“Yes,” Karl said, envisioning each place as if he were there again. “There are many beautiful sights.”
“And plenty of business opportunities, yes?”
“Indeed. The West is full of opportunity. But then I like to think the entire world is our Creator’s richest blessing. We have yet to see but a tiny portion of what he has to offer us.”
Kenney smiled, looking as pleased as if he had come up with the concept himself. “A fine idea,” he enthused. “Has it been your thought for long?”
“A most recent idea, actually,” Karl said. “You see, I was away from my Savior for some time.” It amazed him how the words came from his mouth effortlessly now. Heretofore, speaking of Christ made him vaguely uncomfortable. But now, it was as if something significant had shifted within him, making him feel as if talking about Jesus and his lead were as easy as speaking of the beauty of San Francisco Bay. A major reason had to be Gerald’s own openness, he decided.
“Astounding news,” said Gerald. “I am so glad you’ve found your way home, son.”
And as Karl stared back into his eyes, he had the distinct feeling that Gerald too felt something like kinship.
sixteen
When Kaatje had fantasized about seeing Tora again, she had imagined experiencing many feelings, many reactions. Mostly frustration and fury. Never had she anticipated fear. But it was the first thing she thought of upon seeing Tora, upon seeing Tora look at Jessie. Fright. In all the years she had held Jessie to her chest in comfort, wiped away her tears, laughed with her, played with her, fed her, tucked her in at night—never had she considered that Tora would want her back. When Tora had turned and left the babe on the dirt road in a basket, Kaatje decided she was truly never returning. No mother who loved a child could do such a thing.
But what she had witnessed six days before was the face of a woman in pain. Tora not only loved Jessie, but longed for her. It was as plain as day. What would happen now? No matter that the woman was plainly in desperate straits. She was Jessica’s mother! What would Tora do? Would she steal her daughter back? The thought of it had kept Kaatje awake at night, listening to the cracks and groans of the settling house and making her rise to check on the girls each hour.
It was three in the morning on Christmas Eve when Elsa found Kaatje in the parlor, staring at the dying embers of the fire. “Will you tell me what has been bothering you now?” Elsa asked gently.
Kaatje turned to glance at her through the darkness of the room. “I’m afraid I have a confession to make, Elsa.”
Elsa sat down on the edge of the sofa, waiting.
“I’ve seen Tora.”
“Tora, my sister?”
“Yes. I ran into her. Literally. She was but a block from the house, standing with an old woman, staring this way. She turned suddenly—”
“But, where is she?”
Kaatje shook her head and paced a bit. “I’m sorry. I do not know. When she recognized me and the girls, she ran. I called after her but she just kept running. There was no way to catch her.” She rose and walked over to her friend. “Elsa, she was not well. She’s terribly thin. She looked like she was living on the streets.”
“The streets? Tora?”
“It is my guess that that is why she’s here in Seattle. She’s at the end of her rope, so she’s come to you. And yet she cannot face you. Let alone me and Jess.”
Elsa was silent for a moment, then walked to the window. “Why did you not tell me immediately?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been frightened.”
“Frightened? Of what?”
“That she’ll want Jessie back,” Kaatje said quietly. “If you could have seen her eyes, Elsa. It was with a mother’s eyes that she looked upon Jess. I was afraid you’d want me to give her back.”
“Give her back?” Elsa scoffed. “To a mother who willfully abandoned her own child? For nothing more than spite and a desire for personal gain?”
“So much has happened to her. We may never know. She may have changed since then.”
“What could have happened? Last I heard, she was being courted by Trent Storm and was a successful businesswoman in her own right. She’s made the papers more than I!” Elsa walked to the fire, clearly irked at the memory of her sister’s indulgences, and how she had tossed her family aside with little thought. “Do you know that I was even interviewed by a private investigator? He let it slip that Tora claimed her family was dead. Dead. Can you imagine?”
“I don’t know,” Kaatje said. “Whatever happened, it must have been ugly, to make her fall so far. She’s in rags, Elsa.”
