But where was Mama now? And Papa for that matter?

“Can ya do something with your mother, Serena?” Her father poked his head in at the window. He stood out on the porch, waving his arms.

Serena rushed to his side. “What is it?”

Francis Nurse, stooped with age and a head shorter than Serena, nodded in the direction of the three oaks. “Look at her. Fool woman.”

Serena watched her mother walking amid the snow-covered ground where outdoor tables for picnics stood upended against the oaks. While she had a homespun shawl pinned over her shoulders, Rebecca wore a thin sack-cloth dress, socks and shoes. “I don’t understand. What is she doing with that broom?”

“Dusting the snow away. She’s insisting we ready the tables for a meal.”

“What? Now? In this cold? How could you let her, Papa!”

“I tried to stop her! You know how stubborn she is!”

Serena watched her mother, broom in hand, waddling about beneath her three oaks. Her “precious trees” as she called them. The huge oaks adorned their front yard. Rebecca whisked snow from the upturned tables that leaned in against the trunks. Serena leaned into her father and said, “But it’s so cold; it’s only March.”

“Tell her that. I’ve tried.”

“Obviously not hard enough.”

“‘No sitting on cold ground or benches in any month with an R in it’ I told her!”

“Is she out of her head?”

“Stubborn, ornery is what, like I said. Like you, she is.”

Ornery or uncertain, ornery or fearful, Serena wondered. Was her mother afraid if they waited longer for the traditional Easter gathering beneath the oaks that she wouldn’t be on hand? That she would’ve passed on before April or May when the more clement weather prevailed?

Her long illness and convalescence had had the entire family thinking such thoughts, Serena included. But now her mother was putting down the tables, dusting them with broom. “Perhaps you should lend a hand, Father.”

“I thought it’d dissuade her when I refused to help,” Francis said, a year older than Rebecca.

Serena stared a moment at her square-shouldered, short father, his skin as brown the bark on the oaks, a result of years of labor beneath the sun. “Now you’re being stubborn.” Barefoot, Serena rushed to help her mother with the chore.

“Persuade her away from there and back inside,” he shouted after Serena.

“Why’re you still under my roof, child?” Rebecca Nurse asked Serena now alongside her, helping her to bring down a second table to set it upright.

“I’m too tall perhaps? Too thin maybe? Perchance too awkward . . . ”

“Men like women with rumps as soft and round as the bread we bake.”

This made mother and daughter laugh. Then Rebecca added, “I think it’s your mouth, child.”

“But I don’t swear . . . not often.”

“No, but you’ve never learned to hold your tongue. Men can’t abide a woman—”

“—Who talks back! I know, I know.” Serena had heard this now habitual remark so often that it no longer held any hurt. “Little wonder no one will have me, eh, Mother?”

“Indeed. Candlewick.” It was an endearment Rebecca had given Serena when she was a preteen, one that spoke of her thin and sinewy stature then but hardly anymore. She had filled out, her tomboy appearance gone with her curvaceous body.

From beneath her bonnet, Rebecca said,“I sent your brother, Ben, to call everyone here.”

Serena hadn’t heard the nickname, Candlewick, in perhaps six or so years, but here was Mother saying it as if her youngest daughter was still a child and a tomboy at that.

“Men want women who can work a field,” said Serena while taking the broom from her mother’s hand.

“Like a good mule,” joked her mother.

“Work a field by day, deliver sons by night,” Serena said as they swept away snow and ice from the tables they had leveled.

“But you’ve got good teeth and gums! As good as any mule in Salem,” Rebecca joked on.

“First thing Papa looked for when he met you? I’ve heard you say so!”

They laughed so hard snow fell from the leaves overhead.

“Mother!” pleaded Francis from the porch. “Do come in now the tables are dusted, please!”

Serena, her bare toes pinching with cold now, remembered to wipe the sleep from her eyes. “Father worries.”

“Oh, the old fool. Do you think he’d lend a hand? Not so much as a finger!”

“Mother, we’re done here.”

Serena twirled the broom, its bristles gleaming in the morning sun. Neighbors passed by the gate at Ipswich Road, most with bundles of kindling, vegetables, bags of grain, some pushing carts, and all curious at Mother Nurse’s antics in the snow. Most politely waved and shouted their morning greetings. Serena waved for Rebecca who’d remained oblivious of the outsiders. Any who were not family, according to Rebecca’s teachings were suspect and to be considered ‘outsiders’ and quite possibly mischief-makers to boot.

