The widow's war by Sally Gunning

the meager fireplace ash around their stems, the crows now encouraged to come back and discuss among themselves their plans for their forthcoming dinner. As Lyddie worked she thought about Mehitable’s note. I don’t know why you have done this thing, but as you have chosen to do it… But when had Lyddie ever chosen? What had she ever chosen?
    Well, she had chosen Edward. She’d been heavily courted by a second cousin from Truro, who had taken the eight-hour journey on horseback twice each month, but Edward had caught her up on her way to meeting one day, handed her a chestnut burr, and said, “Best keep this near you. ’Tis good for putting on chairs to fend off idiot suitors.”
    “I’ve no idiot suitors,” Lyddie had snapped back.
    “Then you must be one yourself, for he’s the surest idiot on earth. No brain, no wit, no anything but chin. Are you fond of chins, then?” And he jutted out his own. It was the kind of chin that finished off the face without a great deal of fanfare, but all through meeting, whenever Lyddie had snuck a look at him, Edward Berry had pushed his chin in the air.
    So she had chosen Edward.
    Lyddie dusted the garden dirt from her clothes and went inside. The house had cooled, and she thought with relief of the bed linens that had come with the children. She ate some bread, now down to the heel, and drank some water, made up the bed and climbed into it, but again lay sleepless, this time thinking about the children. She had barely come to know them, and now, she imagined, she would know them no better. She might see them at meeting or around town, watching from a distance as Bethiah took on the look of a consumptive and Nate went off to Harvard College; Jane would grow lovelier every day until she married and had her own children, and from there her beauty would unravel as quickly as it had come on. And Mehitable? Mehitable would bear and lose her own children, of course, any number of them, if she survived to do it. Lyddie’s chest tightened at the thought of Mehitable in childbed until the very tightness wore her out and she dozed off. She slept and woke, slept and woke, slept and woke, till dawn, but with light came some thought with purpose. She must have food; that was first on the list. And she must return Rebecca Cowett’s basket with a proper thanks. And thinking of the two together, she thought she might be able to accomplish both things with one visit.

     

    The trees had leafed around the Indian’s house and the interior had grown dim; Rebecca Cowett’s hair lay in a long, shining braid downher back; Lyddie felt little of that former sense of an Englishman’s home, and her unease held her back—Rebecca Cowett was forced to urge her forward into the room in order to shut the door. She led Lyddie to the table, dropping into the nearest chair and waving Lyddie to the other. Lyddie had by now bent her mind to getting away as quickly as she could; she set the basket on the table but didn’t sit down.
    “I came to return your basket,” she said, “and to say the thanks I hurried through so rudely yesterday. You were most kind, Mrs. Cowett.”
    Rebecca Cowett dipped her head but remained silent, watching Lyddie, as her husband had watched Lyddie. What did these people hope to find with all this watching, wondered Lyddie, the color of her skin on the inside? Lyddie pushed into her pocket and pulled out the buttons Rebecca Cowett had admired the day before. “You’re in need of buttons for a husband’s jacket and I am not,” she said. “I am, however, in need of flour and butter and yeast and—” She stopped there. The dozen jacket buttons had cost her five shillings, but there were now only eight buttons left. She might fairly ask for a bushel of Indian meal and a pound of butter and her yeast, but not a thing beyond.
    The Indian held out her hand and fingered the buttons. “May I ask…are you at odds with your family, Widow Berry?”
    No, you may not ask. The meager