back staircase to Nathaniel’s room. He bolted the door, then stripped off his black coat. She unbuttoned her dress, until he told her to stop. He would do that for her.
The bed was small, too small for Nathaniel alone it had seemed, but that didn’t matter now. Life can be long or short, it is impossible to know, but every once in a while an entire life is spent in one night, the night when the windows are open and you can hear the last of the crickets’ call, when there is a chill in the air and the stars are bright, when nothing else matters, when a single kiss lasts longer than a lifetime, when you do not think about the future or the past, or whether or not you are walking through a dream rather than the real world, when everything you have always wanted and everything you are fated to mourn forever are tied together with black thread and then sewn with your own hand, when in the morning, as you wake and see the mountain in the distance, you will understand that whether or not you’ve made a mistake, whether or not you will lose all that you have, this is what it means to be human.
* * *
AS SHE WAS PLACING the book back beneath the mattress, he saw both the name and the title. She’d thought he was asleep, and now she clutched the book to her chest. You will change everything, Elizabeth had warned her. There is no logic in love or in writing, Mia had insisted, but now she wondered if she had gone too far in tempting fate.
“You must let me see,” Nathaniel urged. When Mia refused, there was a darkness in his voice. “It appears to be my book. Is it not?”
“Not yet. Not until you write it. If you saw it now you might be influenced to change it in some way, or to write it as you think it’s meant to be written.”
But now he knew the title, which he assumed he dare not change. Among the words he’d recently written in his notebook there had been a list of colors. Scarlet had not been among them, but now that he had spied it, he thought it the most beautiful word.
“Did my sister tell you not to show it to me? She’s not always correct, even though she believes she is.”
Mia had never seen him so shaken. She had read about his black moods and the gloom that often descended upon him, and yet she was unprepared when he stormed out of the room, muttering that he would find some coffee at the bar. As soon as he’d left, Mia thought it was best to conceal the book in a place where he wouldn’t think to look. She would stow it in her bag and store that in the fireplace, but as she lifted the book, it fell open on the floor, and then she saw the change had already begun.
The words she knew so well were disappearing. An entire passage she knew by heart, one that concerned what to do with an unwed mother who had broken the Puritans’ rules, was gone, replaced by blank white space. At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead. More was disappearing as she turned the pages, as if the words were black sparrows flying off the paper, too quickly to be caught. What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her gown, or the flesh of her forehead? This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly, there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray!
Even if Mia was at the fringes of Nathaniel’s life, those edges might burn so fiercely they could change everything, and like the butterfly across the world, she would have changed all that he did and thought and wrote as well. Even if she told him how to follow his history, where to meet his wife, at what addresses he should live, the date he was to join Brook Farm, the day he should begin to write his great novel several years from now, she could not make certain he would experience the small details of his life. A dragonfly he spied on a Friday. A bird he noticed in the sky. One meeting in the forest could affect all that he was and would ever be. What would their daughter mean to him, how would she change his vision of the world? A novel was made of personal experience and raw emotion. It was a chart of all that a person was. Even if Mia lived in the cottage, if she saw him once a month, or every six months, it might be enough to change what was meant to be. Elizabeth had been right; it was already happening. Mia went to look in the glass and saw that she was beginning to disappear. Her freckles were gone, her hair was a pale ashy color, her eyes were silver rather than black. That was when she knew, if she waited too long to leave, she would become invisible, both here and in her own world, as if she had walked into the water all those years ago, as if his book had not been on the shelf, there to change her fate.
* * *
IN THE MORNING, THE carriage arrived to take Robert and Nathaniel back to Salem. Their time here was over, and the real world awaited. It had moved on without them, and now it was time to step back inside their lives and pick up their responsibilities and renew their family ties. Robert Manning thought the trip had done his nephew a fair amount of good. Nathaniel seemed in better spirits, and he had stopped talking nonsense about life in the future. The future, after all, was what they made it and what they lived each day.
There were two carriage men rather than the usual one. Robert recognized the regular fellow as the one who’d brought them to the Berkshires a few days earlier, a young man named Tyler, who explained that he was showing the new man the ropes. The new fellow had gone up to Nathaniel’s room and brought down his bags while Nathaniel was in the bath. Robert threw a keen glance at the dark figure, who was expressionless as he loaded the baggage into the rear of the carriage.
