Afraid that her parents would see into her heart and know she was not the same person she’d been when she left home. Afraid to add to their grief in this way. Afraid to be thrust into the reality that her family was not the same, either—and would never be again.
Raina couldn’t bear it, she couldn’t hold off her grief any longer; she fell onto a sofa and wept for her sister—and also for herself. Why couldn’t her parents have settled in a city like Omaha or Saint Paul? In a city, she and Gerda could have worked together in a little store, or taken a secretarial course, or taught in a school where the children didn’t fall asleep from exhaustion.
Or where the wrong decision didn’t lead to unimaginable tragedy.
Suddenly she could hear her sister’s voice in her ears, scoffing. Poor Raina, the voice said—but there was warmth in it, love. Such a baby, such a princess. And Raina stopped crying, and she laughed instead as she blew her nose and dried her eyes.
No matter what, Gerda would always be with her; the bond of sisters was eternal. This letter was simply paper and ink, nothing more; her heart knew the real truth of her sister. These words could not change that.
From the bedroom, Anna was calling her name; Raina rose with a sigh, reaching into her pocket. She took the letter—neatly folded, no need to read it again—and went to the kitchen. Opening the door of the woodstove, she threw the letter inside. She did not remain to watch the flames consume it.
Instead, she resolutely went back inside the sickroom to care for Anette.
CHAPTER 26
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ANETTE WAS DREAMING NOW, AGAIN, always. For a girl who had not been given to dreaming before—how could anyone sleep so lightly as to dream, when she was so exhausted every night her sleep was as heavy as a ton of bricks, blotting out any fancies?—she was currently entangled in so many she couldn’t make sense of them.
There was the dream of being yanked out of an ice house and into someone’s arms, a woman’s arms, not Mama’s, but someone else’s. And when she opened her eyes, just once, she saw that she was in Mother Pedersen’s arms, but that couldn’t be possible, because, well—that just couldn’t be possible. And then Mother Pedersen was crying and saying she was sorry, but that, too, could not be. Then the nightmare of fire licking at her hands, devouring them in its fierce, gaping mouth, and she cried and screamed, and maybe someone held her down because she wanted to get up and stab that flaming monster in the eyes, but she couldn’t because she couldn’t move her arms.
Another bout of dreams and fantasies—past, present, future, she had no idea: Fredrik taunting her, telling her to get up, she was a baby, just a girl, a stupid girl, why didn’t she get up and go with him? A recurring sensation of falling from a ledge up in the sky into the very earth itself, the soil rising up to catch her was soft as a feather bed. She fell deep into it, afraid that it would hurt when she finally landed, but she never did, she just kept tumbling down in its pillowy embrace. Teacher calling her name over and over, sternly, like Anette had done something bad. And her slate! Her pail! Where were they? She patted her chest, felt for the slate—hadn’t she wrapped her shawl over it?
Mrs. Halvorsan, Tor Halvorsan, they knocked at the door of her turbulent mind, they cried Fredrik’s name, they gazed at her and put something in her arms, they cried again, they left, they came back. They were only notions, not real people, of course. Real people did not come to see her, did not treat her kindly. Except for Fredrik, who kept running in and out of her dreams like he did when they played tag together; he’d dart around the corner of the schoolhouse, then reappear behind her like a demon. She’d laugh and dash away from his outstretched hand, and he’d call her name. He called her name now. His was the voice she heard the most, rising above all the others she might have recognized and might not have, but it seemed there was a babbling stew of praying, crying, talking all around her, never letting her sleep as she longed to.
Then they stopped. The dreams. The voices were silenced, too, and that’s when she knew that the voices hadn’t really been in her dreams, they had been real people, talking. But it was quiet now. And she thought that she had died. For wasn’t that what death was, the silencing of all things?