Chapter 48

C HAPTER 48

A faithful friend is a strong defense;

he that hath found him hath found a treasure.

—Louisa May Alcott

Officer Parker was more concerned with the harm that hadn't been prevented. "Alva Hatchet poisoned her husband and son and then poisoned herself?" he asked. "We know that, and we know how Ellery got into the water …" He scratched his chin in contemplation. "What about the stabbing?"

There was only one person left who had been present for the commotion that fateful night. Marigold turned to Cleon.

"They argued, didn't they, Cleon? Sister and Cousin Ellery. Did he know she'd poisoned him?" All this time Marigold had thought the Hatchets' worry about poison excessive—perhaps it hadn't been enough?

"Ayuh." Old Cleon crumpled to his knees next to his sister's bed—the sister he had blindly obeyed, eavesdropping on conversations, planting poisonous plants, and putting bodies into the silent waters of Salem Sound. "Never did like to be crossed, sister." Cleon began to cry, streams of tears creasing his face.

"He wanted revenge against sister—even though it were my fault, for giving him bad tonic. He come at her hard, Cousin Ellery did," Cleon told them. "He knew he were dying, and he were full of God's righteous anger. Said he'd drown her and be done with her. Do to her what she'd done to his pa. What he had always been afeared she'd do to him if he didn't mind her ways. I had to stop him."

Marigold made herself ask, "How did you stop him?"

"He pushed me away, back against the stove," Cleon admitted. "And I flung my arm out for a handhold."

Marigold looked back toward the hulk of the cast-iron stove. "The toasting fork! The perforations—the two holes in Ellery Hatchet's side."

"By God," the doctor said.

"You stabbed Pa, Cleon?" It was Wilbert who voiced the unspeakable.

"He come at me." The piteous creature gulped through his tears. "I just wanted to be let be."

Marigold could see the scene in her mind's eye—Cleon in a crumple on the floor, holding the fork, and Ellery Hatchet impaling himself in his blind rage.

"By jeezum." Wilbert sighed and drew the crying old man to his feet. "It's all right, Cleon."

"It's not all right," Officer Parker insisted. "He stabbed him and then left him to drown? And when he'd done his worst, then he hauled Hatchet up on the crosstree to dry out like a scarecrow?" He scratched his head under his hat. "Suppose the old fool lit the fire too?"

Cab looked at Marigold. Marigold looked to Sophronia. Who closed her eyes.

It was Wilbert who put an end to it. "Reckon it was just an unlucky lightning strike that night. Bound to happen someday with all that old, dry hay."

Marigold all but held her breath, but Parker was quick to choose the path of least resistance. "Well, I reckon," he agreed.

And with that, what would be, was.

Justice, though hard-fought, seemed to have been won. The bad had been punished and the good—or at least the good enough —were left in peace to contemplate their sins, exhume their secrets, and bury their dead.

Officer Parker and Dr. Oliphant left soon thereafter, presumably to make their reports and sign whatever official papers were necessary for the town of Pride's Crossing and the inhabitants of Hatchet Farm to resume their otherwise quaintly eerie lives.

"Well, it's a good thing we saved the shovels," Wilbert said wearily. "I've got two graves to dig."

"I'll help you, Wilbert." Cab, always ready to do the right thing.

As was she. Marigold decided that the best thing she could do for her family was what she did best—clean. Starting with the age-old mess that was Great-Aunt Alva's room.

She gathered her necessary buckets and hygienic supplies and set herself to making order from chaos. The cluttered interior so reminded her of the littered yard when she had first arrived that Marigold felt she was starting all over again.

"Surprised she didn't go up in flames years ago," Sophronia commented from the doorway, gesturing to the melted wax and sagging candles perched atop some piles. "And all of us with her. No idea it'd got this bad. Don't think anyone but Hatchet or Cleon had been inside in years."

But her comment gave Marigold her solution. "Perhaps a good bonfire in the remains of the barn might be the best solution—if there are some embers still smoldering? But wait—Wilbert!" Marigold chased her half brother—her brother —across the yard. "The graves can wait. First, we need to sift through the ashes of the root cellar."

"What for?"

"Your treasure."

She led him behind the charred remains of the barn, and there it was, just as Bessie Dove said she had left it, in the soot-filled cellar. Wilbert swept aside the ash and cinders to reveal the charred remains of an iron-banded, wooden chest.

"Well, I'll be." He traced the initials engraved in the metal. " J.E. " he read. "Wonder what the J stands for? Didn't know Pa's father had another name besides Elijah."

"That's the Crowninshield family cipher," Cab said quietly into Marigold's ear. "With likely Jacob Endicott's initials."

Another thought struck her. "Your uncle Endicott must have known. Why else would he keep trying to buy, or recover through litigation, a bald, bankrupt, rocky island?"

"Indeed," was all Cab would allow.

"So, what do we do?" she asked. "Will the contents change the Endicotts' fortunes? Or will it be a more suitable reward for this young man who has nothing else of value to his name?"

"Nothing but his excellent remaining family." Cab smiled at her in that way he had of making a person feel like the best of themselves. "Wilbert, why don't you have a look and tell us what's in there?"

If there had once been a lock guarding the chest, there was not now—a benefit, Marigold suspected, of Bessie's raising her son to be a blacksmith. But the less said about them the better—Wilbert didn't need to know that someone else had already taken their own suitable reward.

"Holy smoke—" Wilbert's oath transferred into a long whistle. "Will you look at that."

Inside were large, blackened disks, tarnished by age, filling the bottom half of the chest.

