The Legacy of Eden. Nelle Davy

actually think of you, something—be it the morals of church or their love of community—holds them in check. So to that end, despite the contempt they felt for her, people still nodded at my grandmother when they passed her in the street though their lips were pursed and they slid their eyes from hers. People still responded to her questions and doomed attempts at polite conversation, though as minimally as they could legitimately get away with. She always knew that once she passed them they would stare at each other and in low voices berate her and everything about her, starting from the day she showed up at her uncle’s house in a pinafore dress accompanied by a feckless mother.

      But for the first time in her life she didn’t care. She didn’t care when they noticed her stomach grow and their eyebrows lifted into crescents of surprise and then lowered in disapproval. She didn’t care when her family refused to speak to or acknowledge her (the only people in the town who did so). She didn’t even care when people pointedly mentioned Lou within earshot. None of it mattered; none of it could touch her, because for the first time in her life she was happy. Truly, unadulteratedly happy. She sang to her belly, she did her chores, and while her husband worked in the fields, she imagined the Aurelia I would come to know and live on, the farm we would love and live for; the home we would die and sin for.

      Meanwhile Piper despaired.

      Her brother’s affair with the doctor’s wife and their marriage had upset her greatly. As long as she would live, she would remember the night Lavinia came to the farm with Cal. Piper had sat at the kitchen table in her dressing gown, waiting anxiously for her brother to return. He had been gone for hours with no indication of where he was or when he would be back and with everything that had gone on in the past few weeks, the uncertainty made her nervous. So she waited up for him after she had put Julia to bed, watching the sunlight outside eventually grow dim and vanish. When she finally heard her brother’s footstep in the hall at around ten o’clock, she leapt up and ran out to see him, but when she saw the doctor’s wife standing behind him holding her suitcase, she took one look at the both of them and slapped her brother so hard across the face, the sound made my grandmother jump against a small rosewood table by the door and topple the flowers in their vase, so that the water spilled across the surface and dripped down onto the floor.

      “For God’s sake, Cal,” Piper spat, “hasn’t this family enough to contend with?”

      Cal rubbed his face gently, massaging the blood back into his cheek.

      “It’s done, Piper.”

      Piper looked at my grandmother, who peered at her uncertainly from behind Cal, and curled her lip in distaste.

      “Anne-Marie Parks?” she asked, her eyes narrowed to slits. She assessed my grandmother in one long, contemptuous look.

      “It’s Lavinia,” my grandmother corrected.

      “What?”

      “She’s coming to live here, Piper—she’s going to be my wife.” Cal looked down at his sister, who was staring at him in shocked horror.

      “Her? She’s married, to a doctor, to our town’s doctor. For the love of God, do you know what people will say?” Piper screeched.

      “Hush,” said Cal, looking up at the stairs, “you’ll wake the girl.”

      “You need someone who can be a good, faithful wife,” she spat at my grandmother. “Someone who knows a thing or two about farming, someone who will be up with you from sunup to sundown. Not some prissy town maid whose only function is shopping and ordering linen from a catalogue.”

      Cal took a step toward his sister.

      “You just watch what you—” But then he stopped, because my grandmother had already moved away from him. She came to stand before Piper, her eyes burning a hole in Piper’s face so that my great-aunt leaned her head back and blinked. Then my grandmother stalked past her and went into the kitchen. She began to search through the drawers, opening and closing them, while Cal and Piper stood in the doorway, openmouthed.

      When she took out the long kitchen knife and held it up so the light shone on the blade, Cal put his hands up and took a step back, but she was already coming toward them. They sprang away from her as she walked past and opened the door. She went out and stood on the porch and, holding the blade to the soft flesh of her inner arm, she drew the knife across it, so that her blood began to pour from the wound and splatter on the ground.