Arthur nods and lays a hand over Celia’s. “We’ll go to Hays from now on. For mass, we’ll go to Hays.”
Celia needs to trust him. Now, more than any other time, she needs to trust Arthur. And maybe she could have until she saw the looks on people’s faces today. Most of them have probably known Ray all their lives. And all of them believe.
“I think it would be a nice drive for all of us,” Celia says, trying to swallow the lump that has formed in her throat. “It’s a lovely church.”
Arthur nods. “Hays’ll be fine.”
Evie listens for Daniel in the hallway outside Aunt Eve’s room. He is supposed to start a fire and that always takes him a good, long time. Grandma Reesa says the trees of Rooks County are plenty safe if the matches are in Daniel’s hands. Hearing nothing, she opens her small plastic tote and lays it on the bed. She blows the dust out of the corners and looks around the room. The Virgin Mary won’t fit inside the small case, and even if she did, Grandma Reesa would notice if Mary went missing. She is still mad at Daddy for gluing the hands back on, even though she said he could do it. Grandma says it’s shameful to use plain old glue on the Virgin Mary and to leave clumps of it stuck to her wrists. Evie walks to the table where the statue sits and touches the seam where Daddy glued her left hand onto her left wrist. She lifts Mary, tilts her back and forth, feels the weight of her before gently placing her back on the table.
Pausing to listen for footsteps again, but hearing nothing except the faraway clatter of Grandma Reesa’s pots and pans, she walks to the dresser next to the Virgin Mary’s table, opens the small, center drawer and peeks inside.
“Are these your pictures?” she says.
She giggles, feels that she’s done something naughty by talking to Aunt Eve like she’s right here in the same room. Glancing around, she muffles another giggle with one hand and, with the other, lifts out a small silver frame with a picture of Grandma Reesa when she wasn’t so big and a man, who must have been Grandpa. Evie holds the picture close to her face.
“He doesn’t look so nice. Was he a nice dad?”
No one answers. After propping the picture up on the cabinet, she takes out another.
“Just look at you,” she says, smiling down on a picture of Aunt Eve and Daddy. “Your hair is like mine. Look,” she says, holding up one of her own thin braids. “Just like mine.”
Evie sets the picture next to the first one and pulls the drawer open a little farther.
“Who is this?” she asks, and then nods. “It’s you, isn’t it? You seem so happy. Look at how you’re smiling.”
Pulling one sleeve down over her hand, Evie wipes the glass in the last frame and holds up the picture. A young man, much younger than Daddy, is lifting Aunt Eve off the ground. His arms are wrapped around her waist and Aunt Eve is smiling and holding a wide straw hat on her head with one hand so it won’t fall off. She is a girl, almost as old as Elaine, but not quite. The man is wearing a brown cowboy hat pushed high on his forehead. He has dark hair and is staring at Evie through the camera lens. Evie tilts her head left and right.
“He looks like Uncle Ray,” she says, smiling. “He’s so young and his eye is not so bad.”
Then she remembers the Uncle Ray who came to the house wanting a piece of Aunt Ruth’s pie and frowns. She looks around the room, at the closet full of dresses, at the Virgin Mary, at the window over the bed, wishing Aunt Eve would tell her the man isn’t Uncle Ray, but she doesn’t. Still hearing the clatter of Grandma Reesa’s pots and pans, Evie puts the first two pictures back in the center drawer, closes it and lays the third picture, the one of Aunt Eve and the happy man, in her small bag.
Chapter 17
Sitting at the kitchen table while waiting for the potatoes to boil, Celia fans the book for a fifth time, stirring up a small breeze that fluffs Evie’s bangs. On the count of three, Evie pokes a finger between the pages to mark the stopping point. The book, an early Christmas present from Ruth to Evie, falls open on the table. Celia takes a sip of spiced cider and stands to turn down the burner, leaving Ruth to study the book with Evie.
The family hasn’t returned to St. Anthony’s for a month of Sundays, and it is clear that mass in Hays doesn’t suit the rest of the town, almost as if mass in a different church, even if it is catholic, isn’t really mass at all. Even before the family had attended a single service at St. Bart’s, the other ladies in town stared and whispered when they saw Celia and Ruth in the grocery store. Good Christians attended St. Anthony’s every Sunday and good Christians didn’t leave their husbands, for any reason. Arthur had promised Reesa that the family would go back to St. Anthony’s for midnight mass on Christmas. Perhaps that would do a little something to make the town happy.
Though the rest of the town shakes their heads at the Scotts attending mass in Hays, it has kept Ruth out of Ray’s sight and he seems content to see Arthur at work every day, at least the days that Ray makes it to work. Arthur says Ray is probably drinking again so he doesn’t have time to worry about bringing Ruth home.
In the front room, Arthur struggles to force a crooked trunk into a straight tree stand, and out on the back porch, Daniel sifts through the boxes they moved from Detroit in search of the ones labeled CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS. The air smells of evergreen needles, sap and Ruth’s homemade spiced cider, making the house warm and cozy even as the wind whips though the attic and the sky darkens with signs of snow.
Studying page 275 of Evie’s book, Ruth wraps both hands around her mug, lifts it to her lips but doesn’t drink, and makes a tsk, tsk, tsk sound as she shakes her head.
“Is that not a good one?” Evie asks.
“Very poisonous,” Ruth says, glancing up at Celia and tapping the page that lays open on the table.
Celia leans over the book and reads the caption beneath the picture-narrow-leaved poison wedge root. Ruth stops tapping and lays one hand flat over the picture, spreading her fingers so she hides the plant. She leans back in her chair, as if checking on Arthur and Daniel.
“It’s good for her to learn about the poisonous ones, too, Ruth. To be on the safe side.”
Ruth lifts Evie’s chin so she’ll look Ruth in the eye. “This is definitely a bad one. Very bad. One of the worst.”
“Would it make me sick?”
“If you ate it, it would,” Ruth says, swallowing and clearing her throat. “But you’d never, ever eat something you found growing outside.”
“Except if it was in your garden.”
“Yes, that’s true.” Ruth points to the white leaves that look like tiny tubes with pointed ends. “Cows eat them sometimes. Not often. They don’t like the taste. But if they do, it makes them stagger and bump into things. The blind staggers. Very bad. You leave this one alone.”
Evie nods and before Celia can sit again, the back door swings open followed by a gust of cold, dry air. Elaine and Jonathon stumble into the room, their cheeks and noses red, both of them breathing heavily.
“What’s all the commotion?” Arthur says, pounding his leather gloves together as he steps into the kitchen.
Evie giggles at the pine needles stuck in his hair. Celia quiets her with a finger to her lips.
Elaine, still wearing her coat and mittens, sticks out her hand. “We’re engaged,” she says, gazing down at her brown mitten. “Oops.” She pulls it off to show the new ring on her finger. “We’re getting married.”
With a sideways glance toward Arthur, Celia stretches her arms to Elaine. “Oh, sweetheart,” she says, holding the tips of Elaine’s fingers as she admires the new ring. “It’s lovely.” Then Celia lifts up onto her tiptoes and gives Jonathon a hug.