The Island of Doves (26 page)

“If only I could have done the same for Josette,” Therese said to Magdelaine. “But time moves in only one direction.”

Therese explained that she had continued her work at the convent, teaching, nursing the poor and sick who came to their doors. It wasn’t as though she sought out wives who wished to leave their husbands. But every now and then one came to her, whether because of violence or neglect or some other reason. She never insisted they explain themselves, and she did everything she could do to help them.

But the work didn’t seem to be enough to satisfy Josette. The dreams of her little sister continued. In them, Josette never grew older, and, walking together, they never got any closer to their destination, nor did Therese learn what was the object of Josette’s gaze. She was trying to show Therese what she could do to make amends for what had happened on the island, and Therese was trying to interpret what that was. Helping Lucretia and other women like her wasn’t enough, it seemed. The years passed, and, Therese explained, she continued to feel unsettled, continued teaching and working and waiting.

Then one winter day, after she had been transferred from the Quebec convent to one in Charlestown, Massachusetts, Therese offered to take the morning chores for a sister who was ill. She got the kitchen fire going, kneaded the bread and put it in the brick oven to bake, boiled the coffee. And when the bell sounded she went out into the cobblestone alley beside the convent to meet the man who delivered the milk. The wind howled between the brick walls, and the air was full of small pellets of ice that clung to her sleeves. Therese took the heavy ceramic jug he lifted down to her and handed him the coins. When she looked up into his face to smile her thanks, she saw that he wore a fine beaver hat and that beneath the hat his cheeks were warm and dry. The pelt that made his hat could have come from Mackinac, and thinking of that place nearly made her fall to her knees on the cobblestones.

Even Josette, from whatever otherworld she was watching, must have known that it was impossible for Therese to go back to Mackinac. So why had she brought the milkman and his hat across Therese’s path? Perhaps in the urgent dreams, Josette’s gaze was on the women Therese had yet to meet, had yet to find a way to save. So she redoubled her efforts to find them, and when she did, she made arrangements to send them to the island. If she could not bring Josette back to Magdelaine, she could send these women in her place. She had to try to return what her sister had lost.

Magdelaine understood now. “The other women I tried to help, before Susannah—
you
were the one who sent them?”

“Yes,” Therese said. “As you know from my first unsuccessful attempts, it wasn’t easy.” It was one thing to send a woman from Quebec to Montreal, or Boston to New York, she said. But sending a woman alone deep into the Michigan Territory was another thing entirely. There were setbacks.

“I felt my failures were only making things worse. Here I was, upending women’s lives to try to save them, all because I was having dreams that my dead sister wanted me to do it. I began to question my sanity. I determined to withdraw from the world. I left Massachusetts on my own and went to the tiny parish in Buffalo.”

“But Father Adler came with you, and he wouldn’t let you give up,” Magdelaine said with a satisfied nod as she saw the story begin to click into place.

Therese glanced at Susannah, then turned back to Magdelaine and shook her head. “Magdelaine, you don’t understand. There is no Father Adler. He is a figment, a name I created to use in helping make arrangements for these women. It’s hard for a woman on her own. But when I tell people that I am writing on behalf of a priest, or traveling, or requesting assistance, of course they never question me. It costs money to make arrangements for these women. No one would give
me
anything. But they give readily to a man of God . . .”

“But—” Magdelaine said, trying to get her voice to work. “All the letters I exchanged with the father. All those thoughtful replies. That was—”

“That was me. I wrote them.”

Now it was Magdelaine’s turn to grasp her sister’s hands and fight off tears. She felt at once the loss of the man she had admired—and the shock that he had never really been there at all!—alongside this gift:
Therese
had been there, all these years. She had never really lost her. It was almost too much to comprehend, to realize how completely she had misunderstood her own fate.

“And I thanked God for the chance to speak with you,” Therese said. “If only from a distance.”

Magdelaine shook her head in wonder, her cheeks wet now.

“It took a long time for me to realize,” Therese said, “that I was wrong about what Josette was looking at in the dreams. She wasn’t tugging on my arms to show me all these unfortunate women, though she did want me to help them. She was tugging, pointing, leading me to you, Magdelaine. She wanted me to come back to you.”

Magdelaine opened her mouth to speak but found she could not. That image of Josette as a girl, whole, walking and talking and scheming in the afterlife to get her sisters to reconcile in this world was both a comfort and a rebuke. All these years she had been haunting Therese. Why had she never once visited Magdelaine?

