Sophie's Dilemma (5 page)
Covering her surprise, Ingeborg sniffed as she rose to bring the platter and bowls off the warming shelf. As she set them on the table, she rested her hand on Haakan’s shoulder just for the joy of having him there. So many things she missed when he was gone.
Haakan took a piece of bread from the plate and brought it to his nose. ‘‘No one makes such good bread as you do.’’ Slathering it with butter, he took a huge bite and closed his eyes as he chewed. ‘‘And fresh butter. We couldn’t always buy good milk and butter. Sometimes even the water was bad.’’
As they passed the bowls, he heaped his plate. ‘‘Mrs. Geddick did well, but no one compares with you.’’
‘‘I am going to get a swelled head with all your compliments.’’ But she enjoyed every one of them. She glanced up to see Astrid giggling into her milk. ‘‘What?’’
‘‘Nothing.’’
‘‘Then why are you laughing?’’ Haakan stopped with a fork of food halfway to his mouth.
‘‘Because I’m happy too. If Andrew and Thorliff and their families were here, it would be perfect.’’
‘‘We’ll do that tomorrow night,’’ Ingeborg said with a nod.
‘‘So how is school going?’’
‘‘Good, although the reading list is enough to choke a cow.’’
‘‘Don’t feed it to one, then.’’ He studied his bread. ‘‘Although cows eat most anything. Not like us.’’
Ingeborg nibbled on her bottom lip to keep from laughing out loud. Haakan had such a droll sense of humor. She caught his glance and let her smile widen.
Astrid rolled her eyes, the dimples in her cheeks deepening. ‘‘P-a-a. I wasn’t planning on it.’’ She took another bite, started to prop her elbows on the table, but caught the look from her mother and sat up straight again.
The conversation continued, catching one another up on all the news. Ingeborg made sure the bowls kept passing until Haakan waved her off and patted his stomach. ‘‘Got to save room for that pie.’’
Astrid mopped up the last of her gravy with a bit of bread. ‘‘Sophie cut her hair in a fringe. I think I will too.’’
While Haakan shrugged, Ingeborg’s eyes headed for her hairline.
‘‘Well, it is the fashion.’’
‘‘Since when did you care about fashion?’’ Haakan dug his pipe out of his overall bib pocket.
‘‘I am growing up, you know.’’
‘‘No. You are still my little Astrid.’’
‘‘Pa.’’
He held the match up like he used to for her to blow out, but when she shook her head, he blew it himself. A deep smile of satisfaction softened his face at the first draw on the pipe.
At her mother’s nod, Astrid stood to clear the table, scraping the plates into the bucket kept for the chickens. She kept the bones out for Barney, for when he came in the morning with Andrew. When Andrew and Ellie moved into their house, Barney went to live with them, leaving a hole in the life at the homeplace. Setting the dishes in the pan of soapy water heating on the stove, she put the food away and then washed the dishes.
Ingeborg poured her husband another cup of coffee to go along with his pie and picked up her knitting to sit beside him while they talked.
‘‘Any idea why Hamre came back?’’ Haakan asked.
‘‘Sophie’s been writing to him,’’ Astrid told him, ‘‘but he didn’t tell her he was coming. She was as surprised as the rest of us.’’ Astrid kept up with the conversation in spite of the slosh and clink of the dishes in the pan.
‘‘She’s been writing him?’’ Haakan looked from Astrid to Ingeborg.
Ingeborg shrugged. ‘‘I didn’t know it. Kaaren has never mentioned it.’’
‘‘What’s wrong with her writing to him?’’
‘‘Nothing. Not one thing. It just doesn’t seem like Sophie. Now Grace, yes, but Sophie?’’ Haakan stared back at his daughter. ‘‘You’re not corresponding with any young men, are you? Or is anyone calling that I don’t know about?’’
‘‘Pa . . .’’
‘‘All right.’’ He raised his pipe. ‘‘Just asking. After all, I’ve been gone, and who knows what all could have transpired.’’
‘‘I’m going to nursing school. Remember?’’
‘‘As I said, just checking.’’
Some time later when Ingeborg had brushed her hair the requisite one hundred strokes, loving the feel of Haakan watching her, and had blown out the kerosene lamp, she lay back on her pillow with a contented sigh. Her husband had come home, and she had ceased bleeding, a very good combination. When he put his arm around her, she went to him with joy.
