His gaze jerked toward the sod houses. Neither Joseph nor Lillian had emerged. Worry gripped his heart. Might Lillian be berating Joseph for granting the title to someone other than his father? Eli couldn’t imagine her being harsh, but Reinhardt’s death—even though they never spoke of it—was not long past. She might think it too soon.
Whatever she decided, he would support her. As much as he longed to be a true husband and pa, he would not trample Lillian’s feelings to satisfy his own longings. But he would forever savor the wonder of that moment when Joseph had met a deep desire of Eli’s heart by calling out, “Pa!”
Lillian tucked the quilt beneath Joseph’s chin and placed a kiss on his forehead. She touched Henrik’s shoulder in lieu of a kiss. “Sleep now, boys. We have much work to do tomorrow.” One thing they needed to do was dress the deer Henrik had shot. Lillian cringed. If gutting a rabbit was distasteful, how would she ever manage to prepare a deer?
Henrik shifted on his makeshift bed, the dried grass crackling beneath him. “Do you think we hung the deer high enough that no animals will reach it?”
An image of the deer hanging head-down from the tallest tree on their property, its throat slit and glazed eyes staring, flashed through Lillian’s mind. She shuddered. It might be a blessing to her if some animal did cart it away during the night. But how disappointed Henrik would be. He’d exhibited such pride when he’d dragged the deer home this evening. Plus they would need the meat to carry them through the winter. The dried beef they’d brought from Gnadenfeld was nearly gone.
“Eli says it is high enough, and Eli is usually right,” Lillian assured her son. “Now sleep.”
She lifted the canvas flap, cut from the wagon canopy, and peeked out. Eli was nowhere in sight. Heaving a sigh of relief, she stepped into the trailing end of twilight. The tall coffeepot still sat beside the coals of her cook fire. She retrieved a tin cup from the wash pan and crossed to the fire. As she poured the dark, aromatic brew, she heard footfalls behind her. She straightened so quickly she splashed hot coffee across her hand.
Hissing, she plunked the pot down. In seconds, Eli was at her side. He took the cup and guided her to the wash bucket. Without a word, he submerged her hand in the cool water. She tried to tug loose, but he held tight, counting slowly in a calm, low tone. When he reached twenty, he lifted her hand from the bucket and gently wiped it dry with her apron.
“Does it burn yet?” His fingers encircled her wrist.
In the dim light cast by the half-moon, Lillian read concern in his eyes. Her pulse had increased when he startled her, and it continued to race. She shook her head. “Nä, nä, it is fine. You . . . can let me go.”
He looked down and gave a little jolt, as if surprised to still be holding her hand. He released her quickly and took several scuttling steps away from her. His hands slipped into his pockets, and he rocked back on his heels. “I set your cup beside the bucket, if you still wish to drink it.”
Lillian reclaimed the cup and sipped. The remaining coffee no longer held any appeal, but it helped bring her racing pulse under control. “I . . . I thought you had gone to bed.” She couldn’t allow him to think she had come out to have time alone with him.
Eli sighed, his head dropping back. His thick beard lifted slightly with a swallow. “I went, but I could not sleep. I . . . am troubled, Lillian.”
The somber tone lured Lillian into taking two steps toward him. “Troubled?” As she voiced the simple question, remorse smote her. At supper, she had offered little to the conversation. Joseph’s sudden change from “Onkel Eli” to “Pa” on top of her inability to conjure an image of Reinhardt had sent her far inside herself. It wasn’t Eli’s fault—she shouldn’t hold him accountable for Joseph’s choice or her own negligent memory—yet she had purposely distanced herself from him. She had sensed his discomfort at the table, but she’d done nothing to ease it.
He shifted his head to meet her gaze. For long seconds he stood, his head angled, hands deep in his pockets and his lower lip caught between his teeth. Then he released a sigh that carried clearly to her ears. Slipping his hands free, he crouched beside the fire and propped his elbows on his knees. Staring into the coals, he finally responded.
