Kit's Law by Donna Morrissey

narrow hallway, and the small room at the back that served as Nan’s closet. Everything was clean—the wooden bin, criss-crossed with a thousand cuts from a thousand diced carrots and potatoes, and the wood bleached from a thousand scrubbings; a sanded plank nailed across the wall over the bin served as a shelf for the dishes; the cupboards below, hidden behind a curtain of red cotton that Nan hemmed and hung to keep out the dirt.
    The tops of the stove were polished black, and its white enamel sides were gleaming, except where pieces of the enamel was chipped, showing the black underneath. We didn’t have curtains in the kitchen, didn’t need them. Nobody came around our place, and Nan liked looking down over the gully onto the sea from her rocker. The blue-and-pink flowery canvas covering the floor was scuffed bare where Nan always stood by the bin, and in front of her rocker, and the spot in front of the doorway leading down the hall. Time enough to get new, Nan always said, when the tar gluing it down starts gluing your socks down as well.
    The way the house leaned to one side bothered her. You couldn’t drop a ball of yarn around your ankles without it rolling out of sight, she’d say. And she always complained, with a wink to Aunt Drucie, about how she got a stitch in her side sometimes, just by walking up the hall from the closet.
    Still, her crocheted angel with the red halo hanging on the wall over the daybed was pretty. And her wandering Jew lit up the window by the door. Too, I liked the multicoloured throw that she had knitted out of a hundred different pieces of leftover wool, and laid across the daybed that me and May Eveleigh was now sitting on. I fingered a corner of the soft wool as May cleared her throat, readying to speak.
    “Drucie’s sleepin’ sickness,” she said, snapping everyone’s attention onto her, “it seems to be catchin’ up with her a lot, these days. There’s some of us that’s not convinced that she can handle the mother properly, even if she was able to stay awake, most times. We’re concerned about the girl.”
    “Thank you, May,” Doctor Hodgins said, rubbing at his chin and sounding deeply touched. “But you, more than anyone, know the outporters take care of their own. Kit and her mother will be fine.”
    “Drucie doesn’t seem all that fit herself, these days,” Mrs. Ropson spoke up, the little pockets of fat on the side of her mouth jiggling as she leaned forward and laid her cup on the corner of the table. “Certainly the mother will need a stronger hand than hers.” She forced a chirpy little laugh and sat back. “Course it’s hard for me to say anything, seeing’s how hard Lizzy judged me the last time I tried to do my Christian duty by her. But it’s the girl’s—ah, Kit’s—interest that concerns me and the reverend. That’s why he wanted me to come out here today, even though my knee is swelled with arthritis again, to make sure Drucie can handle what we’ve put on her.”
    “Duty is a fine thing and I’m sure the good Lord sees straight through to your souls,” Doctor Hodgins said much too quickly. “However, Drucie has been a friend of Lizzy’s all her life and has a way with Josie. I don’t anticipate any trouble.”
    There was a studied silence. Then Mrs. Ropson cleared her throat.
    “It’s not always easy putting the well-being of the congregation over your own, Doctor,” she said with a touch of scorn. “Duty to one side, there are concerns here that affect others in the community as well.” She flicked her glance to May, like one passing over the reins of a horse.
    “Well, yes,” May said, shifting further to the edge of the daybed. “About Josie and … her ways. Well, now that Lizzy’s gone, things might get out of hand … and be a bad influence on Kit.”
    “We can trust to Lizzy’s upbringing that Kit is well aware of her mother’s ways ,” Doctor Hodgins replied sharply. “And that she’s well adapted to dealing