“Rags?” Elsa asked, disbelieving. She strode back and forth across the room.
“Yes. Her eyes—you know how she always had that look in her eye? As if she could see the future and knew where she was going? There was never a time that I could see doubt in her. She was always so … sure. So dead-on.”
“And?”
“She’s lost, Elsa. The look is gone.”
“I have to find her,” Elsa said dully.
“I know,” Kaatje whispered.
Elsa paused. “You are Jessica’s mother, Kaatje. More than Tora ever will be.”
Kaatje could do nothing more than nod.
“Trust me in this. My loyalty lies with you. But she’s my sister. I have to find her. No matter what has transpired, I need to make sure she is all right.”
“And I’ll have to tell Jessica the truth.”
“You would have had to do that eventually.”
“I know. She just seems so young. How do I tell her something so foul?”
“You tell her she is loved and always will be loved,” Elsa said, taking Kaatje by the shoulders. “You tell her she will always have her Auntie Elsa, and you as her mama. But you have to tell her about her real mother.”
“O God,” Kaatje muttered heavenward, her breath taken away at the thought. “How am I to do that? How am I to bear it?”
After running into Kaatje and considering suicide on the old docks, Tora had left the safety of the mission and made her way in the streets of Seattle. If Kaatje told Elsa of seeing Tora, and her obvious despairing condition, the mission was the first place Elsa would look. Tora wanted to see no one. Especially her sister.
Tora was starving, but she didn’t care. Again, she thought of her desire to die. She wanted to melt away, to end the pain and despair that God had brought upon her. She laughed mirthlessly. There was no need to die and go to hell; she was living in hell now. She had no home, no job, no friends. She had distanced herself from her family. And when she looked to herself, Tora did not like what she saw.
By lying to the whores on Washington Street, she was told of a woman who could give her some medicine to end her life painlessly. After stealing enough to barter for two bottles of the murky green liquid—twice that necessary to do the job—Tora went to her, feeling as if she were removed, reading her own story from a book rather than living it out. She sneaked into the town stables for the night and sat staring at the bottles she held in her hands, sealed with corks and wax. Am I ready to give up my life? she asked herself.
I am better off dead. She peeled off the wax and uncorked the first bottle. It shimmered in the faint light of a nearby lantern as the stable master walked by. She gazed into the bottle, making her wonder again what it contained. Tora’s heartbeat did not even pick up at the sound of the man’s footsteps. She cared little if she was discovered and thrown out yet again. Perhaps the stable master might even call the sheriff, as he always threatened. At least she would then have a cot and a blanket at the jail. Maybe some food.
She sat up to cover herself better with hay, making it more difficult for anyone to see her and warmer at the same time. Tora had no idea what would happen once she drank the liquid. Only that it wasn’t likely to be pleasant. Feeling she had no other choice, Tora drank the foul concoction down in five big gulps. She winced at the bitter aftertaste in her mouth, immediately feeling sick to her stomach, bu
t forced herself to swallow the other bottle too before she lost courage. Moments later, bile rose in her throat and she retched, quietly at first, then more violently.
It was impossible to keep back the sound, or her coughs, and it wasn’t long before the stable master found her and dragged her to the street, calling her every dirty name he could think of. “Comin’ here, after drinkin’ away your money,” he derided as she writhed before him in the street. She felt as if her stomach were coming apart, it hurt so badly. “Stay in the mud and filth, you louse! You don’t deserve to sleep among my horses’ manure!” he yelled, kicking her thigh.
Tora gasped for breath, wondering how long it would take for it all to be over. She was alone on the abandoned street, shivering with cold, curled up in pain. Her cheek scraped against the rough brick of the street. “Help me,” she whispered in spite of herself. She had not been prepared for the excruciating pain of death, and it made her weak. “Help me!” she called feebly, wondering if anyone, anyone at all, was around.
“It’s my only way out,” she chanted to herself, wincing at the pain that rivaled childbirth. She was no longer able to think of anything but the knifelike sensations in her gut. “My only way out.”