Therese sat down on the bed. “I spent many years begging, in my heart, for Josette’s forgiveness. I see now that she gave it long ago. But what I don’t know is whether
you
will forgive me, Magdelaine. For failing to help Josette, for leaving you alone, a widow with a son, to shoulder it by yourself. And for staying away so long. I have tried penance and self-denial and teaching and praying and forgetting, and none of them have worked. When you sent the letter asking Father Adler to come to the island, Susannah included a letter of her own, in which she told me that she knew who I really was. I realized that I could not wait any longer. I had to come back here and simply ask you, as I should have done long ago, will you please forgive me?”

Magdelaine tipped her head to the side in sympathy. She thought back over the twenty years that had passed since Therese’s disappearance. How might they have been different if Therese had come back? How might they have faced the trials of the years together?

“Of course I forgive you,” Magdelaine said. “If you will forgive me.”

She rose from the bed and Therese stood too, and they embraced. Suddenly a thought occurred to Magdelaine that made her laugh out loud. She pulled away and said, “I prefer you to Father Adler in every way. But now who will we get to marry Esmee and Jean-Henri?”

“Oh, dear,” Therese said, sinking back down on the bed. “There isn’t anyone else?”

“Well, we do have a priest on the island now, but he is less than ideal.” Magdelaine’s words made Jean-Henri groan.

Therese sighed and nodded. “I’ve heard some things about him. I worried about trusting him, but he was always amenable, as long as he was paid on time. And he had enough secrets of his own to keep quiet about mine. . . . I apologize for involving him if it has caused trouble.”

“You have no idea. Someday I will explain it all to you, but now I am too tired. And too happy.” Magdelaine heard the dogs begin to bark and went to the window to look down.

A tall man in a rumpled coat stood in front of the house. He wore a dented hat and an uneven smattering of whiskers that marked a weary traveler. “Therese,” she said. “Did you travel with a companion? Someone to see about your things?”

“No. I brought nothing other than my small case, and that is downstairs in the front hall. I didn’t know if I would be staying for just a few days, or perhaps longer . . .”

Magdelaine smiled at her sister. The question hung between them. Susannah would stay, and Therese would stay. And perhaps Josette’s happy ghost would return too, flitting from room to room and causing their candles to flicker. It was a pleasant thought.

“How strange—there is a man downstairs who appears to be waiting for something.”

Therese looked at her in confusion. Then her eyes widened and she bolted to the window.

S
usannah, we have to get you out of sight.” Therese rushed over to her on the other side of the bed. “Where can we put her, Magdelaine?”

Jean-Henri stood too. “The pantry.” Magdelaine nodded at him. “Come on,” he said, taking her elbow.

Susannah felt a surge of fear. “Why? What is happening?”

“It’s Edward,” Therese said. “He is here.”

Susannah shook her head in disbelief, her face blanching white in terror. Magdelaine, Esmee—they had reassured her so many times that she was safe here. How could Edward be here?

They raced her down the stairs and through the kitchen, where Esmee was feeding Raphael. Jean-Henri ushered her and the baby out the kitchen door. They could cross through the yard to the church without being seen, he whispered. Magdelaine nodded. There was no telling what Edward would do, and he wanted to get Esmee and Raphael as far away as possible from the target of Edward’s search. His mother, he knew, could fend for herself.

“He must have followed me onto the boat,” Therese said as Susannah backed into the pantry.

Magdelaine handed her a lamp. “Be very quiet,” she said.

Susannah nodded, her heart racing.

“It will be all right,” Magdelaine said. Therese wedged the door closed.

Susannah turned up the flame on the lamp, and a circle of light spread across the small space. She set it on one of the shelves. The inside of the pantry smelled of burlap and the dried herbs that hung suspended in bouquets tied with string, and Susannah sat down on a large sack of rice.

On the other side of the door she heard the sound of chair legs scraping the floor, then footsteps, the front door opening. Voices. Susannah couldn’t make out what Edward was saying, but she didn’t need to know. The familiar cadence of his voice felt like a cold hand reaching through her flesh to give her spine a good shake. She took hold of the shelf to steady herself, pressing her forehead against her knuckles.

Her eyes darted around the interior of the pantry, looking for something, some clue to her salvation. She tipped her head back and looked up at the flame of the lamp. The conversation in the front hall was growing more heated, Edward’s insistence echoing as he bellowed. Hot tears welled up in Susannah’s eyes, but she felt that if she let them fall, all was lost. She held very still, breathing through her nose.

