Page 87 of The Frozen River

“I hoped it would stop.” Rebecca turns away. Looks at the wall. “I still do.”

A few moments later, I stand outside the parsonage, breathing cold air through my nose to calm my mind and still the rage. It isn’t fair. This is what runs through my mind over and over like a dog chasing its tail. It isn’t fair.

Vengeance might be the Lord’s, but hasn’t He appointed men to be the arbiters of justice? Where is it for a woman like Rebecca? And who can bring a judge to justice? As I trot up the narrow channel of packed snow on Water Street astride Brutus, a thought occurs to me—so quickly that I do not have time to reject it: if Joseph North cannot be hanged for raping Rebecca Foster, perhaps he can be hanged for killing Joshua Burgess?

Saturday, February 13—Clear and cold. The ice builds at Fort Western. I was summoned to appear this day at the house of Isaac Foster to give evidence to what I know concerning the cause there to be tried. Came home in the early evening. Mrs. Densmore here to cut me a gown of green silk. She tells me that the wife of James Bridge was delivered at the first hour this morning of a dead born son who is to be interred this evening. Doctor Page was the operator.

I am not angry that Clarissa Stone didn’t call for me. There are other midwives, and she could have sent for any of them. But Peggy? After what Page did to Clarissa’s child? There is no excuse for her pride. She had all the information she needed.

I can count on one hand the number of men I have ever truly hated in my entire life. But Benjamin Page is near the top of that list. Billy Crane takes first place. Followed closely by Joseph North. But since Page’s arrival in Hallowell, he has been nothing but a pestilence. God, I’d strangle him with my bare hands if I could.

BALLARD’S MILL MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15

“Why is he here?” Ephraim asks.

I’ve come down to the mill with lunch for Ephraim. He’s been working on the waterwheel since dawn and somehow looks both sweaty and freezing. The wheel is still locked in the frozen creek, and my husband has determined that now is the best time to make much-needed repairs to several of the wooden paddles that have rotted or cracked.

“Barnabas?” I ask, looking over my shoulder. “I rather thought his reasons would be obvious.”

I hand Ephraim his plate, but he sets it down on a stump. “He hasn’t come courting,” Ephraim says. “Look at him.”

Barnabas is haggard. He’s ridden hard and long with the wind at his face. His cheeks are red, his lips chapped.

“Perhaps he was in a hurry to see Dolly?”

Even as I say the words, I know that my husband is right. As always.

Ephraim pulls his mouth into a hard line. “That boy doesn’t want to be here. He’s scared.”

Barnabas has brought the wagon. Lately he’s been coming on horseback, but those were social calls. I’ve only ever seen him on that wagon—the one with the iron loop affixed to the sideboard—twice.

Ephraim takes a menacing step forward as Barnabas jumps down from his seat. He looks like he’s swallowed a gallon of vinegar. He takes off his hat. Whacks his thigh. Looks to the clouds. Squints. Shakes his head as though arguing with the Almighty.

“Why are you here?” Ephraim demands.

It is the first time I have ever seen Barnabas Lambard out of sorts. He nearly chokes on the words. “I’m here to arrest your son for the murder of Joshua Burgess.”

Ephraim’s voice is low and deep. Dangerous. “Which. Son?”

The word must be painful for Barnabas, like cut glass on his tongue, and he struggles to spit it out.

After a moment, he looks to me as though pleading for help. It’s a mercy he won’t get. Not today.

“Cyrus.”

The only thing our oldest child has ever wanted, in all his life, is to go to sea. Though I know he’d deny it, I suspect Cyrus wants to be a pirate. To climb rigging and perch in a crow’s nest and see exotic locations. He wants—more than anything—a life of adventure. A life filled with salt air and blue water and a fist shaken in defiance at the stormy horizon. He’s been robbed of this future, however, and makes do with sailing the Kennebec and navigating his father’s logs to ports downriver. In winter, however, he is landlocked. And his only solace is Mill Pond, where he goes to fish almost every day.

So we trudge up the path—the four of us—in search of him. Ephraim. Barnabas—who looks as though he’d rather eat a pile of steaming entrails. Me. And Dolly. She’d seen him arrive. Of course she had. That girl looks for him like a first-century believer waiting for the return of Christ. So no sooner had we passed the garden gate than she came rushing out the front door, drying her hands on a kitchen towel.

But the girl is perceptive—more so than any seventeen-year-old I’ve ever met—and she knows something is wrong. No one will answer her questions, however, and now she’s angry as well.

“Where are we going?” she demands. “Why is he here? Why won’t anyone answer me?”

I give her a warning look that makes her swallow the next question, and I can see her anger turn to fear in the span of a single blink. She finally understands.

“He wouldn’t dare,” Dolly whispers. She grabs my forearm and squeezes hard. “He wouldn’t.”

“It takes decades to really know a man, Dolly. And you’ve barely had weeks with that one. I’d suggest you not assume anything about what he will or will not do.”