But this was different. This was providence. And she’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.
The woman aimed her mule in the direction she had traveled only a year and a half before. Did she have any shame when she remembered that previous journey? Any remorse, when she recalled her daughter’s questions, her bewildered eyes—her pathetic tears?
There was no remorse, no shame; she’d done what she had to do, what would make her life easier.
She snorted, thinking that her journey this time was so similar. She had troubles—that hadn’t changed much in the ensuing months, not even with one less mouth to feed—and a solution had presented itself yet again. All she had to do was go to the same house she’d gone to before. Tying her nag of a mule up outside the prosperous two-story home, she realized that if all went according to plan, she had left her husband and sons without any means of transportation. Oh, well. Maybe, if she was feeling particularly generous, she would drag the beast home behind a new carriage, a farewell present before she turned her back on that damned miserable cave and rode off to live in a grand house with servants, a house full of gleaming furniture and plush carpets and china plates, a house that didn’t smell of shit and sweat and boiled potatoes. That didn’t smell of him and the brats, still unable to make it outside—they didn’t have an outhouse, only holes in the ground—before they pissed themselves.
But probably she wouldn’t do that, after all. Her husband was a lot like her; it wouldn’t be smart to let him know she was suddenly rolling in money.
If all went according to plan.
She walked to the front door and knocked. And when the door was answered by the woman she remembered—that beautiful woman who had looked at her with such distaste the other time, too—she calmly stated her business.
“I am Anette’s mother. I heard about her from the papers. And I am here to take her home.”
CHAPTER 31
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ANETTE HAD GROWN USED TO the funny man who kept coming to sit by her bedside. He read her many letters from strange people who were worried about her and prayed for her and sent her presents of dolls and books. She was getting better with her English, thanks to Mother Pedersen letting Teacher give her lessons. The funny man—Mr. Woodson—didn’t know any Norwegian.
But Mr. Woodson liked her; Anette could tell. The pain of losing Fredrik never left her; she too easily could conjure up his laughing face, his flashing feet, the way he had of pushing his hair up from his forehead until it stood straight on end. Tor and his mother came to visit once—they had come before, she was told, when she was sick—and they reminded her so much of him that it had hurt her inside, like bees stinging her heart. Tor looked so like his little brother, except he had a calm, soothing presence, unlike the whirligig Fredrik had been. Fredrik’s mother had been so sad, and had taken Anette’s hand in hers and asked, urgently, “But he saved you, didn’t he, my Fredrik? He saved your life, my boy did.”
Anette nodded, and this made Mrs. Halvorsan smile, finally, and she spent the afternoon telling story after story of Fredrik—the time when he was three, when they thought they’d lost him in the tallgrass, but he was asleep in the barn and never heard them calling for him; the time he almost tumbled down the well but got his foot tangled up in the bucket rope, which saved him; the time he found a toad and put it in his mother’s drawer where she kept the good linen, because he thought it was the nicest place in the world for a toad to live. Anette loved the stories and could have listened to them forever, although Tor didn’t seem to enjoy them. He watched his mother anxiously, and Anette didn’t know what he was afraid of, only that he relaxed when his mother stopped telling the stories and decided it was time to go back home to get supper. That was when his mother was brisk and more like, well—a mother, and Tor looked almost like his old self.
Anette had never really paid much attention to Tor at school, other than to take Fredrik’s side against him whenever the two brothers bickered. Tor was just one of the big boys, outside of her thoughts. He was friendly, he was helpful to Teacher, but he was older and smarter and almost gone from the schoolhouse anyway.