“I have a little bowl for her. But she’ll need a bigger space as she grows,” he said. “I have to warn you, she’ll get rather big. You don’t have to take her.”
“I’ll guard her with my life,” I said.
I’ve been sitting here for almost an hour, and I can’t bring myself to write the rest. I can’t explain myself, or him, or maybe I don’t want to explain. We aren’t in love, that much I know for sure. But we do love each other.
The only thing I can say is that war has made us different, Beth. We want so much. We know our lives are only here for right now. I don’t know how else to explain what happened between us—all of it—from building a house out of sticks to how knowing James helped me let go of Teddy to our last night at the cottage and what happened between us then—except that maybe we wanted to live our lives as much as we possibly could, and for a little while it felt like we were. And now he’s gone to find his dreams. And I have no regrets, even though maybe I’m supposed to.
So here I am. I never sleep. My belly is already getting big, but it is still small enough to hide. The baby is moving—every once in a while I feel a movement against my skin, but by the time I put my hand there, it’s stopped. I can’t imagine it. I can’t fathom there’s a human in there.
I have two more things to tell you and then I’ll finish. And both of them may shock you even more than what’s shocked you already.
I keep thinking of my old broken bones, from that terrible fall off the barn when we were kids. One of the bones, you may remember, was my sacrum, in my pelvis. Now it haunts me. What if I can’t deliver this baby? To be honest I don’t know if I’m more scared for her or me. All I know is that either way, I need you with me.
And this brings me to my second and final shocking thing. I suppose it won’t be so shocking when you see the postmark on the letter. I plan to mail this from our next stop, so maybe you’ll already know by the time you open it that I’m writing this from the belly of a ship. I didn’t tell you before I left because I didn’t want to lie twice. I wanted to make sure I’d get it right.
I’ve been writing to the endless rocking rhythm of the ocean. And I’m surprised to find that being here isn’t scary at all.
I have everything planned. Once I land in New York, I know how I’ll make my way out to Wichita by train. I already know your address; that was your first mistake. You can’t escape me now.
My parents hate the idea of course, but they couldn’t stop me. And the baby is my secret—yours and mine. When this thing comes along to change my life, I want to be with you when it happens.
James was always right, that our friendship is complicated, but I’ll never love anyone half as much as I love you, Beth.
We reach Cherbourg tomorrow, and I’ll mail this letter then.
Love, Lenore
CATHERINE
PART 2
AUGUST 3, 1934
Dear Ellis,
It’s been three days since we left Canaan, and already I feel like I’d give anything to see our dead garden again, or Galapagos craning her neck at me from across the yard.
We’re camped in the woods on the edge of a town called Bonner Springs, just outside of Kansas City (where I hope to mail this letter), far away from the road so no one will see us. We have some bread, jerky, two potatoes, and two dollars. We have one wool blanket to share, which Beezie has stolen in her sleep. Tomorrow we’ll walk toward downtown and hope to catch another ride close in.
We are headed for New York.
I know that above anything else I owe you in this letter, I owe you an apology. I’m sorry that I couldn’t bring myself to say good-bye to you. I know I snuck us out of Canaan like thieves in the night. I never dreamt that, between you and me, I’d be the leaver and not the left. And I hope one day you’ll understand that it took all my courage just to go, with none left to tell you I was going.
Our first morning, we managed to hitch a ride from a wealthy couple in a brand-new Buick outside Canaan. Two more rides and long hours of walking have brought us this far since. I’ll never forget the shock of that first morning.
What we saw in the hundred miles we rode that day made my heart sink. Town after town, mile after mile, we passed emptiness and desolation—the ground stripped up and blown away, the acres rolling and featureless like the heart of a desert. Mama used to say that when she arrived in Kansas it was bluestem and birds as far as you could see.
It was treacherous and slow, with dust drifts covering the roads in many places and dirt coating the windshield. At times our driver had to stick his head out the window just to see. We felt lucky though, as we drove past people who were stranded, their cars shorted out or their wagons stuck in the dirt.
It always felt like Canaan was in the eye of the storms that were suffocating us. But driving those miles, I finally understood we have only been a speck in a desert of loss. Ellis, they say it’s us who have torn up the land. If that’s true, how could we have such power to destroy? And can we ever fix it?
I don’t know what turned my steps east instead of west, after slipping Beezie out of bed and packing our few things and making it past you and Mama and the end of the drive and town with her on my back—or why I stood on one side of the road to look for a ride instead of the other. I like to think it’s some inner compass, telling me the way I need to go. But I think probably it was an impulse, and nothing to do with which way was right.
The whole time I stood there, I was so near turning back I started retracing my steps home, hobbling back the way we’d come, already defeated.
And then the Buick appeared in the distance and slowed to a stop in front of us.
And a minute later, we were gone.
Beezie hasn’t forgiven me for taking her. At the time she was too groggy to know what was happening. Now she doesn’t understand I had no choice. I suppose you and Mama won’t understand either.
We heard this morning that the world hasn’t ended back home but that it’s come close, and that the other night Kansas had the storm to end all storms. They say the dust reached ten thousand feet in the air, and the haze stretched all the way to New York and three hundred miles out to sea, dusting the ships like rain. Here, we could only see a haze floating over the sun.
The only thing that keeps me going is my hope that Beezie will get better and Kansas will get better, and that I’ll make it back to you. Though I don’t know if I will, and I don’t know if you’ll wait.
I hope you got the letter I left outside your door—it is from Lenore to Mama. I hope it explains some things I couldn’t say before I left. There were more, but those were about Mama and Lenore before me, and I left them for her to keep for herself. I left them on the kitchen table and then on second thought, I left my journal too. She’ll know about us now, and I hope it doesn’t cause problems for you. But I don’t care for keeping secrets anymore.
Trust in me, you said, the other night. Let me save you.