The Little Giant of Aberdeen County Page 16

  “We’ll be fine,” Amelia said matter-of-factly, and then shut her mouth to any other conversation.

  I looked at her face, hoping I would see a sign of sadness, but I knew I would not. She was too schooled in sorrow to let it show and too familiar with hard times to let them get her down. For once, though, I wished that her exterior were a little softer, a little doughier, like mine. I put the egg in my basket and pictured her alone out here with the creaking windmill and the squabbling hens. “I’ll miss you something awful,” I said. “You’ve been like a sister to me.”

  Amelia didn’t crack. She handed me another egg, but I could see the beginning of a tear swelling in her eye. “Better than a sister,” I insisted. “Serena Jane only put up with me because we were born in the same house.” I looped the basket over my other arm. “What’s been your excuse?”

  Amelia looked at me, and this time she didn’t even try to hide the grief in her face. I put down the basket and hugged her tight, bundling her in my arms as if she were a rare bird. “Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “My heart will always be here.”

  Her voice, when she finally spoke, was muffled and confused, as it had been in childhood. “Make sure you don’t lose your heart living with Robert Morgan. Make sure he doesn’t use up all the very best parts of you.”

  Like he did with Serena Jane, I knew she meant. But then I thought about Bobbie and how sad and confused he would be, missing his mother, and I knew I had to go. “I won’t,” I promised. “You know me best, Amelia. You’ll keep me all in a piece.” She nodded and put her hand on her chest, as if to pledge fidelity.

  It was one Dyerson debt, I thought, that would absolutely get paid in full.

  Four days later, Robert Morgan watched as I climbed the front porch steps of my new home. I was remembering how once, in boyhood, his parents had taken him on an automobile trip to see the president’s heads carved into Mount Rushmore. From a distance, he’d told everyone at school, they were immense, but he didn’t know how huge until he got up close and nothing about them made sense anymore. I figured I was probably exactly like that. Up close to me, Robert Morgan no doubt found it hard to fathom why God made a woman so ugly. My globular nose clashed with my doughy cheeks, which fought a little battle with my inner-tube lips, and so on. I wasn’t fat, but I was so solid, I resembled a tree. Feeling my hips shift from side to side as I hauled a cardboard suitcase up the four steps, I found myself wondering how much I weighed. Scales weren’t something the Dyersons worried about. In fact, thin was everything that was wrong with the Dyersons: thin clothes, thin meals, thin luck. As for height, I had no accurate idea about that, either. I had a good two inches on Robert Morgan—that much was clear. If it weren’t for the way I blinked at everything, or my habit of working my lips before I spoke, I thought that he might even have been slightly afraid of me.

  We passed through the front door and into the entry hall of the house, where there was nothing to greet a visitor except a round, empty table with a water stain in the middle of it, a staircase wriggling its way up to a second story, and four closed doors. Robert Morgan dropped my suitcase in the middle of the floor and opened one of the doors. “Kitchen’s this way,” he said, jutting his chin. “We eat in there. Dining room’s in here, this is the den, and this”—he crossed the hall and opened the last door—“is the parlor. No one ever uses it, but if you’re so inclined, you’re welcome to sit a spell come an evening.”

  I wedged myself through the door of the little room, blinking in the shuttered gloom. A threadbare sofa was pushed up against one wall, facing a fireplace, and a pair of tattered chairs occupied the corners. Dust balls hunkered on the floorboards, and the hooked rug was moth-eaten. The only object of any beauty in the room was the floral quilt hung on the wall above the sofa. I walked closer to it, amazed at all the tiny stitches holding the whole thing together. The pattern was one I’d never seen before. The center looked reasonable enough—flowers and leaves in neat rows up and down—but outside the black diamond border, it looked as though the quilt maker had just given up and started sewing vines and plants willy-nilly until she plain ran out of thread. I was so absorbed in my inspection of the quilt that I’d almost forgotten Robert Morgan was standing right behind me.

  “It was my great-great-grandmother’s,” he said. “You know the stories about her. Tabitha Morgan. She made it.”

