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Show Moon -119 to insist? She would only be punished in the usual ways: "You exaggerate. You complain." Her mother would say, "You don't have faith." Lee, she knew, was stealing again. Or was it the maids? A twenty gone from her purse. James accusing her of pilfering from his wallet. Caleb came to her, his quiet serious face screwed up like a prune: "Mom, I think Lee took my savings. I saw him coming out of my room, and when he saw me he turned his eyes away. My money's gone." She could see what it cost him to tell her this, he who had so carefully saved his money, the way he groped for words, his green eyes bright with concern for his younger brother. She would not tell James. There was nothing she could tell Caleb except, "Ask for it back." But Caleb shook his head and said, "I can't do that. What if I'm wrong?" They were all of them much too afraid of being wrong. That was their trouble. No one simply believed. She knew she was right about there being something wrong with her. People didn't just fall down for no reason. And there had been that strange time at the cottage after Germany when her whole family had come and no one would speak what was in the air. She could not ask James, not straight out. Besides, the problem wasn't her husband's silence. And her effort to embrace Mary Baker Eddy's teachings had been, perhaps, merely a blind. The truth was simple: she didn't want to know. Knowing would somehow force her to know about other things, like why Joy had become strange and quiet before she flew away from them to art school, her chin high with touching courage. One knowing would lead to another. And what would she do with such knowledge? |