Pre Civil War: Ruth Vandenberg and Violet Underwagon die in animal attack. There’s the letter about Gabriel grieving not only his twin sister but the girl to whom his affections were so tenderly bound.
Post Civil War: Elijah commits suicide. Jude has made a copy of the suicide note, where he has not just highlighted, but underlined the ominous phrase—I know of no other way to stop this curse.
There’s the article about the train crash in 1890, including a caption that hinted at a courtship between Isaiah and Helena Pisel, who perished alongside his family. Then there’s the article of the bank robbery. Poor Enoch lost not only his parents and his left eye, but Mary Donovan, to whom he was betrothed. There’s information about Rose Vandenberg, who died in The Blitz wearing the ruby necklace.
And then my mother.
He’s made a copy of the yearbook photograph. On it, he circled the mark beneath her collarbone with the wordsSimon loved herscrawled underneath. Next to her is a photograph of Jude’s mother, a woman who bled to death on a delivery table after his father’s profession of love.
And there, in the midst of all that evidence, is an item I’ve not yet seen, plucked from the timeline. A journal entry written by the scorch mark’smother. Dated one year after her son penned his suicide note.
I turn to Jude, who’s still standing in the doorway, his hand on the crown of his head, fisting his hair.
“I found it Sunday morning,” he says.
November 12, 1873
It has been a year, one full, ruinous year since Elijah cast off this world, and still, I cannot accept that he is gone. My son. My heart. I miss him with every breath I draw.
At night, I dream of him as a child chasing butterflies in the orchard, his curls golden in the sun. I wake, and the pain of his absence is suffocating. It presses against my chest like stone. So does the shame.
My husband weeps behind closed doors. He prays late into the night. But prayer cannot mend what he has broken. He gave our son poison. This wretched curse. And Elijah believed it. Enough to choose death, convinced it was the only way to protectthose he loved. Yet in his final words, he begged his father to pass the poison onto his own son, to warn Isaiah. Pray tell, how would that protect his precious boy? Gabriel will not grant him this request. He says he has learned. But what good is wisdom earned too late? The blood will forever stain his hands. I will never forgive him.
“To love brings death,” he told Elijah, and he dared tell me the same. I wanted to strike him. To scream. If love brings death, then why am I still here? My heart beats on. I am his wife, am I not? So then, he does not love me?
I want to follow my son to the grave. Let Gabriel contend with the wreckage. Only the children keep me here. They are too young to understand the shame they will carry all their lives. Sweet Esther. Precious Deborah. Little Isaiah.
I will not leave them with more sorrow.
But I am foreveremptied.
—A.V.
My fingers linger over the phrase “to love brings death.”I look again at the evidence Jude has gathered.
Ezra loved Molly, and she died.
Amos loved Lydia, and she died.
Then he loved Florence, and she died, too. The whole town caught on fire.
Gabriel lost Violet.
Elijah took his own life.
He begged his father to tell Isaiah everything, but Gabriel refused, and Isaiah not only lost Helena, but his entire family.
Enoch lost his betrothed.
Daniel lost his wife in The Blitz.
Jude’s father lost his mother in the wake of Jude’s birth.
And Simon loved my mother only to vanish alongside his family.
All these stories of affection.
Every one ended in tragedy.
