Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Outside Foxglove, the storm is angry. Rain smacks the house like lashes from a switch, fierce and unrelenting. It feels as if this might finally be the storm that takes our beloved home from us, levels it so there’s no sign Foxglove ever existed. Like the earth has decided to take her back.
Sometimes, I don’t think that would be so bad.
The sound is all-consuming. At times, it drowns out all else—my own heartbeat included.
When it calms, even for a second, I hear him. His steps are heavy, as if he owns the earth as well as this house. As well as me.
I can chart his path as the boards creak.
He moves from the bedroom to the parlor.
Then, always, the slow drag of boots toward the window.
He doesn’t like storms either, but that’s not why he waits by the window.
He does it on clear nights, too. As if he’s watching for someone. As though someone might be coming.
Each night, I wait as he does, for someone to come. To save me.
No one ever does.
Every night, I listen, and he paces. I breathe, and he lives. I survive down here, while he enjoys himself above me—in the home built by my blood, the house meant for me.
I rot down here, feet bare, skin and dress stained brown from too long in the dirt. The moisture seeps into my body from the soles of my feet, like the sadness, the loneliness, might take root.
To pass the time, I’ve scratched shapes into the soft dirt with sticks and stones, created games with myself to keep the madness from creeping in.
I’ve traced my handprint as if to say I am here, and scratched stars into the dust, pictures I half remember from books Mama used to read to us by firelight.
As quickly as I draw them, my wild footprints wipe them away during the times when I can’t seem to do anything but walk. Like my bones don’t realize I’m not free. As though they believe I can move enough to get us out of here.
I can’t, though I should be able to. It’s Foxglove’s purpose, after all.
My ancestors prepared for exactly this. They created avenues for me to escape—built tunnels that helped my mother, my sister, and me flee when I was just a young girl.
Now, our cellar’s walls are lined with whiskey barrels, filled to the brim.
Try as I might, I can’t budge them an inch.
I’ve tried to drain them, to break the boards and pry them away. Such efforts only result in bloody fingers and slashed hopes. He wouldn’t dare leave tools that might help me.
He doesn’t even realize what he’s done, placing the barrels down here. Maybe that’s what hurts the most. If it weren’t for the whiskey, I would be long gone by now.
Though, if it weren’t for the whiskey, maybe I’d not have been locked down here in the first place. My husband was not a cruel man when I met him, nor when I married him.
It was not until we lost our first child, still in my womb, that he changed.
That he became cruel. After our second child was delivered stillborn, he took to distilling his own whiskey, the pints in the village no longer enough to quell his grief.
And when the blood came again, warning of what would be the third loss, he forced me down here.
Perhaps he thinks it is my fault somehow, that I wished for this, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.
My face aches from the bruises still healing after our last visit, and the wounds itch relentlessly.
I hate that it heals, strange as it may sound. Like my own body is trying to fix what he broke, erase it as easily as my drawings in the dirt. When he sees me next, I’ll be good as new once more, a canvas ready for him to bloody.
When it’s late, and he’s gone quiet, I shift from where I’ve been sitting. My dress is soaked and sour with sweat and moisture. With the stench of fear. Of regret.
I creep across the room to the corner where I sleep, hidden from view to give me time to wake before he finds me, should he decide to pay a late-night visit.
It’s the farthest point from the beam of light that seeps through the slats above, the glowing amber from the hearth.
The moonlight that whispers tales of freedom I may never see again.
Each night, I wait for him to sleep, counting the time between footsteps. I wait for the silence to stretch longer and longer still.
Only then do I reach for the loose, sharp stone hidden in the crack of the wall. I pull it out, kneeling next to one of the wooden beams.
There’s just one letter left.
As a child, I grew up with our name carved above the fire, a reminder of from whom we came. Of whom I am. Down here, I’ve missed it. I’ve needed it, the strength of the women who came before me. The strength of my mother.
I press the edge of the stone into the wood, careful and slow. My hand is steady from years of carving soap with Mama.
I hear her voice down here with me each night as I work—it’s the only time she seems to be with me.
Gentle, now. Steady. Not too deep, just enough. Let the shape reveal itself.
And just like she promised when I was a child, the shape does reveal itself eventually, when my arms shake from use, my body nearing sleep.
N.
I lean back, admiring the full thing. WILDE WOMEN.
Not just Wilde any longer. If I ever find freedom again, I vow to take this board and place it somewhere I will see it every day. Somewhere to remind me that I am borne of women who knew of danger, of pain, and weren’t afraid to fight it. Women who fought for me.
Each daughter, each woman born, is just proof of generations of women willing to challenge the norms and live bravely. Willing to endure pain and scrutiny for a future she might never see, for daughters who might one day invoke her name when they need to feel brave, too.
I squeeze my eyes closed, whispering my mother’s name, the names of the women from the stories she’s shared. “Hannah. Hester. Josephine. Elizabeth. Rachel. Serena. Rose. Lyddie.” Then my sister’s name. “Millicent.” My dear Millie, who lives far away. Happy and safe. Who doesn’t know of my troubles.
We are the Wilde women, and Foxglove is ours.
And here’s the proof—carved into the beam. Our name creates a home for me in this dark corner. The shadows keep it safe until I am.
Until we are.
I am not alone.
As I run my finger across the letters, across days and days of work, my hand trembles. Not with fear or even exhaustion, but with something familiar. Something deep and old.
I think of what Mama used to say before the sickness swallowed her whole. Before she took her final breath in the room just above my head. Before my world grew infinitely darker.
“Generations of Wilde women have lived here before you, my darlings.” She held our hands as she told us of them, Millicent and me.
My Millie. “And there’ll be generations who come after, God willing.
This house is ours. And theirs. And if you ever need help, you just ask the walls, whisper to the shadows.
Wilde women live here, Wilde women remain here, and if you believe it, they just might find a way to protect you as they have always protected me. ”
Her words are stitched into my skin, part of my very being. I repeat them in my head often, when the thunder is too loud, when his temper is the worst. When I feel the most dreadfully alone.
I whisper them under my breath, as if they were a spell.
Wilde women live here.
This is our home, not his. Never his.
Never theirs.
He doesn’t know that, but he will. He thinks I am broken. Dirty as the floor I live on. There are times when I believe it, too.
But then I hear them. The whispers of my mother. Of hers, though I never knew her voice. And when they come to me in those dark moments, I remember.
I remember how the firelight looked in her eyes.
How she loved me. I remember how her voice could warm a room, make everything better.
I remember the night we ran, how we stayed in the orchard until the bad man was gone.
I remember how she held us, that night and others, and told us the blood in our veins runs deep.
Strong as the current in the river and wide as the roots of the oldest trees.
It’s in those quiet moments I remember that I am a Wilde woman.
And so long as Foxglove stands, I am never alone.