He leaned back but did not move his searching eyes from Edney’s face. She felt the strange hunger in his look and it confused her. If he had anything to gain, it would only be the Christian comfort of having helped to ease another’s suffering. She could give him nothing else. She could not even promise to give him that comfort. But if she did, perhaps the gift would be a renewing of her faith and a cooling of her terrible hatred, a gift her Maker might reward with that one last contact she so desired. It was the teaching she had always known—for the soul to be at peace, the life must do good. Why not let this gracious American, alone, wounded in heart rather than in body, try to help her?
“I don’t understand,” she said at last. “What are the services this lady in Victoria provides?”
He smiled and sat up straight. The watery blue of his eyes suddenly brightened. He brought his one hand around and rested it on his thigh. The fingers were long and thin and yellowed with tobacco.
“Ah, she is an expert in the ways of bringing the living into contact with the dead. A medium, a clairvoyant, a spiritualist—but there is no earthbound word that can do justice to those who have the gift of parting the veil. For our purpose, she is the one hope we have of communicating with your child while she is still so close to her corporeal time. Oh, that I had but spoken with Robert sooner! How richer the conversation would have been, how fresher the feeling.” He stared sadly away.
On reflex, Edney looked after him and seeing his empty teacup on the table moved quickly to fill it. The physical act, simple and repetitive, helped to orient her. For the truth was, she could not imagine how anyone could reach May if she, who had loved her so deeply, who, indeed, perhaps loved her even more now, could not do so on her own. But these matters were profound, more so than she could fathom. That someone dedicated to finding ways of contacting the dead could succeed where she had failed was not an impossible idea—Edney did not pretend any great knowledge of life and death. She knew her heart and she knew her duty; if the first was broken, the second could not be properly carried out. So what choice did she have? For her dead and living children, she must repair the break. And if a woman in Victoria, upon the recommendation of the sympathetic soul sitting in the parlour where May’s body had lain, could be an agent in that lonely work, Edney knew that she’d be foolish and irresponsible to resist.
The clock ticked heavily. Ambrose Richardson lifted his cup and took a silent sip of tea. The sunlight no longer flowed through the room, but it had the same trembling quality as the American’s eyes as he spoke again.
“Of course, I’ll make all the arrangements on your behalf. The fee is minimal, considering the great peace that results. However, should you require any assistance…” He made the slightest of bows and courteously dropped his eyes.
Edney absently pulled at the end of one of her tight braids. The fee? It was difficult for her to think of money or any other worldly concern in relation to May. But she tried hard, recognizing the intensity of his feelings and the honourable manner in which he expressed them. Not all the Americans she had met—and there were several on the delta—possessed such gentlemanly graces.
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. As for the other arrangements, I’d be most grateful for your assistance.”
“I’ll leave for Victoria on the next steamer. Madam, your faith will be rewarded in the only way that can truly help you. You will speak with your beloved child again.”
The words were so dazzling, his tone so convincing in its promise, that she did not notice for several seconds that they were no longer alone in the parlour. Only when Ambrose Richardson stood, rather suddenly, and a few drops of tea spilled from his cup onto her hand, which rested on the ottoman between them, did she awaken to the world of flesh.
“Arrangements? For what?”
Edney turned at the sound of Thomas’s voice, as if yoked to it. But she was not alarmed by his presence or his question, merely surprised by the former as he was generally at work all day in the fields.
“Good day, sir,” Ambrose Richardson said. “Your wife and I have been enjoying a cup of tea and some most uplifting conversation. Why don’t you join us?”
Edney watched Thomas carefully but with little emotion. He seemed very far away, even though he was so palpably present. The world that he carried with him, he carried in the same way that a horse did. His face was red and slick with sweat. A few strands of hair were stuck to his brow, and his thick beard was smoulder waiting to flame at the quick light in his eyes. But he had removed his boots and held his hat like a limp pelt in one hand.
“No. No, thank you,” he said awkwardly, and Edney knew that his discomfort came from the simple confusion created by a guest acting as a host. Her husband was not a man who took even a slight change in the proprieties with calm. It was no surprise to her, then, when he pressed on with his questions in an abrupt manner.
“I heard my wife mention arrangements, sir. If they concern your interest in the cannery, it would be best if you discussed such matters with me. And if they concern something else…”
Edney felt his darkness shift heavily toward her as he continued.
“… well, I cannot think of anything that does not require you to speak with me first. I heard mention of a child. What child did you mean, sir?”
Edney sensed the American’s attention settle lightly and briefly on her, but she did not look at him. He cleared his throat. Edney was surprised to find herself hoping that he would answer the question directly, as in “Your dead daughter, sir.” Suddenly she wanted all the surfaces gone, wanted her truth to be the only one. It saddened her that not even her own husband was prepared to stand at her side on that painful, clarifying ground.
But Ambrose Richardson gracefully deflected the question. “My sincere apologies. I realize that I’ve yet to accompany you on your rounds of the cannery. Perhaps you’re free now? It’s a fine day and a walk would be most satisfying.”
Thomas’s silence spread thickly through the air. His eyes blinked like an owl’s but did not appear to take anything in. Edney might even have felt sorry for him, had there not been a kind of savagery in his confusion. But once she had regarded his coiled strength as comforting, a protection against so many dangers. If that same strength seemed dangerous now, she understood that that was as much a result of her own fragility as of any change in him. In truth, he had not changed; the death had not changed him, and therein lay the great danger.
The seconds dragged by. Edney almost believed that Thomas was going to dismiss the mention of the cannery and insist upon an answer to his question about the child. It would have been like a cleansing breeze blowing through the stale parlour; the walls would have collapsed and the three of them would have stood in an open relationship to the insistence of death. Instead, to her strange mixture of relief and disappointment, Thomas finally took the bait of commerce. He shifted his hat from one hand to the other and said, almost meekly, “As you wish. The Chinese will be well at work on the cans, and the Indians are making more nets.”
Ambrose Richardson stood. His smile was so broad that it gathered the skin into bunches on his cheeks.
“Excellent. I’ll just retire to my room for a few moments and meet you on the veranda.” He extended his hand to Edney.
She took it, noting the soothing white coolness, which seemed nothing less than an extension of his presence.
“Madam, I thank you again for your most gracious hospitality. Why, I could be treated no better in the finest of Virginia society.”