“He’s a bit old to be new, isn’t he?” Robert said with a laugh. The man looked somewhat undesirable, in strange clothes with close-clipped gray hair.
“He’s working hard,” Tyler said. “And he barely says a word. I suppose that’s good enough.”
Robert’s bags and his fishing gear were already on board when his nephew came out of the inn to reclaim his luggage. He’d left Mia in his room in order to explain his situation to his uncle and reclaim his luggage. His hair was wet. There was something wild in his eyes.
“Are you ill?” Robert wanted to know.
“Not at all,” Nathaniel said. “Or perhaps I am. If so, it’s an illness that affects the heart, one people beg to have, even if there is no cure. Uncle, I think you understand the one thing that would keep me here.”
All at once Robert knew. Nathaniel was besotted. “Is it her?” his uncle asked. “The mythological creature?”
Nathaniel laughed. “She’s real enough. Believe me.”
Robert’s keen gaze was drawn toward the second story of the inn, and there, in the window of his nephew’s room, he spied a woman with pale red hair. She wore Nathaniel’s dressing gown with nothing underneath. Robert felt a wave of sadness, for he understood that he would be returning to Salem alone. He had failed in his mission to wake Nathaniel from his dreams and fantasies and was unable to drag him back to real life. He could quarrel with his nephew, but Nathaniel was stubborn, he always had been, a man who followed his own path and intended to do away with the rules of the past.
Robert stood in the shade of a twisted apple tree and listened to his nephew’s explanation of why he wished to stay on in Berkshire County, a tale about needing time to write and think, excuses that didn’t ring true. “Be honest, man,” Robert said. “Isn’t she the reason?”
Nathaniel lifted his eyes to see Mia at the window. He’d been showing her where the bath was, so they’d both been out of his room when his luggage was brought down. Robert laughed when he saw the expression on his nephew’s face. He knew a lovestruck man when he saw one. “You answered the question.” Robert shook his head. “I’m quite convinced you have no intention of returning to Salem with me.”
“Not today. That much is certain.”
Robert clapped his nephew on the back. “Take my advice. Do not get married.”
“That is an unlikely outcome, as I have no ring,” Nathaniel joked wryly.
Nathaniel embraced his uncle, who had indeed been a father to him. He wished he could tell Robert more, but it was best not to, for surely the truth would alarm Robert and make him question Nathaniel’s sanity.
“No rash actions,” Robert reminded him.
“What I want more than anything is some time, Uncle. I’ll stay here and write.”
“I’ll have them place three more nights on my bill,” Robert granted. “Should that be enough?”
It would never be enough, but Nathaniel thanked his uncle. Three nights to do their best to figure out the rest of their lives.
“Just a warning,” Robert said. “Love can be dangerous.”
Nathaniel softened to his uncle, who always wanted the best for him. “Is there anything worthwhile that is not?”
Nathaniel remained outside to watch the carriage disappear down the road, past a stand of beech trees. When he turned, he noticed that one of the carriage men was still standing there, leaning against the wall of the inn, as if he had all the time in the world.
“They’ve gone without you,” Nathaniel said, confused.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” the man said brazenly. “I don’t work for them. I’ll do as I please.”
“Will you?” Nathaniel eyed this character with suspicion.
“I’ve got a farm here,” the fellow replied. “The biggest in Berkshire County.”
“Do you now?” This man certainly didn’t look like the other prosperous farmers in the area.
“She’s mine as well,” the carriage man said with a grin as he gazed upward.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Nathaniel answered, but he saw the way the fellow was staring up at the window of his room. Nathaniel had such an intense reaction to this man, mistrust he supposed it was, that when the fellow turned to leave, Nathaniel waited to make certain the stranger was headed off before he went back inside the inn.
“Who were you speaking with?” Mia asked when at last Nathaniel came upstairs. She’d spied him in conversation with a man who stood in the shadows so that she could not make him out.