  “The whole thing?” I breathed. It seemed impossible to me that one woman’s fingers could loop and stitch with such abundance. How many years had it taken her? I wondered. And what kind of fury had she harbored inside of her to make a kaleidoscope like this? In the parlor’s gloom, the colors seemed to vibrate, inviting conspiracies and legends. Everyone in town knew about Tabitha Morgan, of course. An old maid at the tender age of twenty-six, she was Aberdeen’s primary healer until the first Dr. Morgan loped into town and married her. It was an unhappy union, though, and Tabitha died young—some said by her own hand, and others said by her husband’s. And no one had ever found her shadow book.

  “Do you think her spell book really exists?” I asked the doctor now, stretching out a finger to tap the old fabric.

  Robert Morgan snorted like one of August’s horses and bared his long teeth. “That’s just a heap of women’s gossip—a sin I hope you don’t indulge. If you’re going to get along in this house, Truly, you will keep what you see to yourself. My patients expect it.”

  “Of course,” I stammered.

  He spun on his heel. “You can go on upstairs, then. Your room is the third door on the left. I’ll leave you to manage. It doesn’t look like you brought much. Oh, and if you want to”—he glanced over his shoulder at the quilt—“you can take that old thing up with you. I have no use for it.” He paused. “We generally like to eat around six. Bobbie’s around here somewhere. I imagine he’ll be along to say hello. He’ll tell you what he likes for supper.” And before I could say anything else, he backed out of the room and squeezed the door firmly shut behind him, leaving me alone with the puzzling quilt, whistling as he walked away, as pleased with himself as if he had just sealed a genie into a bottle.

  He’d given me the guest room, with its windows overlooking the back garden and fields and a four-poster bed I wasn’t sure would hold me. I spread the quilt over it, pleased with the cheer it injected into the room. Come winter, I thought, when Aberdeen’s colors ran together into muck, I’d be glad of the embroidered red-and blue-tipped blooms and faded green stems. They would be a reminder that the world outside wasn’t gone, just sleeping.

  I trudged over to the window and pulled the curtains back a little. The glass in the window was old and streaked, but I still had a pleasant view out over the flower beds Maureen had planted aeons ago. Kneeling in them, his head bowed as if he were praying, I saw Marcus, his hands sunk amid the stalks. Aware that someone was looking at him, he glanced up to the window, his almond eyes startled wide. I half raised a hand to wave at him, and he lifted his chin up at me and squinted. It wasn’t exactly a hero’s welcome, but it was nice to see at least one familiar face. Just then, I heard a scuttling outside the door. Curious, I walked across the room and cracked the door, only to have it strike against something soft and yielding.

  “Ow!” a child’s voice cried, and my nephew, Bobbie Morgan, popped his blond head into the room. I caught my breath and took a step back. It was as if Serena Jane had been shrunk into a child again—but a boy this time, with elfin ears and a gravity about him that must have come from the Morgan side of the family.

  “Oh,” I stammered, “I didn’t know anyone was there.”

  The rest of Bobbie appeared in the doorway—a lanky body clothed in a faded T-shirt, no shoes, and, tipped back in his arms, a vase overloaded with flowers. “Marcus let me pick them for your room,” he said shyly, casting his eyes down to the petals. “I thought you might like yellow and blue.”

  I reached down and took the vase. “They’re real pretty. Thank you.” I set the vase on one of the night tables.


  Liberated from the flowers, Bobbie looked even skinnier, the bones in his arms as brittle as two kindling sticks. He scowled. “What’s that doing in here? That goes in the parlor.” He jerked his chin toward the bed and Tabitha’s quilt.

  I turned back to Bobbie. “I’m sorry. Would you like to have it in your room instead?”

  Bobbie considered, his eyebrows slanted fiercely in toward each other. “No. My father wouldn’t like it.” Underneath the hem of his shorts, his knees stuck out like overturned bowls. They glowed as white as spilled sugar. I didn’t have any experience with children, but I knew plenty about not having a mother. I remembered all the afternoons I’d spent in my mother’s closet, inhaling the diminishing scent off of her coats, her shoes—an odor unlike anything I’d ever known. I patted the quilt.