“There’s too much yet to do, Serena,” began her mother. “If we’re to gather the family and bake and cook and set table.”

“Three tables you mean?”

“Yes, enough for the entire clan.”

“Mother, none will come for an outdoor gathering when’s so cold and blustery.” As if to punctuate her words, a chill gust defied the warm sun to swirl about them.

Rebecca placed a hand on Serena’s forearm and looked her in the eye. “You know full well that if I ask it of my brood, they will come.” Calm assurance from both voice and eyes came through. In fact, Serena saw none of the watery, bleariness of her mother’s illness. Instead it’d been replaced by a certainty and a clarity Serena had missed for too long in her mother’s pale blue eyes.

“Have you really sent word round the compound?” asked Francis in the tone of a slap. He’d ventured out to help Rebecca negotiate the stairs.

“Yes. I have.”

“By Benjamin, I suppose.”

“By Bennie, yes.”

“Mother,” interrupted Serena, “you said Joseph too, earlier.”

“Both, yes—I’ve sent both riding off!”

Benjamin remained her baby, youngest of her children; he too lived in the main house, the old Towne home that had belonged to Rebecca’s father. Serena thought Ben conspicuously absent this morning, and now she knew the reason why. Mother had dispatched him to all the surrounding homes filled with little Nurses, little Eastys, little little Cloyses, and little Tarbells—Rebecca’s twenty-seven grandchildren. She meant to have an outdoor gathering with food, drink, children and grandchildren all in one place. A feast, a spring festival.

“We could as well do this indoors, Mother.”

“No, no,” she absently replied. “He told me specifically that it be outside and today. Beneath the new sun.”

“But today is Sunday. Hold . . . wait. Who told you?”

“A voice . . . a voice inside.”

“A voice?”

“All right, my Maker . . . your Maker.”

“Ah-ah . . . I see. But Mother, everyone will be off to church.”

“They’ve been told to forgo Parris’ vile sermons for this one day.”

“How long’ve I told ’em all to do just that?” asked Serena, her features tightening at the mention of Parris’ name. “I heard a rumor that he’s gotten himself an apprentice, oddly, someone named Wakely.”

“Wakely? Be it our lost Jeremiah?”

“No . . . most unlikely.” Serena gave thought again to the possibility—one she had dreamed on since hearing the nasty little rumor. “But if it is Jere Wakely—” Serena gave her broom a strong forward push to punctuate her point—“I’ll, I’ll give him a piece of my mind, I assure you.”

“Whoever the poor man is, he’ll be filled with Parris’ venom soon enough if he’s apprenticed to that man.” Rebecca negotiated the steps with husband on one side and daughter on the other.

Francis replied, “Just galls me to hear that country parson speak.”

“Galls me,” added Serena, “his likening himself and his situation to Christ’s condemnation.”

Rebecca grimaced and shivered with a sudden chill. She clutched her shawl, one that she had knitted during her convalescence, tighter to her. “My sisters tell me he’s now likening his own flock to the money changers and Pilate and swine.”

“I told those sisters of yours to mind what they say and to not to pester your mind with such nonsense as goes on in the village meetinghouse!” Francis erupted.

“No, instead you want to bring me all the nonsensical news sweetened and strained like porridge!” Rebecca laughed as she found her favorite porch rocker. “And if you won’t convey the truth no more, Deacon Nurse—”

He’d plopped into a rocker beside her and instantly defended himself. “Now that’s not true and you know—”

“True enough! Keeping me poor dear old feminine ears from harm…keeping me in the dark!”

“Mother,” interceded Serena.

“So then it will be my faithful sisters—and Serena here! She never sugar-coated a thing in her life.”

“You needn’t be upset by that place,” he promised. “I have it on good authority that our Mr. Parris is not long for Salem.”

“Indeed?” asked Serena, who’d remained standing and towering over her elderly parents.

“I imagine June or July and we’ll have seen the last of the Mr. Parris.”

“So you’ve been to see Mr. Higginson again, have you?” asked Rebecca.”

“I don’t understand the depth of Mr. Parris’ venom toward members of his own congregation,” confessed Serena, pacing the porch, lifting the broom anew and sweeping to quell her restless pacing.

“Why it’s mainly due our withholding his payment.” He searched for a pipe and tobacco in his vest pockets.