Page 11 of Mail Order Mercy

Tommy lifted one foot and inspected it. “My boots are too little to teach.”

“Then mine shall have to learn courage on their own,” Albert said gravely.

Clara giggled first, hiding her face behind Grace’s blanket. Then Dorothy laughed.

It was not a loud laugh, and it did not last long, but it changed the room. Albert looked up sharply. Clara stopped giggling. Tommy grinned as if spilling water had been his plan all along.

Albert did not move. He was afraid if he did, the fragile sound would vanish, and the room would close around grief again. Dorothy’s laugh had been small, almost startled, but it seemed to him as important as the first smoke from a newly lit fire. It meant something in her had not died with Henry. It meant the children had heard their mother laugh. Albert tucked that sound away carefully, knowing he would remember it long after his boots dried.

He had not known he was waiting for that laugh until he heard it. Some part of him had been measuring the cabin by what was missing—the flour, the warmth, Henry’s voice, Dorothy’s ease. Now there was something present that had not been there before. It was small, but Albert knew enough about fires to know a flame did not need to be large to be worth guarding.

Dorothy pressed one hand to her mouth, startled by the sound that had escaped her. She had believed laughter belonged to the life she had lost, to mornings with Henry and evenings before hunger had become a thing she counted. Yet there it was, still inside her, small and uncertain but alive.

Dorothy almost apologized for the laugh, as if laughter were a disloyal thing. Then she looked at Clara’s bright face and Tommy’s triumphant grin and swallowed the apology before it could escape. Her children needed more than a mother who endured. They needed one who could laugh when water ran across the floor, and a wounded man declared himself under attack. Perhaps Dorothy needed that mother too.

Albert smiled at Tommy, but his eyes moved back to Dorothy. For the first time since Henry died, the cabin did not feel only like a place grief had settled. It felt like a place where something tender might one day grow.

Chapter Four

Several weeks passed, and Albert’s visits became as much a part of the Peabody cabin as the stove, the wood box, and the children’s pallet near the wall.

He came before work with milk or eggs or a paper packet of something Dorothy would have sworn they did not need until she found herself using every bit of it. He came after work with wood on his shoulder, nails in his pocket, or a tool tucked beneath one arm. He patched the loose board by the door, strengthened the shelf above the table, and fixed the latch Tommy had somehow managed to pull half loose while pretending to be a bear.

Clara listened for his footsteps before supper. Tommy ran to the door whenever a man’s boots sounded on the path. Even Grace, who knew little of the world beyond hunger, warmth, and the arms that held her, had begun to reach for Albert’s face with both hands when he stepped inside.

Dorothy watched it all with gratitude that frightened her. The children were warmer. Their cheeks were less hollow. Clara no longer hid bread in her pocket, and Tommy had stopped asking whether tomorrow would have breakfast. Those were blessings, and Dorothy knew she should accept blessings with open hands. But each time the children brightened at Albert’s arrival, another quiet worry settled deeper in her heart. They were learning to depend on him. Worse, so was she.

She knew it was ungrateful to fear a blessing. Ella would have told her so kindly, and Belle would have likely said it with more firmness. But Dorothy had learned that anything her children leaned on could be taken. Henry had been strong and laughing and full of promises one morning, and by evening he had become a grave in frozen ground. If Clara and Tommy leaned too hard on Albert, what would happen if he stepped away? If Dorothy leaned too hard, what would be left of her when he did?

On Monday, while Albert was at the mill and Ella was helping Belle distribute fabric, Dorothy took in washing from Mrs. Johnson.

She did not tell Albert. She did not tell Ella either, because Ella would have looked at her with worried eyes and found twelve reasons why someone else should do it. Dorothy needed money of her own. Not borrowed. Not disguised as trade. Not left on her doorstep before dawn by a man who thought of Henry every time he helped her.

Taking in the washing felt like rebellion, though no one had forbidden it. With every shirt she plunged into the water, Dorothy told herself she was proving something. She could still earn. She could still trade labor for coins. She could still stand at the center of her children’s lives instead of waiting for Albert’s boots on the path. But the harder she scrubbed, the more she understood that pride could exhaust a body just as surely as hunger could.

By midafternoon, the cabin was full of steam. Damp shirts hung from a line strung between the cupboard and the wall. A pair of trousers dripped into a basin by the stove. The washtub took up the space where Tommy usually played, and the hot water made the small room feel close and sour. Dorothy’s sleeves were soaked to the elbows. Her back ached from bending, and Grace had cried twice because Dorothy could not nurse her and scrub at the same time.

She told herself she was only tired. Tired was familiar. Tired could be endured. But when she lifted another shirt from the water, her hands trembled so badly that suds splashed across the floor.

*****

ALBERT OPENED THE DOOR without knocking because Tommy had called for him through the window, and he stopped so abruptly that cold air swept past him into the damp heat of the room.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Dorothy pushed a strand of damp hair from her cheek. “Washing clothes. Mrs. Johnson pays fair,” Dorothy said. “And fair pay is not something I can afford to refuse.”

“I can see that.” Albert stepped inside and shut the door behind him. His gaze moved from the steaming tub to the wet laundry to Grace fussing on the pallet. Then he saw Dorothy’s shaking hands. Fear struck first, sharp and hot, but anger was what came out of his mouth. “Have you lost your senses?”

Dorothy straightened slowly. “I beg your pardon?”

“You are nursing a baby, caring for two more children, keeping this cabin, and now you are standing over boiling water until you can hardly hold a shirt. What happens if you take fever? What happens if you collapse? What happens to them then?”

“Then perhaps you should have knocked before storming in to scold me,” Dorothy said. “I am tired, Albert. I am not foolish.”

She heard how sharp she sounded and was glad of it, because sharpness covered fear. If Albert saw the trembling in her hands and the weakness in her knees, he might decide she needed saving. Dorothy could endure hunger, cold, and work, but the thought of being reduced to someone’s burden made her throat close. She had been Henry’s wife, not Henry’s helpless relic. She needed Albert to remember that, even if she wasn't sure she remembered it herself.

He heard the harshness in his own voice and hated it. He had meant to say he was afraid. He had meant to say the sight of her trembling had turned his stomach cold. Instead, he sounded like a man giving orders, and Dorothy’s face told him he had chosen the worst possible way to care.