I thought that all would be settled when I had Peter Gunness’s son—surely the money would fall to me then—but Gust was a fierce advocate for his wan little niece. Our dispute ended up in court, where my lawyer fought well enough on my behalf, and in the end, I got most of the money for my little boy. I would rather have had it all, but most was certainly better than nothing, and the lawyer said there was little left to be done, and so I had to let the rest of the money—and Swanhild—go. The latter certainly bothered me the least.
It did not sit well with me, though. Did not sit well with me at all. I could not help but curse Gust Gunness as I sat up at night, drinking brandy next to the spot where his brother had died. He had cost me much chagrin and misery, that man, and I swore that if I ever crossed paths with him again, I would make sure to pay him back with interest.
What was it with brothers that they always came meddling and stuck their noses where they did not belong? Why was it that they always distrusted me so? I was sick of such men and their need to interfere. It made me think marriage was not worth it at all, if I always ended up with some brother on my doorstep, making problems and voicing concerns.
Perhaps I was better off on my own.
People in La Porte were touched by my plight, though, and the church was crowded when my son was christened. This little boy would have a good life, I thought, looking down on his small face under the lace cap.
This one would have a good life, if only for helping me fight back against that horrid man Gust Gunness.
34.
Nellie
Chicago, 1903
Ihad not been well since Peter Gunness’s funeral. My sleep was uneasy and nothing seemed to bring me much joy. Not even after we finally could afford a house of our own did my mood brighten much, although it was what I had wished for always. Though my sister was far away, she seemed to be always on my mind—the children, too. Myrtle in particular. I wondered how she was after all that had transpired, if she had managed to forget whatever it was that she knew, or if she found the burden of knowledge unbearable.
Her dark gaze, wide with innocence, seemed to watch me whenever I closed my eyes.
For the first few weeks, after the story of the meat grinder had found its way to ink and paper, I waited for something to happen. I was always expecting a knock on the door, or a blazing headline with my sister’s name in it. I waited for something to come tumbling down, and as we readied for the move, I was thinking of how to best arrange it if Bella’s girls should suddenly end up in my care. I thought of where they would sleep and where to keep their clothes. I walked past the school they would go to, to make sure that the yard looked nice.
John noticed my dark mood with growing concern. He did what he could to keep my mind occupied, speaking of wallpapers and upholstery—we would have a bigger sitting room now and were in need of more furniture—but I could not make myself come out of it.
He thought that it was the newspaper stories alone that bothered me, and he surely shared my concern about that. I suspected that he and Rudolph edited the articles when they translated them for me, but they could not shield me from people’s talking.
“I think we should not go to La Porte again until they know what happened,” John said one night after we had gone to bed; the candle was still burning on the bedside table. “There are too many strange occurrences happening around your sister.”
“Do you think Bella had anything to do with Peter’s death?” I asked with my heart in my throat.
“Of course not,” he murmured, though I could tell that he did not mean it. He only said so because I had always defended her before, and he wanted to avoid an argument. He had no reason to think things had changed. “I just think about Mads, and that date . . .”
“You thought Mads could have done it to himself.” I remembered our talk from that time.
“I still think so—but this meat grinder business is equally odd.” He was on his back and had flung an arm over his eyes, so I could not see them. I thought that it maybe was on purpose.
My heart was racing, racing. “So what exactly are you saying, then?” I wanted him to voice it, the suspicion we shared.
“Nothing.” He sounded very tired. “We do not know anything of what happened in that house, and we have to put our trust in the sheriff.” He sighed and removed his arm; I could tell that his eyes looked tired, too. “I’m just glad that she lives in La Porte now.”
I did not tell him about Myrtle then, although I knew I should.
If it all came tumbling down, then I would tell him.
If it all came tumbling down, I had to.
But the headline never came—no law enforcer ever came knocking to ask about my sister, and I was starting to think that perhaps Gust Gunness had been a little rash. Perhaps they held an inquest after all such farm accidents that ended in death. I knew little of the law and could not tell.
The worst thought of all to fly through my mind was the idea that I was wrong. What if I suspected my sister of such foul things for no good reason? What sort of woman would it make me to think of my sister in such a way if it had all been heresy and misunderstandings? Perhaps what Myrtle had seen had not been so bad. She was young and innocent; perhaps she had merely seen her parents in the throes of passion? That could certainly look both frightening and confusing to a young soul.
But then I thought that surely the newspapers would not have written about it if the death had not been peculiar, and then there was the memory of Mads’s death that came drifting along whenever I was about to put the matter aside and ascribe it all to bad luck on my sister’s part. Then again, I thought that surely the sheriff would have found it, if there was something be found, during the inquest.
As I packed all my things and brought them out again to rest on new shelves, my mind seemed to never tire of these thoughts, and even after it became apparent that nothing would come of the inquest, I was still startled by the smallest noise and dreaded to see the mailman on our street, fearing for what he came carrying. More than anything else, I worried that Bella would announce another wedding. When an envelope eventually did appear, however, it was a smaller sort of man it introduced, and I did my very best to rejoice in this new life, this nephew of mine, but his father’s bloody death cast a shadow on it all that I simply could not be free of.
Yes, I did my best to stay away from Brookside Farm—not because I did not want to go there, to help those little children out, but because I could not bear it. Everything in me was repulsed by the thought, afraid of what I would find if I went there again. Afraid it was something I could not look away from, or silence as I had Myrtle. The farm had become a dangerous place in my mind, littered with traps and unwelcome surprises. I ran from all knowledge the best that I could; I did not want to know.
But only because I stayed away from Bella and her children, it did not mean that they did not come to me.
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