You will live. There is another way.
Tora looked around, wondering if there was indeed help about. She wiped sweat and tears from her eyes, trying to see better. “Magda?” she whispered.
You will live. There is another way.
“No. I’m going to die. Tonight. It is the best way.”
It is the wrong way.
Tora winced and looked around again. “Magda? Come out. I need you.”
You need Me.
Tora stilled, listening harder.
You need others.
Tora laughed mirthlessly, bearing through another pain. “I need no one. Haven’t I proven that?”
Have you?
Again, Tora could think of nothing for a while but the pain. “I am going to die.”
You will live.
“For what reason?” she whispered.
For Me, if for no other.
“Who are you?”
You do not know?
“Who … are … you?” she ground out.
I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am the Source. I am the Christ.
All at once, the pain was gone, and warm hands were lifting her, cradling her. “Don’t worry, child,” Magda said. “It will be all right. I’ve come to take you someplace safe.”
“Merry Christmas,” Magda said when Tora awakened the next morning. Tora looked around in confusion, trying to get her bearings. There was a cracked window covered in newspaper and peeling paint on the rough-hewn walls.
“The abandoned warehouse,” Magda said, as if reading her mind. “I know you didn’t want to go back to the mission—to the mission—mission—on account of your sister. You have to make that choice on your own.” She patted Tora’s hand, and moved to take a can of beans from a nearby shelf. “Here,” she offered.
Tora turned away, grimacing. “I almost died from retching last night. I cannot eat … those.”
“Suit yourself,” Magda said.
Tora raised a hand from beneath a pile of filthy blankets to press at her temple. “How did you find me?”
“The Lord led me to you,” she said simply, stuffing her mouth full of beans.
“You heard him last night too?”
“Heard what he had to say to me, at least. Told me where to go and collect you.”
“Did he tell you that I want to die?” Tora spat out. “That I had hoped it would happen last night?”
Magda stopped chewing. “Life is not something we should give away.”
“God doesn’t care about me. Look at me! What I once was …”
“God’s ways are mysterious.”
Tora laughed. Had God ever seemed mysterious to her? Not at all. She had hardly lived as Amund and Gratia Anders had raised her; certainly God was angry at her, and this was her punishment. So why save her? Why not let her die? She searched her mind, relishing her fury. But after a while her thoughts came to rest upon Jessica. And moments later, the vague idea that she was secretly glad to be alive. Somewhere, deep within her, was the tiniest glimmer of hope.
“It’s a second chance,” Magda said, again as if reading her mind.
“For what? I cannot find a way to live like this. I cannot find a way out. I’m trapped.”
“You must surrender,” the older woman said, rising and walking to the window. “All your life, you’ve never surrendered, have you, Tora? Tora. Tora. Tor—”
“To whom? Why should I?”
“Because. Life is easier when you do. To the One who loves you more than any other.”
Tora was still, listening to Magda, thinking about how her words sounded so familiar, so similar to the Voice that spoke to her last night. They were words her mother would have used.
For a long time she was silent. “But why?” she whispered. “Why would he want me? Why me?”
But Magda was gone into another realm again, lost in mad giggles.
“Dear God,” Tora whispered, staring at the ceiling. “You had to send me a crazy woman as my angel?”
Later that day, Tora felt healthier than she had in years. Aware that it must be a delusion, that she truly had faced death the night before, she walked on leaden feet down the now-familiar path to Elsa’s home. For a long time, she stood outside. It was terribly dark from the gray clouds overhead, but at least it wasn’t snowing or raining.
