Cheryl Reavis (5 page)

Beata clutched at Frederich’s arm. “You let him raise his hand to me! You let him—!”

“Be quiet, Beata! I will hear no more!” He was still holding on to Eli, and he pulled hard on the reins with one hand to keep the team from bolting, finally stopping them in the yard. He said something to Eli in angry German, silencing Beata again when she made some remark.

Please,
Caroline prayed as Frederich lifted her down.
Please let me get away from these people.

But she had married Frederich
and
the Graebers, and she was having a baby. She tried not to think about who would help her when her time came. Beata?

Oh, dear God.

Eli and Frederich began to unharness the team, both of them still arguing. She stood for a moment, staring toward the house, a brick house two stories high. Ann had been so proud to live here. She had been too young to know that a fine house meant nothing if there was no love in it. Given Beata’s present mood, Caroline wondered if she would even let her come inside without some kind of altercation.

“Aunt Caroline?” Lise said, ignoring Beata’s admonishments to take care of Mary Louise. Lise was so pale, and Caroline realized suddenly how difficult this day must have been for her.

Lise and Mary Louise were the only good things to come out of this arrangement, she thought. She looked up at the sky. The sun was low on the horizon. They had completely missed the noon meal. Both children must be starved. She took her nieces by the hand and walked along with them toward the back porch as if she expected nothing from Beata but exemplary behavior. Beata hurried past them, muttering to herself. She went into the house first, but at least she didn’t lock Caroline and the children out.

The Graeber kitchen was huge and smelled of smoldering ashes and Beata’s before-church baking. One side of the room faced the east and had two double windows to catch the morning sun. There was a trestle table in front of one of the windows and a paneled chest-settle near the huge diagonal fireplace. The fire had been banked, but it still gave off some warmth. Caroline walked with the children to the settle, needing desperately to sit down again. She began to help them take off their coats. She felt so ill at ease here. Everywhere she looked reminded her of Ann. Ann’s punched tin sewing box, the one decorated with sunbursts, sat on a small
table by the settle. Their own mother’s English Stafford-shire china filled the corner cupboard. The numerous bright blue and white dishes had been Ann’s only wedding gift of any value from the Holt side of the family. And how Caroline hated seeing them in Beata’s kitchen. Ann’s heavy oak rocking chair still sat in the same corner. The back of the chair was decorated with carved roses. It had been a wedding present from Frederich, and Ann had always sat in it to feed her babies. It surprised Caroline that Beata had kept it.

There was no pig iron stove in the kitchen, only an iron box oven that sat directly on the hearth. Ann had wanted a real stove so badly. She had never really learned how to cook in the fireplace where everything had to be done over open flames or buried in hot coals. Once, she’d even set her skirts on fire.

Eli came in and began to light the oil lamps that hung on S hooks from the exposed overhead beams. She could see the room better now. The rest of the walls were lined with dressers for dishes and pots she didn’t quite remember. And there were several churns sitting about, and some small three-legged stools in the corners. One bare brick wall had been sponge painted with white lead. She had to grudgingly admit that Beata, for all her ill-tempered ways, kept a spotless house.

Eli moved from lamp to lamp, glancing at her from time to time as if he expected her to cry or run or both. He seemed to have taken over the task of acting as her champion, but she wished that he wouldn’t stare at her so. She was dangerously close to tears again.

I can’t live here with Frederich,
she thought, but it wasn’t living with him that troubled her. The Graeber farm was twice the size she was used to. There would be more than enough chores for her and Beata to do. She could easily stay out of his way during the day, but what would she do at night?

Tonight?

She tried to find the numbness she’d felt earlier this morning, but it had been replaced by a kind of mindless panic. She was trapped, and the sun was going down. She had no night things. No dressing gown. No way to hide from her new bridegroom. She had only the clothes she’d arrived in. She glanced at Eli as he lit the last lamp. Perhaps he could help her. Perhaps she could just
say
it.

Eli, I’m afraid!

He left the kitchen for a moment and came back with a brimming pitcher of milk. Then he motioned for her and the children to come to the table. She got up reluctantly, while he found three large tin cups and filled them with milk. Then he disappeared into the pantry and returned with several pieces of cold corn bread.

“Beata doesn’t cook when she’s angry,” Lise said as if she thought Caroline needed some kind of explanation.

