第2章

And so, at dawn, that day in the first week of August, Mae Tuck woke up and lay for a while beaming at the cobwebs on the ceiling. At last she said aloud, “The boys’ll be home tomorrow!”

Mae’s husband, on his back beside her, did not stir. He was still asleep, and the melancholy creases that folded his daytime face were smoothed and slack. He snored gently, and for a moment the corners of his mouth turned upward in a smile. Tuck almost never smiled except in sleep.

Mae sat up in bed and looked at him tolerantly. “The boys’ll be home tomorrow,” she said again, a little more loudly.

Tuck twitched and the smile vanished. He opened his eyes. “Why’d you have to wake me up?” he sighed. “I was having that dream again, the good one where we’re all in heaven and never heard of Treegap.”

Mae sat there frowning, a great potato of a woman with a round, sensible face and calm brown eyes. “It’s no use having that dream,” she said. “Nothing’s going to change.”

“You tell me that every day,” said Tuck, turning away from her onto his side. “Anyways, I can’t help what I dream.”

“Maybe not,” said Mae. “But, all the same, you should’ve got used to things by now.”

Tuck groaned. “I’m going back to sleep,” he said.

“Not me,” said Mae. “I’m going to take the horse and go down to the wood to meet them.”

“Meet who?”

“The boys, Tuck! Our sons. I’m going to ride down to meet them.”

“Better not do that,” said Tuck.

“I know,” said Mae, “but I just can’t wait to see them. Anyways, it’s ten years since I went to Treegap. No one’ll remember me. I’ll ride in at sunset, just to the wood. I won’t go into the village. But, even if someone did see me, they won’t remember. They never did before, now, did they?”

“Suit yourself, then,” said Tuck into his pillow. “I’m going back to sleep.”

Mae Tuck climbed out of bed and began to dress: three petticoats, a rusty brown skirt with one enormous pocket, an old cotton jacket, and a knitted shawl which she pinned across her bosom with a tarnished metal brooch. The sounds of her dressing were so familiar to Tuck that he could say, without opening his eyes, “You don’t need that shawl in the middle of the summer.”

Mae ignored this observation. Instead, she said, “Will you be all right? We won’t get back till late tomorrow.”

Tuck rolled over and made a rueful face at her. “What in the world could possibly happen to me?”

“That’s so,” said Mae. “I keep forgetting.”

“I don’t,” said Tuck. “Have a nice time.” And in a moment he was asleep again.

Mae sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on a pair of short leather boots so thin and soft with age it was a wonder they held together. Then she stood and took from the washstand beside the bed a little square-shaped object, a music box painted with roses and lilies of the valley. It was the one pretty thing she owned and she never went anywhere without it. Her fingers strayed to the winding key on its bottom, but glancing at the sleeping Tuck, she shook her head, gave the little box a pat, and dropped it into her pocket. Then, last of all, she pulled down over her ears a blue straw hat with a drooping, exhausted brim.

But, before she put on the hat, she brushed her gray-brown hair and wound it into a bun at the back of her neck. She did this quickly and skillfully without a single glance in the mirror. Mae Tuck didn’t need a mirror, though she had one propped up on the washstand. She knew very well what she would see in it; her reflection had long since ceased to interest her. For Mae Tuck, and her husband, and Miles and Jesse, too, had all looked exactly the same for eighty-seven years.