A Promise to Love

by Serena B. Miller

  Ingrid wondered if Diantha could not help the way she was, or if she had simply allowed herself to fall into that spiral of self-pity and detachment from everyone around her—until her mind began to play tricks on her.

  Joshua was still out in the barn and the whole family was asleep around her. It was a rare opportunity for her to finish reading the cursed diary. She no longer wanted to read it, but she knew she had to—if only to have enough knowledge to protect her family from these terrible revelations.

  She carefully closed the bedroom door behind her yet again, bent over the cradle, and smoothed a wisp of a curl back from little Bertie’s forehead. She smiled over the little frown he always wore when he slept, his lips poked out, as though concentrating very hard at sleeping.

  With a sigh of resignation, she pulled out the toxic book one more time, sat close to the lamp, and began to read.

  March 30th, 1871

  I am “that way” again. The signs are unmistakable even though it is early. It is not Joshua’s fault. I was the one who turned to him—the voices told me to do so. I do everything the voices tell me these days. It is so much easier to obey them than to fight them.

  I do not want this new baby growing within me. I confided my problem to Millicent last week when I drove into town. She is the closest thing to a friend I have, and I told Joshua I wished to go visiting. The man was nearly beside himself with happiness that I was doing something so social, so normal. He readily agreed to watch the children while I was gone. He would not have been so happy had he known what I intended to do. This was no social call. I had heard whispers that there are preparations a woman can use that will take care of this problem. Since she and her husband own the store, I thought Millicent might know how to go about obtaining such a nostrum.

  Millicent—it turns out—is a bit of an expert.

  She tells me that in these modern times, there are several patented products on the market that are specifically created to “treat” my condition.

  To my great relief, she said she had some pills that she would give me. She confided in me that this method is quite safe, and that she has used these pills on several occasions. Millicent worships her figure and chose many years ago to never mar it with bearing a child. She tells me that some women, in order to make it even more effective, drink tansy tea along with the pills. I told her that I know a place where tansy grows.

  The label of this box says that it can safely be used by the most delicate of ladies, and since I’m not very far along, I’m not afraid to try it. I’m certain that the makers of these pills wouldn’t be allowed to sell their medicine if it could hurt someone.

  My only fear is that the medicine won’t work, or will only partially work. I want no mistakes. I want to make absolutely certain about this, so tomorrow morning, when I take the medicine, I intend to double the amount. Then I intend to sit with Joshua at breakfast, smiling and drinking my special tea. It is amusing to me that he will have no idea that what I am drinking will help me get this over with as fast as possible.

  The diary ended. Ingrid quickly stuffed it back inside her mattress. Then she lay down upon her bed, absorbing the impact of Diantha’s words. There was no way she would ever tell anyone about what she had read. Joshua could never know this terrible thing.

  Thinking about Joshua made her long to be near him. She got up, put her work clothes back on, wrapped the still-sleeping Bertie in a blanket, and walked to the barn.

  When she slipped through the door, Joshua and the poor, laboring cow were illuminated in a circle of lantern light. He didn’t realize she was present until she came close enough to step into that circle of light.

  His first reaction was concern. “Are the children all right?”

  “Everything is fine. Children are good. Baby is good. Mother is good. All good in the house. I cannot sleep, and think, maybe Joshua like company while he wait for calf.”

  “I’m afraid this is going to be one long night. This isn’t the first time this cow has calved. It always takes her a long time.”

  She settled herself on an upturned bucket. It felt good to simply be near him right now. “You want Ingrid talk or be quiet?”

  “I’ve had more than enough quiet tonight. Maybe you could tell me something about your life in Sweden. It seems like we’re always working, or the children are interrupting. I know very little about you except that you are the most competent woman I have ever met.”

  Ingrid could not have been happier or more surprised by the gift of his compliment than if he had handed her the crown jewels of Sweden. “What thing you want to know?”

  “I’d like to hear more about your brother, Hans. I’d like to know about the farm you and he worked. I want to know about your parents—you must have had an extraordinary mother for you to be so wonderful with children.”

  “Ja. I have very good mother and father.”

  “Agnes told me today that you said she could go play because you were the mother now and she didn’t have to be.”

  “Agnes too old for her age.”

  “She also told me that you act like you love them, even when I’m not around to watch.”

  “Agnes say that?”

  “She did.” He paused. “It feels disloyal to say this, Ingrid, but you’ve earned the right to know the truth—you are a better mother to my children than Diantha ever was.”

  Ingrid’s heart positively sang with those words of praise. “I tell you about mother and father and farm and neighbor who teach me English and Hans and—”

  She stopped midsentence. Joshua was listening with a look of amusement on his face while she went on and on.

  “I talk too much?” she asked.

  “Not one bit. I’m looking forward to hearing all your words, but would you mind bringing out a pot of coffee first? I think this might be a long night.”

  She whirled to leave, giddy with all the good things he had said to her. “I go get coffee now. Be right back. Do not go away.”

  He chuckled at her enthusiasm. “I won’t move an inch.”

