Page 124 of The Frozen River

Martha was the one who should have lived.

Martha, our second daughter, the one that Ephraim insisted be named after me. She was eight years old and looked like her father. She seemed the least ill of them all. She never wheezed, never seemed to lose her breath. Her throat was never covered with the rancid gray sores. But her heart—oh God, her heart—grew slower and slower as her illness progressed. It slowed and then it stilled and then the next breath never came. And the weight of her in my arms, wrapped in linen, was the weight of a thousand heartaches.

I don’t remember if I screamed. Or if I cried. In that whole, awful ordeal, it is the one detail I cannot summon from the depths of my memory. I’ve never asked Ephraim. I don’t have the heart.

I was certain then that the sickness would take them all. It would take them and then it would take us and then it would all be over. It’s possible that I even wished for that to happen as it would be the only way we could be together again. As a family. As God intended.

But Cyrus got better. The morning after we buried Martha, he sprang out of bed like a wobbly new calf, wanting water and toast. But when he came to me, asking to be fed, his voice was gone. I’d only heard that voice crack a single time with looming manhood. But now it was gone. Paralyzed by illness. And though we waited—days, months, years—it never returned. Never more than a gentle croak or groan that he soon became too embarrassed to use. His life was spared, but his voice was stolen. And with it, any chance of a normal future.

Jonathan recovered the day after Cyrus. Then Lucy the one after that. Their fevers broke and their coughs faded and their lungs cleared. Their voices never so much as wavered. And when they asked after their sisters, we had only tears for an answer. Though you never think it possible, you can celebrate and grieve in the same breath. It is a holy abomination.

“I want to leave this place,” Ephraim told me as we stood beneath the oak tree where our daughters were laid to rest. “I want to move somewhere else where there is more land. Where we can have a real farm, not just a garden. Somewhere we can start over. Perhaps build a mill.”

“What?” I looked at him as though he’d spoken some other language. I could not comprehend his words. He had carved Martha’s name in the third stone that morning. We had only just set it upon her grave ten minutes earlier. The tears were still fresh on our cheeks, our hearts still an open wound. And he wanted to abandon them? “No,” I told him. “We cannot leave our girls.”

“Martha,” he whispered, pulling me tight against him. “Our girls have left us.”

Only once before had I been so angry that I’d slapped him. And, as he had on that hillside the day we married, he grabbed both wrists, startled by my fury.

I shook out of his grasp.

Ephraim pointed to the graves. “They are not here. Not anymore.”

I turned and left him there, alone.

6 THE RUSHING RIVER APRIL 1790

Is that a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth

BALLARD’S MILL SATURDAY, APRIL 10

I stand on the path, fifty feet from the mill, and watch Isaac Foster ride away. Ten days. That’s how long it took him to finally return to the Hook and explain their absence at the trial. He came today without Rebecca, spoke only to Ephraim, and even then, he didn’t stay for a total of fifteen minutes.

I walk the rest of the way down the path—tin plate with Ephraim’s dinner balanced in my hand—as Isaac follows the drive into the trees, then disappears among the shadows. The days are longer now, and the sky brighter as winter loosens its ruthless grip. It hasn’t snowed in a week, and the air no longer burns my lungs. The river is still frozen, however, but it has started to crack and pop occasionally, hinting that it won’t be long until the thaw. Inside the mill, Ephraim stands at his worktable, furiously stripping bark from a slender pole with his draw blade. It’s a two-handled thing, straight as an arrow, and two feet long, with an edge sharp enough to cut bone. He knows what he’s doing and is careful, but still, I wince at the sight of that glinting metal sweeping toward his torso. He wears a long leather apron over his shirt and britches, but one wrong move and he will need stitches. Or worse.

“Where have the Fosters been?” I ask, careful not to startle him.

“In Vassalboro. Isaac appealed his lawsuit to Obadiah Wood.” Ephraim looks up, then wipes a trickle of sweat from his brow. “They negotiated a settlement.”

“Of?”

“One hundred dollars. It’s only half of what Isaac is owed, half of what he was promised in his contract with Hallowell. But it will be paid at the end of the month and is enough to get them settled somewhere else.”

“And did he say anything of North’s acquittal?”

“Only that he truly believed they’d get a guilty verdict. He doesn’t understand how a jury of ‘twelve honest men’ couldn’t see the truth of what happened to his wife.”

“They couldn’t see her at all! Rebecca didn’t bother showing up to trial.” My voice is louder than I intend, and Percy rouses in the rafters of the loft. That bird has the nerve to squawk at me.

“Isaac said she refused to go. Said she didn’t have the heart to stand before another group of men and give them details of her shame.”

“It isn’t her shame.”

“I know. And so does Isaac. But what was he supposed to do? Drag her to Pownalboro and force her into the courtroom? Physically threaten her so she’d testify? He isn’t a cruel man. Besides, Seth had her written testimony. You were there as a witness. Isaac thought it would be enough. And I can’t blame Rebecca for not wanting to go through that again.”

I set Ephraim’s dinner on the worktable and lower myself to the stool. “She told me this would happen. That even if the court found North guilty, it would only be for attempting a crime, not committing one. And what’s the worst punishment he would have gotten? A fine?”