The house was silent, cloaked in the stillness of night.
She went to the children’s bedroom and walked in, stopping beside the bed. Martha’s head was covered in a nightcap. Suzanne had lost her cap in her tossing and turning, and her red hair spilled over the pillowcase in a puddle of tangles and curls. Angelic and impish at the same time. Inga’s heart ached as she looked at them. She loved them so very much.
But it had been a baby’s cry she’d heard. Where had it come from?
She left the children’s bedroom and went downstairs, wandering from one room to another. All was silent. All was as it should be.
She opened the kitchen door and gazed out at the barnyard. The snow was gone. She would have sworn she could see crocuses blooming beside the back steps. It had to be a trick of the moonlight. Winter couldn’t possibly have ended while she slept.
She closed the door and leaned against it. She felt lost, alone, and afraid.
Terrified.
Walking as quickly as her legs would carry her, she returned to her upstairs bedroom. A glance at the bed proved she was not alone. Dirk was there, sleeping, one arm thrown over his forehead.
Then she saw the quilt, lying across a chair near the window. She crossed to it, stared at it. Scarlet. So very scarlet.
She had prayed and asked God for Dirk’s life. She had sworn she would never want anything again if only he would spare Dirk, even if it meant losing him later to the things he wanted more. She had told God to take anything of hers but to let Dirk live, and she would never ask for another thing.
God had heard her request and taken her unborn child.
She picked up the red and white quilt, held it to her face, and began to weep. Her heart was torn and bleeding, like the scarlet of the quilt, and she couldn’t stop weeping. She knelt on the floor, clutching the quilt, swaying forward and back as she mourned the baby she would never have. All the babies she would never have.
She wasn’t sure when Dirk came to kneel beside her, when he took her into his arms and held her head against his chest, when he began to whisper words of comfort and remorse.
“We’ll start over, Inga. You and me. We’ll do things right this time.”
She had wanted too much. Her destiny had been to stay at home with Pappa, to take care of him. She should have learned to be content with what she had, but she hadn’t been. She’d wanted adventure. She’d wanted to be pretty. She’d wanted Dirk, and then she’d wanted his child. She’d wanted more, always more. She’d wanted too much.
Dirk stroked his hand over her hair. “When I asked you to marry me, it was for plenty of selfish reasons. I never thought about what it would cost you. You gave me more than I deserved. It’s my fault, all your unhappiness. Nothin’ I can do will ever give you back what you’ve lost, but I want you to know how sorry I am. How sorry I’ll always be.”
Dirk thought it was his fault, but he was wrong. Inga knew the fault was hers and hers alone.
“I’ve got no right to ask you to love me, Inga. I know I’ll have to earn it.”
She had loved him too much and now she had paid the price.
“What do you say? Can we start over? Can we make us into a real family, you, me, and the girls?”
She couldn’t answer him. Fear of the future, of still wanting too much, kept her silent.
Sobs tore at her throat, and she was inconsolable, for she believed, deep in her wounded heart, that she had bargained one life for another.
And then she had found the price too high.
Monday, April 2, 1898
Uppsala, Iowa
Dear Mary,
It has been nearly a month since I received your letter with the sad news about Mr. Maguire. I am glad, however, to learn of the good health of your son. I know little Keary must be of comfort to you now.
There has been much heartache for my family this winter. Gunda was in an accident. The sleigh she was riding in went into the icy river. One of her friends drowned and she could easily have died as well, if not for my husband’s rescue. As it was, her leg had to be amputated below the knee. Dirk caught pneumonia after all his hours in the cold and I feared I would lose him, but he has recovered.
As for me, I had a bad fall down the stairs. I was pregnant at the time, and our baby was lost. The doctor says there can be no more children.
I had not realized how difficult it would be to write those words. It is because I wanted so much more than I was meant to have. I was envious of others. I wanted to be beautiful like my sisters. I wanted to love and be loved like you with your Mr. Maguire and Beth with her Mr. Steele. I wanted to have a family of my own. I was never satisfied with what I had. I wanted more. Too much more.