  18

  “I believe you managed to somehow accidentally marry the ‘virtuous woman,’ son,” his mother said as she sat in the upstairs room with a lapful of mending.

  A drawer was sticking in the bureau they had designated for her, and he was repairing it. It was the first time since his mother had arrived that they were alone together. She was obviously planning to use the rare moment of privacy for a heart-to-heart talk. He didn’t mind. He was grateful that she had recovered so well. There was no evidence of the haunted, disoriented woman Zeb had dropped on their doorstep.

  “What do you mean, ‘the virtuous woman’?”

  “You know, the last proverb when it describes a woman who makes clothing for her children and keeps everyone well fed, and who makes everyone in her house feel safe and secure. The proverb says her price is far above rubies.”

  “Ingrid is that,” he mused, “and more.”

  “But you don’t love her.” His mother picked up one of his socks that had developed a hole, inserted a wooden darning egg, and began to weave her needle back and forth.

  “I’m grateful to her, and I have endless respect for her—but I’ll never be able to love her as a husband should. I’m afraid that kind of love died with Diantha.”

  “Diantha was never the woman you thought her to be,” his mother said. “You do realize that, don’t you?”

  “I know she struggled—I watched her struggle—but sometimes I think I loved her all the more because of it. She needed me.”

  “The heart is a strange animal. It will love whomever it wants to love—regardless of what the brain tells it to do. But sometimes”—she stopped darning and looked up at him—“if you treat someone with love—and you do that every day—the feelings will eventually follow.”

  “Do you know this firsthand, Mother? Did you have to learn to love my father?”

  “No.” She began to ply her needle once again. “But I watched my m
other turn a marriage around by applying that principle. My parents had an arranged marriage; they barely knew each other when they immigrated to America. I was their firstborn, and I watched my mother being so kind to my father, and I watched him being good to her in return. It took several years, but I actually watched my mother and father falling in love.”

  “I will be grateful to Ingrid until the day I die, but I can’t imagine that ever happening. She’s just too . . . different.”

  “You mean she’s too different from Diantha.”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps things will change. We’ll wait and see. I’m praying about it.”

  “Pray all you want to, Mother, but it would take a miracle for me to ever be physically attracted to that tall, rawboned woman down there in the kitchen—no matter how grateful I am to her.”

  “Supper is ready,” Ingrid said from midway up the stairs.

  He glanced down and saw, by the high color in her cheeks, that she had heard every word. Dear Lord, he wished he hadn’t said what he did. He should be shot for those words, and he knew it.

  She looked so pitiful standing there in her old work dress, still wearing George’s cast-off boots because she had decided to save the new ones Hazel had purchased for Sundays. His heart broke for her. He wished he could take every syllable back.

  “Ingrid, I—”

  “Supper is ready.” She turned on her heel and went back to the kitchen.

  “You don’t deserve her, son,” Mary said. “I’m sorry, but you just don’t.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “But I’m what she’s stuck with.”

  “Then for goodness sake, son, at least buy the poor girl some decent shoes!”

  Joshua’s words stung worse than Millicent’s whip. Ingrid had no idea what “rawboned” meant—but the contempt in his voice told her it wasn’t good. And he said it would take a miracle for him to ever be attracted to her.

  What was wrong with her?

  It wasn’t fair. Diantha had curled up like a cat and watched life go on about her, completely disengaged emotionally from her children and from him—and he had adored her. Ingrid had worked like a mule, loved his children so much that she would die for any one of them, and he felt nothing for her but gratitude? She had hoped, after those hours of easy companionship in the barn last night, that things were changing between them, but she had been wrong.

  For two cents, she would hand Diantha’s diary and the pills over to him and let him know everything—let him know that his wife had been nothing more than an insane, crafty little thing who had cared nothing for him.

  After everyone came to the table, Joshua blessed the food, but Ingrid sat in silence, still digesting those terrible words he had said. Her food tasted like sawdust.

  Mary made a stab at dinner conversation, but it didn’t take. Neither Joshua nor Ingrid followed up on any of her comments. The children looked from one adult to the next, trying to figure out what was wrong, gave up, and simply ate their supper.

  This was not the happy family Ingrid had tried to create. She was sorry, but this evening, she had had enough. If they weren’t already legally married, she would walk away from him right now. The problem was—she would want to take the children with her. There was no way she was going to leave her children behind.

  “I am not hungry.” She pushed away from the table. “Trudy and Ellie, you help Grandmother with the dishes. Agnes, you take care of Bertie.”

  Everyone looked up at once.

  “Aren’t you feeling good?” Agnes asked. “Do you need to lay down? Mama always needed to lay down when she wasn’t feeling good.”

  “No,” Ingrid replied. “I’m going to take a long walk.”

  “Can I come?” Ellie asked.

  “No,” Ingrid said. “Not now.”

  She went into the bedroom to get her shawl and hesitated beside the bed. Was now a good time to show Joshua the diary and the pills? Was this a good time to show him how dark his precious Diantha’s mind had been? Frankly, she was grateful that Diantha had died. Had she continued in the spiral she was in, it was likely that her unborn babe might not have been the only life she would have destroyed.

