He turned the big-hoofed Belgian sharply and prodded him around Leah’s carriage, heading toward the path and the church. And he pressed the lumbering beast hard, slowing down from time to time to let his eyes scan the line of trees or the field beyond.
He abruptly decided to take a short cut across Avery’s acreage of clover, unmindful of the damage the Belgian’s great hooves would do. He saw Caroline near the middle of the field and only seconds before the horse would have stepped on her. She was lying facedown, one hand outstretched as if she’d been reaching for something. He reined the horse in hard and slid to the ground.
“No,” he heard himself say as he rushed forward. “No!”
The rain pelted down on her. Her hair, her clothes were soaking wet. He grasped her shoulders and turned her over. The ground under her was still somewhat dry—she must have been lying here when the rain first started. He tried lifting her upward. Her head dropped backward, her bonnet slid off and dangled over his arm.
“Caroline—Caroline!”
She was so still. He stroked her face, pressed his cheek against hers.
“Caroline—” he whispered. “Mein Gott. Caroline, can you hear me!”
He ran his hands over her, searching for some injury, some wound. Perhaps she’d been shot by a hunter or by the foragers, those bored, careless young soldiers who had nothing better to do than to steal livestock and grain and fire off their guns as a lark.
“Bitte,” he said, the only prayer he could manage. He found nothing to account for her present state.
“Caroline!” he said again, desperate now and giving her a shake. This time her eyes fluttered and she attempted to lift her hand. He caught it and held it against his chest as her eyes closed again.
The rain came harder; he had to get her home. He managed to lift her off the ground, but when he approached the Belgian with his burden, the animal shied violently, whirling away and galloping off across the field.
He swore out loud. He should have brought Leah’s buggy, and even as the thought came to him, he knew why he hadn’t. He hadn’t expected to find Caroline—except with Kader Gerhardt.
He shifted her in his arms so he could carry her more easily. Her head lolled. against his shoulder. He began walking back the way he’d come, as fast as he could walk, his body hunched to try to protect her from the pouring rain. By the time he reached the trees and the path, she was beginning to rouse again. She gave a soft moan, then made a sharp mewing sound, and she stiffened so that he nearly dropped her.
“Caroline,” he said, kneeling down with her.
“Hurts—so—” he thought she said. She suddenly clutched the front of his shirt. “Mary Louise—where—”
“It’s all right,” Frederich said, trying to see her face. “Leah has her.”
“Leah?” she murmured, dazed. She made the mewing sound again and doubled up, her head nearly touching her knees. “Frederich—” she managed. “I’m—it’s the baby—”
“Caroline, we have to get you home. I’m going to lift you up. See if you can put your arms around my neck. Try, Caroline. That’s it—we get you home quick now—so your baby can be born.”
“No. No!” she protested as he stood up with her. “It’s too soon—Frederich—oh!”
Too soon?
He had no idea if that was truly the case or not. He’d never bothered to find out how far along she was in her pregnancy. He had simply resigned himself to watching her grow bigger every day with another man’s child.
Too soon.
Too soon.
He carried her along, overwhelmed suddenly by the realization that this had happened before.
Not like Ann. Please, God, not like Ann.
He called out loudly as he approached the house, and Leah met him on the porch. He was completely winded and had to let her help get Caroline inside.
“Where’s—Mary Louise?” he said, looking frantically around the kitchen.
“She’s asleep—what’s happened?” Leah asked as they made their way up the stairs. “Is Caroline all right? Frederich, what’s wrong with her!”
“The baby comes now,” he said, and Leah immediately faltered. If he hadn’t been in her way, she would have bolted.
“Leah, you have to help me,” he said.
“No, I can’t—I don’t know what to do! I’ll go get somebody—”
“And who do you think will come here—for her? Would your mother come?”
“Yes—no, she can’t. She’s sick again. She’s been in bed all week—Frederich!” she said in exasperation because he wouldn’t step aside.
“I need you to help me!”
She stopped trying to get by him.
“I need you to help me,” he said more quietly. “The second door there.”
But she still hesitated, and Caroline gave a ragged moan.
“Bitte!” he said for the second time that afternoon, he, who never said “please” to anyone.
Leah nodded and hurried ahead of him to open the door and to turn down the bed. She began to help him get Caroline out of her wet clothes.
“Where are her night things?” she asked, moving away and leaving the removal of garments to him.
He said nothing, his pride keeping him from stating the obvious. He had no intimacy with his wife whatsoever. He knew nothing of this room or her. Leah began to search without his direction, finding them in a lower bureau drawer. She brought a nightgown quickly and helped him bring it over Caroline’s head, neither of them looking at her nakedness.
Caroline began to shiver, the shivering abruptly overtaken by another hard contraction. Frederich covered her with the quilt, then hurriedly left the room long enough to bring another one from his own bed.
Caroline moaned loudly as the contraction intensified.
“She’s so cold—shall I heat some bricks?” Leah said anxiously.
