Chapter 45

C HAPTER 45

A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become

inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands.

But a mother's love endures through all.

—Washington Irving

"My God." Marigold invoked a deity she would have sworn she didn't believe in.

The enormity of the sin—the crime!—was overwhelming.

She found herself sitting on the edge of Sophronia's bed, steered there by Cab, who must have feared for her normally impervious constitution.

How could she have no memory of them? How could she not know? "Do you think they know?" she asked him.

"Seviah and Daisy?" He shook his head but said, "You would be a better judge than I."

"Would I?" For once, Marigold could not agree with him. Her powers of discernment had failed her so utterly. "Even Cleon could see! He told me I would see how Daisy looked like Esm é . And I did, but I didn't understand. And Seviah! I discovered he was not Ellery Hatchet's son, but I never suspected he was my brother—though you saw it, the resemblance, it never occurred to me."

How blind she had been in thinking she was the only one who knew how things ought to be at Hatchet Farm. She had never questioned her own assumptions of rightness. She had never asked why things might have gotten so out of hand in the first place. "What a fool I've been."

To her chagrin, neither man in the room disagreed. "Well, this is certainly a whole lot of jiggery-pokery," the officer surmised. "But it still doesn't tell me who killed Ellery Hatchet."

Except it added an entirely new set of stunningly compelling motives—the knowledge that Ellery Hatchet had stolen children gave those children an even greater motive to exact their retribution. To burn it all to the ground . Or shoot his eye out . Or clear the place out .

To put it all right—just as she had been invited to, by Sophronia, in her letter.

Marigold could see the awareness of that exact truth reflected in Cab's eyes—he was more deeply worried for her than ever.

"I didn't do it," she assured him. "However much he clearly deserved it, the thieving bastard. I had no idea until now."

"No," he agreed. "I think we can both see that." He looked to the policeman for confirmation.

Who gave it reluctantly. "Nevertheless—"

Nevertheless, one of them—someone at or involved with Hatchet Farm—had killed him.

But Marigold no longer cared who. She could only think of her poor mother, deprived of the daughter and son she must have so desperately missed. No wonder she had spent her life in a whirl of dissipation—she had spent her life trying to forget. While Sophronia had clearly spent her life trying to remember, keeping the collection of photographs like talismans of the sin. Signposts to the past. "Sophronia knew all of this, all along."

"Yes," Cab agreed. "I think we had best go talk to her."

Marigold descended to the kitchen on legs that felt numb. She laid the photographs of Esm é and Harry on the table like a pair of Sophronia's tarot cards and asked only, "Why?"

"Jealousy," was Sophronia's whispered but honest answer.

Marigold wanted far more explanation, but she settled for asking, "Whose?"

Sophronia settled back into her chair. "Mine. His. Both."

"Please." Marigold could feel her composure crack. The depths of her well-cultivated aplomb had run dry. "For once, will you please, please, kindly, simply explain."

Sophronia pulled the photograph of Esm é , sublime and ethereal on her wedding day, toward her. "She was a beauty, wasn't she?"

"She was." Marigold could only agree. "And Daisy is the picture of her, isn't she?"

"She is," Sophronia sighed. "Though on a grander scale." She smiled a little wistfully, making a gesture to acknowledge Daisy's towering stature before she went back to fingering the worn edge of the photograph, as if she had beheld it thus many times over the years. "She was like a tiny fairy queen that day."

Marigold felt a strange twinge of uncomfortable empathy. But the time for uncomfortable truths had come. "Were you jealous of her beauty?" She gave Sophronia's hand a little squeeze. "I was too, growing up. Always wondering why I wasn't as beautiful as she."

Sophronia squeezed Marigold's hand back, but she said, "You don't need beauty—you've got something more. But I was once as beautiful myself. Beautiful enough to rival even Esm é ." She pulled her hand away and sat back in her chair to remember. "So I set myself after her suitor—to prove I was still … someone. To show I was still … I don't know. It was all for naught. Still ended up here. Still had to endure Hatchet's displeasure."

"You set your cap for Harry, my father? I don't understand."

"Jealousy," Sophronia repeated. "That was my sin in all of this. But it started it all."

Marigold tried to understand what her cousin had not said. "You married Hatchet after Harry chose Esm é over you?"

