The morning my sister left him, Bob Bob woke up and knew it without opening his eyes. It was the absence of the usual odors in the house—the cottony scent of her breath captured in hollow of the pillow next to him, the slightly acrid aroma of coffee wafting up the stairs, followed by the grease of bacon frying. He lay perfectly still in the bed, his nose twitching, but there was nothing.
His first thoughts should have perhaps been for seven-year-old Bobbie sleeping two rooms down, or even for himself, but they weren’t. Instead, he immediately pictured the expectant plains of Maureen’s face crumpling in disbelief, then the stern angles of his father’s mouth. His parents were all the way down in Florida, but when you were a Morgan man in Aberdeen, you never fully escaped the tidal pull of familial influence. No one in his lineage had ever died in a war, been anything other than a physician, or gotten divorced. Marriage was a lifelong glue.
Bitch, he thought, even as he stretched his legs wider underneath the covers, savoring the extra space in the rumpled bed. He opened his eyes and scanned the room. Evidently, she hadn’t taken much. Her pale silk dressing gown still hung over the latticing of the chair in the corner, its edges pooled on the floor. The random collection of vials and little pots of face cream on the vanity appeared to be untouched, and even her customary shoes—a pair of low-heeled black pumps—were right where she’d left them. Bob Bob hitched himself onto his elbows. The blankets fell around his midsection. He snorted and threw the fabric off his legs, sliding his feet over the edge of the bed, searching for his slippers.
Then he waited.
The house seemed very dull to him, like pond water congealed on a sluggish summer day. He couldn’t imagine living with that sensation for long, and it occurred to him that maybe he would miss Serena Jane after all. Perhaps he’d been wrong, he thought. Maybe Serena Jane was simply in the garden with an early cup of tea. Perhaps she’d gone to see one of her old school friends. Perhaps she was downstairs, balancing her checkbook before she started breakfast, or hunched over the sink, working a stain out of one of Bobbie’s shirts. Then he spied the envelope.
She’d left it where she was sure he would find it—right on top of his medical bag, which he always stood at the foot of the bed. He tore open the envelope and slid out a sheet of unlined paper. In the middle, scrawled in shaky letters made either in haste or from nerves, were two simple sentences: Don’t come look for me. Just find Truly. That was it. Nothing about Bobbie. No explanations or reasons. Not even a signature.
Bob Bob crumpled his fist with the note in it, then threw the wad of paper in the bedside wastebasket. So she’s gone, he thought. Good for her. Good for him, even. They’d never really been suited, he thought. First, Serena Jane had been a mystery—luminous and aloof—then an obsession, and, more and more lately, she was just a lump of flesh he’d had to coexist with. Every night, they’d brushed their teeth in tandem, taking turns spitting into the enamel sink, then crawled under the rough cotton sheets together, smacking their respective pillows into submission, before turning their backs on each other. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d made love, if he was going to call it that. Ever since the first time, she’d always been a cold fish, nothing like the glamorous, hot-blooded mermaid he’d always expected. In fact, that was the whole problem. Serena Jane had always been a goddamn ice princess.
Don’t come look for me, her note said. Maybe he wouldn’t, but he wasn’t going to sit back and do nothing, either, and that’s where Serena Jane had made her biggest mistake. If she thought he was going to let her go like rainwater down a drain, she had another think coming. No one walked out on Robert Morgan. At least, no one ever had so far.
Find Truly. As loath as he was to admit it, Bob Bob finally conceded that this was a fine idea. It was even better than fine. The oxen sister with no future to speak of. The lost cause. Why, Bob Bob bet, I would be more than happy to step into my pretty sister’s shoes. He figured I’d be thrilled.
And best of all, he reasoned, I was so big, there was absolutely no danger I’d take flight.
If I was surprised to look through the barn door and spy Robert Morgan (since becoming the town doctor, he’d forbidden anyone from calling him Bob Bob) dragging through Dyerson mud in my direction the morning after my sister left, I’m proud to say that my face didn’t show it. The farm had been getting a lot of visitors lately—most of them men of a certain age who found themselves captivated by the sparkling eyes of the widowed Brenda and were more than happy to prove their gallantry by doing a few chores around the place.
It had been years since August’s death, and the farm still had a claptrap air hanging over it, but there were cautious signs of optimism in the fresh curtains Brenda had hung in the kitchen windows and in the recently patched steps. The weeds around the porch had been hacked into submission, and someone had taken it upon himself to remove any intact engine parts from the back of the house. Even the marigolds at the end of the tomato bed seemed to stand straighter.
I was in Hitching Post’s stall, brushing his mangy coat, when the thin outline of Robert Morgan appeared in the door. Hitching Post—the last of the losing racehorses—gave a defeated sigh and shifted his weight.
“Hush,” I whispered in his ear. In spite of all his physiological flaws, Hitching Post was an excellent judge of character. With unerring instinct, he could ferret out the vainest jockeys on the track and run them into the fence. He always stamped on the crooked veterinarian’s instep, and he absolutely disallowed any of Brenda’s new suitors near him, sensing, perhaps, the dollar signs they had tattooed on their hearts. Now, he flared his nostrils in Robert Morgan’s direction and pulled his ears close to his head. In the dry air of the barn, his breath scuttled like an unsettled breeze.
