Mary Connealy (53 page)

“Do not”—Daniel brushed Grace’s scolding finger aside and leaned down until they were nose to nose—“tell me how to raise my sons.”

“Well, somebody needs to. You have them shoved in this”—Grace waved her arms in a wild gesture that took in the tiny cave as Daniel ducked so she didn’t catch him on the chin—“hole-in-the-ground. You feed them on a table with no plates or silverware as if you were throwing scraps to a pack of dogs.” She jabbed him in the chest. “They have no clothes, no privacy, no manners, and no hope of ever getting any with you for their father.”

Daniel grabbed her wrist so she couldn’t poke him anymore. “You’re about one wrong word away from sleeping in the barn with the animals.”

“And that would be different from living in here, how?”

“That’s the word.” Daniel jerked her forward. She jerked back.

They tripped over a stack of bedding that stuck out from the side of the wall and fell over in a heap.

He landed on top and knocked the wind right out of her. She gasped for air, but catching her breath was impossible with his weight. She shoved at his shoulders, but he was already scooting off.

As if he refused to do anything that she thought of, he stopped moving and settled down. His eyes flashed. His hands sank into her hair. “Tell me what you were doing in my wagon.”

Grace felt something close to panic at being so controlled by Daniel. She’d sworn never to be under anyone’s thumb again. But for all his fury, she didn’t fear Daniel’s fists. She wasn’t sure why; probably just bad judgment on her part.

She looked in his eyes and knew she couldn’t tell him the truth. He hated her. He’d hand her over in a heartbeat. But she could tell him enough, maybe, to stop his horrid accusations. Maybe if she did, he’d get off.

“I was hiding. A man…a man frightened me. I didn’t choose your wagon. I was running—”

“Some man in Mosqueros was chasing you?” Daniel’s eyes changed. The fury faded, replaced by worry. “Why didn’t you go to the sheriff?”

Because the sheriff would have sided with Parrish
. He would have held her until Parrish got there. “I didn’t have time. He was coming. I just saw your wagon and climbed in. I didn’t know it was yours. I didn’t
choose you
.” The very thought made Grace shudder.

Her trembling caught Daniel’s attention, and he seemed momentarily distracted. His hands, which had held firm in her hair but never pulled, loosened now until her head rested on his flexing fingers as if they were a living pillow.

Grace swallowed and tried to remember what they were talking about. Oh yes—terror, hiding, freezing nearly to death. “I was afraid to move, and I was afraid to tell you I was there because you’d take me back to town and leave me where he might find me.”

“I’d have found him and taken him to the sheriff for you.” Daniel removed one hand from her hair. His eyes were concerned.

Grace was surprised to realize he meant it. He would have protected her. If this story she was telling him was true.

“I would have, Grace. We may not agree on my boys, but I wouldn’t have let you come to any harm. Surely you don’t think I’m that much of a low-down skunk.”

Grace almost did believe him. She couldn’t let herself. “I just stayed quiet, thinking to wait until you were out of town where it was safe. The cold was too much. I…I guess I fell asleep or passed out. I didn’t t-trap you. There’s no man with whom I have been…dallying. I’m not…”

Suddenly it was all too much. The fear of Parrish and this stupid marriage she’d been thrust into. Daniel’s awful accusations. She felt the tears burn in her eyes. This man had reduced her to tears twice now. And Grace hardly ever cried. She’d learned long ago that it just didn’t do a lick of good. “How could you think that of me? I am not a woman who—” Her voice broke.

“Don’t cry.” Daniel sounded a little desperate.

She tried to stop. She breathed raggedly. “I’m sorry. I don’t blame you for thinking the worst of me.” She reached for her cheeks to wipe the tears away.

Daniel’s rough thumb got to the tears first. He wiped at her cheeks with surprising gentleness. She looked up to thank him.

Their eyes caught. Their breath caught.

Daniel rolled off of her as if he’d been burned. He jumped to his feet, threw some potatoes into the stove, tossed the steaks on next, and asked, “Can you make biscuits?” He didn’t look at her. In fact, he kept his back squarely to her as he worked around the kitchen.

She could tell her tears had disgusted him. Parrish had always punished her for crying. She quickly dashed them away. Then she thought to breathe again.

