A Promise to Love

by Serena B. Miller

  “And he cocked it.”

  “Oh!” Agnes frowned. “He must be awful serious about keeping Bertie.”

  Suddenly, no one was angry at him anymore.

  “You are hungrig.” Ingrid ran over and sliced him off a thick chunk of bread and buttered it. “Give father a bowl,” she told Agnes.

  Agnes didn’t argue but placed a deep, savory bowl of bean soup in front of him. Ingrid brought him a cup of coffee. His spirits rose a bit when she delicately lightened it with cream. She had remembered how he liked it.

  “Richard and Virgie are too caught up in grief to think straight,” Hazel said. “They’ll soften. You’re too good of a father to be deprived of your child. Goodness, you all live so close they could see Bertie every day if Virgie would quit that craziness we had to listen to at the inquest.”

  “I hope you’re right.” He dipped a piece of bread into the soup.

  “We get baby.” Ingrid patted his arm and dipped another ladleful into his bowl. “Snart.”

  He had no idea what she had just said. “Snart? What does that mean?”

  “Soon,” Ingrid explained. “We get baby soon.”

  Later that night, he lay alone in his room and listened to what sounded like a party going on overhead. Ingrid had chosen to share the loft with Hazel and the girls tonight. He heard Agnes spluttering with laughter—probably at his expense.

  Although he felt left out of the fun, he was intensely grateful. His house, which had felt so desolate, had come alive.

  9

  Ingrid sprinkled water from a bowl onto a pair of Joshua’s line-dried pants, then picked up the flatiron, licked her finger, touched it to the iron, heard a satisfying sizzle, and knew it was hot enough. Ironing was not her favorite chore, but it was a necessity for a well-ordered home. She had spent most of the afternoon pressing the family’s laundry.

  Joshua came in just as she finished ironing a sheet for his bed.

  “You iron sheets?” he asked.

  “Ja.” She folded it neatly and laid it on the table.

  “Why do you bother?”

  “Because it look good and feel good. This is a problem?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “But even my mother didn’t iron the sheets unless company was coming.”

  “My company is you and children.”

  She meant it. She cherished having her own family to care for. Even if that family felt a little . . . borrowed.

  “Don’t try to argue with her, Pa,” Agnes said from her seat at the kitchen table. “Ingrid has her own ways of doing things and you better not try to change it. The woman even has a certain way of putting clothes on the line.”

  “How is that?”

  “Sheets go first.” Agnes ticked items off on her fingers. “Then towels, then long pants, then dresses—then Polly’s diapers. It has to go in order of length. I pegged a washrag beside the sheets and I thought she’d faint.”

  “Neighbors see laundry,” Ingrid said. “They judge us.”

  “But we don’t have any neighbors,” Joshua pointed out.

  “Someday.” Ingrid smoothed out another sheet and began to iron it. “Somebody come on wash day. They say . . .” She frowned and shook her finger in the air. “That Ingrid, she is bad housekeeper. Her washing krökte—crooked.”

  Joshua laughed. “I doubt anyone will ever call you a bad housekeeper, sweetheart.”

  Her heart flip-flopped in her chest. He had called her a love name. Only two weeks into their marriage and he had not gotten angry at her again, and just now he had called her a love name.

  Her eyes sought his, to see if his words had meant anything, but he didn’t seem to notice what he had said, nor did the girls, who were busy cutting out chains of paper dolls from an old newspaper.

  “Hey, Pa,” Agnes said, picking up the section from which she was cutting, “listen to this. President Ulysses S. Grant signed something called the Ku Klux Klan Act.” She looked up at him. “Aren’t them the people who burn crosses and scare people?”

  “Sometimes they do a whole lot more than scare people. It’s a good law, Agnes. I’m glad Grant signed it. It’s the kind of thing we fought for.”

  “What was it like?” Agnes’s eyes were avid with curiosity. “Fighting with General Custer?”

  “Dusty.”

