Page 66 of The Frozen River

Most families in the Hook make their own candles, but there is always a traveler or housewife or shopkeeper who finds themselves in a pinch, and Coleman’s is the first place they turn. He likes meeting the need, and I like the chance to barter. I come here at least twice a month in the hopes that he has gotten a new shipment of coffee, sugar, and chocolate from Boston, though the odds of those items having arrived since the river closed are slim. Most important, however, I am hoping to find something new to read. Having finished Emmeline, I am eager for another story.

Soon he turns his attention from the candles to the book.

“Any good?” Coleman asks, screwing up his eye to focus on the title.

“I liked it better than most. And the author is English. You’ll approve of that,” I say with a wink. “It’s about a woman on the fringes of high society who refuses the traditional roles assigned to her, finding her own way, a love of her own choosing, and therefore ends up both wealthy and happy in the end.”

“So it is a fantasy then?”

“Absolutely not. It is a possibility. Although, I must say, it felt rather… what’s the right word… gothic, perhaps. Filled with wild, remote locations and mysterious happenings. I think you would enjoy it.”

“Then I will trade ye book for book, Mistress Ballard,” he says, reaching under the counter and pulling out a novel that is rather worse for wear and missing half the cover. “Although, to be honest, my damned eye is fading on me, and it won’t be long a’fore I canna read at all. I’ll have to hire a shop boy to keep the ledgers.”

I take his book and turn to the title page. “The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne by Ann Radcliffe,” I say. “You have read it?”

“What was the word ye just used? Gothic? If that’s what ye are looking for you will be satisfied. It’s a full-blown medieval Scottish feud.”

“Then it will suit my mood perfectly.” I tuck the book under my arm and begin unpacking the candles.

“Anything else while you’re here?”

“I’d love some coffee and sugar. But would settle for cornmeal and molasses.”

“None of the former, I’m afraid. Not until the river opens. But I can give you a bag of cornmeal and a pint of molasses. More’n enough on yer account to cover it.”

“How—”

“Mr. Sewell came in. Added money to your account and bought a pound of chocolate and half a pound of tea for ye as well. They’re wrapped and set aside for ye.”

Sometimes I am paid in coin before leaving a patient’s house. Sometimes with food or livestock or bartering later in the year. But just as often, a grateful husband will add to my account at Coleman’s or surprise me with a purchase left waiting for my arrival.

“Oh,” I say, “that was good of him.”

“To hear him talk, ’twas the other way around. He said his wife nearly died because of that laudanum and that you saved her.”

I don’t know what to say to this, so I don’t say anything at all.

“I know you think that half the town has turned against ye, Martha, what with all the trouble you’ve had. But there are just as many who’ll not hear an ill word against ye. Mr. Sewell counts himself in that number. And so do I.”

Cyrus is at Pollard’s Tavern when I arrive, and he waves me over to his table.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

He slides a ledger across the table. Taps the line that shows a lumber order has been delivered and paid for.

“Chandler Robbins?” I read the name. “I take it he has another ship under construction?”

Cyrus nods. Shows the order details for seventy boards of white oak and two pine logs for the mast.

“His wife is expecting their first child soon,” I tell him, as though it matters, as though he cares.

Although perhaps that isn’t fair. Cyrus is far more interested in having a family than Jonathan. Which is the real tragedy of his circumstance. He is a good, strong, kind, intelligent man. But the simple fact of this world is that women look at him as though he’s stupid. Simply because he cannot speak. They fear it is an illness. That it’s catching. Some affliction that could be passed on to their children. So the girls of this town have always looked right through him. And he has built a wall around his heart in response.

“Every woman wants a man to whisper soft words in the darkness,” Ephraim told me once, when I was lamenting Cyrus’s lack of prospects. There was no malice in the statement, only heartbreak. And I have never forgotten it because it is true.

“Did you know that Chandler Robbins was one of the men who cut Joshua Burgess from the ice?” I ask.

If Cyrus heard me, he doesn’t bother to acknowledge the question. His eyes are latched onto someone behind me, and he follows them through the room. He sits a little straighter, eyes curious, when a set of footsteps comes to a stop behind me. When I turn, Sarah White is standing there with a coin purse in her hand and a smile on her face.