A Fireproof Home for the Bride (47 page)

“He forced you,” Emmy said, finishing the story before it had to fully begin, the details of lightning bugs and a moonlit stroll too beautiful a beginning for the obvious turn the birth certificates had foretold. Anger flooded Emmy, as much for her aunt as it was for the stupid girl she had also once been. Josephine was right in her onetime assessment; this was not original.

“Yes,” Josephine whispered. “Though it wasn’t rough, and I can’t say I didn’t lay down willingly at first. His voice was sweet, his hands warm and soft. Ray had been sent away, and my heart was tender, easily taken by someone as determined as Stephen.” She paused, her head slowly nodding as though she were silently counting up the details. “I woke up alone in that tent, in the dark, scared he would come back. By the time I found my way to my uncle’s cabin, it was obvious what had happened.”

“How horrible for you,” Emmy said, controlling the disgust rising inside of her. She tried to believe that Bobby’s gentle caresses were different, that his restraint was noble. Of these two poles, Emmy decided she wanted neither. “Did Grandmother help you?”

Josephine laughed, a once-harsh sound weathered by the paucity of time. “She called me
schlottern
and blamed me for chasing Stephen away. I sat on the bed in my soiled dress as she packed my bags and lectured me on my indecency.”

Silence hung on the last word as Emmy pressed against her stomach, the knot of revelation therein unraveling so swiftly she thought it might knock her to the ground once unfurled. “My father?” she finally asked.

“A miracle,” Josephine said firmly, releasing Emmy’s hand and taking her by the elbow. “Though clearly not at first.” They began to walk back to the pumpkin field as Josephine explained how she had refused to tell Stephen about the baby, even though Lida insisted he was a good man and would marry her. “Imagine,” Josephine said. “Marrying someone you didn’t love, after that.”

“I couldn’t,” Emmy admitted.

Josephine paused and gazed into Emmy’s eyes. “Of course,” her aunt said, before resuming her steady pace through the furrows, describing how she arranged with Lida to stay at the farm until the baby came, and how, in order to save everyone from shame, they’d pretended it was Lida who was with child, and she who had given birth. Josephine had gone back to the estate to live with her aunt—Ray’s mother—and Lida cut all ties to the family, unable to forgive Josephine’s transgression, even as Lida benefited from its outcome. “It was for the best,” Josephine said, pushing her sleeves up her arms as though she were preparing to wash her hands of the conversation. “Christian is a very good man.”

“He is,” Emmy said, her love for him resetting a small part of her disrupted soul. She remembered a time when she was very small, asking her grandmother why she’d only ever had one child, and Lida telling her that Christian was so perfect, she didn’t need to have any more. Another memory, later still, of Karin telling Emmy that her grandmother had been very sick after having Christian, and unable after that fever to bear more children. Emmy’s ire spiked again at the layers of deception she’d based her life story upon. She no longer knew what to believe, but with every new speck of truth she began to construct the narrative she would carry forward. “Does he know?”

“I wanted to tell him when Lida died, but I couldn’t.” Josephine stared up at the sky, her face pale as a cloud against the brilliant blue. “I’m afraid he wouldn’t understand.”

“I think he would,” Emmy said. “I do.”

“Don’t try to lie,” Josephine said, gratitude marking her scold. “It doesn’t suit you.”

She picked up a small pumpkin. “These are sugar dumplings,” she added, a softer shade of pink beginning to tint her face. “Ray brought the seeds from a trip to Long Island, New York. Selected the sweetest each year for reseeding.” She held one as tenderly as she would a baby’s head. “This was our life, this right here.” She smiled wanly at Emmy. “Go get the Jubilee. Careful not to flood her, she likes an open throttle and little or no choke. Wait for the idle.”

Emmy collected as many squash as she could carry, and went back to where the flatbed sat connected to the small red-and-white field tractor, unloading her bounty into the wagon as she tried not to cry. She climbed up on the cold metal seat and did as instructed until the engine revved to cantankerous life, the noise of it covering the sound of Emmy’s sharp inhales. Using the small wooden spool attached to the oversized steering wheel to turn the tractor in Josephine’s direction, Emmy eased the Jubilee down the row and succeeded in suppressing her rising tide of self-pity. It was clear to Emmy that her aunt was unaware of Mr. Davidson’s current proximity, and Emmy determined to maintain that fragile distance until she could find a way to render it permanent.

