Free The Island of Doves by Kelly O'Connor McNees Page A

her labor.
    The gesture made Magdelaine wonder if her son knew her at all. If he did, he would know that she had no use for a big house, with bone china and feather beds. She slept well in her cabin at the sugar camp but even better in the tent she had traveled with for two decades along the fur trade route in the Michigan territory, and slept best of all under the open sky when the bats pitched up out of the trees into the pink dusk and her fire roared beside her. She feared nothing then, when everything was within sight and she was alone. Beneath her broadcloth skirt, she kept a long knife tied to her ankle, and she was well known for her ability to draw it with the speed of a hawk and plunge it wherever she had to: into the belly of a hungry wolf, confused and nosing around her camp; into the chest of a man who had it coming.
    The lake was quiet this evening, keeping its secrets to itself. Ani stood at attention in the bow of the canoe as she paddled, his muzzle following the arcs of the diving gulls. Evenings like these were rare, now that steamboats from the East could travel to this region, fueled by wood cut along the way from the dense forests. Every few days one of the vessels slid into Mackinac’s harbor and cast its enormous shadow on the beach, where Odawa families still came and went with the seasons, building their lodges at the water’s edge.
    They came to collect “gifts” to compensate them for the lands in Upper and Lower Michigan they had agreed to give up to the American government. Meanwhile, the French families, some mixed with Odawa blood back many generations, stayed all year in small cabins. The newest arrivals to the island were Presbyterians from the East, who kept cows and chickens and well-manicured gardens around their wood-frame houses. The old and the new—birch-bark canoe and hulking steamboat, Indian lodge and farmhouse porch—sat alongside one another, showing how much had changed on the island in her lifetime.
    Magdelaine was not opposed to progress. She herself had taken a steamboat to Detroit and was enchanted by the speed and comfort of the journey. But she missed the quiet of old Mackinac, and she suspected Ani did too. The dog glanced back at her and the sun glinted off the beads of water in his wiry fur. He dropped his tongue, a request, and she pulled one of the fish from the net and tossed it to his end of the canoe.
    She approached the harbor and fought to keep her eyes on the shoreline. Magdelaine had argued against the house until she could see that her son would not back down. Then she relented, asking only that he show restraint and remember that what she loved most in the world was the island itself, its bluffs like cresting waves, the craggy limestone façades crowned with lush green cedar. Magdelaine wanted to die on this island, but out in the open air—not choking in a bed with velvet curtains.
    Ani shifted back and forth on his paws, eager to run to his pen and reunite with his brothers. Something white and hulking loomed up on the shore, and it filled Magdelaine with dread as she dragged her canoe out of the shallow water and up onto dry sand. Her thoughts cast about, trying to distract her from the matter at hand. There was plenty to do on the island now that spring was here, and of course she was eager to look for the mail and see whether she had received another letter from Father Adler.
    It had been months since she had had any word from him, a year since the unfortunate business with the second Miss Dove.
Dear Madame Fonteneau
, his letter from Charlestown, Massachusetts, had said when he wrote to her for the first time five years ago.
The church has become aware of your grace and devotion, of your good works and service. It is with those traits in mind that I must call on you for help. I want to know whether you might consider offering refuge to a young woman who must escape a troubled situation . . .
    Magdelaine was chilled to the bone, her hands numb,