BLUE GATE, 1860
HIS BROTHER BEGS HIM NOT to go inside, but Grady doesn’t listen. He tells Jacob to wait in the woods, makes him swear to stay away from the house. Then Grady finds his father in the dining room, lighting his pipe. It reeks of sweetness, and the smoke makes his eyes water.
Grady stops at the archway of the room, keeps the ax at his side. His throat tightens and he wants to cry, but he can’t in front of this man. He’s afraid he won’t be able to say what he needs to.
His father speaks first. “I did you a favor. Do you know how people would talk?”
Grady’s mouth won’t open. Through the pipe’s trickle of smoke he doesn’t see the dining room, the window seat, or the sleek wooden cabinet. Instead he sees the burned-out cabin and glowing embers. He sees bones in ash.
“Jacob was there. He saw everything.” Finally the words come, and Grady’s surprised by how calm he sounds. “I know it wasn’t an accident.”
“I warned you the first time,” his father says. “I told you never to go there again.”
Grady knows what he means. He means to the witch’s cabin. He means Pearl and Hanna. “You killed the woman I loved.”
His father sweeps flecks of tobacco off the table with his handkerchief. “What do you know of love?” His blue eyes narrow. “You disgrace yourself,” he says. “You disgrace this family.”
This is all Grady needs to hear. Even though his mother asked them to be kind to each other. Even though. His grip tightens on the ax.
His father laughs. It’s a bitter sound that hangs in the air. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Grady steps toward him, stopping at the table. “This is to fix what you’ve done.”
His father loved his mother, Rose, but now she is dead. With her gone, there’s no goodness left in him.
Grady steps closer. His father takes the pipe out of his mouth and glares.
“I refuse to fight you,” he says, but the challenge is in his eyes. It’s always been there. The ax trembles in Grady’s hand.
“You will put that down and apologize.” His father glances at his pocket watch. “Don’t make me say it again.” His mouth is hard, pressed tight with conviction.
Hanna, Hanna, Hanna, Grady thinks. God, our son too. Hanna, Lucky—they’re all he can think of, always. He knows what he’s doing is wrong, but his father killed them. He killed them and he’s not sorry and there’s no other way. Grady’s jaw bears down and his heart feels like it’s exploding in his chest and he can’t live without her, he can’t, and he won’t. Then he moves so fast that it’s all a blur.
The first thud makes his ears ring, and they’re still ringing as he drags his father’s body from the house. He sees Jacob watching from the trees and calls for him to help. There’s another small bird in his brother’s shirt pocket and his cheeks are wet.
“I’m making things right,” Grady says. “Don’t you understand?” Jacob stares at him with teary eyes and shakes his head. “Help me anyway,” Grady tells him.
His brother’s eyes well up again but he takes their father by the ankles while Grady holds under his shoulders as they limp into the woods. After they reach the burned ground where the cabin once stood, he yells at Jacob to leave. When he doesn’t listen, Grady shoves him, and only then does his brother turn and run. Watching him go makes Grady feel like he’s choking on ash. He feels like his lungs are going black, his heart too. But there’s no stopping now.
“I did it,” he says.
In front of him, Pearl is standing near what used to be the fireplace. A barn cat is in her arms, along with the book, half hidden by her long white hair. At her feet are two woven baskets. The baskets are moving.
“I’m ready,” he tells her, setting his father’s body on the ash. The chest wound is seeping; his mouth is half open. Even though he’s dead, Grady’s afraid of him.
“This is his doing,” he says to Pearl, hardening his voice so she can’t see how scared he is.
“Yes. This is his night.” Pearl’s jaw tightens and she shuts her eyes like she’s praying. Her hair lifts around her in the breezeless air. When she nods, he knows it’s time.
Grady opens the book, sees his fast handwriting down the page, the ink just dry. It’s the ritual he needs—the one Pearl recited to him before he took the ax to the house.
Now there’s nothing left to do but go through with it; there’s nothing left for him if he can’t bring her back. He starts to read from the book and all sense of time disappears and then suddenly he’s at the end and it’s finished, it’s finally over, and he’s covered in blood. He collapses to the ground, his knees hitting the earth, the book falling from his hands.
Pearl touches Grady’s shoulder and all her fierceness leaves her. She is crying, and she never cries. She is crying because she was too late to save her daughter—she was away when Grady’s father came. She doesn’t know Hanna heard him in the woods and gave the baby to her brother, telling him to run. Hanna stayed behind in the cabin, believing love was stronger than the darkness that was coming. But sometimes terrible things come to pass, and they can never be undone. They can’t be fixed or reversed. They can only be made anew.
Like right now. The old witch wipes her eyes when she realizes who’s watching them. She knows who’s listening when Grady shouts Hanna’s name, begging her to rise. But only Pearl sees the return as shadows swirl in the air, swirl and settle overhead.
A moment later, the new Hanna takes a breath as she looks at Grady from the edge of the trees. Her body smells of smoke and ash and earth. In time it will begin to hurt—the headaches will come first, and then the chest pain, the bruising—but for now she feels strong. She almost feels like her old self. Almost.
She is Hanna, but not quite. She is different now.
This new girl turns and walks deeper into the woods, alone, away from the blood that’s soaking into the dirt, the blood that she didn’t ask for. Her heart is searching for her child, who escaped. Her feet are taking her far from Blue Gate.
And so begins a new life.