The next evening with the whole Bjorklund family home—as well as Hamre, who provided them with sea tales during the meal—and supper finished, the women cleaned up the kitchen and rejoined the men still gathered around the kitchen table. The talk turned to the flour mill that the town co-op had been building and when it would be ready for business.
‘‘We’re getting the machinery installed now,’’ Thorliff, the elder of the Bjorklund boys and owner and editor of the now-weekly paper, the
Blessing Gazette
, leaned forward and wrote himself a note in the small notebook he always carried with him. ‘‘Hjelmer has the applications from those who answered our ads for the position of manager, and we will be interviewing next week. I am partial at this point to a man named Garth Wiste from Minneapolis. Hjelmer is leaning toward another. We have written to three men to come for the interviews.’’
‘‘One is from Chicago,’’ Elizabeth added.
‘‘Wiste is younger than the others but has plenty of experience in the flour mills of Minneapolis.’’
‘‘Is he married?’’ Ingeborg asked, dividing her attention between the conversation and watching Ellie, who couldn’t seem to get comfortable on the kitchen chair. ‘‘Andrew, why don’t you bring the rocking chair closer for Ellie?’’
With a concerned look at his wife, Andrew brought the chair closer, and Ellie, sitting down, sighed in relief. ‘‘Thank you.’’ She picked up the baby sweater she’d been knitting and set the rocker in motion with the toe of one foot.
Thorliff turned to his mother with a frown. ‘‘Now that is one question we didn’t ask. What difference does it make?’’
‘‘If he is married, he will need a house built for his family and will be more likely to stay here.’’
‘‘True, and there are none available for sale in Blessing right now.’’ Thorliff got a faraway look on his face.
‘‘All right. What scheme are you coming up with now?’’ Elizabeth poked her husband with her elbow.
‘‘Well, I was just thinking maybe we should build a house or two, you know, and have them ready to sell when someone new moves here.’’ He made another note. ‘‘Think I’ll mention that to Hjelmer.’’
‘‘I’d think with finishing the mill, you’d have about all the construction you can handle.’’ Haakan blew a smoke ring from his newly lit pipe.
‘‘Never hurts to think ahead. When that mill gets going, everyone in Blessing who has shares in the co-op will benefit. We’ve kept the construction costs down real well, coming in under estimates.’’ He tapped his notebook with the pencil. ‘‘Who’d have thought we’d be looking for more people to work here?’’ He glanced up at Hamre. ‘‘Sure you wouldn’t rather stay home? We could use another pair of good hands.’’
Hamre shook his head. ‘‘Sorry.’’
‘‘You wouldn’t have to milk cows.’’ They all chuckled as Hamre flexed his fingers and shook his head again.
‘‘You’re gaining a good reputation with the building,’’ Ingeborg added.
‘‘Just taking after the rest of the family.’’ Thorliff smiled at his mother and father.
Ingeborg returned the smile. Her cheese house did have a good reputation, as did the men and their farming methods. The Bjorklunds and Knutsons were known to be progressive farmers, willing to try new machinery and new crops. While she knew pride was one of the seven deadly sins, she believed it referred to pride in oneself. Hers was more for her family and this small town that had built up around their farm, starting with the school and the church.
‘‘I’m thinking of adding on to the surgery.’’ Elizabeth shifted her daughter’s sleeping form to her other arm.
‘‘You want me to put her on my bed?’’ Ingeborg asked.
‘‘I can.’’
‘‘Let me.’’ Ingeborg stood and picked up her precious granddaughter, swaying gently from side to side until little Inga sighed into deeper sleep.
Astrid looked up from the book she was reading and smiled at her mother. ‘‘What a lovely sight.’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘You holding Inga. Love shines golden all around you.’’
‘‘Ah, just the lamplight.’’ But the words warmed her heart as she laid the little girl on the bed and covered her with the shawl she kept on the bedpost. Finally, after all these years, there was a baby in the house, even if only once in a while. It helped make up for the lack she’d always pleaded for God to change. She, who’d wanted a house full of children, had only three. Now that the canning and gardening was finished for the year, she would have to bring Inga out more, or go to her house. She leaned over and kissed the child on her forehead, tenderly stroking back the wisps of sunlight hair. ‘‘God bless you, little one,’’ she whispered. ‘‘Oh, Lord, keep her and the other babies safe.’’