“I am troubled because you are troubled.” He lifted a hand and shook his head as if anticipating an argument. “Do not deny it. We both know it is true.” Another hard swallow communicated the depth of his concern. His head low, he offered, “I will speak to the boy—will tell him I am his uncle and not his father.”
Lillian opened her mouth to protest, but even though Eli made no gesture to hush her this time, words did not spill out. After a few seconds of tense silence, she clamped her lips shut and cradled the cooling coffee cup between her palms.
Eli kept his head low. “This will make things well between us again?”
She couldn’t deny the hurt in his voice. Hanging her head in shame, she sighed. “I am sorry, Eli.”
He chuckled softly. “For what are you sorry? You cannot help how you feel.”
No, she had no control over her feelings. Yet she should be able to control her actions. Punishing Eli for something outside of his control wasn’t right. She blurted, “But you will hurt Joseph’s feelings if you tell him he cannot call you Pa.” Truthfully, she had considered chiding Joseph herself, but she couldn’t find the courage to do so.
Eli gave one slow nod. “Jo, that might be true.” He lifted his head, his unblinking eyes met hers. “But right now I am more concerned about you and your feelings.”
Lillian drew closer to the fire, clutching the cup so tightly the handle bit into her palm. “Please do not think of me first.”
His brow crunched. “But why not? You are my—” Eli abruptly turned his head toward the softly glowing coals. The unspoken word hung on the night air as loudly as if it had been shouted.
Oh, Lord, how do we make this work? The prayer winged from her heart, bringing a sting of tears. She had committed herself to Eli. They worked side by side each day, but each night they went their separate ways. This marriage, although it solved many problems, was unnatural. Confusing. Dissatisfying.
With hesitant steps, Lillian closed the distance between them and poured the contents of her cup into the flickering flames. The coals popped and hissed, sending up a cloud of steam. The remaining glow disappeared, shrouding her and Eli in dark gray shadows. Setting the cup aside, she sat across from him and linked her fingers in her lap.
“Eli, I think it is all right for Joseph to call you Pa. It makes him feel secure, and he needs security with all of the changes that have come into his life.”
Eli shot her a questioning look, and she thought he would argue. When he didn’t, she continued quietly. “My withdrawal from you tonight had more to do with me and something that happened earlier in the day. I should not have allowed it to make me act differently toward you. I am sorry.”
Concern crinkled his brow. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
She had hurt him, yet he treated her kindly. No recrimination or retaliation, just a desire to help set things to right. To her acute embarrassment, her eyes filled with tears.
Eli leaned forward, planting one knee against the ground. “Lillian, what is it?”
Rarely had Reinhardt expressed patience with her tears. He had never been harsh with her when tears threatened, but he usually slipped away to avoid facing them. She had always tried hard to control her emotions so Reinhardt wouldn’t be uncomfortable.
But at the sight of tears, Eli didn’t get up and leave. His tenderly voiced question, combined with the deep shadows in which she could hide, gave Lillian courage. She whispered, “I was at the creek, looking at my own reflection, and I realized . . . I cannot remember Reinhardt’s face.”
Eli seemed to freeze, and then he settled back to sit on his heel. “I . . . see.”
Once the confession had found its way from her mouth, she felt as though a dam had burst. Words tumbled out. “Do you realize we never t
alk about Reinhardt, Eli? It’s as if—as if he and Jakob never existed. I think of them every day. I look for Jakob, I listen for Reinhardt. The surprise of not finding them has dimmed, yet a part of me still looks and listens, waiting and hoping.
“They haunt my dreams at night, but even then their faces are fuzzy. Reinhardt and I lived together for twenty years, Eli, but now . . . his image is lost to me.” She gulped, swallowing salty tears.
Eli rose, his knees cracking with the sudden movement. He stood looking toward her but not meeting her gaze. “I am sorry, Lillian, at the depth of your pain. But . . .” He drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. When he shifted to face her, his smile was sad. “It is late. We should rest. There is much work to do tomorrow between planting my wheat seeds and preserving the meat from Henrik’s deer.”
Confused by the abrupt closure to their conversation, Lillian nodded mutely. He held his hand toward her, and she allowed him to assist her to her feet. The moment she stood, he released her hand and backed away.
