Violet eyed the biscuit, the last one in the house. “Can I get you something?” she yelled back.
“A cup of tea.”
Violet stoked the fire and placed a half-full kettle on the stove. Brewing tea would make her late getting back to school by a good ten minutes. She hoped Miss Reese wouldn’t make a fuss.
After steeping the leaves, Violet spooned cream off the top of the milk and into the tea. White foam bubbled on top. “That’s money in your pocket,” she said, scooping some into her mouth. It was one of her mother’s favorite sayings.
“If you won’t be needing anything else . . .” Violet said, as she set the cup and saucer on the table next to her mother’s bed.
“Watch!” Grace snapped, snatching a framed photograph, the one taken of Daisy and her friends on the day disaster struck. In the picture, Daisy stood on the far end of the second row, her long hair pulled up in a bow, her white baptism dress illuminated by the sun. While the other six girls stared straight into the camera, Daisy glanced beyond it, her mind seemingly running ahead, her body leaning out, poised to follow. Grace pored over the smile, the laughing eyes. You couldn’t know, my pet, what the day would bring. Of course not, she thought with some relief. She studied the other girls—Flo, Ruth, Marion in the first row, Janie and Susie in the second. No signs, no indications of what was to come. And then, as impossible as it seemed after two months, Grace noticed Violet for the first time. Somehow she’d managed to squeeze into the photograph. Her closed right hand covered most of her mouth; her left clung to the skirt of Daisy’s dress. Violet had been worried about spoiling the picture. She knew she didn’t belong.
“I best be on my way,” Violet said uncertainly. In that instant, the sour smell of vomit reached her nose and choked her. “Been sick again this morning, I see.” Violet held her breath, walked over to the chamber pot, and lifted the container with both hands. Emptying it would delay her another five minutes.
When she finally got out the door, Violet found Stanley waiting for her at the bottom of the steps, holding two fishing poles.
“Ever play hooky?”
CHAPTER THREE
BY THE TIME THEY GOT TO LEGGETT’S CREEK, one of the better fishing spots in the Providence neighborhood of Scranton, and cast their lines, Violet had discovered that Stanley was anything but stupid. He could do numbers in his head, even his times tables up to eight. He could name at least forty of the forty-eight states, including Arizona and New Mexico, which had only been added the year before in 1912. And he could call birds better than the birds themselves.
“Shush,” Stanley said. “Hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That blue jay,” Stanley whispered as he pointed across the creek toward a thick line of hemlocks.
“I can’t see anything.” Violet stood up and stretched on her toes to see what Stanley saw.
“Listen.”
Violet sat down, closed her eyes, and focused on the bird’s triple-noted whistle, a high-pitched twee-dle-dee, twee-dle-dee, like the old nursery rhyme. The song repeated several times, and then a nearby blue jay, too near for Violet’s comfort, returned the call. Violet leaped up with arms flailing in an attempt to shoo the bird. She’d heard from her neighbor Tommy Davies that blue jays would peck a soul to death. No need to take chances.
Stanley sat at the edge of the creek, doubled over in laughter. “That was me, you silly goose.” He blew into his cupped hands, and the bird sang again. He straightened right up when he saw Violet’s red face. “Aw, come on. I’ll teach you if you like.”
Violet stood, arms folded, mouth turned down, until Stanley had apologized half a dozen times. She thought six an adequate number of “I’m sorrys,” especially since she really did want to learn how to call birds.
“We’ll start with the sparrow. He’s an easy one. Think of your mother when you’ve let her down.”
Violet’s eyes flashed with tears.
“Or a teacher when you’ve made her real mad,” he added quickly. “That’s a better one.” He raced on: “You know, when she makes that tsk, tsk sound with her tongue on the roof of her mouth.” He fired off a series of eight or twelve trilled tsks, too quick to be counted.
Much to Violet’s surprise, a sparrow immediately returned the song. “How’d you learn to call so good?”
“Mama. She had what Pa calls a gift.”
Had. Violet paused to digest so small a word.
“Rheumatic fever,” Stanley added, in answer to her unasked question. “It’ll be a year next month.”
So that explained it, Violet thought. No mother to make him go to school. She glanced at Stanley’s dirty face and clothes. No mother to make him wash behind his ears or change his britches. She pulled in her line, rethreaded the half-dead worm on the hook, and cast back into the water.
“You’re not doing it right,” Stanley said, flinging his line out twice as far as hers. “It’s in the wrist.”
“Who made you boss?”
“I’m older,” he said. “Been fishing longer.” The tip of his pole bent toward the creek. “See?” He smiled broadly as a mud-colored sucker with a hook in its cheek broke the surface of the water. “Biggest one yet.”
“Sing in the morning,” Violet warned, “cry at night.”
“How’s that?” Stanley asked, just as the line snapped. They both watched wide-eyed as the sucker disappeared downstream.
“Don’t count your fishes until they’re caught.” She stifled a giggle before handing him her pole to share.
* * *
“You’re going to catch hell when you get home,” Stanley said as they admired two suckers and a chub strung by the mouth and gills on a piece of rope.
Violet knew truth when she heard it, and marveled at Stanley’s ability to express it so effectively. Not only had she skipped a whole afternoon of school, but she’d skipped a whole afternoon on the first day of third grade.
On their way home, they tried to think of an excuse, not that Stanley had any particular need for one, but he wanted to help Violet, especially since fishing was his idea in the first place.
“You best take them all home,” Violet said, eyeing the chub she’d caught not an hour before. “If I walk in the house with a fish,” she paused to consider her words, “I’ll catch hell.”
* * *
Grace plodded into the kitchen, clamped the meat grinder onto one end of the table, and started in on a supper of ffagod, Owen’s favorite Welsh dish. She minced the pig’s liver and onions before folding them into a bowl of suet and breadcrumbs, seasoned with a light hand. It had been weeks since Grace felt well enough to tend to a meal, and she hoped Owen would notice her effort. After flouring her hands, she started rolling the mixture into egg-sized portions. Not having added any coal to the stove since morning, Grace looked over at the bucket alongside it. Three-quarters full, more than enough to keep the oven going.
She pulled her eyes straight back, ignoring the lightly bruised wall where a few of the blueberries had landed that day. Ignoring the purple pinpricks that would inevitably bleed through this latest coat of paint. Not today. Not now.
Not again.
July 4, 1913. Just two months ago.
Grace had been so happy, full of hope for the first time since she’d buried Rose nine months earlier. Daisy would be baptized that morning.