“I do,” Charlotte said, her blue eyes bright. She made an impish smile. “It’ll be looove-ly.”
To his own surprise, Ansel’s hand rose and slapped down hard on the table so that the plates and silverware jumped and clattered. A heavy silence followed until Ansel at last mumbled an apology. He looked up from his plate and scanned the rooms. “It’s just that . . . it’s no one’s fault—except my own and Mother Nature’s—but I never thought we’d be leaving the place.”
It fell quiet again until they heard footsteps on the stairs, a stern series of clicks on the planks. It was Ellie, and only Ellie.
“There’s no money from her sister,” she reported. “It’s worse than that even. Her sister wasn’t writing in response to Aldine’s letter. She hadn’t even received the letter.” Ellie cut through an apricot, then stilled her knife. “If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny,” she said. “The sister was writing on her own, in hopes of borrowing money from Miss McKenna.”
“From Miss McKenna?” Ansel couldn’t keep from saying.
Ellie nodded. Aldine’s sister and brother-in-law had been called to Salt Lake, she said, and they’d spent all their money on the baby and travel and hoped that Aldine might help them through. Ellie shook her head. “In the letters she wrote them, she never mentioned she wasn’t being paid.”
There was silence until Clare said, “She should just come with us to California.”
Ansel took a bite of biscuit, but it seemed to lie hard in his mouth. He took a bite of apricot to help it down. He tried to sound hesitant when he said, “I suppose we could do that.”
“Goodie!” Neva said, but no one responded, and she said it again, louder.
“Where would she sit in the car?” Charlotte asked. She looked actually alarmed. “Where would she live when we get there?”
“If there’s work for us,” Clare said, “maybe there’d be work for her. They have schools, don’t they?”
Neva said, “She can have my place in the car. I could sit on her lap.”
Ansel picked a final crumb off his plate. He could almost hear the terrible wrenching of his family as it pulled in opposite ways, he and Clare and Neva on one side, Ellie and Lottie on the other, and the girl in the middle. But they had an obligation, didn’t they? They had brought her out here, and now her problems were theirs, too. So why not bring Aldine along? he thought, and then, to his surprise, he heard himself say it: “Why not bring the girl along?”
When Ellie stared at him with reproachful eyes, he stared right back. He wanted to be near the girl. That was all, nothing more. Was that wrong? And being near was all that he wanted. To be near was enough.
“I’m sure Miss McKenna would prefer to go back home,” Ellie said in a quiet, controlled voice. “The school board is just going to have to meet its obligation here so she can go back to her own family.” She paused. “In the meantime, though, she could work in Emporia at the Harvey House.”
Ansel was incredulous. “The Harvey House?”
She nodded.
“They couldn’t be hiring, not now, with—”
But she cut him off. “They aren’t hiring. But they will hire her.”
Her father. Her father had arranged something.
“But a waitress,” he said. “She came here to teach school, not wait on tables.”
“You married a waitress, Ansel,” Ellie said. “It was good enough for me and it was good enough for you.” She set her face. “It’s a paying job when paying jobs are hard to come by.”
“And your father had nothing to do with this?”
Ellie looked away and told Neva to eat her biscuit.
“But will she be okay,” Clare said, “being all alone like that?”
“Gil’s still there,” Ellie said, “and two girls are getting married. It’s a good place to work. She’ll have girls to talk to”—she paused—“and I’m sure Gil will look after her.”
Neva pushed her food around on her plate and said, “Can you get me a job there, too?”
Ansel was seeing Ellie in a way he had never seen before, and this new incarnation cost her sympathy. He said, “It isn’t Mother you need to ask, Neva. You’ll need to take your case to Opa. He solves all our family’s problems.”
He waited for Ellie to say something, or even to meet his eyes, but she did neither. So it was true.
Ansel went out to finish packing the trailer after supper, but he was so reluctant to complete the task that his progress was slow. At last, when everything was set and roped, the house was dark and black clouds had cut off the moon. He backed the trailer into the barn, which felt like some kind of sad joke. Putting the trailer inside to protect it from rain. The wind had begun to blow. He closed his eyes and stood smelling the barn and listening to the creaking boards and an owl’s low chortle and whoo. He’d used up all the firewood. He found the sledgehammer and knocked some planks from a stall and cracked them into shorter lengths. He got a fire going in the stove and stared into it, moving only as needed to feed in more wood. He did this for a long, long while.
When finally he walked back to the house, it was very late. Neva and Ellie lay on the bed arranged for Neva near the cookstove in the kitchen. He stood in the door frame wondering if they were asleep.
“Trailer safe?” she asked through the darkness.
“Mmm. Unless the barn blows away.” She didn’t reply, so he said, “Are you staying down here again?”
Neva shifted in the bed, and Ellie waited for her to grow quiet again. “It’s better if I can be here to put more water in the kettle,” she said. “Keep the air moist for her.”
“Sure,” he said. “That makes sense,” and he turned to go upstairs alone.
He lay fully dressed on their bed. Last night, he’d heard creaking on the stairs and then low voices overhead. Clare’s voice, he was sure, and the girl’s. Clare hadn’t stayed long—Ansel thought he heard the girl sending him away. Still, Ansel had left his bedroom door ajar. To hear Clare, if he should pass again, that was what he told himself. But on this night, no matter how still he lay, or for how long, his body would not give itself up to sleep. The windows shivered under the wind. He got up and looked in on Clare—the boy didn’t stir—then he went downstairs and found Neva and Ellie both snoring gently. He stood watching them for a while, and wondered what had gone through old Tanner’s mind at dinner the day he shot his mules.
When Ansel climbed the stairs, he supposed it was to return to his bed, but he did not return to his room. He moved past it, and eased up one step after another, toward the attic.
Aldine’s door was closed fast. His turn of the knob produced a click and a squeak, and by the time he’d pushed the door open, Aldine was sitting bolt upright in bed, the covers pulled tight to her neck.
“Oh, it’s you then,” she whispered, relaxing her hand on the covers. “I was afraid it was Clare.”
“I need to talk to you,” he said in a stiff whisper.