"Must be—more'n a hundred!" Wilbert was beyond astonished. "All these years, this was what Pa was digging for? And it was here all the time?"

"Yes," was the simplest answer Marigold could give. "And now it is yours."

"Mine?" He blinked at her, all disbelief. But then he seemed to grasp all the ramifications of the day. "By jeezum. You really aren't here to take anything from us, are you?"

"All I have ever wanted was information about my mother."

Wilbert drew in a breath that seemed to expand his chest and shoulders before her eyes. "You're plumb crazy if you think I'm not going to share this! With Ma and Cleon and Sev and Daisy, and you. We wouldn't never have found it if it hadn't been for you. And we're family still. Reckon a half sister's as good as a full one. Makes no difference to me."

"Thank you, Wilbert," Marigold returned. "That means the world to me."

Marigold felt a strange, numb sort of peace settle upon her—she had done what she was meant to do, and the world had finally caught up. Wilbert, Seviah, Daisy, Lucy, Bessie, and even Sophronia were all poised to embark upon new and hopefully better phases of their lives. The wrong Marigold had come to Hatchet Farm to discover was known, and although it could never be righted—as Sophronia had so wisely said—Marigold could go on with her life.

She had not drowned in the well of her family's troubles, though she felt as if she might have gone under a time or two. Order had been restored to, or rather imposed upon, Hatchet Farm.

Whichever it was, Marigold could be proud of all she had accomplished for her cousins—her siblings —and might leave in good conscience. "What do you think you'll do now?"

"Sell up," Wilbert said immediately. "Sell it back to old man Endicott, if he still wants it. Sell it on to anyone who'll take it. Take what we want and burn down the house behind us and move on to someplace better, someplace without any bad memories or secrets. Move on."

"That sounds like a very sound plan for such prime coastal real estate," Marigold agreed.

"S'pose you'll be moving on too? I hope you know you're always welcome with us, Ma and me," Wilbert offered.

"Wilbert, you are a lamb." But always had always seemed longer than she wanted to think about at present. Always meant permanence, which made her desperately uncomfortable.

Always made her think of Cab.

Who was watching her carefully.

"Care to take a walk with me, Cab?" Though where they were to go seemed problematic—the garden felt too filled with ghosts.

"Naturally," he said as he fell into step beside her. "Glad to have a moment alone." He swiped his hat from his head. "I see your poker face is well in place. Happily, I've bought the necessary medicine to cure a bad case of poker face." He held up a flask of delightfully demon liquor.

"You have no idea how welcome that is! Let's try the breezeway." She was suddenly wearier than she'd ever been. "It's not the salon at the Copley Square Hotel, but I hope it will do. What have you brought me?"

"Port. Fortified and strong. It's been a hell of a day."

"It has indeed, but as I told you, I'm no damsel in distress."

"No," he agreed. "But perhaps I am."

Marigold laughed and raised the flask. "I'll drink to that. I would drink to a willing foe again, but how horribly prescient was that toast?" She took a deep drink. "Thank you. This is exactly what I needed—forgetfulness in a flask."

"That's where we started, back in Boston, isn't it?" Cab sighed in easy agreement. "Maybe I should have said my piece then, and maybe then none of this might have happened."

"What piece?"

"Marigold." There was something in his tone. Something bare and plain. And unsure. "Surely you know?"

"That this was all my fault? I do—"

"No. Surely you understand." He reached for her hand. "I'm utterly mad about you."

Heat and something more fragile kindled in her chest. "If you must know, I'm desperately fond of you too …"

"But?"

"But I've just had my life upended," she finished.

"I understand that," he said. "I want to give you some surety—someone you know you can count upon."

She had to smile. "Yes, I think I have learned that I can always count on you—to do the right thing even when it is inconvenient. Thank you—you have been an astonishingly good friend." Letting Seviah, Samuel, and Bessie off the hook was only the beginning of friendship. "You are the rare man who can be counted upon to know the different between punishment and justice."

"Thank you. But why should my friendship astonish you?"

"Because, at the moment, it seems I have nothing to offer you in return."

"Nothing?"

"I'm not who I thought I was, Cab. It was bad enough being a pauper, but now I'm a bastard—to use your plainspoken word—as well. It's a bit much, even for me."

"Marigold." His tone was gently chiding. "You always said people make their own decisions, regardless of their blood or family name."

"That was before my name was in question—although I suppose I am still a Manners."

"Marigold, you must understand that no matter your name, or your parents, or your execrable habit of managing others, I love you? That I always have? And I always will."

For once in her life, Marigold was nearly overcome with raw, painful emotion, as if her heart had gone weak and wavering within her chest.

And that was the problem—the way she felt about Cab was unsettling. Whenever she was near him, all her well-honed reason seemed to desert her. Emotions were not nearly so reliable as logic. " Always seems untenable," she returned cautiously.

"Please believe me," he began slowly, as if he were feeling his way as carefully as she. "I know I love you. I have from the first moment I met you. And I fear, no matter the outcome of this conversation—because I see that alarmed look in your eye—I always will. I'm afraid you've ruined me for all other woman, Marigold. You and you alone will do for me."

"Cab, I—"

"Don't say it. If the answer is no, don't say it, please. Let me hope. Let me hope for just a small while."

"Then I won't say no." She reached out her hand. "I'll say, kiss me instead."

He was astonished. "Is that a yes?"

"It is a please. Right now, after everything that has happened, I would like to be kissed. By you and no other."

"Then, yes." He pressed a kiss to her hand.

Marigold felt clarification was in order. "On the lips, Cab. On my lips."