She made her aching fingers open the front iron gate. As she approached, she could see a family around the dinner table, a fat golden turkey at its center and Scandinavian dishes surrounding it. She identified Elsa, and a boy who must be her son, then paused. She stepped closer to the window, feeling as if she were a phantom, invisible to the people inside. There was Kaatje, with a girl to her left who must be Christina, and to her right
“O God,” she whispered. O God. She felt as if she could not breathe. Sitting there was Jessica, so beautiful, so perfect. Her Jessie. The pain of a thousand nights flooded her soul, and Tora sank to her knees in the wet snow underfoot. The movement drew Kristian’s attention, and he pointed her way. Ducking as if avoiding a snowball, Tora rolled from the window and on aching legs ran for the gate. The front door opened behind her and Elsa called, “Wait! Can I help you? Miss! Tora? Tora, wait!”
But Tora kept running. It was enough for now. It was enough just to see them.
seventeen
January 1887
Elsa sighed into the mirror as she watched Kaatje pull out long sections of her golden blond hair to wrap into an elegant coiffure. “I do not know how you do this to your own,” she said despondently. “Another reason why you can’t leave. I’ll be left to my same old outdated chignon.”
“It’s beautiful any way you do it,” Kaatje said with a small smile.
“Perhaps. But if all the ladies in town saw me without an elaborate hairdo and pearl comb, they’d deem me unworthy of any invitations.”
“Really, Elsa! Such a thing to say!”
“I cannot help it. They’re all so catty, the way they talk and talk of nothing.”
“I’m probably fodder for their rumor mill,” Kaatje said. “The poor relation come to visit.”
“I don’t care. I have half a mind to invite old man Yessler’s wife over to tea. The women have practically ostracized her. She wouldn’t be invited to anything if she weren’t married to a founder of the city—whose business is it that there’s such an age disparity between the two of them?”
“My goodness, who put a bee in your bonnet today?” Kaatje asked, stopping to stare at Elsa in the mirror.
“I suppose it is Tora,” Elsa said, idly picking up a pearl-handled brush from Japan and twisting it in her hands. “I cannot get her out of my mind.”
“We have scoured the city. She’ll have to come to you when she’s ready.”
“And you,” Elsa added.
/> Kaatje nodded and continued her work on Elsa’s hair, adding delicate ringlets around her face after the knots were done.
“Well, now you have my hair ready for a ball,” Elsa said. “But I can’t get into anything but my shift. Mrs. Hodge says there’s no room to let out my dresses anymore.”
“Showing more with this one, are you?” Kaatje asked, gesturing toward Elsa’s waistline.
“I think it’s twins.”
Kaatje dropped her hands to Elsa’s shoulders. “I know what would cheer you! Let’s visit the dressmaker. Get her to make you some decent maternity dresses! The girls will love it. You remember how they played with her scraps and buttons for hours?”
“While Kristian moped about.”
“Perhaps Kristian can find another playmate for the afternoon. Come, Elsa, you need to get out. I need to get out, for that matter.”
“Very well. I believe you’re right,” Elsa said, rising to try and find something suitable to wear about town.
Kaatje breathed a sigh of relief as the carriage pulled up outside the house and the girls and Elsa climbed in with her. Since the elation of Christmas had faded away, they had all slowly succumbed to a “funk” as Mrs. Hodge called it, withering like the pine swags about them until everyone felt a bit brittle and irritable. The constant, drenching rain, so common this time of year, did not help matters. Getting out was just what they all needed. And new dresses for Elsa might raise her spirits as well.
Elsa was stunning, Kaatje admired from across the carriage. Despite her hardship, mourning, and pregnancy, she was still one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. Even in black.
She looked out the window and thought about her own appearance. Despite Elsa’s generously purchased dresses, she still felt like a brown church mouse next to her dearest friend. If she had only been a bit prettier, perhaps Soren would never have gone. Yet some days when she awakened, she half expected to hear that he had arrived, tracking them down from the Dakota Territory to the valley. But he remained absent as ever, and she fought off her disappointment and faced the new day.
Maybe that was why God was calling her north. So the nagging question of where her husband was, what Soren wanted from her in the future, was laid to rest. Alaska, she thought, visualizing the word written on paper. It seemed terribly wild and untamed to her. An unlikely place for a farm maid from Bergen. But if she had made it this far, could she not go farther?
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