Only then, as her resilience spread into untested territory, did Emmy finally allow that she had traded a flawed grandparent for one who was made of far more hideous material. Her heart pinched at the thought of Mr. Davidson’s fine blond hair and that of her own bearing more than a passing resemblance; the way she had found her own likeness in Josephine’s high swept brow when they had first met. There was no denying that Josephine’s story was true, and Emmy clearly understood that not only was she right to have chosen her destiny, but in so doing she could take it a giant leap further. She could expose the past.

The two women passed an hour working in necessary silence, their violent experiences creating a deeper bond between them than the revelation of ancestry ever could have. Emmy marked the time by looking at her watch every five minutes, feeling the intensifying draw of her grandfather’s—she couldn’t think of him as anything else—box still at the office, and how eager she was to get back to it. The sun had already peaked low on the horizon and set its course for the waning of the day, having imparted much more heat than typically expected in early November. Emmy took a moment to survey the wagon full of tiny Jack Be Little squash, a variety new to the farm. Somehow the cheerful quality of the teacup-sized pumpkins slightly buoyed Emmy’s spirits as she whistled to Coffee and headed toward the house and a hot, mind-clearing shower.

She’d barely reached the road when Bobby’s truck swung ahead of her into the drive. Coffee barked twice, and Emmy felt her finger for the missing ring, knowing it wasn’t there. She raced across the road, panic spiraling up from her empty stomach with the acid pooling there—she hadn’t had five minutes to think about what she wanted to say or how she would say it. By the time she caught up with him, Bobby was standing beside his truck, a grim scowl on his face.

“Get your work done?” he asked, as frank as a coin flip. Emmy stopped.

“No,” she said, trying to gauge his irritation. “I’m sorry I left the party without saying anything.”

Bobby kicked a pebble away from the truck’s front tire. “Mom was sore,” he said. “You could have told me.”

“You weren’t there to tell,” Emmy said, flipping her own coin. “I saw you leave with Pete.”

Bobby puffed his cheeks into a blowing sigh. “We went to get more beer.”

“Please don’t lie to me,” she said. “Not today.”

Bobby blinked rapidly, a sign of discomfort that made Emmy regret her bluntness.

“He had an issue…” Bobby began.

“Please don’t,” she repeated. This was not the investigation she was interested in, and playing out the petty questions made her anxious to get to the point. She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter where you went. You left, so I left.”

“You ran off,” he countered, picking up the thread of confrontation the moment she let it dangle. “Sister Clare saw you rush out.”

Emmy held her arms out in a guilty shrug. “Look, I saw you fighting with Pete, and I got upset.” The childishness of the conversation grated against her desire to be done with it, into the shower, and back on the track she preferred. Emmy sighed. “This isn’t right.” She licked her dry lips. “We’re not right.”

Bobby’s face blanched as he caught sight of her bare left hand. “Where’s your ring?” he asked, looking as though he might cry.

“I took it off,” she said, the first waves of the sadness that come with letting go of a lover—any lover—lapping at her. She touched his cheek. “You don’t love me,” she said. “Not the way you want to.”

“I gotta go.” Bobby shook his head in complete repudiation; his shoulders hunched low as he backed toward the truck’s door. “We should talk about this later.”

Pity overcame pride, and Emmy relented. “Yes,” she said with all the compassion she felt. “We should.”

“I do love you.” Bobby’s voice became increasingly softer yet more pained. “The best I can.”

Emmy felt a small crack grow wider in her heart. “I will call you in a few days,” she said, her words slow and full of purpose. “I have to take care of something.”

He opened the truck’s door. “Okay,” he murmured, the sound of a penny dropping into a well. “I’ll be at our house tonight, working, if you want to find me.”

“Okay.” Emmy stood in the drive as he pulled away, and the first sob of seeing him go burst from her, blinding in its unexpected force.
Don’t leave me,
her head yelled as her heart whispered
Let him go.
It was hard to reconcile the vastness of this new freedom with the heartache it was inflicting. I’m sorry, she thought as she opened the door. I’m so very sorry. Coffee bolted into the kitchen and spun in a tail-chasing circle before settling. Maybe in time it would make sense to Emmy how a greatly felt love could come to so little.