“Whoa,” I whispered again in his ear, and Hitching Post relaxed, leaning his weight against me. I tipped my own head down to him, glad to have the horse’s flank between me and Robert Morgan.
“Hello.” Under the half-rotten rafters of the barn, Robert Morgan’s voice was like a blast of winter. It ate down into my bones and made my breath catch. I peered over Hitching Post’s neck and took a good look at my sister’s husband. He’d grown a little heavier in the torso and legs, and his hair was cut shorter, but his face still had the same angles. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he howled at every full moon.
“Hello,” I croaked back, but it came out as a question. When we were growing up, I realized, the only times Robert Morgan had ever spoken to me were when he was trying to get with my sister or when he was teasing me. I didn’t see why anything should be different now.
Robert Morgan stepped directly in front of me and rubbed his palms together. It was the month of August, and even though it was still early, the day was getting hot. Robert Morgan cleared his throat as if he were nervous, but I knew better than that. Reptiles didn’t feel fear.
“Well,” he began, his voice surprisingly conciliatory, “I guess it’s been some years.” I said nothing. It was a statement I couldn’t argue with, so Robert Morgan continued, folding his lean fingers together into a little temple. “I guess I should just cut to the chase,” he said.
Indeed, I thought. The chase was something I knew he relished. It was how he’d caught Serena Jane, after all, stealing her away for eight years and bringing her back all wrong.
“Shoot,” I mumbled. It was what August always used to say when his creditors came calling. Go ahead and shoot.
Robert Morgan stared down at his impeccable shoes, then took a deep breath. “Your sister is gone. I don’t know where. She left a note suggesting I come find you.” He glanced up from underneath his eyebrows—a gesture that would have been coquettish on anyone else but appeared calculating on him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the note, rescued from the waste bin. “See,” he said.
It’s not going to work, I told myself. It wasn’t my problem that Serena Jane had taken off. Then I remembered Bobbie. I reached out and took the note.
Robert scuffled one shoe back and forth over a warped board, waiting while I read the brief words. After so many years, it was a shock to see how like my own handwriting Serena Jane’s penmanship was, how she flared out the bottom of her f’s and looped the y back in on itself, just the way Miss Sparrow had taught us. I wondered if Miss Sparrow had planned this unintended legacy all along—an entire generation of children who formed their letters like hers. I carefully folded my sister’s note back up, following the creases, and handed it to Robert Morgan.
“I see,” I said. Robert Morgan pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. He closed his eyes and sighed. In his stall, Hitching Post responded in kind.
“I don’t know what to do,” Robert Morgan confessed. “I’ve got the clinic to run, and Bobbie—he’s only seven. A boy that age needs his mother. What do I know about taking care of a house and child?”
About as much as me, I thought. And not everyone was lucky enough to have a mother. I hadn’t been. But I remained silent. “No.” I shook my head and turned back to Hitching Post. Robert Morgan narrowed his eyes. He cast his gaze up and down the splintering rafters, considering.
“I suppose this place is really like home to you.” He turned his neck to take in the sorry picture of the farmhouse framed in the barn’s open doors. “It’s been with the Dyersons for, what, close to two hundred years?”
I shrugged. Robert Morgan continued, persistent as a wasp. “And yet, it doesn’t look like you all are doing too well out here. I guess it’s been a little rough since August died. You know…” He paused, forming the temple with his fingers again, a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. “It would be a real shame if all the credit was called in at once, now, wouldn’t it? Why, you all might lose everything.”
The muscles in my back stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“I’m the town doctor, Truly. I know almost everyone, and they’ll listen to me, whether it’s advice regarding an ear infection or, say, something more esoteric, like recouping one’s debts in a timely fashion. You know, as a matter of policy, I never extend credit to my patients. Everyone pays up front, or they don’t get care.”
That figures, I thought. “What do you want me to do?”
Robert Morgan’s lips curled, as satisfied as two snakes in the sun. He took Serena Jane’s note out of his pocket again and dangled it in front of me. “It’s not what I want. It’s what your sister wanted. Surely you wouldn’t refuse a request from your own family?”
You’re not family, I thought, then I remembered Bobbie again. I put my hands on Hitching Post’s back, the uneven bones of him a tonic under my fingers. I worked my tongue around my mouth, careful before I answered. “It won’t be before Tuesday.”
Robert Morgan nodded. “That’s fine. We can make do until then.”
“And I want a television in my room.”
Robert Morgan’s eyes flickered, but he nodded again. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“A color one. Not too little.”
He was edging back toward the door now. Along his hairline, tiny beads of sweat blossomed. “Yes, yes. A color TV.”
“Not too small.” I turned my back on him first. I didn’t think it was an unreasonable request—a television. If I was going to shut myself up in that man’s house like a battery hen, I figured, then the least I could ask for was a little window on the world.
“You’ll need it,” Amelia predicted when I told her I was moving into the doctor’s house to take care of Bobbie. We were gathering eggs from the hens.
“Will you and your mother be okay out here, all by yourselves?” I palmed one of the eggs, letting its faint warmth seep into my hand, and wished I could take it with me when I left.
“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 pulled away from thought and down into a deep and dreamless sleep like thread passing through a needle.