  “Well, why don’t we say this? Anytime you want to, you can come in here and lie down on this bed. And we won’t tell your father. It will just be our little secret.”

  I watched as Bobbie weighed the consequences of this one small disobedience. “Okay,” he finally agreed, his voice cracking. He tilted his head the same way Serena Jane used to when she examined herself in the mirror. It’s too bad he’s a boy, I found myself thinking. He’s such a beautiful child. Which was, I would soon come to learn, what scared Robert Morgan the most. Boys weren’t meant to be pretty. They were meant to be sturdy, and rough, and rugged as mountains. Why, I thought with a tiny smile, they were meant to be just like me.

  As soon as he got me settled in, Robert Morgan stalked over to his office, double-checked that the handle was locked, then resumed his pacing. On his desk, he had flattened my sister’s note, smoothing out the creases, tracing the smudged letters over and over with his skinny index finger. Don’t come look for me. Like he would ever bother, Robert Morgan thought. Like he wanted her back. Still, my sister’s disappearance was a problem. It didn’t look good to have your wife making tracks. It suggested certain inadequacies in the marriage that he didn’t feel like justifying. He narrowed his eyes. It was time to call in a favor.

  One of the distinct advantages to being a doctor’s son was that Robert Morgan had all his father’s colleagues at his fingertips, including Bernie Briggs, the county coroner. It took a minute to get Bernie on the phone, but soon his bristly voice filled the receiver. A few more minutes was all it took, and Robert Morgan had him eating out of the palm of his hand.

  “Of course I’ll call you first if something comes in,” Bernie promised. “Just as sure as sure can be.”

  “Thank you,” the doctor murmured, making sure to keep his voice dipped low. “It’s been a real trial.” That taken care of, he hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, his arms folded behind his head. If he’d had a cigar, I’m sure he would have held it clamped right between his front teeth at that moment. But it wasn’t time to rest on his laurels yet. He still had some calls to make.

  Putting his feet back down on the ground, he picked up the phone and dialed the police in Hansen—the closest law enforcement to Aberdeen. Once, during the forties, the county had considered putting a police force in Aberdeen, but, as the police commissioner had said, you don’t go pouring water over a fire that’s not lit. As he dialed the station, Robert Morgan considered this oversight to be a huge advantage. On the other end of the line, a chirpy receptionist answered. Slowly and carefully, Robert Morgan gave his name and address. He spoke distinctly, making sure the girl had all the time in the world to write down the story of his missing wife.

  As for the last number he phoned, well, I could have recited it even if I’d forgotten my own name. The line jangled and echoed in the doctor’s ear, and then a voice breathed a small greeting into the other end. “Amelia,” said Robert Morgan, “how lucky you’re home. And always so quiet. I’m counting on that. I need a little favor.” Amelia had reverted to silence on the other end of the line, so the doctor continued. “I’m only asking you because I’m trying to protect Truly. What with her sister disappearing and her recent move from the farm, I’m afraid she might be too emotionally fragile. But you, well, you’re tougher than you look.”

  “Get to the point.” When forced to, Amelia would use words sparingly with people outside her family. She had her father’s same low tolerance for preambles and prologues. She knew the heart of a deal came when the card was turned and not a moment sooner.

  “I might need you to come with me to make an identification. You know, in the worst-case scenario.”

  “Humpf.” Even without words, Amelia could always get a point across.

  “What are you implying?” Robert Morgan’s voice slid like silk through the phone.

  Amelia was silent, so Robert Morgan answered the question for her. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m bothering to look for my wife when she ran away?”

  Amelia breathed into the phone. It was, in fact, what she had been thinking. Logistics had never been a problem for her. Robert Morgan clenched his teeth and continued his one-sided conversation. “That’s what you’re going to help me put to rest. Wait for me to call you. And remember, don’t breathe a word.”

  Amelia sighed. The doctor’s voice came out as rough as a lick of sandpaper. “If you help me with this one thing, Amelia, I will make it worth your while, I promise. But if you don’t—” He didn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t need to. If he wanted to, Amelia knew, Robert Morgan could get his friends at the bank to call in almost every debt owed on the farm for the past fifty years, sending her and her mother out the back door with what little they owned in a wheelbarrow.