Just then her eyes found the musket that hung upright on the wall beside the door, and she thought back to the day Magdelaine had put down the rabid dog. Magdelaine
had
been afraid—anyone would have been—but she had acted in spite of her fears. Magdelaine had plenty of fears. She just didn’t let them own her. Susannah saw that her own fear of Edward was like a reflex, something her body marshaled when it heard his voice, long before her mind had a chance to catch up. But it didn’t have to be that way. She could do what Magdelaine had done. Despite her terror, Susannah knew she had to face Edward once and for all and end this madness.

Susannah nodded to herself and took a breath, her tongue clenched against her bottom teeth. She reached for the weapon. It was heavier than she expected, with most of the weight at the breech end. She remembered that after the dog had been shot, Jean-Henri had loaded it again before he put it away. Susannah doubted whether she could fire it, but perhaps the sight of the gun would be enough to scare him off. It was difficult to maneuver in the small space, but she stepped carefully and tipped the long weapon upright. When Susannah rested the butt on the floor next to her foot, the muzzle came up to her ear.

With her left hand she lifted the latch on the door and pushed it open about an inch. The voices in the front hall instantly grew louder.

“I won’t leave,” Susannah heard Edward say. She pressed her face to the crack of light, but they were still out of sight.

“Mr. Fraser, please,” Therese said. “Be reasonable. Your wife is not here.”

“You are lying.” There was no anger in his voice. It was a simple statement of fact.

But Therese pressed on. “You have gotten an idea in your head, and it caused you to follow me here, and I regret that you had to make this long journey only to hear what I have already told you many times: Your wife lies at the bottom of the falls. I am so sorry for your loss, but there is nothing I can do in this world to help you. You must pray for her soul, and for your own.”

More footsteps, and then she saw Edward come prowling into the kitchen, and the shock of seeing him made her step away from the door. Her shoulder blades made contact with the shelves behind her.

Gathering herself, she pressed her face to the sliver of light once more, still clutching the barrel of the musket. There he was, the man who had stalked her halfway across the continent, the man she had feared for so long. But he was much changed by the journey. His once-impeccable hair was overgrown, stringy, and hung down over his eyes and the collar of his filthy shirt. His trousers hung slack at his waist, the cuffs dragging on the ground. Whiskers, black with a dusting of gray, crawled unevenly around his jaw. Beneath the fringe of hair his eyes were wild.

Magdelaine and Therese rushed into the kitchen behind him. He wouldn’t leave, Susannah knew. He would turn Magdelaine’s house upside down until he found her, and who knew what he would do to the rest of them in his pursuit?

Susannah took a breath and stepped into the kitchen, holding the weapon with her right hand.

“Here I am, Edward,” she said, her voice quiet and steady.

Behind him, Magdelaine and Therese stood frozen.

He stood absolutely still, staring at his wife. His eyes took in the musket, but Susannah could see him making a calculation about whether she would be able to heave it up to her shoulder, aim, and shoot it before he had the chance to swipe it away, whether she even had the nerve to try. His pale lips, chapped from the cold air that blew across the boat’s hurricane deck, stretched into a smile. And he began to laugh.

“I knew it. I knew you were alive.”

Susannah nodded and something came into her voice then, something as sure and sound as the hull of a steamboat. “I
am
alive.” She was prepared, now, for whatever he would try to do. She planted her feet into the floor, felt her knees, her hips, holding her up. Her eyes were locked on his and she waited, bracing herself for him to lunge at her. She would step back and hoist the gun up to her shoulder, or if there wasn’t time she would swing it like a club and knock him out. If he knocked her down and tried to take it, she would clutch the barrel with all the strength in her body. She would throw her legs around it. She would bite his fingers. She would spit in his face, kick at his stomach like he was a monster from a dream.

But then he did something for which she was unprepared. Edward Fraser fell down to his knees with a sob.

“Mrs. Fraser,” he said, using that particular name to try to call her back to herself, she knew. He pressed his clenched fists to his eyes. “I have lost everything.”

Susannah said nothing, just watched him as she had watched that dog in its pen: raving, unmaking itself, almost pleading for death. She felt fear, then pity, then fear again, fear of the pity itself, as if it were a trap Edward was setting for her. She pulled the cold iron barrel closer to her chest.

“I’ve done terrible things, Susannah. I cheated men out of money they earned with their own hard work. And I was caught. They took me to jail. I’ve been there for months.”

She raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t surprised to learn that Edward had broken the law to get what he wanted, but the idea that someone had confronted him and held him accountable for his crimes, that someone had been able to take him by the collar and put him in a jail cell, was a surprising piece of news indeed.

