Chapter Sixty-One

Amalia and Donovan ran to the house, half-expecting to find the entire place on fire. Instead, the smoke was confined to a single spot in the yard, a place that Carina, with the same calm with which she had smashed vases the night before, had cleared of flammable debris so she could build her bonfire. Just as they got close enough to breathe a sigh of relief that the house itself wasn’t the target of her rage, Carina came out the front door, her hair ragged, as if she had sawed it off with a kitchen knife. She was clad in an old party dress of greening black velvet which sagged and bulged in odd places, and in her arms she carried a mass of objects that Amalia and Donovan couldn’t discern from where they stood. With the utter calm of someone on a mission, she dumped everything onto the fire. A toxic-smelling black smoke billowed up and greedy yellow flames consumed the new offerings. Carina went back into the house.

Donovan got to the fire first, and pulled out the first thing he could grab. It was one of her framed animal prints, and he beat out the flames that had been eating at the corner. Amalia stared over his shoulder as fans, scarves and photographs blackened and turned to ash. “Carina!” Of course she got no answer, so while Donovan tried to find something else that could be rescued, Amalia ran up the steps, nearly colliding with her sister in the doorway. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Carina tried to push past. “It's obvious."

“You can’t burn your things. You’ll want them later.”

“No I won’t.” She ducked around her and headed toward the fire.

“I’ll put them in a box. If you still want to burn them a year from now--“

Carina tried to push past Donovan. "Mind your own damn business." Donovan was so startled at her hostility that she managed to get three items into the flames before he and Amalia grabbed her and forced her to drop her ribbons, memory books and paintings.

“You’re going to regret this later,” Amalia said.

Donovan dragged Carina from the fire and together he and Amalia got her into the house while Tasha remained outside to throw dirt onto the embers and salvage what she could. Once they had wrestled her into a chair, Amalia took a hard look at her. Carina’s delicate features were bloated from crying and her fair skin was streaked with soot. The ragged remains of her hair hung in scraggly clumps, hopelessly uneven, and the misshapen dress was a horror. “What have you done to your hair? And what absurd thing is that you're wearing?”

“It was the only black thing I could find.”

“You never wore black when anyone else died. Neither of us did.”

“This is different.”

“We're going to get you into some sensible clothes. Have you eaten?”

“I’m not hungry.”

Amalia stifled a groan of frustration and jerked her sister to her feet. “That’s no excuse.” She glanced at Donovan. “Fix a plate for her, would you?” She pulled Carina down the hallway, noting in passing that it had been denuded of family portraits. “If you touched anything of mine, I’ll kill you.”

When they got to the door of the bedroom, Carina balked.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m not going in there any more.”

Amalia peeked inside. It was now almost as bare as her own room had been before she gave it to the children. “You would’ve gone in there a minute ago to burn what little is left, so there’s no reason not to go in now.”

Still, Carina refused to go inside, so Amalia deposited her in the children’s room with a warning not to go anywhere. Then she went back to Carina’s bedroom and opened the closet. It was empty. Unable to believe what she was seeing, she stood for a moment in shock. She pulled open the dresser drawers. Also empty. She ran back to Carina, who was sitting on the edge of Will’s bed in a daze. “What have you done with your clothes?"

“I burned them.”

Amalia looked at her in stunned amazement. “What do you think you’re going to wear?”

“I’m not wearing blue ever again. It was his color.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. You have to wear something. You can’t go around in that.” She stormed down the hall to the room she shared with Donovan and returned with one of her own shirts and pair of sturdy canvas work pants. “Put these on.”

Carina shook her head.

“What’s the problem? They’re not blue, they’re brown.”

“I’m only going to wear black.”

Amalia struggled with an urge to throttle her. “I can’t deal with this,” she said, and stomped out.

* * *

Donovan found Carina no more tractable on the subject of food. Like a stubborn child, she sat looking straight ahead, refusing to open her mouth to so much as speak. Unlike Amalia, he didn’t get angry. He merely left the plate on a nightstand and went into the kitchen. "I guess she’ll eat when she gets hungry."

“This is no way for a grown woman to act. She’ll make herself sick.”

“We can manage the work without her.”

“Not if one of us goes to Jonasville.”

Donovan considered. “She probably just needs a few days.”

“We don’t have a few days.”

He took Amalia’s hand. “It’ll be all right. She’s gotten through all the other times okay.”

Amalia pulled away and paced the linoleum. “No, she hasn’t. That’s what scares me. She hasn’t gotten through anything else before; she simply denied it. She built up this fairy tale that her handsome and intelligent husband would one day return and make everything right. And now...“

“She’s dealing with reality for the first time,” Donovan finished for her.

“I shouldn’t have let her do it. I knew this had to happen someday. Even if he had come home, it wouldn’t have been what she thought. They barely knew each other when they married, and he’s been gone so long...”

“But it would’ve been a little easier if he had come back.”

“I was weak and selfish. It was easier to let her be happy while I indulged my bitchy ways.”

Donovan encircled her in his arms. “Don’t talk like that, okay? You did what you had to do, and so did she.”

“But I’m older than her. I promised Mother I’d take care of her.”

Donovan sat her at the table and brought her a cup of chamomile tea from a pot that had been steeping for Carina. “Take care of her, then.” He sat across from her. “She wouldn’t have listened before now, anyway.”

Amalia watched the steam rising off her cup. “Tomorrow morning I’ll send Will to find someone to go with me to Jonasville.”

“Fine,” he said, in a tone that suggested it wasn't fine at all. He stood up, looking tired and strangely old as he walked toward the kitchen door. “I’ll bring in those last two rows of hay and see what I can do to help Will wrap things up in the chili field.”

Amalia set down her cup. “I’ll come, too.”

“No. Let me be a man and do something for once, okay?”

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