  She hung up the phone, her heart racing. She didn’t have a choice in this matter, she knew, but maybe she could up the stakes a little. Maybe she could wrangle some sort of permanent work out of the doctor. Maybe she could settle her remaining debts once and for all. In situations like these, Amelia had learned, where the deck was stacked against you, the best thing you could do was to take the next card, play your hand anyway, and keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

  Alone in my room the first night, I ignored the television set propped on a chair in the corner and slid my few pairs of dungarees and shirts into a drawer in the dresser. I put my toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste on one night table and then fussed with Bobbie’s flowers on the other. Finally, I reached into the bottom of my battered suitcase and withdrew my familiar cardboard box. After settling myself on the creaky mattress, I opened the worn flaps and rummaged inside for the wad of bills that I’d rolled into a tight tube. Over the past few years, as all of August’s horses had either died or been taken away, I’d added less and less to the bundle, but there was still a sizable amount of money in my hand. I’d never counted, but it was enough to strain the rubber band, enough to make a gambler’s heart beat fast. What would I do with it, though? Especially now that I was bound to the doctor and Bobbie, with his strange stare and skinny arms, missing his mother?

  I replaced the money and fished around again for my old deck of cards, soft at the edges and quiet in my fingers. I hadn’t had them out of the box since August’s death, but here, in this new setting, they seemed tatty and lifeless, so I put them back. Only my old familiar photographs of my parents and Serena Jane were left. There were no photographs of me in the box and none of the Dyersons. There had never been any occasion for any to be taken. People like us didn’t make history, even among ourselves.

  But maybe that can change, I thought, nestling under Tabitha Morgan’s handiwork in the dark. I felt the quilt’s cotton batting settle around my bulk and imagined myself covered with the botanical network. Everyone on earth left something behind, I reasoned, even if it was just bone dust. August had left his bow-backed horses, Tabitha her sewing. Serena Jane had left me her son, even if she was just gone from Aberdeen, and my mother had left me. What would my legacy be?

  I tried to think further, but a breeze outside set the leaves to rustling, a sound that reminded me of the Dyersons and their farm, and before I knew it, I was pull
ed away from thought and down into a deep and dreamless sleep like thread passing through a needle.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After just two weeks, it was as if I’d been bustling around Robert Morgan’s house for the better portion of my life. It was astonishing to me, really, that a man I barely knew could so quickly become a source of routine for me, but that was Robert Morgan for you.

  Everything in the house was just the way he liked it. Order was the most important thing for him, and along those lines, the doctor had instituted a panoply of domestic rules that could make your head wobble. We ate sweet butter, not salted, drank skim milk, not whole, bought our bread intact and sliced it ourselves, and strained the pulp from our orange juice with a miniature strainer. Bacon was supposed to be served crispy but not burned, the newspaper was supposed to be folded back up into thirds and left on the corner of the kitchen table, and if I got the yolk too hard in his egg in the morning, he’d chuck the whole mess in the trash and refuse to eat again until lunch.

  As for the doctor’s wardrobe, most of his shirts were solid colored, although he had some checkered ones for the weekend, and he wanted all of them pressed with starch. He liked his socks sorted in his drawer according to color, and every Friday he left his shoes in the hall for me to polish. It’s a wonder all Serena Jane did was run off, I thought as I ran the iron around yet another pointed shirt collar. I’m surprised she didn’t commit murder first.

  “Truly,” Robert Morgan’s voice rumbled through the open back porch door and into the kitchen. It was my second Saturday with the doctor, which meant him catching up on paperwork in his office and me ironing and tending to a slow-roasted dinner none of us would really want to eat. “Can you come on out here for a minute?”

  I blew a strand of hair off my forehead and set the iron upright. “I’ll be just a minute, Robert Morgan,” I called. I looked at the clock. Two. Bobbie had gone to visit a nursery with Marcus. They wouldn’t be back for another hour. Time in the house without Bobbie was heavier, it seemed. The clock trudged instead of ticked, as if its hands were as big and heavy as mine.