  Ingrid waited for him to say more, but all he did was reach around her for a cup from the cupboard and the coffeepot from the stove. The nearness of him made her lose her English again.

  “Noggran. Kaffet är hett!”

  He paused. “What did you just say?”

  “I say, ‘Careful, coffee is hot.’”

  It was embarrassing that his nearness had flustered her so.

  “With you in the house, there is always coffee, and it’s always hot.” Joshua saluted her with his cup.

  He had started coming in each afternoon for a small bite of something to eat and drink. It was becoming a habit of his, and she had begun to make little surprises for him each day. Her mother had taught her that a man who was well fed was a good worker, and a good worker meant prosperity for a family.

  “There is cookies,” she said. “Fresh bake. In top of stove.”

  His face lit up as he opened the warming oven of the woodstove and drew out a plate of sugar cookies.

  “Can I have some, Ma?” Ellie asked when she saw them.

  The sound of “ma” coming out of the child’s mouth made everyone stop what they were doing, except for Ellie, who continued cutting out paper dolls.

  “Ingrid ain’t—” Agnes started to correct her sister, but Joshua shook his head at her.

  “Leave it be,” he said quietly.

  Agnes gave it some thought and then nodded. “You’re right, Pa.”

  Ellie, absorbed in her play, did not notice the exchange.

  The fact that he did not want the little girl corrected made Ingrid very happy. “There is cookies enough for all.” Ingrid’s heart sang from the child’s slipup.

  While Joshua admired the girls’ handiwork, Ingrid took the bedsheets into the bedroom and proceeded to make up Joshua’s bed.

  And it was Joshua’s bed. Even after Hazel left, she had continued sleeping upstairs with the girls. She had no intention of coming back to Joshua’s bed until he invited her.

  She did not know that he was even in the room until he spoke.

  “You can sleep here with me tonight if you want.”

  She gasped and jumped.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He was leaning against the doorway, a half-eaten cookie in his hand, watching her.

  “You are sure?” she said.

  “No,” he answered. “I’m not at all sure. It’s only been two months since I buried my wife. To be honest, I’m not sure about anything anymore.”

  She considered his words. “I sleep with girls, then.”

  “Please, Ingrid. You are so wonderful with the children. Let us at least attempt to be husband and wife.”

  As Joshua went back out to his fields, he was furious with himself for what he had just done. His invitation had been a momentary impulse stemming from sheer, overwhelming gratitude for the order she had made out of the upheaval of his life.

  At first, he was relieved when she had taken to sleeping with the girls. Night after night he had lain awake smiling as he listened to his daughters giggling as she told them stories. And then, truth be told, a deep sense of loneliness began to wash over him every night, an emptiness that he wondered if she might be able to fill after all.

  She was a pleasant enough woman. Could sheer gratitude be a strong enough emotion to take the place of romantic love?

  He had no idea, and there wasn’t one person on earth he knew to ask. He had never known anyone who had been thrown into this sort of situation before. Now, he was angry at himself for opening his mouth, and he dreaded tonight and what might or might not happen.

  “How come you’re fixing a bath?” Agnes asked as she and the girls watch
ed Ingrid fill the large round tub with water she had heated on the stove. “It ain’t Saturday night.”

  Joshua would not come back to the house for a while. He always spent at least an hour after supper doing chores, but just to be safe, she had put three of the high ladder-backed kitchen chairs in front of the tub and draped them with a quilt to give her a little privacy in case he did walk in.

  She should have realized that privacy was impossible with all these curious little eyes watching her.

  “I work hard, little one. I want bath tonight.”

  “So, Swedish people bathe even in the middle of the week if they feel like it?” Agnes probed.

  Ingrid smiled. That Agnes—so quick-witted with her never-ending questions.

  “Ja. Some Svenska people bathe even in middle of week.” She disrobed and sank into the warm water.

