“Why don’t you play the fiddle, Charles?”
He looked into the fireplace. “I don’t seem to have the heart to, Caroline.” His words might have been made of water, he was so sodden with disappointment.
Caroline could not stand it. “I’m going to hang up your stockings, girls,” she declared. “Maybe something will happen.” They looked at her with such wonder, Caroline’s heart did not know whether to break or swell. She strode to the mantel and hung their two limp stockings beneath the china shepherdess. It was thanks to Edwards that she could do even this much, Caroline thought as she threaded the wool over the borrowed nails. Silently she wished him a happy Christmas. “Now go to sleep,” she said to Mary and Laura. “Morning will come quicker if you’re asleep.” Eager now, they squinched their eyes shut and tunneled deeper into the quilts. Caroline lingered there with her fingertips still on the mantel. Her thumb brushed the head of one nail as she looked down on her daughters. It was so easy to forget, now that there was Carrie, how little Mary and Laura still were. Quickly she bent and kissed them good night a second time and returned to her chair.
Caroline heard herself humming faintly as she rocked. She gave no thought to the tune. Her mind scoured the cabin, pondering what sort of Christmas she might patch together. It must be something new and fresh, or Mary and Laura would not be fooled. Nothing from the scrap bag or the button box. Paper dolls might lift a rainy afternoon, but she could not expect them to bear the weight of Christmas morning. There could be no molasses candy without snow, nor vanity cakes without eggs.
Charles’s voice was hardly a murmur. “You’ve only made it worse, Caroline.”
Caroline’s stomach seized at the thought of them waking to empty stockings tomorrow morning. She had been careful to say maybe, but by hanging those stockings she had made them a promise, no matter the words she used. Something in that cabin must have the power to delight two little girls, her mind insisted, especially two little girls whose entire afternoon might have been altered by something as simple as a snowflake.
“No, Charles,” she said as an idea shaped itself. “There’s the white sugar.” Together with what was left of the white flour she would make two sweet white patty cakes, drifted with sugar.
He scraped at a hangnail. “Walked two miles in both directions, looking for a safe place to cross. Should have thought of Christmas candy when I went to Oswego,” he said to his knees. “I took for granted there’d be time for another trip to Independence.”
“Charles,” she said. He raised his head. The look on his face belonged to a child. Caroline felt her center go soft, as it did when Carrie whimpered. “I can manage,” she promised. His expression eased some—grateful, and at the same time ashamed of his gratitude. That could not be helped. For all his looking ahead, this once Charles had failed. Rain and horse thieves did not disguise that plain fact. Caroline could not tell him otherwise. But she would do what she could to shelter the children from his oversight.
White flour, white sugar, lard, and milk. Saleratus, and a pinch of nutmeg. The white flour was so silky and cool, Caroline mixed the dough bare-handed until it was warm and smooth as her own skin. She rolled it into a thick circle as large as the pie plate, then neatened the rough edges with the heels of her hands. With a knife she cut out two hearts and dredged them with white sugar until they glittered faintly in the lamplight. Quietly, she placed a layer of stones in the bottom of the bake oven, laid the heart-shaped cakes carefully into the pie plate, and lowered the plate into the oven.
It was an extravagance, all that white sugar and flour. And yet it felt paltry. There ought to have been layer cakes, and cookies, and squiggles of boiled sugar candy, Caroline thought as she sat vigil by the bake oven. Swedish crackers, vinegar pie, dried apple pie. The cabin should be heady with brown sugar and clove, and the rich velvety scent of beans and salt pork lazily bubbling in molasses. At the very least, a dried blackberry pie. Even without a cookstove, Caroline knew she could have contrived to make some of it.
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.
Caroline’s skin prickled at the gravity of the words. An empty cookie jar is not a sin, she assured herself. But still her throat grew hot and tight. Charles had been merely remiss, while hers was a disregard so sly she had been unable to recognize it. It was as if she believed she could keep Christmas from coming, Caroline thought, pressing an apron corner to her nose, as though without the sweet smells and tastes to remind her, she would not think to miss Eliza and Peter, and Henry and Polly. Or, she thought with a deep-belly resonance that signaled the greater truth, it was as if she believed the special things they’d so enjoyed together should not be enjoyed apart.
Caroline Ingalls, what nonsense! That’s what Eliza would say. Caroline could hear her sister’s incredulous laugh, see her starry-black eyelashes blinking back tears at the very idea. And Polly—Polly would be too heartbroken even to scold at the thought of such a bereft Christmas. Caroline shook her head, thankful that it would not occur to either of them to imagine what she had done. For oh, how it would hurt them to see her like this.
I’m sorry, she thought to Eliza and Polly, and to Charles and the girls. I’m sorry.
Silently Caroline unlocked her trunk and pulled out the blue tissue paper she had saved from the cake of store-bought soap. A trace of rose scent still clung to it. She teased the two thin layers apart and laid one patty cake in the center of each, taking care to keep the surface that had touched the soap to the outside as she wrapped them. The paper would rip when the girls pulled their gifts from their stockings, no matter how gentle they were. She was not sure herself whether she could nestle the little packets into the stockings without tearing them. Caroline touched her fingertips to the frail tissue one last time.
Jack growled, rousing the hairs at the back of Caroline’s neck. She shrugged, trying to rub the sensation away with her collar. It was only what Caroline thought of as his grumbling growl, the sound he made to let them know there was someone passing outside. She cast about for something to hush him—a scrap of salt pork or a dab of leftover stew—before he woke the girls. But the bulldog’s growl deepened, shifting into a warning aimed at whatever was approaching the cabin door. He gave one sharp bark.
Caroline panicked. The girls were already stirring and their stockings were still empty. She snatched up a dishtowel and tossed it over the presents.
“Ingalls! Ingalls!”
Her head snapped toward Charles. His face mirrored her own bewilderment.