Mary, I am frightened, for I have lost the ability to pray. From the time I was a little girl, I always felt the nearness of God. I told Dirk once I could hear God’s voice in the wind, hear it whispering in the trees. But now, all is changed. I can hear nothing. I feel lost and alone and I do not know what to do.
When we were coming to America, you were the truly brave one, Mary, the one who believed in making things happen. I admired that trait about you most of all. I wish my nature was more like yours. I believe it would see me through this time better than my own.
Your friend,
Inga Bridger
Twenty
Get off me, Sunset!” Dirk elbowed the animal in the ribs but got little response.
He was trying to replace a shoe the big workhorse had thrown earlier in the day. Only the palomino had decided now was a good time to rest and was leaning hard against Dirk’s back.
“You’d make great glue,” he muttered as he measured iron shoe against hoof.
He lowered Sunset’s leg to the ground, then straightened and walked to the anvil. Soon, the clang, clang, clang of hammer striking iron filled the barn. When he paused to wipe a trickle of sweat from his brow, he heard children’s laughter wafting to him on a balmy April breeze. He was irresistibly drawn toward the sound.
He walked toward the open rear door, pausing at the entrance, his gaze scanning the pastures behind the large barn. Jerseys dotted the smaller paddock to the right, nibbling at the new shoots of grass that were beginning to appear. The larger pasture to his left held no animals as yet. He wouldn’t graze his livestock there until late May.
He saw Martha first, high in the branches of a tall maple tree near the drive. Then he saw Suzanne sitting on Kirsten Linberg’s lap, the two of them on the lowest and thickest limb of the ancient tree. Beneath them, a blanket had been spread on the ground, and on it, in various positions, were three more of the Linberg sisters. Astrid lay flat on her back, her eyes closed against the bright sunshine of early afternoon. Gunda sat beside her, her back propped against a fence post and her skirts carefully spread out in front of her, no doubt to hide her missing limb. Inga was on her knees, her folded hands clenched in front of her waist as she stared anxiously upward.
“Martha, be careful,” she called. “I think you should come down.”
“Not yet, Aunt Inga. I’ve almost reached the nest.”
“Martha, I really think—”
Gunda took hold of Inga’s arm and said something, but Dirk couldn’t hear what it was from this far away.
He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb.
Of the two of them, Gunda had bounced back much more quickly than Inga. Even though she would never walk without the aid of crutches, Gunda had remembered how to laugh, how to have fun, how to enjoy life. Inga seemed to have forgotten all of that and more.
Dirk frowned. Maybe he’d made a mistake, not saying he loved her that night two weeks ago. She’d cried in his arms, and he’d felt her pain. He could have said he loved her then, but he’d wanted to show her first. He’d wanted to prove it to her. Words didn’t always mean a whole lot, and he’d wanted his actions to speak for him.
But his wife couldn’t hear or see the love he felt, because even though she was up and about now, even though she had resumed ca
ring for the children and cooking for the family, even though she was physically present, Dirk knew she was emotionally absent. Especially with him.
He thought back across the months since Inga had first entered their lives. He thought of her gentle ways, the sweetness of her smiles, the expectancy with which she used to greet each new day. She’d loved his mother in those short weeks before Hattie’s death. She’d loved his nieces from the moment they’d all first met. He’d thought she might love him, at least a little. She hadn’t been afraid to face life then. She’d had a sweet, abiding faith that she’d shared with others in her many acts of kindness. But now…
“Unca Dirk! Look at me!”
He glanced away from his wife and waved at Suzanne.
“Me too!” Martha shouted.
He obediently did so, waving to her as he had her sister. Then he pushed off from the door and started across the uneven ground, eating up the distance with long strides. As he drew near, his gaze returned to the blanket and those upon it.
