“What did Father say about the key?” Ray asked.
“He was already asleep when I found it.”
“But we can ask.”
“You know how steady he is in his habits. He would never have removed it himself, not with the other keys still there.”
“He must have noticed it missing.”
“Not last night. With the girls gone, he wouldn’t have thought to lock the house. I didn’t.”
Ray eyed the ceiling. “Where’s Agnes?”
“On her porch, I suppose.”
“Tell her to come in and stop her sniveling. She needs to help with supper.”
Outside the window, the deputy made his way across the yard, looking over his shoulder once, then again. If I thought it would do any good, I’d have locked the door at his back for good. But how then could Esther and Myrle ever return?
I found Agnes on the screen porch, sitting on her mattress, a book on her knees. Every year when the cold weather came, we had to beg her to sleep in the upstairs room. From the rafters, she had hung her drawings. Most of them were of family, but a dozen showed the Elliot house, dark and small in its lot across the river. Her head lay against the wall, her eyes closed.
I sat with her in the bundle of sheets and pillows. “Agnes, what’s wrong?”
“I heard what that man said. About their running away.”
“He wasn’t much use, was he?”
“But Nan. ”
“What?”
“Remember those magazines Esther keeps under her bed?”
“You weren’t supposed to know about those.”
“I looked for them last night, and they were gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think Esther took them.”
“Took them where?”
She shrugged. “They had those pictures, the big cities. New York, Chicago, Boston. Esther liked the ones of Chicago best.”
“That doesn’t mean she’d go there. Chicago is nearly three hundred miles.”
“But she was always talking about it. Like she knew the place.”
“Why would you believe anything Esther said?”
She took hold of my wrist. “I’ll show you.”
Agnes led me to the back of the house. The yard sat in shadow, mostly mud and brambles, little reason for us to wander there. A stand of trees leaned together above the curve of the roof and the grasses never grew taller than an inch. Agnes stopped under the girls’ window. “Don’t you see?” she asked. I strained my neck. Underneath the window frame, hidden from anyone in that room looking out, a gash showed fresh with splinters, as if something heavy and sharp had rubbed against the wood. Below it, the wall of the house appeared scuffed, a line that reached to the ground from the gash itself.
“What did you girls do to that window?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“This could be from rainwater for all we know. It could have stained the wall.”
Agnes closed her eyes, dismissing me. Chicago, she’d said. The name sounded the same as choking. Now with the window looking so strange, the missing key, and the way the deputy had turned everything around — I couldn’t bear to think it. The girls may have left because of something we’d done.
“Agnes, when the deputy was here, why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t want to tell anyone. I didn’t even want to go to town. They’ll all be talking about us again.”
The shadows deepened at the back of the house. Standing on her toes, Agnes strained to see the window. The scuff on the wall might disappear altogether in another rain or two, but the gash itself seemed a kind of violence.
“I suppose we’ll have to tell the others,” I said. “Before dinner we will.”
Around the table that evening, we ate what we could in silence. My brothers chewed with their mouths closed, and Agnes held her knife between the tines of her fork, the fork switched from left to right, as Mother had taught us for a cut of meat. “Chicago,” Ray sniffed. The idea of one or the other of my brothers heading to the city to search seemed impossible. A hired car to Clarksville, then the Cedar Rapids and Chicago lines. A week or more to even try, Ray complained, and with all the work needed before winter. The price of a ticket alone was more than a steer at auction. How could the girls have paid for it? Deep within the house, Father groaned in his sleep. One by one we turned an ear to the hall. Never make too much. Father had taught us that too. But now spoken or not, there was something that made fools of us — why the girls would ever want to travel, why they might do so without telling. “No, we won’t go,” Ray decided. “It’s just some idea Agnes has got.” He rested his knife across his plate as if that finished it. The others took their napkins from their laps as they stood and dropped them on their chairs. Long after Agnes had cleared the plates, I stayed alone in the dining room and scratched at the table with my thumbnail until I’d damaged the surface. I scratched again. Who would notice such a little thing? And who would ever think I was the one who had done it?
When at last I went into the kitchen, Agnes and Ray crouched over the table by the stove, the crowns of their heads nearly touching. Patricia crossed the room in squat steps, stacking dishes in the pantry as loudly as she could. The stove burned, the light flickering. Agnes had laid out a handful of pencils and paper on the table, her face hard as she worked with her cheek inches from the surface. The photograph at her elbow showed our family together, a proper sitting Father had insisted on after Mother went, though it cost a good day’s work. The older of us stood in a row in back. In front sat Father and the girls. Esther peered straight ahead with that furious look of hers, her hair a mop and her nose sharp. Not much was pretty in that girl, but oh, she was fierce. Esther knew you, the photograph said, and believed she was the better by twice. Myrle sat on Father’s other side in a cream dress, a band of pearl buttons from her stomach to her throat. Her hair was held with pins, her hands folded. She leaned into Father, as if she might just rest her head on his shoulder.
“We’re drawing up posters,” Ray explained. “We can hang them in all the towns, the railway stations. Someone will surely see them.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched. Agnes blew a strand of hair from her forehead. The photograph seemed small and dim in the low light, the girls’ faces no bigger than my thumb. Patricia stood against the door, her eyes on her husband. “My, but it’s getting late,” she said. She rested a hand on Ray’s shoulder. The kitchen was near to freezing, but Agnes sweated as she worked, wiping the paper clean. When she finished, Ray pulled the drawing from her fingers. “No good. It doesn’t look anything like them.” He pushed the sheet away.
“But the photograph is over a year old,” Agnes complained.
“Ray,” I said.
Agnes only wiped her face and started again, her pencil trembling.
“Isn’t it terribly late?” Patricia mumbled.
I steadied myself against Agnes’ chair. Agnes no longer looked at the photograph as she gripped her pencil, and the drops that fell from her face weren’t from sweating now but from something else, something I hated to see.
Long after everyone had gone to sleep, I took my blanket to the front porch. The moon sat close to the horizon. The fields stretched without a wind. The house was dark, the lamps put out. How easy it would be to step off that porch, to fall into blackness as if nothing expected you back. I listened for any sound from Father’s room, but nothing came. As a child, I imagined his every footstep weighing down whatever ship carried him to this country. What did it mean to spend so many months adrift? While the boat pitched the other passengers against the rails, I imagined him on deck, his stance wide, keeping the thing upright by will alone. I never would have guessed Father undone by anyone, but that deputy managed it in a matter of minutes.