Free Fitcher's Brides by Gregory Frost Page B

prophecies.” “The Reverend Fitcher sits upon the Throne below Jesus Himself, from where he can look straight into your soul.” “He will gather the good and bring them straight into Heaven.”
    Mr. Charter, already fully lubricated with the elixir of the afterlife, succumbed to the message immediately. Had that been the extent of his devotion, the girls might have accepted his spiritual transmission. But Papa had succumbed to the messenger as well as the message. Lavinia was the bridge between worlds for him: Her presence kept him in sight of eventual reunion. His daughters suspected her of evil powers, or casting a spell over his will, but they had no way to persuade him of this, no word the equal of hers, no promise that could soothe his soul—especially if they were right. They had known him to be a gentle man; in Lavinia’s shadow, his inherent irresolution became apparent.
    Their mother’s piano served as final proof. Lavinia insisted it was too large for the parlor. She wanted to put other furniture in there. Over the girls’ protests, Mr. Charter had done what they would never have believed him capable of—he had sold the piano. Watching the men haul it away had been like watching their mother’s coffin carted to the cemetery a second time.
    Thereafter they were allied against their stepmother. Kate and Vern learned quickly to mask their opinions and to protect Amy from direct interrogation because she was helpless when it came to dissembling. Invariably Papa now sided with Lavinia against them in all matters. He, who had never punished them, could now be coerced by Lavinia even to draw his belt.
    Whenever Reverend Fitcher preached within a few days’ journey, Mr. Charter left the girls in Vern’s care to travel with his new wife to hear the prophet’s words. Vern had accepted maternal duties as soon as her mother had fallen ill, and watching out for her sisters was no hardship; but now it felt provisional.
    When her father returned, he was always charged with new fervor, new sureness of the world’s peril. He immersed them in his belief, quoting from Reverend Fitcher’s sermons or parroting the same biblical passages, crying, “God says I am with you always to the end of the world!” as if by exercising his own enthusiasm, he might persuade the girls. Rather than take them to see Reverend Fitcher, it was as if they were to be their father’s flock, Lavinia’s flock. As if they were being saved for some future event. Meanwhile, Lavinia wrested the role of mother back from Vern, usually by giving her orders, assigning her some task to reestablish the household hierarchy. Of all the sisters, she surely hated the woman the most. Kate merely considered herself the least persuaded of the trio.
    Thus, as she followed her father up the road, she focused upon the world around her, and only paid enough attention to his preaching to know when to nod or murmur a response. There were tulip poplars, elms, and chestnut trees, bare as yet but sure to blossom. She imagined collecting the chestnuts come winter and roasting them over the kitchen hearth, as the family had done in Boston. Amy used to shriek each time one popped, certain, though it had never happened, that it was going to explode and do her harm.
    Kate saw the white straight trunks of beech trees, and the hawthorn, dogwood, thimbleberries, and staghorn sumacs. It would be a beautiful place soon, and if it was not Boston, at least it offered its natural lushness as recompense.
    They approached the house without passing anyone on the Gorge Road, and it was surely an illusion that tricked Kate’s eye, for as she looked ahead at the turnpike, she thought she saw the pole slowly lowering onto the posts as if it had been fully raised only moments before. There was no sign of Amy, no one about at all, and she checked her father to see if he was seeing what she saw. He continued to rail against