Gunda smiled, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “Did you come to climb the tree, bror?” She had stopped calling him Mr. Bridger upon her return from Minneapolis and now used the more affectionate Swedish term for brother. “Martha is having trouble reaching that bird’s nest.”
“Make her come down, Dirk,” Inga said softly. “It is too dangerous. She is much too high.”
The fear in her voice nearly broke his heart. “All right. I’ll get her.”
He walked to the tree, grabbed the nearest branch, and hiked himself up.
“Sit with us, Unca Dirk,” Suzanne said when he glanced her way.
“Sorry, pumpkin. I’m after your sister.” Then he resumed his climb.
He heard Martha’s giggles and looked up through the thick web of branches, new buds just beginning to make their springtime appearance. She was straddling a narrow tree limb, mischief twinkling in her eyes.
“What’re you doin’, Uncle Dirk?”
“What does it look like? I’m climbing a tree.”
She snorted in disbelief. “Grown-ups don’t climb trees. They’re too old.”
He paused and glared at her with all the indignation he could muster. “Old?”
She giggled again.
He quickened the pace of his ascent, accepting the six-year-old’s unspoken challenge. In a matter of moments, he’d reached her. “Who’re you sayin’ is old, moppet?”
“Well…you never used to climb trees.”
He grinned. “Well…neither did you.”
“Look.” She pointed to a sparse limb over her right shoulder. “Can you reach the nest?”
“I think we’re gonna have to leave it there.”
“But I wanted to show it to Suzanne.”
“I know, but you’ve got your Aunt Inga mighty worried, being up so high and all. Besides, if you take the nest, when the birds come back, where’re they gonna lay their eggs? There won’t be any baby birds chirpin’ out here in the tree. I’d miss the sound.” He motioned for her to slide backward. “Come on. Let’s not make Aunt Inga worry any longer.”
With a sigh, Martha began inching her way backward along the branch. When she reached him, she said, “Aunt Inga worries a lot, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah.” He glanced toward the ground. “Yeah, she does.”
“She used to be happier.”
“I know.”
Martha touched his shoulder, drawing his gaze to her. “What can we do t’make her happy again? She always did stuff to make Grandma happy, even when Grandma was so sick. You think Aunt Inga’d like it if Suzanne and me made her some yellow daffodils like we did Grandma?”
“She might,” he answered. “But right now what would make her happiest is for me to get you outta this tree.”
“Okay. I’m comin’.”
What can we do to make Inga happy again? Dirk wondered as he and Martha descended through the branches of the old maple tree. There had to be something, and he had to find what it was.
Thea tossed a shawl over her shoulders and left the third-floor apartment, unable to bear being shut in for another moment, unable to bear the noise and the stench that was omnipresent.
The baby in the apartment across the hall had been squalling for over an hour. It was a skinny, sickly thing, that poor baby, and Thea suspected it would not live to see the end of its first year.
On the second floor, in the apartment directly below hers, a man and woman were arguing in a foreign language at the top of their lungs. Thea knew what would happen next. Before long the man would hit his wife—sometimes once, sometimes many times—and then things would fall quiet. Tomorrow, the woman would sport a bruise on her cheek or a black eye. Or she might have an arm in a sling or walk with a limp.
Thea released a sigh of relief as her feet touched the ground floor. A moment later she stepped outside into the fading light of early evening. She paused, looking up and down the street. Karl should be home soon. She was eager to see him, although she doubted he would believe it. She knew she didn’t act like it.
She pulled her shawl more tightly about her shoulders as she thought, Poor Karl.
Six weeks married, and she could already see something defeated in his ice blue eyes. It was mostly her fault, too. No, it was entirely her fault. She knew it, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She complained bitterly to him about everything. Every day he returned home from work to a poorly cooked dinner and a miserable, cramped apartment and a wife who nagged him about everything that was wrong. She blamed him, even when she knew he wasn’t to blame. He had not forced her to come to New York and marry him. She had come willingly.
