Oh, Anna knew this woman. And she could imagine, too well, what would happen if she took Anette away. She’d burn through all the money, she’d drag the girl from flophouse to flophouse, she’d never see that Anette got an education. She would most likely sell her again, but by that time, Anette would be a young woman. And the kind of selling that entailed made Anna shake with fury. It took all her self-control not to tear that hag’s eyes out right now.
Anna glanced at the others—Raina, Gunner, the Newspaper Man. Their faces, too, revealed their fear—but also their helplessness.
“She is her mother.” Raina was the first to break the spell; she spoke in English, so Mrs. Thorkelsen couldn’t understand. But the woman was so busy clucking over her daughter, she didn’t take notice—she was putting on a show, staking her claim—and Anette was loving it, believing every false declaration of endearment and devotion. Ach, that poor child! Another thing she must do—teach Anette not to be so gullible.
“A mother can take her own child,” Raina continued. “What can we do?”
“We signed no papers,” Gunner admitted. “Legally, Anette is not ours. I doubt there are any birth certificates or marriage certificates in that woman’s possession—papers don’t seem to mean much out here, other than land claims—but if this went to any kind of court, no judge would deny that it’s the mother’s right to take Anette back.”
“I’ll be damned if she takes her,” grumbled the Newspaper Man. “She sold her own daughter. She’ll take the money and the girl and run, and we’ll never find Anette again. That is not going to happen, I promise. I can…I can write something up about her in the newspaper, expose her for who she is.” But he, too, looked helpless in spite of his anger, and Anna snorted. A pen, mighty as his appeared to be, was nothing on the prairie. It was no weapon against the basest elements of humankind, and those were what the prairie brought out in people. There was no refinement here. Only the elemental instincts and emotions: greed, evil, might, right. A pen was no weapon against a determined woman.
Pffft!
Anna had no time for these blathering idiots who couldn’t see the danger in front of them, who held on to useless niceties and legalities and idealistic notions of mother love. Turning her back on them—her gaze lingering, just for a moment, on the stove in the kitchen—Anna sighed. She really had enough to do with all these people in the house—cook, clean, sew, nurse—and now this cunning wench disguised as a pitiful mother. Anna thought that Raina, at least, would have had more sense. But no, it would be up to her alone.
“It is time for dinner,” she announced, putting an end to all the babbling. It hurt her ears, it made her skin itch, all these stupid people in her house. “Anette needs to eat so she can go to bed and get her rest.” Anna shooed them all out of her kitchen, grabbed the skillet of cornbread and shoved it into the oven.
The sooner these idiots were fed, the sooner they would go to sleep.
And then she could do what must be done.
CHAPTER 34
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PEOPLE DISAPPEAR IN THE PRAIRIE. That is one thing everyone understands from the moment they get off the train. Just one look at the endless, unmarked land stretching out on either side of the tracks—no buildings in sight, no fences, just space—and a person can’t help but think that it is a good place to vanish, willingly or unwillingly.
Indeed, it was not unusual to hear of people who had walked away from home, never to be seen again. Every community had its tale—the man near Gibbon who had been surveying his withering crops, last spotted with a scythe in his hand walking through the rows of dust-choked stalks. Never to be seen again, despite notices put up by his frantic family. The mother up around Beatrice who put her baby down for a nap, went out the door with a bucket for water, and never returned. The baby was found by its father, red in the face from crying all day but otherwise unharmed.