Page 91 - Fever 1793

His hand was still on my elbow, warm and friendly. I liked having it there.
“Why don’t I walk you home?” he suggested.
We walked slowly. Step, step, stop and talk. Step, step, stop and talk. His voice had a low, sweet note
in it like a cello, and his smile lit up every shadow. I stopped worrying about being a ninny
“I wanted to jump out the window when I saw you a few weeks ago,” he said. “I thought you were
safely in the country.”
“I was staying with Eliza and her family,” I explained. “The coffeehouse had been broken into by
intruders.”
He lifted my chin. “You look like you need a weeks worth of cakes. Didn’t Eliza feed you?”
“There wasn’t much food for anyone,” I said. “What about you? What did you eat?”
“You know Mr. Peale. He always does things in a unique way. You’ve heard of the collection of
animals he has?”
I nodded. Mr. Peale had opened a natural history museum in his house.
“We ate the specimens he had collected, before they were treated with arsenic and stuffed, of course.” “No! You didn’t!”
“Yes, we did. And I’ll never eat possum again, I promise you,” said Nathaniel. “Disgusting. It was as
much Master Peale’s good humor that kept us going as much as anything.”
He stopped. We were in front of the coffeehouse.
“Some days felt like we were trapped in a nightmare,” he said.
“It’s hard to believe it’s really over,” I said. “It feels so strange, so sudden. Were supposed to go back
to the way we lived before, but everything has changed.”
“The important things haven’t changed at all,” Nathaniel said. He stole an apple from my basket and
took a bite. “I will always snatch apples from your basket, you have my solemn word.”
A carriage turned off High Street and stopped halfway down the block. The door opened and out popped the head of Mrs. Henning, my neighbor, wearing an absurd feathered hat. Her children poured out behind her and rushed the door of their house. It looked like they were returning from nothing more
serious than an afternoons drive in the country.
“Your mother will be home soon,” Nathaniel said confidently. “She’ll chase me off the front porch
and try to marry you to a lawyer.”
“I won’t let her,” I said, standing taller.
Nell squealed in the house and the twins laughed. Nathaniel and I had suddenly run out of things to say. “Well, I should go home,” he mumbled. “I may stop in from time to time. Make sure you’re well.” “That would be nice,” I said.
“Don’t worry. She’ll be home soon.”
I tried to smile. No matter how kind he was, it couldn’t erase the question that had haunted me all
afternoon.
What if she didn’t come home at all?