Others were happy. Others who were no better off than she and Karl. She saw them every day, on the streets, in the marketplace, on the stairway of her own tenement building. Why couldn’t she be like them?
“I want to go home,” she whispered as she started walking in the direction of the waterfront.
It was the first time she had voiced those words aloud, but she had thought it often in recent days. In Uppsala, the farmland would be turning green and the trees would be beginning to bud. The crocus would already be in bloom, their yellow heads bobbing in the spring breeze. Gunda and Astrid and Kirsten would be holding court with all the handsome young men in the area, and the parsonage would ring with laughter.
Inga would be there to answer Thea’s questions. Inga, who had always been so giving, so willing to share. Thea had never realized before how often she’d depended upon her older sister to solve her problems or give her advice, how often Inga had rescued Thea from her own mistakes.
Still lost in thought, Thea reached South Street and turned left. The congested piers and ferry slips were bustling with activity, despite the hour. It seemed always to be so. She longed for quiet and wide empty spaces. She longed for the parsonage and her family. She longed to be the prettiest girl in town and to be spoiled and pampered. She even missed her pappa’s disapproving glances.
Down past the James slip, where the ferry that carried passengers up the East River to Long Island City in Queens County was docked, past Pier 32, where the Long Island Railroad kept its car floats filled with freight boxcars, past the Catherine Street Ferryhouse, where Thea and Karl sometimes took the ferry to downtown Brooklyn, she saw the familiar sungold hair of her husband’s head. Tall and slim, he walked with long strides. His shirt sleeves were rolled up above his elbows. He carried his jacket, still necessary in the crisp morning hours when he left for work, over his right shoulder.
Something tightened in her chest at the sight of him, and she felt like crying—something she did far too much of these days. She knew it was true, because she saw her puffy eyes in that tiny cracked mirror in their bedroom every morning.
He saw her then, raised his arm and waved at her, even smiled.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. She had loved him so very much for so very long. She had run away from her family to be with him, to become his bride. This had been what she’d w
anted. To just be with him. She should have been happy. She should be making him happy.
But all she wanted now was to go home.
Inga held her breath, fear squeezing her chest, as she watched uncle and niece climbing down the tree. It was a familiar feeling, this fear. Every time one of the children or Dirk was out of her sight, she was terrified some calamity would befall them. She was afraid disaster would strike, and she would be helpless to save them. She loved them all, and simply by loving them, she feared she tempted misfortune’s arrival.
“Inga,” Gunda said softly, “they are all right.”
She looked at her sister. “I know.”
“In fact, when I am better, I think I will climb that tree myself.”
“Oh, Gunda, you—”
“Do you think I couldn’t?”
She remembered Gunda when she’d been about Martha’s age. Gunda had been such a tomboy, always leading her younger sisters into mischief. Occasionally, she’d roped her older sisters into trouble as well. Later, as she’d developed into a pretty young woman, she’d taken her mischief-making in a new direction, flirting outrageously with all the young men of Jönköping and, once in America, of Uppsala. She had never been as flirtatious as Thea, but she had been bad enough.
Gunda touched Inga’s forearm. “I lost my leg, Inga, not my life.”
Inga swallowed the lump in her throat.
More softly, Gunda continued, “You lost something, too, but it must not cause you to stop living.”
She closed her eyes.
“Pappa’s worried about you. And Mamma. You haven’t been to church or—”
Inga looked at Gunda, protesting, “I am still not well enough to go into town. I…I haven’t the strength yet.”
“Oh, Inga,” her sister whispered, her expression filled with sadness. “It is more than a month since you fell down the stairs. It is time you put it behind you.”
Inga wished she could be angry about Gunda’s attempt at interference, but she couldn’t summon that emotion. It seemed the only thing she could feel anymore was fear, trepidation, a sense of loss and foreboding. If she could, she would lock her family up in the house and never let any of them out of her sight.
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