The child laughed, nodding her head.
“Really?” Clementine said. “We’ll see how you feel when you’re face-first in the mud.”
“I like the mud!” the child exclaimed.
To this her mother had no response, and could only resort to holding her still as Isabelle walked to greet them. Clementine was dressed in a wool gown beneath an overcoat long enough for a man, a graceful red scarf snaked around her neck. Formless yet beautiful. Isabelle embraced her and said hello to Elsy, then inspected the carriage.
“It’s quite ragged, I know,” Clementine said. “I dread its failure. But it was the only one I could manage to acquire for the price I had in mind.”
“You made it up the lane just fine,” Isabelle said. “What does appearance matter?”
Clementine eyed the carriage suspiciously.
“Might I ask what you plan to do with it?” Isabelle asked.
“Well, I’m afraid we don’t have a great deal of choice but to move on. The hotel isn’t exactly suitable lodging. There were complaints of Elsy being noisy, of me returning late. It wouldn’t do.”
“And now?” Isabelle said.
Just then she felt the cool shock of a hand upon her shoulder, and Mildred, who had joined them, stepped toward Elsy.
“How about I take the child to visit the chickens?” she said. “They could use some food, if this one is brave enough to feed them.”
“I am brave!” Elsy was quick to tell her.
“We shall see about that,” Mildred said, looking at Clementine, who only nodded—happy, it seemed, for a break from the child. Mildred and Elsy wandered off toward the coop.
“When she wakes from her naps,” Clementine said, “there are no bounds to her energy.”
“It’s a lifetime ago for me,” Isabelle said, “but I can recall what that’s like.”
She turned to Clementine.
“Why don’t you come to the porch? We can at least have some tea.”
They went on together. Clementine sat in Mildred’s seat and Isabelle poured another cup from the tray.
“Do you know where you’ll go?” she asked.
“Not precisely. I simply wish for a quieter existence somewhere, is all. And a climate more fit for my services. The men here are more involved in building back their lives than visiting with women like myself. The money has dried up.”
“I see…”
“I have always done what I must to survive,” Clementine said. “And although I’ve made a decent life here, things will only be better up North. Amongst a more welcoming audience. Perhaps a wealthier audience.”
“I have no doubt you’ll succeed in whatever you set out for. What of Elsy?”
“I plan to get her in school, shortly. However that may be done.”
“You have quite the journey in store!” Isabelle said. “I wager there will be a good number of trials.”
“Don’t think I feel any different. I’m terrified, truth be told, but it’s better to make the break while she’s young. At least that’s what I tell myself.”
A shrill wind picked up dust from the ground, and both women took a sip of their tea in defense of the weather.
“I wonder,” Clementine said, her voice low, “if you’ve heard from them.”
Isabelle took a second sip for good measure. Perhaps it was the comfort of Clementine’s stolidity, or the way she asked with so little judgment behind the words, but for the first time in a long time, Isabelle felt capable to answer the question.
“No.” she said. “Not yet.”
“Oh, Isabelle.”
“Now don’t even begin down that road. I need no sympathy. I’m sure they’re both fine. It’s only Caleb’s way.”
Clementine pulled the scarf from her neck and stared at Isabelle with obvious concern, waiting for more; waiting, perhaps, with the same exasperation that punished Isabelle’s heart on a nightly basis. But Isabelle had nothing more to share. Nothing in the realm of the known.
“The letter will come,” said Isabelle, and her tone lurched toward the optimism she’d been forcing herself to practice. “I often imagine opening it. The childlike loop of the letters, the sentences that slant off diagonally as they carry on. That laziness with words he has…”
Isabelle looked down the lane, relishing the working of her mind—the oft-constructed scenario she conjured during her darkest moments. The content of a letter that did not exist.