She’d seen Daniel mix the biscuits up for breakfast. She thought she remembered. How hard could it be? “Yes, I’ll do it.”

“Make a lot. Watch the steaks. If they catch fire, be careful. Hold back on the eggs until we show our faces.” Daniel grabbed the bucket of now-melted snow off the stove and opened the door.

Grace saw another bucket heaped with snow sitting there.

“I wonder how much of that Mark heard?” Daniel muttered. He put the bucket on the stove and crossed to the door. As he left, he turned back toward Grace. “Maybe you didn’t trap me a’purpose, but we’re well and truly trapped just the same. But there’s trapped and there’s trapped. No woman’s ever gonna die giving me another child. That’s a kind of trapped I won’t be a part of.” He walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Grace wondered what on earth he meant by that. It wasn’t for the first time she realized that she knew nothing about men or marriage—or being a woman, for that matter.

And she set out to prove she knew nothing by making biscuits for the first time in her life.

C
ome for supper.” Hannah Cartwright whispered out the door into the bitter cold of the dusky Chicago afternoon. They just had to survive until spring. Everything was easier when the weather didn’t try to kill them.

She didn’t hear the children, but she knew where they were. Trevor huddled next to Libby near a grating, a warm spot they’d discovered across the alley from their little shed. The little boys sometimes found the energy to play hide-and-seek or toss a rock back and forth between them, but not today.

The children liked to be outside. Hannah didn’t blame them. The little shed was dreary, and it smelled terrible, as if the owner had used it to store rotting potatoes at one time.

Hannah only came inside when the cold was too much to bear. The wind cut through her thin dress, and she stepped in to save as much of the precious warmth from the burning barrel as she could.

Stepping back from the shed door, her hands quivering with cold, she opened the letter from Grace. Pulling out eighteen dollars, in weary-looking one-dollar bills, she asked the empty room, “How much do schoolteachers make anyway?”

Afraid the answer was twenty dollars a month, Hannah stared at the cash. Grace was holding back two dollars for herself. That wasn’t enough to buy food.

Hannah knew teachers didn’t make much, and this must be the lot of it—again this month. “Grace, how are you living?”

Grace’s letter spoke extravagantly of the meals she ate with her students’ families and the warm, cozy room she’d been given as part of her salary. Even with little or no money, she should be able to get by, but she’d have nothing left for a proper schoolteacher’s dress or any other necessities.

Trevor came into the shed behind the blacksmith’s shop, helping Libby, with Nolan ahead of him and Bruce bringing up the rear.

The boys were all thoughtful and too quiet for Hannah’s peace of mind. They didn’t have food enough in their bellies to laugh and play.

Always so careful of Libby, who never spoke a word, they took their time walking beside her, supporting her as she limped on her slow-healing ankle. The instant they got inside, they carefully closed the rickety door to preserve the heat.

It was so different having brothers. Parrish had always preferred girls for some reason. Hannah and Grace believed he enjoyed terrorizing girls more than boys. Maybe they cried more easily when he laid the belt to them.

“It’s time to eat.” Hannah waved them toward the bucket of water to wash. “Mr. Daily set the bread out.”

“I found this, Hannah.” Nolan pulled a dented can out of his pocket. The label was gone, but there would be food of some kind inside.

Trevor went to work on it with a rusted can opener.

Bruce’s hands were full of trash to burn. When he set it beside the barrel, to be fed in slowly all night, he shoved his hand deep in his pocket and pulled out a penny.

“A lady over by the train station gave me this.” Bruce reached over to set it behind the barrel. From his other pocket, he produced a good-sized rag. When he spread it out, Hannah could see it was a shirt the right size for Libby, with an arm torn away.

Bruce glanced up at them with defiant eyes. Only six, he’d come into their shed one night and crawled up to the heat, looking at them as though they might attack him. Instead, Hannah had given him a full share of their bread and let him join the family. Bruce brought a wallet home with him the next day with five dollars in it.

Grace’s money had run out early that month and the boys were starving on the bread. Hannah had a talk with Bruce about God and sin and what the police did to children who were caught stealing. But, though she’d never picked anyone’s pocket, she’d swiped a few apples off a grocer’s cart when they were starving. She was no innocent.

