Page 105 of The Frozen River

“By the end of this night, you will know whether midwifery is a thing to which you have been called.” Those pale, watery eyes bored into me. “Or not.”

5 THE GRIEF THAT DOES NOT SPEAK MARCH 1790

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar

BALLARD’S MILL MONDAY, MARCH 1

I finish yesterday’s journal entry while Ephraim reads the letters. There are three in total—one of them in his own handwriting—and I can hear the papers crinkle between his fingers as I record the details of Eliza Robbins’s delivery in my journal.

Sunday, February 28. Birth. Chandler Robbins’s son. Snowed in the afternoon. I was called to see Mrs. Robbins who is unwell. Mrs. Robbins lingered until four p.m. when her illness came on. Doctor Page was called but she did not wish to see him when he came. She was safe delivered of a son, her first born, at the tenth and one half hour last evening and is as well as can be expected. I tarried and watched. Mrs. Ney was there and she only.

I’d recognized Ephraim’s writing on the envelope, of course. There is no mistaking the precise and lovely lines, how the stem of every d curls up and to the left, making a perfect half loop above the letter. The only mystery is how a survey that my husband completed almost twelve years ago had come to be in the saddlebag of a dead man.

Ephraim wanted the entire story, of course—where I’d been and what I’d been up to—not to mention how I got out of that shed. He wanted it the moment I got home, but, exhausted and stiff, I’d promised to give him every detail if he would wait until the morning.

Now, I tap my quill on the little pewter dish to knock off the remaining ink and push my journal aside. I turn to Ephraim. Wait.

“But”—Ephraim drops the letter to his lap and looks up at me, staggered—“this says—”

“I know what it says.”

“They can’t.”

“They can, apparently. With that affidavit from North.”

Ephraim folds each letter methodically and places it back in its envelope. Bits of wax seal break off and fall to the floor, but he doesn’t notice. He taps the letters against his thigh. Then he’s up and pacing.

“This is an eviction notice.”

“Yes. I read it.”

And I had. After dressing this morning, but before leaving our room, I sat on the edge of the bed and read each of the letters in Burgess’s saddlebag: a survey drawn almost twelve years ago by Ephraim of our eighty acres, along with a detailed property description; a certified letter to the Kennebec Proprietors from Joseph North stating that the Ballard family had failed to meet the third condition for acquiring the deed to this property; and a response from said Proprietors noting that the Ballard lease is heretofore canceled and—as North suggested—reassigned to one Captain Joshua Burgess.

The fact that the saddlebag came home with me last night is another thing I will have to explain to my husband. He hasn’t asked yet. Therefore, I haven’t volunteered.

“But it’s a lie. Everything he said in that letter is demonstrably false. We have met every condition.”

“Not the third. Not technically.”

“Only because next month will mark our twelfth year on this property. But we have most certainly maintained a permanent residence. There are hundreds of people who will testify to that!”

“Will that matter if North refuses to certify the claim? He is the Kennebec Proprietor, not you. And it would require a lengthy appeal regardless. And in the meantime, we would have been evicted. Turned into the street so Burgess could have all we’ve built.”

“Except he’s dead. And we are still here.”

I shake my head. “That’s the part I don’t understand. Why would North go to all the trouble of transferring the mill to Burgess only to kill him?”

He looks at me with those steely blue eyes. “You believe it was North?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. He’s the only one to profit from Burgess’s death.”

Ephraim goes to stand before the window, the letters pinched between two fingers on his left hand. His back is straight and strong, as is his profile, and I watch him stare into the distance. After a moment he scratches at the scruff along his jawline.

A thought occurs to me, and I sit up straighter on the stool. “Oh.”

“What?”