  She had to sit cross-legged in the tub for it to come up to her waist, but she unbound her hair and used a dipper to sluice warm water over herself. Hazel had been thoughtful enough to include a bar of precious scented soap in the supplies she had brought. Ingrid did not know if it was an accident or if Hazel simply knew—but that bar of soap smelled of lilacs, not of Diantha’s roses. In fact, she didn’t think she would ever be able to tolerate the scent of roses again.

  Her bath would be absolutely delightful if not for the questions coming from the other side of the quilt.

  “So, you gonna do this every night from now on?”

  “No. Not every night.”

  “Too much work to get it ready, right?”

  “Ja.” She worked up a nice lather and smoothed it into her long hair. “Too much work.”

  It was a lot of work, but oh, what a pleasure to wash the week’s worth of toil and labor off her body. Best of all, she had a secret she had managed to keep from the girls’ prying eyes. Hazel had seen her shabby nightgown the night she had slept at her cabin and had somehow secretly slipped a brand-new, store-bought nightgown into her old valise. Hazel hadn’t even told her about it until the next morning.

  “I left something behind for you in that old bag of yours,” Hazel whispered as she was leaving.

  Ingrid had investigated the minute the girls’ backs were turned. It was a lovely, floor-length, white cotton nightgown with a square-cut neckline, lace on the bodice, and a few sprigs of pretty pink flowers printed here and there.

  She had not dared to even try it on until today, after Joshua’s surprising invitation, while the girls were outside playing. It had fit her well, and best of all, had made her feel pretty.

  She now rinsed her hair and then scrubbed her body with a rough washrag until her skin glowed.

  “You about done back there?” Agnes asked.

  “Ja. Why?”

  “Well, I was just thinking,” Agnes said. “Polly’s starting to smell a little ripe—can I stick her in there with you?”

  One thing that Ingrid did not want tonight was to smell like a ripe Polly.

  “Wait!” she said. “Almost done.” She rose from the tub and wrapped around her the quilt with which she had covered the chairs.

  “Now all girls can take bath!”

  With glee, the two littlest girls shucked their clothes off and dove in—the unexpected pleasure of splashing in the tub on an unprecedented middle-of-the-week night was too delightful to pass up. Even Agnes was grinning as she stripped Polly and lifted her in.

  While the children splashed in the water, Ingrid, still wrapped in her quilt, sat in front of the opened door of the still-hot oven, drying her hair and reading a ragged copy of her Swedish Bible. Seeing the familiar words made her homesick for her country and for her language. She had not heard a word of Swedish spoken for months.

  At home, Bible study and prayer had been a major part of her life. Now that things were settling down here, she intended to get back into her routine of reading from the Scriptures every night before bed. Tonight, it felt especially appropriate to read 1 Corinthians 13, the chapter about love.

  “What are you reading?” Agnes asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “My Bibel.”

  “Your Bible? It don’t look like any Bible I ever seen.”

  “It is Svenska Bible.”

  “Huh,” Agnes said. “I guess that would explain it. How about reading some of it to me?”

  Ingrid repressed a sigh. More translating when she had been looking forward to escaping into her mother tongue for a while. It would be too difficult and time consuming to translate the entire chapter, so she decided to focus on a few verses that she especially loved in this chapter.

  “Love last long time . . . and love is kind,” she read.

  For Agnes’s sake as well as her own, she tried to translate the Swedish words into the simplest English possible.

  “Love does not envy, and love does not brag on self.”

  She glanced over and saw that Agnes, sitting on a small stool beside her, was listening intently.

  “Love is not rude or selfish or angry.”

  She turned a page.

  “Love does not have evil thoughts, it hate sin, and is always glad of truth.” Agnes, the teller of blunt truths, nodded her head in agreement with that verse.

  “Love bears always, trusts always, hopes always, endures always.” She smiled as she repeated her favorite words in the entire Bible. “Love never fails.”

  She was surprised to see tears welling up in Agnes’s eyes.

  “Why you cry?” she asked.

  “Do you believe what you just read?” Agnes asked. “Or is it just some fancy words—that part you read about love enduring?”

  “Ja. I believe the Bibel.”