The eighteen dollars from Grace each month should have been enough to buy good food for all of them, with enough left over to rent a room and buy warm clothes. Hannah had written to Grace just once and never hinted that they were anything but comfortable. But paying off Libby’s doctor bills to treat her ankle used every penny of it. Thank heavens they’d found this empty shed, or they’d have been sleeping on the street.

Every day Mr. Daily, who owned a diner three blocks over, watched for Hannah, and when she came, he slipped outside and gave her two loaves of bread. A generous, Christian man, he was careful not to let his wife catch him.

Hannah could hear Mrs. Daily shouting from inside the diner anytime she happened into the back room. Carefully Hannah would crouch in the alley near the back door, knowing Mr. Daily would leave the food whenever he could.

“What’s for supper?” Trevor smiled.

She couldn’t smile back at her fourteen-year-old brother. She lifted the envelope so Trevor could see inside.

Lips curling down into a frown, he asked, “What’s she living on? Did she write? Does she ever mention buying herself a new dress or shoes? Is she eating?”

Trevor had never met Grace, but Hannah had told stories of her brave big sister until they all felt as if she were out fighting the world for them.

“You know Grace. According to her letter, everything is fine. All she talks about is how comfortable she is and how bad things are for us here. Of course, she doesn’t know about you boys, and she’s dead set against adoption, so I didn’t tell her I found homes for the little girls, but she’s adamant that none of us work. I’m too old for school now, and maybe I could get a job, but I don’t think Libby can stay at home alone while I work yet.”

Trevor gave Libby a long look. He had been the one to find her, curled up in an alley, living alongside the rats, fighting them for food thrown in the trash, dragging her broken foot behind as she hopped or crawled after food. He’d brought her home, and because the little girl didn’t speak and was too little to write, Hannah had taken to calling her Libby. Libby was tough, and Hannah and Trevor both well knew that the painfully thin three-year-old could survive alone in this shed all day. But neither of them wanted it that way.

“Grace hated seeing children put to work. She trusted me to look after the little girls when we got them away from Parrish. The one promise she demanded of me was that they’d stay in school and never be put back into that mill. They’ve all found homes now, but the same promise applies to you boys and Libby. Protecting us from the mill and from Parrish matters more to her than a new pair of shoes.”

Trevor dragged his ragged woolen hat off his head. “The eighteen dollars would rent us a room, except—” He glanced at Libby for a split second then looked away before the tiny girl noticed.

Hannah thought about the doctor bills. They could pay them only because of Grace’s money. And Libby needed to keep being doctored until her foot healed, if it ever would.

Bruce went straight to the barrel and threw in paper and other burnable trash he’d dug out of the alley. Kneeling by it, he reached out his hands to soak up the meager warmth. The elbows of the gray sweater he wore hung in tatters. Hannah saw the holes in the soles of his shoes. She’d found both in the trash and been grateful for an actual pair. Nolan’s were mismatched.

“Yes, Trevor, ‘except.’ That about says it all.” Hannah thought the last operation on Libby’s leg had finally fixed the problem, and Hannah wasn’t above cheating the doctor out of his money—she’d done worse things to survive. But they had to pay him because they might need him again.

“Well, since that money is all spoken for and we’re eating bread—only bread—for the fourth day in a row, I’m not listening to Grace or you anymore. I’m doing things my way.”

“Not a job, Trevor.” Hannah caught at his arm. “You need to stay in school. Just three more years and you can get a real job, something good that will be safe. That mill is a trap that you’ll never get out of without schooling. I’ll gladly let you work for the rest of your life once you’re graduated.”

“It’s not child exploitation if I do it to myself.”

Hannah flinched when she heard Grace’s most hated words—
child exploitation
. Grace had taught those words along with reading and writing. Wanting to argue with her brother, who had come sneaking out of an alley a year ago and joined the family, Hannah instead remained silent.

At last she said, “I think I’m going to exploit myself, too.”

“No, Hannah.” Trevor shook his head. His dirty brown hair hung too long on his forehead, and he shoved it aside impatiently. “You need to be here for the little ones.”