Fire Along the Sky by Sara Donati Read Free Book Online

her; it was that, she told Nathaniel, or lose her mind with the wait and worry.
    In a matter of days every fine thing in the house had found its way to the chamber: the best blankets, an embroidered pillow slip normally folded away in tissue, a heavy china washbasin and matching water jug sent all the way from England. A new standing desk had been placed between the windows and a worktable in the center of the room. A bright rag rug covered the plank floor and on a long shelf above the bed a dozen books stood between blocks of cherry wood sanded and polished to gleaming.
    Everyone had come to leave some gift, large or small, for Hannah; clothing and soap and candles, a beaver pelt for the foot of the bed, a pretty rock. A panther skull, scrubbed clean, held down a pile of newspapers from Albany and Manhattan.
    Daniel and Lily had argued for days about the right gift and finally decided on a bottle of ink, a dozen finely sharpened quills, and a new journal sewn from the best paper they could afford. Because, they reminded each other, Hannah always kept careful records of the patients she saw. In the old days her fingers had always been stained with ink.
    In the week between the news of Hannah's coming and her arrival, Lily had imagined the hours she would spend in this room with her sister, but she had found instead that the door was always closed. Now she stood in the middle of Hannah's chamber, and Lily saw what she had only suspected: since she had come home Hannah had not written a word; the quills and ink and paper were untouched. Nor was there any sign of her old journals, the ones she had taken west with her or the ones she must have written over the years. Whether they had been lost or stolen or destroyed only Hannah knew.
    This was another kind of loss, one that Lily had not imagined, and it made her catch her breath and understand finally and clearly what she had been afraid to admit, even to herself: the sister she had missed so fiercely was not home and would never come home, because she did not exist anymore.
    “Space will be very dear,” Lily's mother said behind her. “I cannot put Luke and Simon Ballentyne in the same room with Daniel and Gabriel, and so I must make room for all the young women here. I trust you will not mind sharing with your sister and cousin. No doubt they will keep you awake all night with their talk.”
    Even an hour ago Lily would have been thrilled at this turn of events, but she was suddenly overcome with shame for her own selfishness. Her mother, occupied with the linen in her arms, seemed not to take any note at all.
             
    Hannah's chamber had windows hung with white muslin curtains on two walls: one provided a view of the orchard and beyond that the cliffs; the other looked out over the whole glen and the mountains. Jennet Scott Huntar thought she had never seen a view so beautiful. Mountain upon mountain, fading away into a blue haze on the horizon where the sun made its way toward the other side of the world. The endless forests. Jennet had never been able to grasp the idea until she saw it for herself: a world overwhelmed with trees, and every one of them glowing in the sun and casting shadows like reaching hands.
    “Hannah Bonner,” she said finally. “I waited far too long to come. This is Paradise indeed.”
    “Yes, well,” Hannah said, “it is not without its faults, this Paradise. But I'm glad you're here.”
    She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap, her expression calm and almost happy in the late afternoon light. They had been girls the last time they saw each other and they were women now. Both with tragedies behind them, or losses that were meant to be tragedies. Sometimes Jennet said it out loud:
I am a widow
. But it sounded strange and even silly to her own ears. Her widowhood seemed a plaything, of no real substance, while Hannah's losses had dug themselves deep into the bone.
    Her cousin's face had set in its planes and