One of Us Buried by Johanna Craven (year 2 reading books TXT) 📕

I smiled. “I do. Yes.”

Her clothes were grimy and torn, her wet hair hanging loose on her shoulders. Had she been sleeping on the streets since I’d found her all those weeks ago?

“Where have you been?” I asked.

She chewed her lip, avoiding my eyes. “Just about.”

I nodded. Wherever she’d been, whoever she’d been with, it didn’t matter. I was just glad she was here now. I put a hand to her shoulder, ushering her inside. “Come on. Come and get yourself dry.”

I led her and Lottie into the alley behind the tavern and used my key to unlock the back door. I ushered them up the stairs to my room.

As Kate hurried inside, Lottie reached for my arm, holding me back. “Who is she?”

I kept my voice low. “She’s Maggie’s daughter. I found her in the street.”

Something flickered behind Lottie’s eyes. “Does she know what happened to her mother?”

I shook my head. Kate turned back to us and I forced a smile, stepping inside and locking the door. I had no thought of where we would all sleep in my little snuff box of a room.

I went to the table by the bedside and lit the lamp. Lottie took the baby’s basket from me and laid Willie inside it. She sat it on the floor and knelt beside him. I took my cloak from the hook beside the door and tucked it around the baby.

“He’s sleeping at least,” I said. “That’s good. We can take him to the physician tomorrow.”

Lottie gave an incredulous laugh. “You’ve no idea, do you, Nell? Two years in this place and you’ve not learned a thing. There’s no physician who’ll look at him once they learn he belongs to a factory lass.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “It can’t be.”

Lottie looked at me witheringly, shaking her head. A reminder that my time at the spinning wheels had not washed away all my naivety.

She chewed her thumbnail. “He needs his father. Patrick would know what to do.”

I glared at her. She couldn’t speak his name. Not in front of Maggie’s daughter.

Kate was hovering at the foot of the bed, chewing her hair and peering down at the baby.

“Is he going to die?” she asked.

“Of course not.” I ushered her away from Willie’s basket.

Lottie let out her breath. “I see she’s got the same gift with words as her mother.”

My stomach plunged. Kate’s lips parted, and she looked up at me with wide eyes.

“Take off your dress and hang it up,” I said hurriedly. “You’ll catch a chill.”

She slid her smock over her head, not taking her eyes off mine. “Do you know my mother?”

I glared at Lottie, willing her to speak. But she was kneeling over Willie with her head down, refusing to meet my eyes. Making it clear Kate was my responsibility. The girl was a fragile figure in her thin wet shift, with skeletal white arms and a face dwarfed by wild, wet curls.

“Your mother is dead, Kate,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I clenched my fist behind my back, trying to force away my anger at Lottie. A drop of water slid from the end of my hair and beaded on the floorboards.

Kate’s mouth opened, then closed. She perched on the bottom of the bed, her feet dangling inches from the floor. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

I sat beside her, my wet skirts tangling around my legs. “Lottie and I both knew her. At the factory in Parramatta.” I opened my mouth to say more, but could find few words. My most vivid memories of Maggie were of her lying lifeless on the side of the road. But Kate was looking up at me, expectant. I knew I had to give her more. “She was a kind woman,” I managed. “She always spoke her mind. And she loved you very much.”

I remembered the tremor in Maggie’s voice when she’d spoken of the Orphan School. I had no doubt her head had been full of her daughter at the time.

Kate began to gnaw on her thumbnail. I waited for her reaction. Tears? Anger? There was none of that. Just a silent acceptance. I put my hand to her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Come on. We ought to sleep. If we squeeze up we can all fit.” I looked over at Lottie. She was sitting on her knees with her back to me, a protective hand on the edge of Willie’s basket.

“Lottie,” I said, “there’s room for you on the bed.” In spite of my anger, I hated the thought of her spending yet another night on the floor.

“There’s no room for three,” she said. “I’ll stay here.” The divide that had sprung up between us felt almost a physical thing.

Kate stayed planted on the edge of the bed, staring into the lamp. “How did she die?” she asked suddenly.

I hesitated. Was I to lie? Cobble together some more manageable version of the truth?

“She stopped breathing,” I said finally. I stared at Lottie, willing her to turn around. Willing her to face the reality of who her husband was. What good would it do her; this blind hope that one day Owen would take her back? That impossible dream of having a family. I understood her need for security, of course. But surely she would do better if she let her faith in Owen die.

Kate stared at me with her mother’s deep-set blue eyes. “What do you mean she stopped breathing? How?” I knew she’d spent too much time on the street for my all-too-gentle truths.

And I was thinking of Lottie and Owen when I said, “Someone killed her.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Killed her?” Kate repeated. “Who killed her? Why?”

“She was killed by the savages,” Lottie said, before I