“Good night, Lillian. I—” His shoulders squared sharply. “I will pray you see Reinhardt clearly in your dreams.”
Eli slapped aside the canvas door flap and stormed into his little sod house. He wanted to pace, to unwind his tangled thoughts and expend the hurt that weighted his chest, but there wasn’t room to take more than a couple steps.
With a groan of frustration, he flopped onto the quilt covering the mound of dried grass that served as his bed and covered his eyes with the crook of his elbow. Behind his closed lids, he envisioned Lillian from moments ago, moonlight barely tingeing her features. But even in the scant light, he had read the truth in her eyes.
She would never stop loving Reinhardt. What a fool he had been to imagine that he could build a family with Reinhardt’s wife and sons. In their busyness to establish themselves on this land, their talk had been on the present and future, not on the past. But the past still lived in Lillian’s heart. Lillian belonged to Reinhardt and always would.
He kicked off his boots. The solid thunk of the heels against the hard-packed floor echoed against the sod walls and pounded home the realization that he was married, but slept alone. Married, but unloved.
“Why, God?” The words rasped from his tight throat. “You took my first family—my Mutta and Foda. I had a substitute family all those years of growing up. Then I spent my adult life alone. Is it too much to ask for my own family now?”
Eli listened, but the Voice of God didn’t reply from heaven. Only wind—whistling Kansas wind—filled his ears. He released a heavy sigh, the big expulsion of breath carrying away a bit of the hurt Lillian’s words had inflicted.
He had vowed before God and witnesses to honor Lillian, and he would keep the vow. He would provide for her and her sons, build her a home that would shelter her, continue to be her friend. But when the others came, and they established a village on this prairie, she would no longer require his presence. As had been the tradition in Gnadenfeld, the men of the community would see to the needs of a widow and her children. When the others came, Eli would move her off this farm and into town.
He nodded, a plan forming in his head. There would be no dishonor in dissolving their marriage. A marriage that was not consummated could be disjoined by the church. A dissolution would free Lillian to live with Reinhardt’s memory, unbothered by the presence of her husband’s foster brother. And it would free Eli to seek a wife who would love him. At his age, he probably would never have children, but perhaps God would bless him with stepchildren who— A picture of Joseph waving the string of catfish intruded into his thoughts, bringing with it a pain so sharp it doubled him in his bed. He crunched his eyes closed, willing the image to fade, and forced his thoughts onward.
If God blessed him with stepchildren, he would love and nurture them, just as he had tried to do with Joseph and Henrik.
Rolling to his side, he offered one more whispered plea: “Mein Gott, let me honor my vows, but put a shield around my heart. Only let me feel love that will result in good . . . for me and for Reinhardt’s family.”
22
Lillian covered her mouth with her apron and coughed. She and Henrik had built a fire pit well away from the sod houses and her clay oven, but the wind snatched the smoke and carried it to her while she went about her chores. Henrik stood guard beside the fire, steadily feeding green twigs on top of the dried buffalo droppings. With each addition, a new cloud of gray smoke billowed. How could he tolerate standing so near when from a distance the smoke choked off her breath?
A rack constructed of slender boughs from scraggly berry trees that grew along the creek, now denuded of their fruit, arched low over the fire. Strips of deer meat, cut only that morning from the carcass, which survived its night in the tree, draped over the boughs. More strips lay in uneven rows on a bed of dry grass, waiting their turn to be placed over the smoking pit. Before heading to the field with Joseph, Eli had given instructions on drying the meat.
An uncomfortable feeling wiggled down her spine as she remembered Eli’s unsmiling face at the breakfast table. His tone when instructing Henrik hadn’t been unkind, but neither had he sounded like Eli—not the Eli they had come to know over the past months. Although Joseph had come in for the noon meal, Eli hadn’t, claiming he had too much work to do to take time to eat. But Lillian suspected he intended to avoid her. His distant treatment pained her more deeply than she could understand. Especially on this day when Henrik prepared his first large kill and the red wheat kernels carried from their home in Russia would be placed in the waiting soil—both events worthy of a family celebration.