Caroline gave a resigned sigh. In that case, it might be months before Beata prepared another meal for this household.

“Sit,” Eli said, pulling out a chair.

Caroline hesitated, then sat down in the heavy Carver chair he wanted her to take, hoping that he wasn’t giving her Beata’s seat. All she needed was for Beata to come downstairs and find Caroline Holt sitting in
her
place.

Caroline Holt Graeber.

“Trink,
Caroline,” Eli said, holding a cup of milk out to her.

She didn’t want to drink. She didn’t want anything. Except to run. Or to take back the marriage vows.

“Eli, I—”

She stopped because both children were watching intently, and when she didn’t take the cup, he walked to the worktable and lifted the lid on the honey pot, ladling a huge dollop of honey into the milk. He rotated the cup for a moment, sloshing milk over the sides, then brought it back to her.

“Trink,
“ he said again.

She sighed, and she accepted the cup and the piece of corn bread he pushed at her. Then she drank the milk. All of it. Apparently, he’d heard somewhere of her weakness for milk and honey.

“Papa!” Mary Louise said, grinning broadly when Frederich came in the back door. He pointedly ignored Eli, but he stopped long enough to almost smile and to affectionately pat both children on the cheek. The gesture caught Caroline completely off guard. She had never once thought of Frederich Graeber as man who could be gentle with his children. He glanced at Caroline briefly on his way upstairs, and she was struck by the peculiar notion that he was feeling as trapped by the turn of events as she.

Beata must have been waiting for him on the top step, because Caroline could hear both their voices almost immediately.

And Eli stood watching her.

“Eli, don’t stare at me. Please,” she said finally, hoping he had enough command of English to understand.

Whatever he answered had something to do with Lise.

“I can tell her,” Lise said to him. “I like to talk for Eli,” she said to Caroline.

“Mary Louise needs to be put to bed,” Caroline said. “She’s falling asleep in her corn bread…” No one was listening to her. She didn’t want to have to endure any secondhand conversations with Eli. She didn’t want…anything. He spoke to Lise for a moment in German.

“Eli says to tell you this, Aunt Caroline. We…welcome you and we are glad you are here. Don’t be—” She stopped to ask Eli for clarification. “Don’t be afraid of us,” she continued. “No one can hurt you anymore.”

Caroline abruptly looked down at her hands, completely overwhelmed by how desperately she wanted to believe that. She had to fight hard not to cry.

“Eli says I’m to take you upstairs now. He says for you to rest—and try to sleep.”

She looked at him, but now he avoided her eyes.

Lise asked Eli another question.

“Come with me,” she said to Caroline after he’d answered.

Caroline nodded, then stood up. She let Lise take her by the hand, looking over her shoulder once at Eli before she climbed the stairs. He was wiping the milk mustache off Mary Louise’s mouth.

The room upstairs was Spartan and small and not the one Frederich had shared with Ann. Was this where Frederich slept now? Caroline wondered. There weren’t enough personal things in it to be sure, and she couldn’t ask Lise. She managed a smile when the child dutifully kissed her good-night, but she kept looking at the door, expecting Beata or Frederich or both and yet another unpleasant encounter.

She sat down heavily on the side of the bed after Lise had gone and took off her bonnet, hanging it by its ribbons on the one chair. She had no water to drink or to bathe in. She had no brushes or combs.

She sat there, numb again after all and staring at nothing. Then she lay down on top of the quilts and curled herself into a tight ball. All day long, she had been fighting the tears, but now that she had the privacy to shed them, none came. She lay there, huddled in her shawl, listening to the sounds of the house. Distant voices still raised in anger. Footsteps and slamming doors. The wind moaning against the eaves. And she listened to her own wavering sigh.

In spite of the cold and the strangeness, she fell asleep, and she woke a long time later when the door burst open.

“W
here is he?” Frederich demanded, realizing as he said it that in spite of his earlier certainty, Eli was not in the room.

“What?” Caroline Holt asked. The dazed question only fueled his anger.

“The sun is up! There is work to do! Where is Eli?”

Her hair was coming down, and it suddenly penetrated that his new wife was fully dressed and still wearing her shawl and that the bed had been slept on, not in. She sat up slowly and stared at him. Her eyes were big and afraid like a child’s, like Mary Louise’s when Beata scared her with witch stories about the cruel Eisenbertha.