  “Does that mean you ain’t gonna run out on us if my sisters act bad?” Agnes stared at her hands, twisting and untwisting her fingers. “Or if I get cranky and say something stupid, or if Pa gets mad and starts yelling again like he did when Trudy spilled Ma’s perfume? Isn’t that what ‘endure’ means? Sticking around even if sometimes you don’t feel like it?”

  “Why you ask this?” Ingrid was concerned. It wasn’t like Agnes to avoid her eyes, and it was highly unusual for the child to cry.

  “I know you and Pa aren’t in love or anything mushy like that. You’re just here because you don’t have anyplace else to go, and he only married you because you were handy. What I want to know is, before I get too attached to you, are you gonna take off and leave us the first time you get a better offer?”

  Ingrid closed her Bible and considered how to answer the child. Agnes was too smart to accept a pat answer. She would expect and most definitely deserved the truth.

  Ingrid leaned over and grasped Agnes’s chin. “Look at me.”

  Agnes turned her eyes to her—eyes that were open and vulnerable. Eyes that were begging not to be hurt.

  “I not marry your father because I have no place to go. I marry him because I love him already. First time I see you girls, I want to be your moder. Your father does not know this. He is not ready to know this, but I promise you I not run away. Ever.”

  “So, love endures, huh.” Agnes’s voice had a catch in it.

  “Ja.” Ingrid let go of the child’s chin. “Love endures.”

  When Joshua came in from the barn, his kitchen smelled like lilacs and the floor was wet. He climbed the narrow stairs to kiss his girls good night, and they all had wet hair and also smelled of lilacs.

  “Swedish people sometimes take baths even in the middle of the week, Pa,” Agnes informed him. “Not just on Saturday.”

  He had a sinking feeling he knew why there had been a bath in the middle of the week. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, and Ingrid says that Polly kicks her in the side when she’s sleeping here with us, so she’s bunking with you tonight.”

  “Is she now?”

  “If you ask her to,” Trudy said, “she’ll tell you a story before you go to sleep. She always tells us one.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  He heard the girls’ pray
ers, marveling at their sweet innocence. How had he and Diantha, with all their faults, managed to create such beautiful little creatures? His heart caught when he saw Bertie’s cradle standing empty in the corner. His son should be here.

  He went back downstairs and wandered into the kitchen area. He checked, and there were still a couple of sugar cookies left in the warming oven. Tomorrow there would probably be another treat for him put there by Ingrid’s competent hands, but the fact was, he had no appetite. He was simply putting off walking into his own bedroom.

  His gratitude to Ingrid was boundless, but he dreaded going in there, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

  Ingrid heard him enter the house. He had stayed in the barn later than usual. She thought perhaps it was his way of being thoughtful to her, his way of giving her time to get the children tucked into bed and herself ready for him.

  Joshua and Diantha had made beautiful children together, but she too would give him children. Some would have light hair like hers, and some would have wavy dark hair like their father.

  All their children would be treated the same. There would be no favorites, no loving the children of her flesh more than she loved the others. That was not how one wove a strong family together. She knew she had enough love in her heart to cherish a whole houseful of children.

  She heard him as he went up to the loft, a little disappointed that he had not come to speak to her first, but she could not fault him for listening to the girls’ prayers. He was a good father. Once the girls were settled, he and she would have their time to be together.

  One candle was still burning on the thick window ledge of their bedroom, because she wanted him to be able to see her in her pretty new nightgown that Hazel had purchased. She wanted him to see her with her blonde hair unbound and falling in shining waves around her shoulders.

  She was sitting up in bed, her back pressed against the freshly laundered pillowcases that smelled of sunshine, waiting . . . waiting . . .

  He went downstairs and . . . into the kitchen.

  Why was he going into the kitchen when she was here waiting for him—waiting with so much love in her heart?

  She heard the small squeak of the door on the warming oven. Why was Joshua searching for cookies on a night like tonight? Her own stomach was in such a state of nerves and anticipation that she could not have eaten had she tried.