Free The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran

better, isn’t it?”
    Henry sat up, groggy, dream-addled. “What brings you?”
    “You asked for me,” said Bell, looking wounded. “I came when I heard.”
    “I did, didn’t I? Sorry. Thank you.”
    Bell smiled a sad smile. “Birds of a feather now, aren’t we?”
    Bell wore black gloves and a mourning armband; he carried Meg’s mother’s ginger jar as one would a baby, in the crook of his arm. He offered it now. “Thought you might like a memento of happier times.”
    Henry took the lidded jar, a grinding fear clenching his bowels.
    “Not a crack, not a singe,” said Bell. “Queer what a fire will leave behind.”
    “Is there news?”
    Bell shook his head, soft cigar ash falling, breaking on the white sheet. “They’ve gone to a far better place, my friend.”
    A vision of his children laid out in death swamped him. Henry’s pained cry roused the sleeping patient in the next bed. “They’ve been found?”
    Bell put a finger to his lips. “Hush now, Oades. Calm yourself. No, they haven’t been found. But where the tree is felled that’s where the chippings are.”
    “Jesus Lord,” said Henry. “What does that mean?”
    “Do you recall the poor Hagstrom family?”
    “No,” said Henry. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”
    “Six or seven years ago,” Bell went on. “There was a spate of snatchings around the same time. The Hagstrom children, eight little towheaded angels, were all the talk. The old grandfather looked for years. Then one fine day he put his rifle to his mouth and pulled the trigger with his toe.” Bell bent close. Early as it was, he smelled of gin.
    “I didn’t quit, Mr. Oades. The others gave up. Not I. I covered miles of ground in every direction.” He straightened, dropping his soggy cigar into the beaker of cold tea. “If they were let go alive I’d have found them.”
    “It’s only been two weeks,” said Henry.
    “It’s been nearly four, sir.”
    “It cannot possibly be.” In his mind Henry attempted to line up the days and prove Bell wrong, but it was no use. Some days stood painfully sharp in his memory; others he couldn’t begin to account for. “I’ll pay you to go out again.”
    “You’d be wasting your money,” said Bell. “You’ll want to make peace with it is my advice. The sooner you do the better off you’ll be.”
    Henry begged. “Please, sir.” His good leg cramped. “They cannot all be gone. I refuse to believe it.”
    Bell regarded him with flat pity. He was clearly finished. He’d dispatched his family to heaven and now no doubt wished only to dispatch himself to the nearest public house.
    “I still hear my wife!” Henry often felt her beside him, the pressure of her warm hip against his. “She speaks to me day and night.”
    “Mrs. Oades was your first?”
    “She is,” said Henry.
    Bell nodded. “She’ll do more than speak to you. Her face will show itself when you least expect it. You’ll swear it’s her down at the docks. She’ll come to you at all hours, shed of her nightie. That’s the worst. There’ll be times you’ll want to take a working gun to your own head and have it over with. That’s how it was with Libby, my first. Mim’s my second. Childbed fever took Libby. The baby didn’t stand a chance with the top of his wee head missing.” Bell’s cut lip pulsed; his red-rimmed eyes puddled. “I was given a look. A boy.”
    John came to mind, fat and howling, a perfect lusty lad, missing nothing.
    “I’m truly sorry for your loss, Mr. Bell.”
    “I’m sorry for yours,” said Bell, blinking back tears. “You’ll learn to live with it after a while. It’s a promise, Oades. You’ll learn to tolerate. You’ll have no choice.”
    The amputee two beds away moaned, as if grieving for the baby with a missing head. The entire ward seemed to join in at once, caterwauling off-key. Behind the cacophony Meg soothed, whispered. There now, sweetheart. Rest a bit. You’ll be all right.
    Henry set the