“Yes,” Frederich said. “Do that. And heat some water—make her something hot to drink. There may be some coffee—if you can find it. I don’t know. Something—anything—”
“I’ll see about Mary Louise on the way down,” she said, and he nodded. When he looked back at Caroline, she was trying to get out of bed.
“I need them—” she said, reaching toward the small armoire.
“What?” he asked, making her lie back. “What do you need?” He searched her face, trying to decide if she was lucid.
“I put—the things—in there.”
He moved to open the armoire door. “What things?”
“Behind—the dresses—oh!” she said as another contraction overtook her. She was pale and shivering again when the pain eased. “Please,” she told him. “I need them—”
He looked inside the armoire, seeing nothing but a bundle lying in the bottom. “This?” he asked her.
She was watching him intently, and she held out her hand for it.
“Yes,” she said, clutching the bundle to her. “Frederich, you have to—go. You can’t be—here—please!”
He understood that he was the last person she would want now, but he also knew that he had no intention of leaving.
“You can’t do this alone, Caroline. No one else is here but Leah. The Other women—I don’t think there is time for any of them to get here.” He had to force himself to look in her eyes. The reason he gave was the truth—but not the first truth. The first truth was that she was still an outcast, regardless of her marriage to him.
She closed her eyes. The tears squeezed out of the corners and ran down the side of her face into her hair.
I am your husband, he almost said. But he had been Ann’s husband as well, and in his anger and humiliation he’d stayed away when she was dying.
He took the bundle out of her hands and untied it, recognizing the purpose of the sewn-together newspapers and rags immediately. The herb book he had not seen in a long while, and he didn’t want to remember when it had last been in his hands.
But the memory surfaced anyway, the driving need he’
d had to pack away every reminder of the faithless Ann Holt. Lise had had to plead with him not to take away the rocking chair and the sewing basket with the sunburst design, or every trace of her would have been gone from his sight.
He put the book aside, and he had to literally force Caroline to let him arrange her and the bed for her labor. She kept trying to push him away, then clung to him as another contraction began, her fingers digging painfully into his arms.
She abruptly let go, her body limp; the next pain came almost immediately. This time he gave her his hands to grip. The rain fell outside the slightly open window; the wind drove it into the room from time to time. He made no move to close the window because the room felt oppressively hot and humid to him. But Caroline still shivered, her teeth chattering in her need to get warm and in her fear.
Of course she would be afraid, he thought. She had been with Ann at the last, and in this very house.
Leah returned with a kettle of hot water and towels, ones Beata would shriek over when she knew how they had been used. He took them and the kettle out of Leah’s hands and poured some hot water into the washbowl, wetting one of the towels so that he could wipe Caroline’s face. She let him without protest until another pain came. She was in agony, and he knew of nothing to do to help her. There was no doctor to send for. The German community had always relied on its own people for these things, its own women for the birth of a child. He could only let Caroline writhe and drag on his hands, watch her bite down on her bottom lip until it bled.
“The horse came back—I put it in the barn. And I found some tea,” Leah whispered, her face as worried as he felt. “I think Beata hid it for a rainy day.” She gave a slight smile, because both the weather and the events certainly qualified. The smile faded. “I’ll go get it.”
“Mary Louise?” he asked when she reached the door.
“Still asleep. I think she must be worn out. Who knows how much wandering around she did before she found her way home.”
But there was no time to get the tea.
“No, please! Please—!” Caroline suddenly cried, her body curling upward, her hands clutching her knees.
Frederich and Leah both turned to her, but she no longer needed their help. Her body sagged back against the bed; her eyes closed. She said nothing, asked nothing. Her eyes opened again and held his, the question she couldn’t bear to voice there for him to see.
This time she didn’t fight him when he moved the quilts. The child had come—too soon, as she had feared. But there was no baby’s cry, no sound in the room at all but her ragged breathing and the rain.
Chapter Eleven
Why am I still here?
The question came to her every time she opened her eyes. She hadn’t meant to survive, certainly hadn’t wanted to. She had been ill enough to die. She knew that. She remembered very well the fever and the pain in her chest that had followed the baby’s birth. The hushed voices. There had been some kind of committee meeting to decide what exactly ailed her. Johann had been in the room. And Mr. Steigermann. And Beata. A fever, from lying too long in the rain before Frederich found her, they decided, not knowing how badly she wanted to leave this world.
But, regardless of her desires, she was unquestionably… alive.
She turned her head at a small noise. Frederich sat in the only chair in the room, sound asleep. He was close enough for her to reach out and touch him if she wanted.
She didn’t want to. Instead, she watched him sleeping, surprised at how young and vulnerable he looked. He had hurt the back of his left hand on something since she had last noticed—a while past, she decided, because she could see that the cuts were healing. And he was missing a button on his shirt—another fault of hers, of course. No new shirts. No buttons on the old ones. Her illness must have been grave indeed for him to keep a bedside vigil for such a worthless wife. He had kept no such vigil for Ann.
But Ann had died so quickly.
So quickly.
The worthless and shameful Caroline was still here. There must be little rejoicing in the German community at that. She couldn’t fathom why God, who surely must want to punish her, could have let this golden opportunity slip by.
