“The noon meal,” he said as if to a backward child.
“Lise and Mary Louise have eaten.”
“Is there anything left?” he asked pointedly.
“I don’t know. Beata took it.”
“Took it where?”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
He swore under his breath and went looking for whatever Beata might have put aside for him—or missed hiding. There was nothing. He looked up from his search to see Caroline standing nearby.
“Have you…found Eli?” she asked, not quite meeting his eyes.
“One of the horses and a saddle is missing. Eli had some money put by. I expect he is long gone.”
“Oh,” she said, as if she hadn’t considered that possibility.
When he looked up again, she was putting on her shawl and opening the back door. “Where are you going?”
He saw the rise and fall of her breasts as she took a deep breath before she answered him.
“This—marriage—isn’t going to work. I’m going to ask Avery to let me come home.”
The remark took him completely by surprise, and his temper flared. He had given her the only chance she would ever have for any kind of respectability and she was about to throw it away?
“Avery will not let you come home,” he said bluntly.
“You don’t know that—”
“He made too much of a show among the men of disowning you.”
He walked into the pantry looking again for something Beata might have forgotten to hide. He supposed that the loss of her secret hoard of bread must have convinced her as nothing else could that the rest of them hadn’t suffered enough from her self-imposed absence. Certainly it would be much more difficult to cook and eat without her if no one could find any food. He wondered what terrible thing he had done in his life to deserve Beata. And Eli. And Caroline Holt.
When he came out of the pantry, Caroline was no longer in the room. He leaned over the table to look out the window. She was walking across the field he should have had plowed by now, her gait strong for a few steps then hesitant, as if she were being forced to give in to the pain she still had from Avery’s beating.
Good riddance, he thought. Let her grovel in front of Avery. And when he sent her back again, perhaps she would understand her situation better.
He looked around at a small noise. Both his daughters stood at the bottom of the stairs.
“Papa?” Lise said tentatively. “Did you let Aunt Caroline go?”
He sighed. “She went, Lise. There was no letting or not letting.”
“Aren’t you…worried? Uncle Avery—he might hurt her again, Papa. And we promised.”
“Lise, I can’t tie your Aunt Caroline to the kitchen table so she’ll stay here,” he said, trying not to be influenced by how hard she was trying not to cry. Lise was a gentle soul; she was concerned about all living creatures—whether they deserved it or not.
“Eli said we wouldn’t let anyone hurt her again. He promised, Papa.”
“Lise, there is nothing I can do,” he said, in spite of the fact that he’d made the same promise himself.
“Couldn’t you just—?”
“This is not your business.”
Mary Louise was tugging on his trouser leg. “What is it, Mary Louise?” he said more sharply than he intended.
“I think we might cry, Papa,” she advised him.
“Then you’ll just have to cry. Life is full of crying. I can’t fix everything.” He was very careful not to look into her upturned face, into those begging Holt-brown eyes.
“Can’t you please just fix this, Papa?” Lise asked. “Don’t let Uncle Avery hurt her again. Please, Papa! All you have to do is just stand there while she talks to him—he wouldn’t hurt her if you stood by. I know he wouldn’t!”
Her mouth trembled, but she worked hard not to give in to it. Clearly, Lise expected him to stand guard indefinitely.
“Your Aunt Caroline left by her own choice—”
“No, she didn’t, Papa! She left because Beata is going to be mean to everybody if she stays. Papa—”
He held up his hand to stop her.
“You don’t worry about your Aunt Caroline. You don’t worry about any of those people over there.”
Caroline heard the back door slam, and Frederich caught up with her before she reached the edge of the Graeber land.
“I have something to say to you, Caroline Holt. This is—”
“What do you want, Frederich?” she interrupted. She stopped walking, and she forced herself to look him in the eye.
“What do I want? I want to keep you from making the scandal any bigger than it already is.”
They stared at each other. She abruptly looked away.
“What is wrong with you?” he said angrily. “You behave as if you have some choice about what you will do! You don’t. You are pregnant. Avery doesn’t want you or your brat. It falls to me to keep my family from becoming any more of a laughingstock than it already is. I am going to keep the family’s honor—the honor you drag through the mud as if there is nobody to suffer the consequences but you. There is only one thing to be done. You don’t start everybody talking all over again about the marriage. Do you understand?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t!”
“My daughters are crying—Beata is starving us to death hiding everything she can get her hands on—Eli has disappeared! All this is your fault. Do you understand that? Going to Avery—begging Avery—will only make our trouble worse. Worse for you—worse for—”
She looked away from his penetrating gaze. She did understand after all. She understood perfectly. How terrible for Frederich to have to keep her when he wanted so desperately to be rid of her.
“Frederich, I—” she began, looking back at him. But he was staring at her clothes. “Come,” he interrupted. “We go see Avery now.”
“Go see—Frederich, you just said you didn’t—”
“You are beginning to stink. You need your clothes. We’ll go and get them, and you don’t say anything to your brother about this notion you have of coming home. You can manage that, surely.”
He took her by the arm to start her walking, letting go almost immediately as if he found touching her distasteful. And he kept giving her wary glances as they crossed the field.
“Say nothing!” he admonished her as they neared the house, and she had to bite her lip to suppress an angry reply. She wasn’t stupid about everything. Just her choices of lovers and husbands.
She could see John Steigermann standing in the yard-perhaps advising William of her marriage as she’d asked. Under better circumstances and with a different companion, the walk here would have been pleasant enough. It was cold still, but without the biting wind of yesterday. Spring always came quickly in this part of the country; winter one week and budding leaves the next. She noted with some surprise that she was looking forward to the dogwoods and jonquils just as she always did. And she noted, too, that she was actually going to try to have a civil conversation with Avery after what he had done.
Better to ask for her clothes than for sanctuary, she thought.
John Steigermann and William and Avery