“Tell me about the goat!” Myrtle had had enough talk of mean children for one night.
“Oh yes, the goat . . . We had three sheep, two cows, and one goat at St?rsetgjerdet when I was a child. The sheep were called Berit after my mother, and Hildur and Ullina after my sister and me. The cows were called Staslin and Dokka; the latter was old and gave very little milk, but we still kept her on since it was something. Then there was the goat; she was called Perla, because she was as white as a pearl.”
“Was she pretty as a pearl too?” Myrtle asked.
“Oh yes. Perla was always my favorite. Olina and I spent hours outside with her, combing through her fur with our fingers. She had the loveliest little horns and her milk gave the best brown cheese you could imagine . . . Sometimes in winter, when Perla was in the barn, I used to go out there and press my head to her side while telling her everything that bothered me. If my father had been angry with me, or if someone had been cruel to me, Perla always knew all about it.” I paused and looked around at the girls, at their wide eyes and parted lips, completely lost in the story.
“Sometimes I thought maybe Perla spoke to me as well,” I continued, “and I made up a language between us: if she cocked her head to the right, it meant yes; to the left, it meant no. If she ate while I spoke, it meant it didn’t matter as much as I thought. If she came with her head to be petted, she felt sorry for me.”
“What happened to her?” Myrtle asked.
“She fell down a cliff and broke her legs. It was over for her then—my father came out with the knife.”
Myrtle did not reply, but I could feel her shaking as she suppressed her tears. She was always softhearted, that one.
“We ate good meat for days after.” I tried to cheer her up. “Perla was useful for a long while.”
“I wish we could go there some day,” said Myrtle, her tears all forgotten.
“Where?” I asked. “To St?rsetgjerdet?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and closed her small soft hand around mine.
“Oh, it’s not the same anymore. My mother and father are gone now, and Olina—my sister with the bad foot—she lives there alone with her son. He doesn’t have a father either.” I looked around at my mostly fatherless brood. I did not mention that no one even knew who my nephew’s father was. Olina did well enough at St?rsetgjerdet, though, making herself useful as a midwife. I sometimes got a letter, filled with gossip and complaints about the weather. “So, you see, it’s not only you who have lost a parent.” I fixed my gaze on Swanhild and saw Peter’s eyes look back. “It’s not so unusual at all to be an orphan.”
33.
One day Swanhild did not come home from school with Jennie. The latter came bursting through the back door and into the kitchen; she was panting with exertion and her eyes were wild. “They took her!” She stood in the middle of the floor. “They took Swanhild just up the road—!”
“Who did?” I nearly dropped the milk I was handling. Prince was disturbed by the sudden distress in the room and yapped around my legs.
“Some men! I swear I never saw them before.”
“Did they go for only her, or did they try to take you too?” I held the dog in a firm grip to calm him.
“Only her—she seemed to know them. She wasn’t afraid at all.”
My surprise gave way to anger. “Did they say anything that you heard?”
“They said they were going to take her home, and apologized for taking so long.”
“And then they drove off in a carriage?”
“Yes.”
Fury is a seething thing; it writhes and it snaps but is mostly just there, boiling under your skin. Gust Gunness set it aflame. “I better see the sheriff, then.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“I have no idea.” But of course I did. I knew very well who it was. They were trying to defy me and cheat me of what was mine.
I had Jennie finish dinner and drove into town.
* * *
—
Sheriff Smutzer’s office smelled of unwashed men and leather. His desk was surprisingly tidy, but I doubted he saw to that himself. He toyed with his mustache while talking to me and jotted down notes with a stub of a pencil.
“I have heard from Gust Gunness,” he told me. “He has been sending several letters of late. He says that the circumstances of his brother’s death make it unwise to leave the girl in your care.”
“What circumstances?”
He shrugged. “The inquest for one, the uncertainty of what happened—Mrs. Gunness, if I may offer some advice, I would let them have the child. There’s no need for your good name to be sullied further. I know she’s like a daughter to you, but they are her family and will take good care of her.” I could tell from his expression that he would prefer to have this dealt with quickly, that he found such domestic disputes tiresome at best. I could also tell that he did not fear me but thought of me as nothing more than a quarrelsome widow whom he nevertheless sought to charm, in the way that men who think highly of themselves are wont to do. He aimed to be popular, Sheriff Smutzer, especially among those of us with land and money to our names. He was also the sort of man who thought women incapable of bloody violence, something that had served me well after Peter died.
“The Gunness family is only after the money,” I told him.
“Well”—he kept twisting his mustache—“that’s what they say about you.”
“How can they even think that?” I lifted my handkerchief to dab at my eyes.
“People can be cruel sometimes.” He all but shrugged before me.
“But I was Peter’s wife, and ought to take care of his daughter.” I shifted my gaze to the window.
“You could find a lawyer willing to pursue the matter, but as things stand I would strongly advise against it. The circumstances of your husband’s death were—”
“Yes, I know.” I put the handkerchief away. “But if I got her back?”
He shrugged. “It would be up to them, then.”
Get her back, then, somehow. If Swanhild were in my home, lavished with good food and nice clothes, and I got myself a lawyer after that, no one could take the girl from me then.
* * *
—
I asked James Lee to come and visit me at the farm. He arrived on the train with his friend Joe. Joe was a simple man but could be trusted as long as he was paid. He had helped James set the Alma Street fire. I brought the men home and plied them with drink, fed them roast and waffles. We had quite a feast that first night.
I had missed my friend James Lee.
Late at night, after Joe had fallen asleep from the whiskey, James and I lay in my bed.
“I knew it wouldn’t last.” He sat up and rested his back against the headboard. “As if you could ever have that ‘wholesome life’ you talk about.”
“I might have, if Peter had been a better man.” I reached up and trailed a finger down his face; I had dearly longed for the sight of it through those awful days with Peter.