“Isabelle,” George said. “I thought you would be gone for some time.”
“Yes, well, things ended early.”
“Hello, Mother,” Caleb said, without taking his eyes off his food.
“It was getting a bit chilly outside,” George said. “I thought I’d invite Prentiss and Landry in for supper.”
“It’s no harm if you’d like us to leave,” Prentiss offered.
Isabelle walked to the table but said nothing. Caleb had already begun to eat. There was a time when they would all pray together. There was a time when ceremony mattered. It dawned on her that those days were behind the Walkers. The dinner table was now an assortment of damaged bodies collected together to gain sustenance. This no longer bothered her, an awareness that in itself would once have troubled her but now did not.
“Is there another chair?” she asked.
Prentiss stood up and motioned toward his own.
“Sit,” Isabelle said. “I thank you, really, but I’m in no mood for good manners. Not at this moment. If you could just treat me as you treat George and Caleb. As if I was no different. Now, Caleb, why don’t you go get the chair from your father’s study.”
Caleb put his fork down and did as requested while Prentiss reclaimed his seat.
“I had Caleb stop by the butcher on his way home,” George said. “I’ve roasted veal, made a nice side of fried onions. They aren’t your favorite, I know. I would have changed the courses had I known you’d be back.”
“It looks excellent,” she said. “Beyond anything I might ask for.”
After serving himself and Isabelle, George sat down. Everyone ate ravenously, with few words exchanged.
Her husband appeared to be as worried about his standing with her as Caleb had suggested; Caleb himself was stifled by the silence of his parents; and the brothers, well, she had heard them speak so rarely that she did not expect a word. Which made for a surprise when it was Prentiss who initiated conversation.
“George told us about that party,” he said. “I hope you had yourself a good time.”
She looked up. She had sat so quickly she’d forgotten to take off her overcoat. She untied it, let it fall upon the rail of her chair. With a moment to breathe, she realized she was full. Satisfyingly so.
“It’s not worth recounting,” she said. “I’ll only say that the company here is more enjoyable. Much more enjoyable.”
CHAPTER 10
A spider’s web of lightning and the sudden crush of thunder set off a heavy rain that lasted on and off for days. Then the sun returned, mopping up the moisture of the fields. Soon the empty roads were repopulated with men donning overcoats, steering horses around puddles and stopping intermittently to free their wagons from the viselike mud. George thought little of the weather. He embarked for Old Ox prepared to brave whatever might come his way with nothing more than his soft felt hat and overalls, cuffs tucked into his boots to keep them clean.
He intended to meet Ezra, whose invitation he would most likely have declined had he not been cooped up inside for so many days, bored with the familiarity of his home, without even the chance to walk the forest. He’d tried to spend time with his son, yet Caleb no longer felt bound to him, and if they were not in the field the boy spent his time with his mother or stowed away in his room; during the rain he could stay up there for hours, locked up doing God knew what, great monastic acts of solitude that could carry on for hours.
When the downpour turned ugly, George had gone to the barn to check on Prentiss and Landry, but the roof was patched and as sturdy as the day his father had built it. They had their own food now, too, purchased in town or bagged in the woods. When he came back a second time, and a third, they eyed him as they would an intruder, their voices stilling as they glanced up from the pallets where they played cards, or from the lantern where they shared their secrets. The barn was no longer his, but theirs, and he sensed himself unwanted.
He often had this same feeling in his own home, facing Isabelle: that the space, although shared, had been cordoned off, with invisible lines demarcating who belonged where. They spoke more than they had before, since the night she’d joined him at the table with Caleb and the brothers, but the cold front holding them apart was taking its time in dissipating, and meanwhile he walked around her like a child tiptoeing at night so as not to wake his mother.
These were the thoughts weighing on him as he begrudgingly set out to meet Ezra in Old Ox late one night. The roads were still a slough, and he trod the soft mud as if it were quicksand pulling him under—yet the foliage was bold enough to pass for art, and the woods exuded the pleasant smell of wet leaves, such that the entire walk felt so refreshing he would’ve considered his arrival in town enough activity to turn around and go home if he’d had no obligations to attend to.