But she wanted to see Tor and Mrs. Halvorsan, she wanted one last chance to say how sorry she was for their losses. She no longer felt responsible for Fredrik’s fate, but she did feel, keenly, the family’s grief because she had been witness to its inception, the first oozing cut of it.
When she walked to their house one warm spring day, after letting the children out—and smiling to see little Rosa being fought over as to which big boy would carry her home because she was still using a crutch—once again Raina marveled at how short a distance their house was from the schoolhouse. You could make out the buildings, the well, even the clothesline from the steps of the schoolhouse. It was a walk of about fifteen minutes.
Yet it had been a lifetime that day in January.
Mrs. Halvorsan was out hanging clothes when she saw Raina coming; the good lady immediately ran into the house but Raina smiled; she knew women, she knew there would be a plate of cookies or a slice of coffee cake, warmed up, waiting for her, with a cup of tea. It was inconceivable to allow a visitor inside your house without food to welcome her.
By the time Raina knocked on the door, carefully scraping the spring mud from her boots, Mrs. Halvorsan had smoothed her hair and put on a clean apron. She let Raina inside with a shy smile—that shy smile most prairie women had upon greeting guests, especially after a long winter, because they were so unused to company. By the end of summer, people would be freer with their smiles, their laughter. But the isolating, demoralizing winter was still too recent.
“Good, good, Miss Olsen, it is good of you to come! You have been on our minds!”
“I have?” Raina laughed, shook off her cloak, took the proffered seat at the kitchen table, sipped some tea. Two little Halvorsans—one looking so like Fredrik that her heart seized, just for a moment—were chasing each other about the kitchen but all it took was for Mrs. Halvorsan to glance at them once and say, “It is the Teacher!” and they quieted down.
“They will be at school next term,” Mrs. Halvorsan said proudly. “So you can teach them!”
“That was one reason I wanted to visit,” Raina said, shifting uncomfortably in the narrow ladder-backed chair. “I won’t be back next term. I’ve given my notice.”
“Oh, heavens.” Mrs. Halvorsan appeared truly distressed; she twisted the apron in her lap and there was a flash of tears in her eyes that she turned away to hide, but not quickly enough. Then she tried to laugh at herself. “I cry so easily these days.”
“That’s understandable—so do I,” Raina admitted, reaching over to clasp the woman’s hand. It was a hand that was red from scrubbing, the fingers long and sinewy, very little fat in the pads. There were shiny spots where burns—from cooking—had healed. The nails were short, but not dirty. There was strength in this hand.
“I am sorry you won’t be back. But you have so many nice things ahead of you, I don’t blame you.” The woman turned to face Raina, the tears wiped away. “Get away from here while you can. Once you break the ground with a hoe, you will never be able to leave.” And she looked out the window, to where Tor was in the fields, slapping the reins against an ox pulling a plow.
“I love the prairie,” Raina said, and it was true. She loved the beauty of it, the wide openness, the songbirds and flowers, the waving, russet grasses in the fall. The shadows falling across the land, like patchwork, as the clouds danced beneath the sun. The people. But she still felt trapped like an insect beneath a glass jar whenever she truly took in the scope of it. Despite its optimistic vastness, there was little to do with it but stay and plow and hope for the best.
“I love it, but I am excited to go to college. I’m going to Lincoln on a scholarship to the Latin School there, to prepare for the university in two years. I’ll be able to save the sum I was given, by all the kind people. And that’s what I wanted to see you about—I don’t think I deserved all that. Tor was just as responsible for getting the children here safely. Mrs. Halvorsan, please, won’t you let me give Tor some of the funds so he can go to college, too?”