But she took her own time about answering. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know where he is?”

“I’ve said I don’t know! I haven’t seen him since—” She broke off, and looked away, as if she had to shore up her courage. “Since yesterday,” she said, looking him directly in the eyes again. “He didn’t spend the night here, if that’s what you think.”

Taken aback by her bluntness, Frederich stood for a moment, then abruptly left the room, slamming the door behind him.

Now what? he thought as he clambered down the stairs.
Where could Eli be? He wasn’t in the barn—none of the animals had been tended. The cows hadn’t been milked. The kitchen fire hadn’t been lit. Between Eli’s disappearance and Beata’s sulking, nothing had been done this morning. The north field had to be plowed and his children hadn’t been fed—and wouldn’t be at this rate.

He crossed the cold kitchen and opened the back door.

“Eli!” he yelled into the backyard, as if he hadn’t already looked. He listened for a reply, but he could only hear the crows in the pine tops at the edge of the field and the lowing of miserable, unmilked cows.

He turned and went back into the kitchen, and was startled to find Caroline Holt standing there.

“Are the children still asleep?” she asked.

He didn’t answer her.

“Why, yes, Caroline,” she answered for him. “The children
are
still asleep. Why don’t you build a fire so the kitchen will be warm when they come down? Perhaps you could even cook them a little
Frühstück
since they’ve only had milk and corn bread since yesterday.

“What a fine idea, Frederich,” she continued, her sarcasm the kind born of years of practice. “I understand it may be some time before Beata decides to participate in the household again. But you see, I don’t quite know what to do with such a huge fireplace. Perhaps if you would
deign
to instruct me—for the sake of
your
children—I could accomplish—”

“You find this amusing?” Frederich cut in. By God, she was a sharp-tongued woman, whether she was afraid of him or not. No wonder her brother had beaten her—except he was certain Avery Holt hadn’t beaten her for her sarcasm. He’d beaten her for the child she carried. For ruining his dream of finally owning the acre of land with a spring he’d begged the use of these past eight years.

“Oh, no, Frederich,” she said. “I don’t find this amusing. I find this a living
hell.
“

Frederich turned abruptly and went outside before he laid hands on her in spite of his promise. He was angry enough to do it, to grab her and shake her until all that superiority and arrogance dropped away. She was not
his
better, regardless of her fine education and her airs. He knew that she had never considered him a fit husband for Ann—but Caroline Holt had been tumbled by a man she was clearly too ashamed to name. She was like any other briar patch whore in the county, and she’d do well to remember that.

The horses rumbled a greeting when he flung open the barn door, blowing heavily and leaning out over their stalls to nudge him as he passed by. But he left them standing. He had to put the cows out of their misery first.

The milking rapidly grew into yet another aggravation, because his barely controlled anger made the cows as testy and uncooperative as he felt. The wind the past few days would have dried the ground, making it just right for plowing—and here he was doing Beata’s job. Caroline Holt had been right about one thing. This was going to be a kind of hell—living in the same house with her
and
Beata. He ignored the fact that just such an arrangement had been his original plan and that he had once looked at Caroline Holt with a certain longing. He couldn’t deny that he found her attractive enough for his taste and that her aloofness both annoyed and intrigued him. He had never wanted a docile wife. He had wanted this marriage to make his children happy, and, in time, he had wanted to be vindicated as a man worthy of her regard and not some ignorant foreigner.

It was only when he remembered the way Ann had died that he knew the true reason for his seeking to wed her sister. He still felt the sting of Ann’s betrayal as sharply as if it had been yesterday. He cursed the day his older brother had sent Eli here to America. Eli, who had taken half the land
and
Frederich’s young wife. Frederich tried not to remember the look in Ann’s eyes every time she spoke Eli’s name. The question had never been
whether
Ann had loved Eli
Graeber. The question had been how much. He knew the answer to that now, but Ann was no longer here to atone for the wrong she’d done, and it hadn’t been enough for him that she had died giving birth to Eli’s child. He still needed reparation, and Caroline was the person Ann loved best. After her children. After Eli. If he, Frederich, married her, he could make her suffer for Ann’s transgression without remorse. He could insist that she be a good German wife. He could keep her pregnant—there would be no time for books and poetry and fine airs. How Caroline would hate that, and how Ann would have hated it for her.