“I have nothing. No house, no land. But if you will come back to me, if you will forgive me, we could start again. Everything will be different, I swear to you. I will do anything you ask.” He looked up at her, his wide brown eyes full of sorrow. The sight shocked her. She couldn’t look away. Despite everything she knew about his cruelty, his eyes, his low state, plucked at her heart.

“Susannah,” Magdelaine said, stepping forward.

Susannah wanted to look at her—she knew that if she could, the spell might be broken, but she could not tear her eyes away from Edward.

“You must not listen to him.”

He would have to get an honest job, for the first time in his life, Susannah was thinking. He would have to change his name and move to a new city and write letters of inquiry and find someone willing to take on a clerk who came without any references, without any history of work. It would humble him. He would not be able to endure it unless he became a different sort of man. She squinted down at him. Did he mean what he said? Why would he care for her now when he never had before?

“Please, Susannah,” he whispered. “If you want me to beg you, I will.” And he stooped down then and pressed his forehead to the toes of her boots.

The back of his neck was dark with grime. She eased the butt of the musket to the floor, then slowly set it down. Susannah looked at her husband, slumped on her boots. Since her parents had died and left her alone in the world she had longed for a family, and Edward had promised to be that for her. She reached down and touched the top of Edward’s head with her left hand.

But as she saw the hand’s shape, the mangled bones jutting strangely beneath the skin, something shifted in her, a crossbeam sliding into place across the door. Here was the man who had mangled that hand. Here was the man who had terrorized her each minute of the day until she feared sleep, until she feared breathing. And he thought she would forget what he had done?

She looked across the kitchen at Magdelaine and Therese. They watched her, waiting to see what she would do. When Susannah had been at her lowest point back in Buffalo, she had been alone in the world and had thought she would go on being alone forever. Instead, she had found Therese, and Therese had brought her to Magdelaine, to Mackinac. She had a home here on the island now, a new family. She wasn’t alone anymore—and nothing could drag her back to her old life.

“Edward,” she said calmly, and he lifted his head. “I want you to get up off the floor and get out of this house.”

She took a breath and moved her foot to step away from him, but Edward slipped his fingers around her ankles and clenched them tight.

“Didn’t you
hear
me?” he asked, the meekness in his voice slipping away like a mask. He gave her legs a shake, but she managed to stay on her feet. He let go and pushed himself to standing, stepped closer to her as she stepped away. He tried to make his voice gentle again, but it was too late. “You
will
come back to me. We will start again.”

Susannah shook her head, her whole body trembling. Magdelaine and Therese rushed to her side, steadied her. He couldn’t make her go, not with them here to help her. Her voice was a startled bird, beating its wings in her throat. “No,” she said. “I am not going anywhere with you.”

Edward laughed. “Who do you think you are?”

“No longer your wife—of
that
I am certain. This is my home now, and you are not welcome here.”

“Aren’t you sure of yourself,” he said, looking from Magdelaine to Therese with disgust. “You and your motley crew. Well, I’ll get a judge to declare you’ve deserted me. You’ll have nothing from me.”

“I want nothing.” She nearly felt sorry for the way he clung to the old bluster, now meaningless. His life had become a farce.

His eyes flicked to the musket on the floor and he lunged for it, but Magdelaine anticipated his move and swept it up before he could get to it. He stared at the three women, assessing his options.

“Don’t you see?” Susannah said, her voice still calm. She felt the truth of her words as she said them, like the satisfaction of a long-lost key opening a lock. “You have no hold over me anymore. I don’t care for you. I don’t fear you. You mean nothing at all to me.”

Fear wasn’t the thing that could do you in—loneliness did that all on its own. The difficulty of knowing someone else was nothing compared to the difficulty of letting yourself be known, be seen. But Susannah felt that she had done it, with Magdelaine, with Therese and Esmee and Jean-Henri. She had conquered her loneliness, and Edward couldn’t use it to hold her anymore.

Susannah had never in her life seen Edward back down from any confrontation, but here he stood without another choice. He lowered his shoulders, shook his head, but still he did not move.

“Go,” Susannah said, pointing at the front hall. “Get back on that boat if it is still in the port. If not, wait there for the next one.” She could hardly believe that this moment had arrived. She would be free of him once and for all. “Go back home. Or to Chicago. Go to
hell
. But leave this place.”

Edward stared at her, but she refused to break her gaze. He looked at Magdelaine, then Therese, who stood silent and steadfast by Susannah’s side. They weren’t going to budge either. His shoulders slumped and the broken man he had been when he arrived was back. Susannah was glad to see it, and glad to see him finally turn and leave the house.