  She pulled the diary and the pills out of the mattress and looked at them. Once it was done, it was done. There would be no taking it back.

  Deep down she knew that, even though she was hurt and angry, if she handed him these two items, she would regret it the rest of her life.

  She shoved them into her skirt pocket, grabbed her shawl, and headed out the front door.

  “Where are you going?” Joshua asked.

  She looked him straight in the eyes. “I do not know.”

  “Be careful,” he mumbled just before she slammed the door.

  There was still some daylight left, but not a lot. She decided not to go into the woods with darkness so close. Unlike Diantha, she did not enjoy the company of nighttime predators. Instead, she chose to climb the small rise that lay behind Virgie and Richard’s house. Joshua had pointed it out to her as the family graveyard, but she had never felt the desire to see it.

  She decided it was high time that she gave Diantha a piece of her mind.

  If Joshua had thought that looking Ingrid in the face after what he said would be hard, he had not taken into account the impact of five pairs of angry female eyes.

  “What did you do wrong this time, Pa?” Agnes asked.

  He did not want to talk about this with his children. “What makes you think I did something wrong?”

  “Because Ingrid’s mad and none of us have misbehaved today.” Agnes frowned. “In fact, it was a really good day. Ingrid even taught us a song in Swedish while she worked. She was happy all day—until she called you to supper. What did you do?”

  “I said something stupid.”

  “What did you say?” Agnes said. “Maybe you can fix it.”

  “This is not your business.”

  Agnes turned to his mother. “What did he say to make Ingrid mad? It must have been something bad, ’cause Ingrid hardly ever gets mad at us.”

  “Ingrid overheard him saying something that made her feel”—Mary shot a glance at her son—“ugly.”

  “What would possess you to say something like that, Pa? Ingrid is beautiful!”

  “I agree,” Mary said. “And she gets more beautiful in my eyes every day I live here with her.”

  Joshua threw his napkin on the table. “I don’t intend to discuss this.”

  He grabbed his hat and escaped outside, wondering why God had seen fit to bless him with a houseful of women. He felt bad enough about what he had said. He didn’t need the children and his mother rubbing it in his face.

  He started to go out to the barn, his sanctuary of choice when things crowded in on him, but then his eye caught a figure far away at the cemetery.

  He supposed now was as good a time as ever to go apologize. At least he wouldn’t have a house full of females listening through the keyhole.

  As he got closer, he saw Ingrid drop to her knees. For a moment he thought she was praying, and then he saw that she was digging. Why would she be digging, with her hands, in the cemetery?

  The closer he got, the more concerned he became. She appeared to be digging into the mound above where Diantha was buried!

  Had she been so angry with him that she had decided to desecrate his wife’s grave? He began to run.

  “What do you think you’re doing!” he shouted when he reached her.

  Ingrid did not act the least bit guilty over what she was doing. Instead, she simply looked tired and resigned. “I try to protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?” He snatched out of her hand the stick that she had been digging with and threw it away, utterly disgusted with her. “My wife’s grave? Are you that jealous of her? What kind of a woman are you?”

  Her eyes did not register fear; instead, strangely enough, he saw pity. Then he saw something else—lying beside her was what appeared to be a small leathe
r diary. It looked vaguely familiar. Hadn’t Virgie given that to Diantha for her birthday? There was also a small round box.

  “What are these?” He bent over and snatched both items away from her. “Where did you get them? Why did you bring them here?”

  Ingrid got to her feet and backed away.

  He opened the diary and recognized his wife’s handwriting—although it was much more sloppy and blotched—unlike her usual neat penmanship. “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

  “It was in the trunk, beneath the fabric.”

  “You told me there was nothing else in there.”

  “No, I told you it was empty. I never lied.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would you be digging in her grave?”

  “Only a few small inches. The book and the pills belong to her. I pray what to do about them. If to give them to you. When I stand here, I think I should give things back to Diantha. This the only way I know to do. I not want in house where children might see.”

  He was not only angry, he was confused. “Why not simply give them to me? Didn’t you realize that I would treasure any sort of diary Diantha might have kept? The children should have this to keep. A treasure like this . . . I can’t believe you were trying to keep it from us. So help me, I had no idea you were that selfish.”

  “I am try to protect you,” she repeated. “But if you read it, read it here—not in front of children.”

  Ingrid’s anger and hurt had somehow dissipated during her walk to the cemetery. She had prayed for wisdom. Instead, God had given her peace. She knew that if Joshua was here it was because God wanted him here, and for no other reason. The Lord had taken the decision of whether or not to let him have the diary completely out of her hands, and she was relieved to no longer carry that burden.

  She walked over to a tree, sat down with her back against it, and waited.

  Joshua did not sit down. He was so eager to read Diantha’s words that he stood there, rapidly turning pages. He read much faster than she did.

  She waited, studying his face. Watching him go from eager anticipation to a grim, frowning determination to finish.