She scooped up the pile of clothes for washing and called to Henrik, “I am going to the creek. Will you be all right?”
He lifted a hand in reply, waving her on, before tying a bandana over his nose like a bandit. She hugged the pile of dirty clothes to her chest and made her way to the creek. Setting aside the clothes, she removed her shoes and stockings and placed them on the bank. On bare feet, she crept into the water. The shock of cold sent shudders through her frame, but she quickly adjusted.
Piece by piece, she scrubbed the clothes against a large rock half submerged in the water. Her skirts soaked to the knee, clinging to her legs and making movement awkward, but she worked the clothes up and down against the surface of the rock until every item was as clean as she could make it.
She bemoaned the lack of soap for scrubbing the soiled articles of clothing. With no store nearby where she could purchase soap, she needed to make lye soap for the family’s use. She would check how much lard remained in the crock. She sighed as she spread the week’s laundry over bushes and along the sandy creek bank to dry. The work here was never-ending. But at least the washing was finished for the week.
She picked up her shoes and gingerly followed the path back to the sod houses. Henrik remained beside the fire, and Lillian joined him. They pinched several strips, removed those they believed were dry enough to keep from spoiling, and added more to the timber frame. By then her skirts were dry, so she replaced her socks and shoes. A glance at the sky confirmed the dinner hour was approaching, so she returned to the creek with buckets in hands to retrieve water for cooking and washing.
Over the cook fire near the sod house, she fried thick deer steaks with wild onions and mushrooms. The good smell wafting from the pan caused saliva to pool under her tongue. Cleaning the deer had been distasteful, but eating the meat would surely bring pleasure. When the sun hung heavy above the horizon, Eli and Joseph returned from the field.
She looked at Eli’s dirty face and laughter bubbled upward. “You have dirt caught in every crease on your forehead. It looks like the map Herr Weins drew.”
Eli’s lips twitched into a weak grin, but he didn’t make a teasing response, and Lillian’s laughter quickly died. While Eli and Joseph washed, Lillian set the table. She smiled in satisfaction at the meal. The steaks sent an enticing aroma into the air. She had also fried thinly sliced wild potatoes and t
ossed them with fresh-churned butter. Eli’s palate would be well satisfied—the meal was fit for royalty.
Cupping her hands beside her mouth, she called, “Come and eat!”
To her surprise, rather than approaching the table, Eli stalked to the fire pit and spoke with Henrik. After a moment, Henrik ambled away from the pit, and Eli took Henrik’s place.
Lillian caught Henrik’s sleeve. “Is Eli not eating?”
Henrik glanced toward the pit and gave a one-armed shrug. “Someone must watch the meat. He said I should eat, and he will eat later. Leave a steak for him.”
Lillian sank onto her stool, defeated. Not even when Joseph volunteered to bless the food did her heart cheer. She ate, listening to Henrik and Joseph compete over who did the hardest work that day, but she contributed nothing. She might as well have been eating shoe leather for all the enjoyment she took in the succulent steak. Eli’s absence—both literal and figurative—created an aura of despondence she found difficult to shake.
When she and the boys had finished, Henrik returned to the pit and Eli sat alone at the table, methodically eating his now-cold steak and potatoes. When he finished, he carried his empty plate and fork to the wash pan and handed them to Lillian.
“That was a goot meal, Lillian. Thank you.”
The compliment, uttered in a polite yet emotionless voice and without the warm spark in his eyes to which she had become accustomed, made her want to cry. She managed to push her lips into a quavering smile. “You are most welcome, Eli. Tomorrow I will prepare a hearty stew with wild potatoes and onions and cabbage. Does . . . does that sound good?”
“Whatever you cook will be fine.” He took a slow backward step, lifting his arm toward Henrik. “I believe I will help Henrik with the meat. Excuse me, Lillian.”
Excuse me, Lillian. The words echoed through Lillian’s head as Eli turned and strode across the ground to the pit. Excuse me, Lillian—as courteous as could be. But he might have been addressing a stranger rather than his wife.
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