“Of course, and I didn’t look like me when I did it. I’m clever in that way.” His laughter was easy; he was pleased with himself.
“I’m sure.” I laughed a little as well; I held the button up to the light to let the flame ignite its luster. It needed a bit of polishing for sure, but it was a pretty thing. A dozen butterflies swarmed in my stomach when I thought about Edvard’s death; it was only right—what he deserved. This justice was long overdue. I glanced at James again, his proud face when he looked at me. If I had been in jeopardy of losing myself to him before, this little piece of pewter certainly sealed my fate. Never before had I met a man who would do what needed to be done for my satisfaction. He saw me so clearly—saw me as I was.
“The news will get out soon enough.” He took another swig of the bottle. “It seemed too gentle to let him off with just a scar.”
“Well, this certainly seals our friendship.” I dropped the button into the pocket of my apron. I could not stop smiling, could not quench the sense of triumph that had my heart racing.
“Seals a little bit more than that, I hope.” James rose to kneel before me on the step. He took my hand and kissed it, then leaned over me and kissed me on the lips. I had waited a long time for that kiss, and when I finally had it, it was even sweeter than imagined, leaving me tingling and heady with want. James pushed me down on the stairs. Not rough yet, but almost gentle. Then his arms locked around my waist and his teeth sank into the soft skin on my neck, biting down. I hissed from pain but from pleasure too. “Let’s celebrate the death of a rat,” he whispered.
Not before long, James’s fingers were tugging at my skirts, hiking them up over my hips. His fingernails scratched my thighs as he fought to get between them. He fumbled with his suspenders and dropped them off his shoulders. I know I helped him pull down his pants and was satisfied to feel him firm in my hand. Then he was inside me, pushing hard and careless. He hid his face against my shoulder to muffle his ragged moaning, held on to me like a drowning man to quench the shivers that ran through him. Soon I was shivering too. The moon shone brightly on the velvet sky; the frog still sang in the distance.
Not once did I think about the lake.
When we were quite done, we had drinks in the kitchen. I fried sausages and onions in the pan. I could not remember ever feeling so starved as I did that night; it was as if I could not get enough. My back was bruised from lying on the stairs, but I barely felt it; I was too excited.
James came up behind me as I flipped the second serving. His hand grabbed between my legs through the fabric of my skirts. His mustache was wet with brandy; it stung the torn skin on my neck.
“Yes,” he said into my ear, “we truly are the same, you and I.”
The next day I found a chain for the pewter button and hung it around my neck. I carried it with me always, tucked away under my shirtwaist. When Mads asked, I said it had belonged to my father and reminded me of home.
It was as good as a wedding band to me, that button.
Meant more than the gold on my hand.
16.
Nellie
Iwas so relieved when Bella took in those girls. Her asking to raise Olga had driven a wedge between us that I had found it difficult to overcome, and so I had stayed away for a while.
When she had other children to care for, it was easier.
John had not shared my strong feelings in the question’s wake but had thought it all very reasonable—generous even. “They only want to help,” he had said one night, propped up next to me in bed, “and help themselves besides. It is hard for them not to have children of their own.”
“If we had seven of them I would have seen the point of it,” I replied, “but we only have the two, and so it seems strange that they would offer such help.”
“Soon there will be three.” John patted my belly through the blanket, though I barely showed.
“If we are lucky.” I harbored even more doubts than usual. Not only did my body ail, but I was growing old too. If I carried to term, the birth would be hard—too hard perhaps. Age was no one’s friend in such matters, and a sunset child was rarely a joy, at least not for the battered mother. Little Brynhild had been such a child, born after Mother had thought she was too old.
“Mads knows very little of poverty.” John tried to soothe me by stroking my cheeks with the back of his hand. “To him, we might seem poorer than we are, and in dire need of charity.” He tried to laugh it off, but it did not reach his eyes. It hurt his pride, I could tell.
“But Bella, though. She ought to know better.”
“Ah, you know how she is.” He rolled over on his back. “She only sees her own needs, not others’.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I do.” He said it in a thoughtful manner. “She would want Olga for herself, not because it was best for the girl.”
“You do not know her as I do,” I huffed, and rolled over as well. Through the open door, I could just make out the bench in the kitchen where both of my children lay sleeping. I closed my eyes and made to sleep as well but could not stop thinking of what he had said. “Why do you think her so selfish?” I asked in the darkness.
“Oh, it is only from the way she treated you when you were carrying Olga, and the way she behaves toward her husband. She only took him for the money, that much is clear. She only wants what she can use to feel a little better.”
“You should not speak such harsh words about my sister.” My voice had turned cold, yet my heart was racing in my chest.
“No? Then why is it that you will not forgive her for asking to raise your daughter?”
To my own great chagrin, I could not answer that—could not figure why it wounded me so, why it made me want to hold my little girl tight. I felt as I had that time on the riverbank, before the snarling dog, when I snatched Little Brynhild up from the ground to save her from the danger.
That was how I felt—as if Olga were not safe.
Perhaps it was the memories of Mads’s colorful bruises and our father’s large fists that made me feel uncertain. Perhaps she reminded me a little of the latter sometimes, the way she raged and lashed with her tongue, and how she carried old grudges like painful pearls around her neck. It was not her fault. None of us who grew up at St?rsetgjerdet escaped that place unscathed; some of us turned out meek and better, but others were too deeply wounded for that, or carried too much of that tainted blood—the kind that made you mean.