“Holy Christ,” Johnny whispered.
Kate’s wail finally found its voice and pierced the morning calm with a sound so fierce that all the animals within earshot fell silent to listen. There, nestled in the folds of the dead woman’s gown, was a baby. The tiny body was serene and still, as though it were sleeping, cradled in its mother’s arms.
CHAPTER TWO
Great Bay, 1889
The morning Addie Cassatt was born, the fog so shrouded the trees, the houses, and the lakeshore itself that her mother, Marie, didn’t dare make the trip to the doctor’s office alone. It wasn’t far into town—the Cassatts lived less than a mile from the main street—but that morning, Marie couldn’t see beyond her own front doorstep. She stared into the dense, white blanket and wasn’t sure what, exactly, to do. Her nearest neighbor’s house had disappeared into the fog, and Marie’s husband was out on the lake fishing, despite the weather and Marie’s delicate condition. There was no one to help her into town or to summon the doctor to come to her. She was alone in the house and, it seemed to Marie, alone in the world. But the puddle of water at her feet told her that, one way or another, she wouldn’t be alone for long. The baby was on its way.
Marie’s husband, Marcus, and his brother, Gene, were sons and grandsons of men who had fished in these waters since before anyone could remember, and a little fog （let alone a very pregnant Marie） wasn’t about to prevent them from a day’s work. Most of the other fishermen in town thought the Cassatts were fools to go out on a day such as this one. But Marcus and Gene knew the fish liked the velvety fog. The brothers had, more than once, seen schools of them poking their faces above the surface on foggy mornings, just to get a taste of it.
None of that mattered to Marie as she lay down alone in her bed, tossing and turning from the pain that signaled the coming of her first child. Town wasn’t so far away, she kept telling herself as each contraction eased. She walked that dirt road every day with the dogs and knew every dip and turn intimately. Surely she could get there on her own now. Or at least manage to make it to a neighbor’s house, at least that. Come on, now, Marie, it’s just a little fog, she thought. Get up. Get help. This child is on its way.
She tried to rise from her bed, but the pain intensified. She groaned as she laid her head back down onto her pillow. Marie began to swim in a strange sense of vagueness as her body became the river that her baby would cross between another world and this one.
Her thoughts weren’t her own. She could see only blinding white outside her bedside window. She couldn’t be sure the school, the grocer, the post office, or any of the town buildings hadn’t been literally swallowed up. Was anything there? Did the world still exist? Marie was terrified of that white, dense, living thing. She believed that, if she ventured outside, it would turn her around and force her into the thick woods beyond town, and she would be wandering, lost, when the baby came. The fact that Polar and Lucy were barking into the whiteness in the backyard, down toward the lake, further unsettled her.
Help me, Mother was the last rational thought that went through her mind before the contractions took over her body.
Just down the shoreline, Marie’s neighbor, Ruby Thompson, was twisting her apron into knots. She knew that fool Marcus had gone out on the lake, leaving his wife alone on such a day, with the baby so near. Fog or no fog, she was going to make sure Marie was all right.
She wrapped up one of the pies she had baked that morning and walked out into the whiteness to the long row of pines that stood between their two houses. She touched each one, inching along blindly until another tree materialized before her. Being out there, enveloped by the fog, reminded Ruby of one childhood winter day when she had been caught outside during a blizzard. Several people in her tiny community had died that day, taken by the sudden storm. Young Ruby had been walking home from school when the snow began to come down, and just like today, she had crept along from tree to tree to find her way. Now, she felt a chill just thinking about that day. It wasn’t so different from this one. She shuddered with relief when she finally reached the Cassatt home.
Ruby stood knocking at Marie’s front door. Why wasn’t she answering? Lord, thought Ruby, she might be having that baby right now. Ruby tried the door and, finding it open, walked inside.
“Marie!” she called, but there was no reply. Where is she? Where are those damned dogs? Ruby began searching the house, becoming more and more frantic with every empty room. Something was not right. When Ruby found the kitchen door open to the backyard, she flew through it, heedless of the blinding fog. Ruby knew her way from this kitchen down to the lakeshore and could walk it blindly, if necessary. It was necessary now.
Ruby hurried down the path, stumbling on tree roots and stones—Why didn’t Marcus properly clear this path, the lazy sod—until she reached the lakeshore. She could see only a few inches in front of her. Which way to go? She turned to the left and began running down the shoreline, calling her friend’s name.
It wasn’t long before Marie floated out of the fog, almost at Ruby’s feet. She was lying in the shallow water, unconscious or asleep or dead, her dress entangled around her legs. There was no sign of the baby.
Ruby’s shrieks brought everyone in earshot running. Her husband, Thomas, first; then came Otto and Betsy Lund. By the time the men had carried Marie back up to the house, allowed Ruby to get her into a dry nightgown, and laid her on the bed, she had awakened from whatever it was that had entranced her.
“Where have you taken her?” Marie cried in her delirium. “Where is my baby?”
Nobody asked why she had gone to the lakeshore. Nobody said anything at all other than, “You rest now, Marie,” and, “You’ve been through quite an ordeal,” and, “There, there, now.”
But words such as these cannot comfort a grieving mother. Marie’s eyes darted this way and that as she tried to rise from her bed again and again. “My baby,” she kept repeating. Ruby took her husband by the arm and ushered him outside.
“Look in the backyard, in the lake, anywhere you can,” she whispered. “That baby’s out there somewhere. Don’t let the wolves get it.” It needs a good Christian burial, she thought, but didn’t voice it aloud. Where is that doctor? He’ll have something to give Marie to quiet her cries.
Young Jess Stewart didn’t tell his parents, or anyone else, that something had called him down to the lakeshore that morning as clearly as if it had spoken his name.
He was lying under his bed, staging a battle with the wooden soldiers he had received from his uncle for his fifth birthday, when he heard a noise he had never heard before. He poked his head out from behind the blanket to listen. It sounded like singing, but there were no words. And no tune, really, not like the other songs Jess knew. This was something else. Jess thought it was the most beautiful music he had ever heard. He laid his head on the cool floor, closed his eyes, and let the music wash over him.
The sound floated into and out of his ears, creating a tapestry of thoughts inside his head. He imagined being out on the lake in a rowboat with a beautiful woman. She wasn’t his mother, but she had long hair like his mother’s, and she looked so kind and loving that he wanted nothing more than to crawl into her lap and go to sleep, the way he had when he was a baby. But he was a big boy now, beyond such babyish things. He opened his eyes, left the soldiers in the middle of their battle, and crept to the window. Maybe he could see something. He just had to know what was making this music.