Soon there would be another one to chase after—Andrew and Ellie’s coming baby. She had yet to finish the quilt for their little one.
Tomorrow
, she promised herself.
Tomorrow I will work on it. Perhaps
now that she no longer needs to milk, Astrid can help me with it
.
‘‘Mor, you want me to cut the cake?’’ Astrid asked from the doorway.
‘‘Yes, please.’’ Ingeborg stopped in the doorway and turned to look again at her granddaughter.
‘‘I think we better be heading home,’’ Andrew said when she returned to the table. ‘‘Ellie is feeling a mite poorly.’’
Ingeborg stopped with her hand on Ellie’s shoulder. Was this her time already?
‘‘
C
OULD I BE IN REAL LOVE?’’ Sophie asked the face in the mirror.
Grace stopped in the doorway, reading her sister’s lips in the mirror and shaking her head. ‘‘He just came here. Do you think he came for you?’’
Turning from the glass, Sophie squared her shoulders. ‘‘Maybe. I’ve been writing to him for almost two years.’’
‘‘What? Ten letters, perhaps twelve? That is not a basis for love.’’
Sophie could tell how upset her twin sister was by the stumbling of her speech and her flying fingers.
‘‘What do you know? You’ve never been in love.’’ When she saw Grace’s jaw tighten, she knew her words hurt even worse.
‘‘I should hope not. We are too young for that.’’ Grace didn’t try to speak, and her fingers slashed the air.
Maybe you are but not me. His touching my elbow . . . just being near
him makes me shiver
. ‘‘Many women marry at fourteen, some even younger.’’
‘‘They are not women; they are girls. Oh, Sophie, please . . .’’ Grace dropped her hands to her sides and, slowly shaking her head, sat down on their bed.
There was no point in continuing this with Grace. ‘‘Well . . .’’ Sophie turned and tipped Grace’s face up by placing her finger under her chin. ‘‘There’s nothing to worry about. He’ll go back to fishing and nothing will have changed.’’ The thought made her want to throw herself across the bed and wail. He was so handsome, so manly, not a boy like those her age.
A picture of Toby Valders flitted across her mind. He was not a boy either, and his kisses had felt more than sweet, but Hamre looked like she’d pictured the old Norse gods. Strong enough to pick her up and carry her off to his Viking ship, his eyes burning blue sparks, his lips carved like stone, only warm stone and . . . She jerked herself upright, wanting to fan her face. My, how her imagination could carry her away.
She thought back to their walk home from school. He’d told her about some of his adventures—fishing for cod, rowing a dory, and pulling in fifty, a hundred, a boatload of twenty-pound cod. Someday he planned to have a schooner of his own, his dream a three-masted ship to sail to the Bering Sea, where the fish were so thick that all the dories came back full twice a day and the men cleaned the cod and salted them down in the hold, silver in his pocket.
Surely he could afford a home and a wife if fishing was so profitable. . . .
‘‘So how long are you gone?’’ she’d asked him.
‘‘There are two seasons, winter and summer. I came off the summer run and caught the train for here. I need to be back and ready to go in November.’’
He would not be staying in Blessing? Her heart took a dive.
Then
why did you come back?
But she was afraid to ask that question and instead asked what Seattle was like.
‘‘It rains all winter there but not much snow. There are mountains to the west and the east, and Mount Rainier sits like a king on a throne to the south. Sometimes you go for days without a sighting, but when the sky clears, there it is in all its snowy majesty.’’
‘‘I’m jealous. I’ve only seen pictures of mountains.’’
Ah, to see mountains,
huge trees, the Pacific Ocean. Maybe I could even go to Alaska with
him
. She brought herself out of her daydreams. ‘‘How come there is so much water there?’’ She knew Seattle wasn’t on the coast because they had looked it up on a map once to see where he had gone to.
Hamre took a stick and bent down to draw in the dirt. ‘‘Here’s the coastline, and here the ocean comes in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and flows south into an inland waterway like none other. Up here is Canada, Vancouver Island.’’ He drew more shoreline. ‘‘So many islands, I could have one of my own if I wanted. But Seattle is a growing city. Many of the provisions for the Yukon gold strike flowed through Seattle. There are forests with trees thick as the fur on Barney’s back. Like the north woods where Haakan was a lumberjack, the trees in Washington are being cut and shipped up and down the coast for lumber.’’