"Before," Sophronia corrected. "I married the miserable man before. That was what drove me back. Drove me toward Black Harry."

"But why did you marry Hatchet in the first place if he was so disagreeable?"

"Oh, he weren't always such a … He was charming and handsome once too. Courted me with posies and the language of flowers—he's the one taught me that. But that was afore." She paused and looked out over the kitchen table as if she could see back across time. "Afore his mind started getting all twisted up with anger and greed and … and that evil unholy holiness. All that preaching—ranting, it was." She sighed. "But that came on gradually, though it came on strongest after."

"After he stole my mother's children?"

Sophronia shook her head—whether in negation or rejection of the deed, Marigold could not tell—before she returned to her story. "Had this place already when I met him. Made out like we were going to live the life of Reilly in this big house. Said the place was a treasure." She shook her head again. "But he soured and the land soured around him when he couldn't find his treasure, though he couldn't bear to leave. Nor would Mother Hatchet let him leave. Nor leave herself. She squatted in there, like a dragon in her lair." Sophronia flicked a dismissive finger toward Alva Hatchet's room. "Hoarding what she considered hers, giving nothing in return—no love or affection. Not even a bit of work after I came here as a bride. Expected us to do for her."

"Why didn't you leave?"

Sophronia tossed up that unaccountable shrug. "I loved him once, you know. Or thought I did. But then we came out here to this lonely living with Mother Hatchet—" She closed her eyes, as if it might help her see back across the years. "And then, when I had my first baby, my blessed Wilbert, Hatchet's attention wandered, and I wanted to get back at him for catting about the town like a tom."

"Ellery was unfaithful?"

"More than unfaithful." Sophronia pursed her lips, as if the taste of the words themselves was sour. "He was criminal."

"Bessie Dove?" Marigold whispered.

"And others." Sophronia took another deep breath, as if it were hard to draw the air into her lungs. "They lured him, he said, with their wicked ways. Said Satan sent them. But I didn't care who sent them, did I? It was his fault and none other. But it made me powerful angry, and so I run away home. Back to Boston. But Mother Hatchet, she came after me. Told me I had to come back for Wilbert's sake. But I'd got my revenge, I thought. I'd got myself with child by my cousin's man."

There was so much pain in Sophronia's voice that it took another moment for Marigold to begin to understand. Everything within her went still with dread—like an animal that, too late, sees the hunter. "By Esm é 's husband? My father?"

Sophronia's expression was bleak. "He weren't her husband then—just her suitor. But ayuh, he was your father."

It was as if her body had its own logic apart from her mind—Marigold felt a pain in her chest, as if her heart had stopped working or, more likely, that the overstrained organ had split itself in two and was pouring molten blood within her chest.

She could not make herself believe such an impossible thing. "But he was devoted to her—to my mother—as she was to him. They loved each other. They could not stand to be apart."

"True," Sophronia agreed grudgingly. "She was the making of him. Or would have been, but for Hatchet."

The enormity of the implications—

Marigold tried to reassert her powers of logic. "Did he know, my—" She was too confused to sort out the ties. "Did you tell Harry you were pregnant?"

"Never told him. Would have taken it to my grave." This time Sophronia's characteristic shrug was weighted with regret and longing for something that could almost have been. "I don't rightly know—I never spoke to them again. I was here, kept here under lock and key by Mother Hatchet."

"And the baby? Seviah?" Marigold picked up the portrait of her father, photographed as a young man, in his finest. The familial resemblance to Seviah was so strong, it was a wonder she had not remarked upon it before. Seviah was her half brother!

But Sophronia was still lost in the maze of the past. "I'd had my babies, but they locked them away from me. Because Hatchet and his mother took one look at them and knew they weren't his."

This time Marigold's head kept working, even as her heart seemed to stutter to a painful stop within her chest. "They? Babies, plural?"

"Ayuh." Sophronia looked into Marigold's eyes for a long time before she finally told all. "You and your brother. The spit of him, you both were—of Black Harry."

"My brother." Marigold repeated the word carefully, as if it were a shard of broken glass balanced on her tongue. "Seviah is my brother?"

"Ayuh." The word was nothing but a sigh. "My sweet babies. Twins."