But he dragged her away from her family, her friends, to live like a peasant. To dirty her hands with daily labor, to have only him for companionship, to bear children alone with no help from her mother, her sisters. To nearly grow mad with the loneliness, the screeching of the wind driving her senseless; but the times when there were no sounds at all—not a wolf howling, a chicken scratching, a horse whinnying—were worse. Those times, with only her own heartbeat to remind her that she wasn’t trapped in someone else’s nightmare, that she was, in fact, alive and vulnerable, made her question her sanity. More than once, in such a state, she’d found a knife in her hand as she stood over her sleeping children’s beds with no idea how—or why—it had gotten there.
She felt she was losing not only her sanity but herself. She kept looking in the mirror to reassure herself she was still Anna; Anna of the golden hair and the sparkling eyes and the brilliant laugh and the pretty ways who had been the envy of all her sisters, the belle of all the men. Anna who had chosen Gunner, not the other way around. She had many suitors, many chances, but she chose this man, and she must never let him forget that. He needed to know this every single day of this life out here in the middle of nowhere; he needed to be reminded that he was lucky to have her.
And he behaved like a lucky man, he truly did—at times. Yes, he brought her presents from town, planted a flower garden for her in the best soil around the house, relegating the vegetables to a more troublesome plot of land and doing the hard work of coaxing them to grow. He sang her songs in the evening and made his gratitude known to her in bed, when she permitted it.
But she could never forget the other times. The times when he put everything else on this dreadful scrap of land ahead of her. Like the time when she was giving birth to her youngest, the baby. Anna lay panting and grunting in the bed, the other two children standing in the doorway, dumbstruck, staring at her while she strained to bring forth this new life. And Gunner, where was he? In the barn, with his prize mare who was foaling at the same time. But the mare was having trouble, a breech birth, and her husband stuck his hands into the mare to pull out a foal, while she, Anna, lay alone. Split open with pain, clammy with terror, during childbirth. Alone, she gave birth to a son for him, she pulled the child out from between her legs with her own shaking hands, she held him there while she screamed. Their youngest son was born in a webbed, scarlet fury of blood and pain, and in that moment she couldn’t help but feel this was his destiny.
That, she could not forget. Let alone forgive.
Then he brought them, those strangers, into her house. He presented each of them to her as he presented his pretty presents. With a flourish, a pleased flush on his handsome face. But with no real idea of how the practicalities of it all would work: who would feed them, clothe them, have to live with them day in and day out while he escaped to his everlasting stable.
“Anna, my love, you needed help, so I have arranged it,” he told her the day that Anette’s mother arrived with her in tow. “I heard of a woman who wanted to sell her girl—there’s trouble at home, I gathered, and the mother thinks it’s best to get rid of her. Someone in town told me, and I wrote to her, and she’ll be here today. To help you, my love!” He must have seen the darkness overtake her face; that darkness she couldn’t always control, even though she knew it distorted her pretty features, made her less than her usual self.
“A stranger? In my house?”
“You said you were lonely!”
“Lonely for my family, my sisters, my friends. Lonely for you. Not lonely for a girl her own mother doesn’t even want! What do we know about the family? Is she slatternly, the mother? Is the girl a bastard child?”
“I don’t know—I don’t think—”
“You didn’t even ask, did you?” Anna could have slapped his silly, stupid face right then; the man looked so surprised by her questions, so stunned at her refusal of his gift. Anna never refused gifts.
“It’s too late, they’ll be here today. I promised the mother. She was desperate—and so, my Anna, may I say, are you. You have too much to do with the children and this place, you know that’s true.”