How Dark the Night Read Free Page B

Cutler.”
    â€œCan we see her now?” Diana begged, swiping at tears.
    Prescott nodded. “Soon, Diana. I will see her now, along with your father. But this afternoon, you and Will may go in to her. Please keep your visits brief during the next several days and present cheerful faces. She needs your encouragement. She also needs to rest, so don’t tire her, and she needs to slowly start eating something of substance.”
    â€œYou need have no concerns about that, Doctor,” Caleb pointed out good-naturedly. “Not in this house.”
    Everyone in the room, including Dr. Prescott, understood that Caleb was referring to Edna Stowe, the tireless housekeeper who had devoted most of her adult life in service to the Cutler family and was at that moment upstairs tending to little Thomas Cutler and eight-year-old Zeke Crabtree. Her reputation as a cook and as a woman who brooked no nonsense from those in her charge—and that included every member of the extended Cutler family—was well established in Hingham. And on that positive note the family gathering ended.
    D R . P RESCOTT’S prediction was correct. Katherine Cutler did show rapid improvement. Another week would pass, however, before she judged herself well enough to leave Caleb’s house on Main Street for her own home a quarter mile away on South Street. Richard supported the move wholeheartedly, certain that her return to the house so full of happy memories would expedite her return to health. But the rest of the family and Edna had first to be convinced that it was safe. Although Diana wanted her mother home more than anything, she was concerned that something would go wrong were her mother to be moved prematurely from the room that had become a sanctuary of recovery.
    â€œI am hardly a dish of china that will shatter the moment I stumble,” a frustrated Katherine said one day amid the clatter of opinions and warnings. That outburst settled the matter. The move was made on a day in early October when the lingering summer sun warmed the multicolored splendor of the New England fall.
    It was not a carefree transition from one house to another, however. Katherine’s soul clearly remained troubled even as her body healed, and during the first several weeks in her own home she was able to walk outside to take the air only for brief periods. As out of character as her quicktemper and swings of mood may have been, they were not, according to Dr. Prescott, out of order. Consider, he counseled Richard in particular, the mental and physical suffering that she had endured alone for long months before admitting that she was ill, and the pain of the surgery and its aftermath. It was a cross, he stressed, that few people would have the emotional or physical stamina to bear.
    During that first week and into the second, Richard remained in Hingham, leaving the day-to-day operations of the Boston-based family shipping business to Caleb, the proprietor of Cutler & Sons, and to his son Will, who was being groomed to someday take over the business, together with the family’s 50 percent interest in a considerably larger commercial enterprise administered in alliance with the Endicott family of Boston. On days when Caleb and Will were thus occupied in Boston, and when his wife was at rest, Richard busied himself with correspondence to his son Jamie in the Mediterranean, to the Navy Department in Washington, and to his English cousins John and Robin Cutler, who managed the family-owned sugar plantation on the West Indian island of Barbados. They and their wives were dear friends as well as cousins, and they were most keen to be kept current on Katherine’s recovery.
    On Katherine’s first night back at home, Richard had asked his daughter to stay the night with Will and Adele at their home on Ship Street. He wanted this time alone with her mother, he told Diana, who was quick to understand.
    Supper options that evening had been many.