The Signature of All Things

ask it: “What secrets?”
    “Why do you not ask Prudence yourself?” Hanneke replied.
    Now the housekeeper was being intentionally coy, Alma felt, and she could not endure it. “I cannot command you to tell me anything, Hanneke,” Alma said, switching over to English. She was too irritated now to speak in the old, familiar Dutch. “Your secrets belong to you, if you choose to keep them. But I do command you to cease toying with me. If you have information about this family that you believe I should know, then I wish you would reveal it. But if your sport is merely to sit here and mock my ignorance—my ignorance of what, I cannot possibly know—then I regret coming to speak to you today at all. I face important decisions about everyone in this household, and I deeply grieve my father’s passing. I carry much responsibility now. I do not have the time or the fortitude to play guessing games with you.”
    Hanneke looked at Alma carefully, squinting a bit. At the end of Alma’s speech she nodded, as though she approved the tone and tenor of Alma’s words.
    “Very well, then,” Hanneke said. “Did you ever ask yourself why Prudence married Arthur Dixon?”
    “Stop speaking in puzzles, Hanneke,” Alma snapped. “I warn you, I cannot bear it today.”
    “I am not speaking in puzzles, child. I am trying to tell you something. Ask yourself—did you ever wonder at that marriage?”
    “Of course I did. Who would marry Arthur Dixon?”
    “Who, indeed? Do you think Prudence ever loved her tutor? You saw them together for years, when he lived here and was teaching both of you. Did you ever observe any sign of love from her to him?”
    Alma thought back. “No,” she admitted.
    “Because she did not love him. She loved another, and always had. Alma, your sister loved George Hawkes.”
    “George Hawkes?” Alma could only repeat the name. She saw the botanical publisher suddenly in her mind—not as he looked today (a worn-out man of sixty years, with a stooped back and an insane wife) but as he had looked thirty years earlier when she herself had loved him (a large and comforting presence, with a shock of brown hair and a smile of shy kindness). “George Hawkes ?” she asked again, most foolishly.
    “Your sister Prudence loved George Hawkes,” Hanneke repeated. “And I tell you something more: George Hawkes loved her in return. I’ll wager she loves him still, and I’ll wager he still loves her, to this very day.”
    This made no sense to Alma. It was as if she were being told that her mother and father were not her real parents, or that her name was not Alma Whittaker, or that she did not live in Philadelphia—as though some great and simple truth were being shaken apart.
    “Why would Prudence have loved George Hawkes?” Alma asked, too baffled to ask a more intelligent question.
    “Because he was kind to her. Do you think, Alma, that it is a gift to be as beautiful as your sister? Do you remember what she looked like at sixteen years old? Do you remember how men stared at her? Old men, young men, married men, workers—all of them. There was not a man who set foot on this property who did not look at your sister as if he wished to purchase her for a night’s entertainment. It had been like that for her since she was a child. Same with her mother, but her mother was weaker, and she did sell herself away. But Prudence was a modest girl, and a good girl. Why do you think your sister never spoke at the table? Do you think it was because she was too foolish to have an opinion on anything? Why do you think she always arranged her face without any expression at all? Do you think it was because she never felt anything? All Prudence ever wished for, Alma, wasnot to be seen. You cannot know what it feels like, to be stared at by men your whole life as though you are standing on an auction block.”
    This Alma could not deny. She most certainly did not know what that felt like.
    Hanneke went on, “George Hawkes was the only man who ever looked at your sister kindly—not as an item, but as a soul. You well know Mr. Hawkes, Alma. Can you not see how a man like that could make a young woman feel safe?”
    By all means she could see that. George Hawkes had always made Alma herself feel safe. Safe and recognized.
    “Did you ever wonder why Mr. Hawkes was always here at White Acre, Alma? Do you think he came by so often in order to see your father?” Hanneke, mercifully, did not add, “Do you think he