Page 12 of Mail Order Mercy

“Do not speak to me as if I am one of the children,” Dorothy said.

Albert dragged one hand through his hair. “I am speaking as a man who does not want to find you ill on the floor. Your children need their mother more than they need Mrs. Johnson’s coins.” He softened his voice too late. “I need you standing, Dorothy. They need you standing.”

“And I am speaking as a woman who needs to know how her children will eat if you decide tomorrow that your conscience is satisfied.”

Albert went still.

“That is not fair,” he said, though the words came out without strength.

“No,” Dorothy said. “It is honest. How long do you mean to go on like this, Albert? Another month? Until spring? Until the town decides there must be something improper about a man spending so much time at a widow’s cabin?”

Albert looked toward the children. Clara sat very still with Grace in her lap, watching them with frightened eyes. Tommy was quiet for once, his hand curled around the edge of the table. Albert lowered his voice. “I would never let people speak ill of you.”

“You cannot stop every tongue in Yeti.” Dorothy’s anger wavered, and weariness showed through it. “And someday you may marry. What then? Will your wife welcome the Peabodys as another household to feed? Will she smile while you chop wood here and mend my roof and bring milk for Henry’s children?”

The question cost her more than she let him see. Imagining Albert with a wife should not have hurt. It should have been sensible, even expected. He was a good man, still young enough to build a household of his own, and no promise to Henry should keep him tied forever to a widow’s cold cabin. Yet the thought of another woman receiving his easy humor, his steady hands, and the children’s eager welcome made Dorothy feel suddenly hollow. That hollowness angered her most of all.

He had no answer ready because he had not allowed himself to follow his helping that far into the future. He had thought only of the next pail of milk, the next load of wood, the next repair. Dorothy was asking about years, about a life, about what his presence meant when it no longer wore the easy name of obligation.

“I do not want your children hungry,” Albert said.

“Neither do I. That is why I am washing shirts until my hands shake.” Dorothy’s voice softened, which somehow hurt him more than the anger had. “I cannot build our future on your guilt. And I need to know I can stand without leaning on you. Do you not understand that?”

Even as she said it, she wondered whether standing alone had become less a virtue than a habit she was afraid to break. Independence had kept her moving for six months, but loneliness could dress itself in respectable clothing, and Dorothy had worn it so long she barely knew how to breathe without it.

Albert left the cabin with the smell of lye soap and damp clothing clinging to his coat. He had insisted on carrying the heavy tub outside to empty it before he went, and Dorothy had allowed it only because she was too tired to fight him properly. She had not forgiven him. He had not forgiven himself.

Her words followed him all the way to the mill road. I cannot build our future on your guilt. He had wanted to protest that it was not only guilt, but he had not known what else to call it. Duty had begun the visits. Friendship with Henry had led him to the door. But duty did not explain the way Grace’s small hand reaching for his face could soften the worst day. It did not explain why the sound of Dorothy moving around the cabin felt more like home than his own empty room ever had.

If he kept helping without offering anything certain, Dorothy was right. Her future would hang on his mood, his wages, his reputation, and whatever wife he might someday take. The thought of marrying someone who would resent Dorothy and the children made his chest tighten. The thought of not seeing those children every day tightened it more.

That evening, Albert found David Sanders stacking kindling beside his house while Ella hummed somewhere inside.

“Do you have a minute?” Albert asked.

David looked at him carefully. “For you looking that troubled? I have several.”

Albert rubbed his bandaged palm against his coat. “What makes a marriage work when two people know one another, but have never courted?”

David did not smile, though Albert saw understanding settle over his face. “Ella crossed the continent to marry me, and we were strangers. We had letters and hope and very little else.”

“Were you afraid?” Albert asked.

“Terrified,” David said. “A man would be a fool not to fear making a woman miserable. But fear is not always a warning to stop. Sometimes it is a reminder to walk carefully.”

Albert stared toward the Sanders window, where lamplight moved across the curtain. “What if respect is all there is?”

“Respect is not a poor foundation,” David said. “Neither is honesty. Neither is choosing one another every morning after the vows are spoken. Romantic promises sound pretty, but daily choosing is what keeps two people warm when the pretty words wear thin.”

“Did you love Ella when you married her?” Albert asked.

David smiled faintly. “Not the way I love her now. I respected her courage. I admired her honesty. I wanted to be worthy of the chance she had taken. Love came because we kept making room for it.”

Albert thought of Dorothy’s tired eyes, her stubborn chin, the way she scraped the largest portions into her children’s bowls. He thought of Clara asking if he would disappear. He thought of Tommy’s trust and Grace’s reaching hands. “And if one person is afraid the other is only acting out of duty?”

David set down the kindling. “Then that person deserves the truth. Not the easy truth. The whole one.”

“And if the whole truth is likely to scare her clean out of the territory?” Albert asked.