But the actual marriage yesterday had somehow changed everything. Caroline was in his household as a wife and therefore legally and morally subject to his will, but she was also a helpless outcast in need of his charity, beloved by his children no matter how disdainful she was’of him. He didn’t like the turn his emotions had taken. Perhaps it would have been better to let Eli—

Where is Eli, damn him?

Off somewhere feeling sorry for himself—again, he thought.

Frederich’s abrupt fit of agitation startled the cow, and she bellowed loudly, kicking over the nearly full milk pail before he could catch it. He swore and watched helplessly as the barn cats rushed forward to make the best of his misfortune before the milk seeped into the ground.

He could hear Lise and Mary Louise calling him. He left the bucket sitting and he stepped outside. They descended upon him immediately, grabbing him by the hand and pulling him along, chattering as they went. He entered the house fully expecting to find the kitchen on fire.

A meal had been laid out on the table instead—bread and cheese, jam and butter. Bacon and boiled eggs.

“Look what we made, Papa!” Lise said, pulling out his chair. “We only had two things to burn.”

“Three,” Caroline said, lifting Mary Louise into a chair. “The bacon caught fire twice. I couldn’t find the coffee,” she said, turning back to the hearth.

He hesitated, looking at her warily, as if there was some devious purpose behind all this. She glanced at him over her shoulder, and after a moment, he sat down.

“I cooked the bread, Papa,” Mary Louise said, grinning around the two fingers she had in her mouth. He reached to pull them out before she ruined her fine teeth.

“She means
she found
the bread. Beata hid it in the pantry,” Lise said. “We thought the water for the eggs would never boil, didn’t we, Aunt Caroline?”

“Never,” Caroline agreed without looking up from the hearth. She’d shed her shawl, and her face was flushed from working so close to the fire. She struggled with an iron pot, and Frederich tried not to look at the way her breasts moved under the bodice of her ugly yellow-flowered dress.

There were only three places set. Apparently, Caroline had not intended to join them, nor did he invite her. He lost himself in conversation with his daughters, listening to their convoluted story of how such a fine
Frühstück
had come about.

“Beata’s going to be upset,” Lise said.

“Beata is always upset,” he said, spreading more jam on a huge slice of bread.

“But she’s going to say we took bread she was keeping for something else.”

“For what?” Frederich asked with his mouth full.

“She never says that part,” Lisa answered, and he laughed.

“Don’t worry, little one. If Beata wants to hoard her bread, then she must come down here and guard her kitchen herself. The biggest trouble with sulking, you see, is while you’re off hiding with your long face, life will go on without you. If she stays away, there’s no telling what we might
do with the rest of the food in the pantry—we might even find where she hides the coffee,” he added in a whisper.

He was smiling—until he glanced at Caroline. Then he was immediately reminded of what a disaster this morning had been.

He abruptly got up from the table. “I have too much to do,” he said, the reproach in his voice apparent even to him. He took another hunk of the ill-gotten bread and a slice of bacon with him. He had stayed in the company of his children and Caroline Holt too long. He had nearly let his anger dissipate, and he needed it if he was going to plow the north field
and
locate his good-for-nothing nephew.

He went back to the barn. He tossed the last bit of bacon and bread to the barn cats, and he climbed the ladder to the hayloft, fighting off a fit of sneezing that came from the dust and the pungent scent of the hay. He stood for a moment peering into the dark corners for Eli’s sleeping form. If Eli hadn’t gone to Caroline, then he had to have slept somewhere.

The loft was empty, and Frederich began pitching the hay into the stalls below. The cats mewed loudly for another handout, and Beata was awake. He could hear her complaining all the way out here.

He moved to the other side and looked over the edge. The door to the stall directly below him stood ajar, and the bay gelding that should have been there was gone.

Frederich stayed away from the house until shortly after noon. The kitchen was quiet when he came in, and he was surprised that there was no meal on the table. Even if Beata was still sulking, he expected Caroline to have at least managed something for the children. He didn’t see the girls anywhere, but
she
was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs.

“We observe the
Mittagessen
in this house,” he said.

She looked at him blankly.

“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!”