There was no name for what she felt for Edwards then. She had never felt this way toward anyone. Her husband, her brothers. There was not a reason in the world for Edwards to have been so generous. Never in all her life had there been a Christmas so rich.
“Oh,” Edwards said, and patted his shirtfront. Something rustled partway down. He undid a button and drew out two envelopes. “Mail,” he said simply. One went to Charles, the other he held out to Caroline.
At the sight of Eliza’s handwriting on the envelope, Caroline felt her face crumple. She could not get her breath; she was crying without tears. The paper was warm, the envelope so fat it could only be the circulator. Eliza and Peter, Ma and Papa Frederick, Henry and Polly, Martha and Charley. All of them had put their hands to these pages. Caroline pulled a hairpin loose and slit open the envelope where she stood.
Ma had begun the letter as she always did: Dear Children . . .
The words filled her chest. One person at least knew she was yet a child in this world. Oh, Ma, she thought as comfort rained through her. Caroline’s lips fluttered as she read the first lines—scolding them all, as ever, for not writing more and sooner—holding her suspended between laughter and tears. Save some of it, Caroline urged herself. News won’t spoil; don’t gorge yourself all at once. Only she could not fold it back up without treating herself to a glimpse of Eliza’s section. What Caroline saw there sent a warm shiver through her, as though her sister’s news had reached out and brushed every inch of her skin.
“Eliza and Peter had a boy in April,” she told Charles, “named for your father.”
“That’s fine news,” Charles said. He held a twenty-dollar banknote in his hand. “First payment from Gustafson,” he explained. “Sent it on the third of September.” Almost a year since they’d left, and Gustafson had sent what amounted to two dollars a month. A spark of unease nipped at her, then winked out as soon as her eyes returned to Eliza’s news. Lansford Newcomb Ingalls arrived April 5, 1870. Caroline touched her fingertips to the baby’s name, imagining a boy with Eliza’s bright eyes and Peter’s gangly limbs; the soft Quiner mouth, the untamable Ingalls hair. She looked at the date on Eliza’s portion of the letter and marveled at the passage of time. The nephew in her mind was only a few minutes old, yet by now the real Lansford Newcomb Ingalls must be crawling.
The dipper jangled in the water bucket—Laura, trying out her new cup. Caroline blinked once before realizing that of course she was still in Kansas. For the briefest flicker of consciousness, she had been wholly elsewhere. Not so far away as Wisconsin, Caroline was too far grown for that sort of make-believe, but someplace both high above and deep within, where distance was of no consequence. That was as much a gift as the letter itself.
She turned to Edwards, ready to lavish him with thanks. His face, both wistful and sated, stopped her. She could not escape the sense that it was he who was trying to repay them for kindnesses already given. Had a plate of white flour dumplings and a half dozen fiddle tunes by the fireside meant so much? Caroline regarded her neighbor more thoughtfully, recalling how he had settled his shivering self right down on the floor alongside the girls and launched into his Santa Claus tale without taking a sip of hot coffee or turning his palms toward the fireplace. That alone gave her cause to believe that Edwards wanted no more than to feel at home with family. To laud his generosity and enthrone him as a guest of honor now? That would almost certainly spoil his pleasure.
It was a guess, and one she was willing to hazard aloud. “Charles,” she said, “why don’t you and Mr. Edwards see to the stock while I warm the stew and set the breakfast table for five?”
Charles looked at her as if she’d blasphemed. But Caroline saw the happiness soak Edwards straight through. He buttoned up his coat, loped to the milk pail, and called, “C’mon, Ingalls!”
Caroline could not remember the last time she had been so full. Of food, of affection, of gratitude. The cabin was redolent of tobacco, peppermint sticks, gravy, and browned sweet potato skins. She had allowed Edwards the satisfaction of gallantly refusing the rocking chair, and so she rocked Carrie in her lap while the men leaned over the table with their pipes and picked at what remained of the turkey.
“What’s the news from town, Edwards?” Charles asked.
Edwards glanced at Mary and Laura’s bed. “Little ones asleep, ma’am?”
Caroline nodded. Laura was snuggled up with her new tin cup.
“Is there trouble?” Charles asked.
Edwards nodded. “Up in Cherry Township. A young doctor from Pennsylvania tried to run a half-breed and his family off his claim. Fella’s name is Mosher. Guess he’s part Osage, but he married a white woman. Been there four years, even raised a few fruit trees. A week ago yesterday Doc Campbell’s posse ordered Mosher and his wife and child out of their beds in the night and torched the cabin. Pistol-whipped the lot of them right there in the yard while the place burned.” Edwards’s eyes flicked toward Caroline. He dropped his voice further. “I hear Mrs. Mosher’s in the family way.”
A twinge of horror iced across Caroline’s middle. “Mercy on us,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.” Edwards turned a turkey rib in his hands as he spoke. “Marched the whole family into the woods in their nightclothes. Those Campbells must have threatened him something fierce.”
“Are they all right?”
“I hear Mosher was well enough to register a complaint with the Indian Board, but beyond that I don’t rightly know. A few days after that, another half-breed’s cabin was torn down.”
The news was so at odds with all that had happened that day, Caroline could not make a place for it to lodge in her mind. It hung outside of her, like something that had happened in a book instead of two townships northeast. The men seemed ashamed of it—Charles for asking and Edwards for telling. They scraped silently at the turkey carcass until Charles asked with a note of cheer so deliberate it was jarring, “Did I ever tell you about the time my father took a sow sledding on the Sabbath?”
“Twice,” Edwards said. Caroline burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry, Charles,” she said, then buttoned her lips between her teeth so that they could not smile.
Charles grinned and shook his pipe at her like a schoolmaster brandishing a pointer. “Caroline Ingalls, you are not the least bit sorry.”
“Did I ever tell you how I got the coonskin for my cap?” Edwards countered.
Charles shook his head.