Freedom Forever Read Online Free Page B

had been working herself to the edge of exhaustion for weeks now, always the one to offer when there was more water needed for tea or washing, always the first up and feeding the goats, or brushing Beauty, or kneading dough for the day’s bread.
    She pulled herself up and looked out over the orchard, trying to take some sense of joy in the beauty of the day. Winter was losing its grip now, the worst of the snows come and gone, and sometimes the ground was not so hard beneath her feet when she left the house in the mornings. The sunlight warmed ground that hid, Cecelia knew from her life’s experience, the first green shoots of spring—onions and garlic, crocuses, corn. It would not be long until the very first stirrings of summer were felt even in the iron coldness of the winter nights.
    But nothing stirred in her chest. This place was alive with ghosts and no more for Cecelia, memories crowding her until she thought she might scream with them. When she looked at the trees, she heard Solomon telling her how to prune them. When she broke the ice over the water butt, she remembered how he taught her to use the axe before their father would have allowed it. And she remembered how, even from her earliest years, it had always been Solomon and Clara, and Cecelia had hung back, desperate to be noticed and taken into their circle. She should have fought harder for it. That way, she might have more memories of her own, and not snatches of overheard conversation as he confided in Clara.
    She felt a stirring of fear now. She had worked so hard to exhaust herself, thinking it might plunge her into sleepless nights and monotonous days, that she had nothing left to protect herself from memory. And she could not afford to surrender to it now.
    “There you are.”
    Her heart leaping with relief at the distraction, Cecelia turned. Clara looked like a ghost, her blonde hair drawn back in a severe braid and her face pale as death save for the dark circles under her eyes. Her voice was rough with tears shed and unshed, and not for the first time, Cecelia wanted to launch herself into her sister’s arms and sob until the tears let them both go, and sent them to sleep in true peace.
    She knew better than to try. Once, and only once, she had crept into her sister’s room when she heard the sound of muffled sobs, and when they had lain together in the darkness, fingers clasped tightly, Cecelia had listened to the sound of her sister’s grief and felt that she was allowed, at last, to cry. While Clara stroked her hair and whispered choked reassurances, Cecelia had admitted, to the darkness, that she was afraid Solomon was truly gone.
    She did not even have to see Clara’s face to know the change in the room. It was as if the air itself carried the charge of a storm. Clara’s fingers clenched around Cecelia’s so tightly that Cecelia gave a little cry of pain.
    “He is not dead,” she had whispered fiercely into the dark. And Cecelia had fallen all over herself to say of course he was not, until Clara had turned away, cold, to cross her arms over her chest and hunch her shoulders. She would not speak to Cecelia after that, or for days afterwards, until time and tiredness smoothed away the worst of it.
    So instead of crying, or confessing what was in her soul, Cecelia only hefted the bucket. “What do you need?” she asked awkwardly.
    “Mr. Thompson is here to see you,” Clara said simply. “Go up the back stairs, fix your hair. I’ll make him some tea.”
    Mr. Thompson. Wash your face. As if Clara had ever cared about nice words or perfect manners. But she had retreated into etiquette as if it was all that would shield her from the fear that Cecelia knew— knew —ate at her as well.
    Up in her room, she stared at her face long and hard, and tried to make herself smile. She forgot how between every visit, Abraham’s presence a spark of humor in an otherwise humorless world. He would laugh, joke, sometimes bring her a bit of ribbon