The Red Garden - Alice Hoffman [16]
On the day his daughter disappeared there was stew and molasses bread for lunch, with lemon sponge cake for dessert. He remembered that because he wrote it down in his dietary book, in which he recorded all of his meals. He thought such a diary might be of interest if he were ever diagnosed with an illness that might be related to diet. He worked all that morning in his study on the day of the storm, as the temperature outside dipped. It was the coldest June ever recorded, not just in the Commonwealth but all up and down the Atlantic Coast, as far west as Pennsylvania. There were no birds that year, for their eggs had frozen in their shells. Foxes and wolves had come down from the mountains, searching for food, drawing ever nearer to town. The eels in the river were sleepy because of the frigid water and were therefore easy to catch. Since many in town made their living from fashioning eelskin wallets and belts and shoes, and were employed at the Starrs’ leatherworks, there was a mob of fishermen down on the banks. People wore high boots and gloves as they rushed into the brackish water with their nets and hooks. It was a sea of eel flesh, the water roiling. Black thunderhead clouds were moving in from the west, a sign of worse weather to come.
No one realized Amy Starr was missing until it began to snow. Rebecca thought the drifting white drops fluttering into the yard were blossoms from the apple trees, then she remembered that the leaves on the fruit trees had been stunted from the spring drought. Apple blossoms had never formed. The little girl in question was six years old, a quiet, well-behaved child. She was the last to follow the birth of her brothers and sisters: Henry was ten; Olive, twelve; William, thirteen; and the eldest was sixteen-year-old Mary. By dinnertime the sky was black as coal. The falling snow was gaining muster, nearly six inches on the ground already when Amy’s absence became known. She didn’t show up at the table for dinner, even though she was usually the first to scramble onto her chair, her folded napkin neatly placed in her lap. No one could remember seeing her all day. Had she been at lunch? Had she been at play?
Rebecca rose from the table and looked through the rooms, growing increasingly worried. She called and called, but there was no reply. When she reached Ernest’s study, up on the third floor, her neck was flushed even though she was shivering. It had gotten progressively colder as she’d gone from room to room, and she took that as a bad sign. The hired woman, Sonia, had read her fortune that morning, using a pack of cards she kept tied up with a silk scarf. They had sat in the kitchen engrossed in the future while they were supposed to be paying attention to the preserved pears simmering in the kettle. Sonia had laid out her mistress’s fortune on the pine trestle table. One card was for love, another for luck. Sonia had put down a third card, then had quickly snatched it up again. “That one’s a mistake,” she said. But Rebecca had seen it. The card was death.
ERNEST AND THE boys got on their coats and boots and gloves and went to search outside the house in places where the child was likely to be found. Amy often played in the barn, or in the garden, or in the orchard of apple trees that this year hadn’t bloomed.