“Someone who insisted he had the largest farm in Berkshire County when he looked like he’d been sleeping in a barn.” Nathaniel sat in the chair beside the bed, his face lined with worry. He didn’t like the cold obstinence in the carriage man’s tone. He thought of the man Mia had told him about, the one who’d ruined her mother’s life and thought he owned everything as far as the eye could see. “Could anyone else travel here, Mia?”
“No, of course not,” Mia said. “Not without the book.”
“He said you were his, whatever that is supposed to mean.”
Alarmed, Mia gazed out the window. We carry the past with us even when we try to run away. It’s never very far away. It was then she saw a man walking into the woods. She recognized his posture, and the slant of his shoulders, and she certainly knew his walk, for his stride announced his assurance that he owned every bit of the world he was in. And then she knew that when she had come here, he had been close enough to follow her. One step was all it took.
I thought he was a man who would care for me, Ivy had told her one night in the woods, but he turned out to be the opposite. She might have been crying, it was too dark to know. Ivy and Mia had been sitting in the grass, and the fireflies were drifting through the forest as if they were globes of light. He told me a story, and I believed in stories, but everything he said was a lie. He told me he had been terribly mistreated by his family, beaten and uncared for, and that he wanted a new world, where people were guided by rules that helped them through their lives.
“Whoever he is, he was in our room,” Nathaniel said.
“Doing what?” A chill spread through Mia’s body.
“He was sent to collect my luggage.”
Mia turned to see her bag was no longer hidden in the fireplace but was tossed onto the floor, its contents rifled through. She had stowed her mother’s letter and the painting beneath the thin mattress, but the book was missing. She felt sheer panic, for although she had no idea of how Joel intended to use the book, she was certain he would find a way to use it against her. She and Ivy should have made a vow to walk into the future; they should had left the past behind. If you hold on to it, it will only haunt you, it will wrap its arms around you and pull you down. She needed that book in order to return. Nathaniel hadn’t yet noticed she was fading, but when Mia peered into the glass, she could see that she was even paler. It was happening to her. The book had changed or it had ceased to exist, and she was becoming invisible.
* * *
WHILE NATHANIEL WENT TO ask the innkeeper’s wife for a packed lunch to take with them when they explored the woods, Mia pulled on her boots and went down the back stairway, used for bringing up coal and wood in the wintertime. She knew Joel, and she was certain that he would be waiting for her. Evil was predictable; it cloaked itself in righteousness, convinced its enemies must be punished. Mia ducked beneath the tree branches, not caring if they tore at her clothes. She saw the stamp of his boots in the damp earth and followed them through the tall stalks of weeds and the banks of wild mint.
He was there waiting. Mia felt as if she’d been holding her breath ever since she discovered that the book was gone. There it was in Joel’s hands. He always knew the way to best hurt someone. They glared at one another through the shadows.
“I’m not surprised to discover you’re a witch,” Joel said flatly. “That was always in your nature. I took one step to follow you and found myself in hell. I said books belonged to the devil, and you’ve proved me right.”
“I want the book,” Mia said simply, even though she felt as if she were a bundle of nerves.
Joel tossed her a filthy look. “I want the painting you stole. You knew it was the deed.”
“I did not,” Mia told him.
Still, he grinned and said darkly, “I’m not surprised by who you turned out to be, but your mother would be so disappointed in you. She would want nothing to do with you. We should have left you on the town green.”
“Don’t speak to me about my mother,” Mia said in a soft voice.
“And now you’re the devil’s whore.” He was speaking of Nathaniel, nodding to her midsection. “About to have his child I’d guess. At least they know what’s right in these times. You’ll be in jail if you try to rid yourself of it.”
“I wouldn’t wish to do so,” Mia told him. “But if I did, I should have the right to make that choice.”
“Your mother didn’t teach you to do as you were told, even though she learned pretty quickly.”
“She only stayed because you threatened to take me away.”
“I was enough of a father for all those years. My name is on your birth certificate. You’re mine and you owe me. It only makes sense for us to help one another. You want the book and I want the deed to my own land. We make a fair and even trade and you promise to take me back with you with whatever witchcraft you’ve got up your sleeve.”