Ah, but he was punishing her, she suddenly thought. He had duly noted her sins, found her guilty and sentenced her to remain here.
She gave a wavering sigh and let the sorrow she had been trying to keep at bay wash over her.
My baby!
Frederich was awake immediately. He leaned forward and rested his big callused hand on her forehead without her leave, his familiarity much more disconcerting than his newfound concern.
“Gut,” he said, more to himself than to her.
She closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was waiting.
“The fever is leaving, Caroline. The fever is leaving—and you are not, no matter how much you want it. I am going to bring Lise and Mary Louise in to see you now.”
“No,” she protested, surprised at how weak her voice sounded.
“Yes,” he answered. “They have worried enough. They will see you are awake with their own eyes.”
He left then and returned almost immediately with the girls. But he didn’t let them come into the room. He stood in the doorway and lifted Mary Louise up so that she could see.
“Blow your Aunt Caroline a kiss,” he said to her. He took Lise by the hand, because both girls had grown suddenly bashful. They hesitated, hiding their faces against Frederich for a moment before they did as he asked.
Caroline forced herself to look at them, trying hard not to cry.
“We’re glad you’re better, Aunt Caroline,” Lise offered after a moment. She glanced at her father to see if she’d spoken out of turn. “I’ve got another loose tooth—want to see it?” she added, apparently deciding that she had not. She opened her mouth wide and wiggled a remaining front tooth with her tongue.
“Can you come out and play?” Mary Louise asked.
Caroline managed a smile. “Soon,” she whispered without meaning it. With considerable effort, she returned their blown kisses.
Frederich’s eyes held hers for a moment, and if he wanted to say something, he didn’t. He set Mary Louise down instead.
“Go let Beata give you your supper,” he told them, sending the girls on their way.
He stood for a moment, making sure they had gone, then came into the room and sat down on the side of the bed—yet another familiarity Caroline found disconcerting. And he didn’t say anything. He simply waited, as if his being here was something she required of him.
Sit here and wait until I can think of something you can do for me.
But there was nothing he could do for her, nothing anyone could do for her. She didn’t want to be here, and if she must, then she just wanted to be left alone.
“You are hungry?” he asked.
She shook her head and looked away.
“Sleep then,” he said. “Tomorrow you will get up for a little while.”
She had no intention of sleeping or of getting up, but she did both, not at Frederich’s insistence but at Leah’s. Leah wanted Caroline to get out of bed, to bathe and to dress, to eat—and she wouldn’t be put off by anything Caroline said or did. She simply offered the one threat that couldn’t be ignored.
“If you don’t, I will go get Frederich.”
Caroline found the entire process of returning to the living exhausting, but less so than fighting Leah Steigermann’s iron will. At Leah’s insistence, she even visited briefly with Lise and Mary Louise, dutifully drinking the beef tea and toasted bread they so precariously brought her.
But she couldn’t keep from crying. They were so dear and loving and she should be grateful to still be with them. She wasn’t grateful, and in spite of all she could do, the tears coursed down her cheeks. Lise took her cue from Leah, ignoring the silent weeping, feeding Caroline bits of bread she had to force down and holding her cup. It only made the crying worse.
“We’ll go now,” Lise
said, when Mary Louise was about to make some observation.
“But she needs peppermint,” Mary Louise whispered.
“Then we have to find Papa and tell him,” Lise whispered back. “We’ve got to hurry,” she said to Caroline, all but carrying Mary Louise out the door.
“They love you very much,” Leah said after they’d gone. “You’re very lucky—”
“I don’t feel lucky,” Caroline said, sniffing heavily. She was so tired of being Leah Steigermann’s charity case. If her brother disowned her, if her child died, Leah came to the rescue—and she didn’t want to be rescued.
“Caroline, you would be dead if it weren’t for Frederich—”
“I don’t thank him for it.”
“Well, you should. He fed you when no one else could— or would for that matter. I don’t know how many nights he stayed up with you—trying to keep you from hurting yourself when the fever was so high you didn’t know where you were—trying to get your fever down. You almost died, don’t you know that?”
Caroline said nothing. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“And people think I am spoiled and selfish,” Leah said. “I’m going now—but I’ll be back. And, yes, I know you want to be left alone. But I’ll be back anyway, because Frederich wants it. You know what the saddest thing is, Caroline? I know you don’t thank Frederich for saving your life, but the saddest thing—the saddest thing—is that he knows it, too.”
“He should have let me go. It would have solved all his problems.”
“No. It would have solved all of yours. His children— your nieces—love you. Did you think he would just sit and do nothing and let their hearts be broken again? You have a reason to be here, Caroline.”
Caroline gave a sharp sigh and turned away. Her hands were trembling. She wanted to lie down; she wanted to run as far and as fast as she could. When she looked back again, Leah had gone. She abruptly put her face into her hands.
For the nieces.
She did love them. She loved them with all her heart. She had been willing to endure her marriage to Frederich for their sakes. Why couldn’t she find any of that determination now?
Cheryl Reavis Page 15