“I can’t think about it now,” she said aloud, shocked by the calmness of her voice. Emmy folded a slice of bread and stuffed it into her mouth, chewing with the sole purpose of moving on with the day. She poured the cold remains of the morning’s coffee into a glass and chugged it down black. The bitterness felt right to her, a refreshingly honest representation of a thing not trying to be any more or less than it was.

*   *   *

Emmy arrived at the
Fargo Forum
building a full hour before her shift normally began. She wasted little time on pleasantries, weaving her way through the reporters’ desks and straight back to the morgue, where the sight of Jim’s wide shoulders and tousled brown hair made her tingle as she moved forward and looked over his shoulder. He’d once again laid out the objects and papers in the order from the night before, and had the encrypted ledger open before him, a notepad full of scribbling by its side.

“Hey there,” he said, rubbing his hands together and standing. “I thought I’d get a jump on things.” He moved the chair next to his away from the table and gestured for Emmy to sit. She flung her coat on the rack by the door and sat in the offered chair, Jim’s proximity a welcome comfort.

“Anything worthwhile?” she asked as he returned to his seat and picked up a pencil.

“Plenty,” he said excitedly. “Though there’s still a few keys missing. I was up most of the night trying to crack the code in the ledgers, but it switches between them, and the last one is beyond defiant.” He moved his chair an inch closer to hers and used the pencil to point at a column in the ledger. “This one I’ve got: Here’s a list of all of the townships in Clay County.” He turned a page. “Each of these pages begins with the name of a township, alphabetically ordered, followed by a list of names—inhabitants. Sort of like a census.” He licked a finger and turned a number of pages until it fell open to a decoded sheet with the heading of the township most familiar to Emmy: Moland, where she’d grown up. She scanned the printed list ahead of his finger, her eye drawn to the familiar names: Nelson, Brann, Gunderson, Hansen, Svenson.

“This is where it gets interesting,” Jim said, picking up a dark-blue-covered book with gold script across the front which read
Plat Map of Clay County Minnesota.

“What’s a plat map?” Emmy asked as he fanned open the oversized pages.

“An official surveyor’s map of land ownership,” Jim said. “In this case, by township. Aren’t they pretty?” He turned each page and smoothed over the hand-lettered squares with his fingertips. “Quite a labor of love, creating this kind of map. You really don’t see this degree of craftsmanship anymore.”

Emmy drew her chair closer for a better look at the elegant depiction of the view of subdivided Clay County from above, including minuscule churches and country schoolhouses. “Where’s Moland?” she asked, and Jim ran a fingernail across the top of the pages, locating a bookmark he’d clearly inserted earlier. Emmy immediately saw the name Benjamin Nelson inked along the Buffalo River on the #6 quarter section of land. The rest of the section bore the name Emmaline Brann, Ambrose’s mother. A strange sensation seized Emmy, an icy liquid melting. She looked at the section to the right: E. Brann.

“Why is it in
her
name?” Emmy asked as she laid more fingers on the Branns’ substantial holdings.

“It would have been her property.” Jim drew his right index finger across his lips and Emmy could sense him staring at her.

“He may have married her for it,” Emmy said.

“This was drawn in 1919,” Jim said, turning the book slightly. “After the war. There were a lot of widows.”

Emmy bit at a thumbnail. “I’ve always been told they married late, had Ambrose later. I have no idea what’s true and what’s not anymore.”

“I’d say you’re officially a journalist, then,” Jim said, commiseration mixed with mirth in his voice. “Not that I’d wish that on anyone else.”

The coldness that had flowed through her was replaced by a current of heat that started in the space between them and spread to the bone. She fought away the urge to smile by refocusing on the evidence before them, and noticed light pencil marks on each square of labeled land—small symbols that had no correlating key. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Exactly my question.” Jim put one finger on a tiny star and the other hand on the ledger. “O. E. Gunderson, one star here, and one star there.” He moved his hands in concert. “Alias Hummel, two
X
s. Ben Nelson, two stars. E. Brann, two stars, and three tiny
M
s.”

Emmy stopped his left hand in the middle of the plat. “Okay, so there’s a code within the code. But what do you think it means?”