The Children's Blizzard(19)
This was a boy, a man—a good man, he would be, just like his father—who would never speak a seduction wrapped up in a compliment. Who would never say pretty things he shouldn’t to a na?ve young girl. Who would never dangle hope where none existed.
Nothing in his honest young face made her fearful. Or confused. She only knew an overwhelming sense of relief that he was here. Tor, she realized with an overdue slap of rational thinking, even at his young age, was everything that Gunner Pedersen was not. Gunner—suddenly she wanted to howl his name just as desperately as Tor had howled Fredrik’s.
She and Tor were both missing people. People who had claim to their hearts. Despite what she thought about Gunner—his flaws as a husband, as a moral person—Raina still longed for him to come driving up with his fine horses and save her. Save them all.
She longed for him to act like the man she wanted him to be.
As she gently pulled Tor away from the door and back into the schoolroom toward the stove where the other children sat huddling, the youngest ones starting to sniff back tears, Raina still listened for the sound of horses whinnying, reins jingling, his teasing, musical voice calling out for her in that seductive way. Her heart actually seemed to reach toward the schoolyard, her hope, her need, was that strong. And she thought back to the other night—that night, when he did croon her name. “You’re the most important thing to me in the world. Get dressed, my Raina,” he’d whispered, pressing her hand when she sat up, wondering if she was dreaming, then hearing Anette turning over in her bed behind the curtain so that she knew she was not. “Get dressed, come to the barn. We’re leaving this place, you and me. Together.”
What gave him the right to say this? What had she ever done to indicate this was what she wanted? She’d tried so hard to be good, to be modest; she prayed every night to be released from this hell of temptation and despair. He gave her flowers, he manufactured ways for them to be alone, he stole her thoughts, her dreams, even her privacy, accompanying her whenever she tried to escape, whenever she found a dark corner to hide in. He did it all so smoothly, even delicately; no one would know there had been any words spoken between them that weren’t harmless, any thoughts or hopes revealed that weren’t innocent, what would normally occur between two chaste people living under the same roof.
No one but Anna, his wife. Anna saw and heard everything; she was a force of nature who never kept still, never hid herself away, seemed to be everywhere at once: now in the kitchen, dicing meat for stew; now in the little parlor, polishing the prize china lamps; now in the stable—his domain—rubbing the bits and bridles until they shone. Checking on the chickens, sending Anette through her paces, diapering the baby, braiding her daughter’s hair so tight the girl cried, obsessively ironing her own pretty clothes, the only things she didn’t make Anette launder. Sewing new aprons and bonnets for herself while Anette’s clothes grew more and more threadbare, cooking dinner, each dish so pretty in a dainty bowl or platter, the table set like at a hotel, with many forks and spoons, even when the food was just plain farm food. She heard, she saw, she suspected, she scattered her withering words like hard, sharp pebbles throughout the house, you had to pick your way carefully through them, you never knew when you would face a new onslaught.
She never sat, never rested. Not even at night.
When Gunner crept back downstairs that awful night, Raina lay still for a long while. I’ll go back to sleep, she told herself. She may murder me in the night but I don’t care anymore. I need to leave this house one way or another.
She had never said a single word to Gunner that would indicate she was the type of woman who would run off with a married man. But words weren’t the only way to communicate. And in her miserable heart she knew that had Anna not shown herself, she might have gone with him—after all, hadn’t she already risen, her feet on the floor, ready to follow him, before Anna spoke?
A crash, a wail—Raina twitched as if she’d been poked with a barbed wire. She heard glass breaking, shattering her memories, and she looked about her. The largest schoolroom window had blown in with an explosion of glass; it was all over the floor. The greedy wind rushed through, howling now inside the schoolhouse as loudly as it did outside, and her hands flew to her ears to stifle it. She froze, trying to make sense of the scene: papers blowing all over the place and children screaming. Clara burned her hand on the stove as she ran to it for warmth. The snow piled in; the cold assaulted the room like an army of sharp knives. Tor rushed to gather the girl up as those icy knives slashed at Raina’s shawl, her dress, her flesh, her bones. She was shivering now, her entire body shaking. Walter Blickenstaff ran to the window with his coat, trying to cover it up, but his coat was then sucked outside. Tor threw the last log into the stove, desperate, then turned to look at Raina for guidance while she still stood, freezing, shaking, children running to her, tugging on her skirt, crying, wailing, hysterical.
It hit her then. They couldn’t remain here, after all. They would freeze to death. The time had come, and gone, when she could be rescued.
She was going to have to lead these ten children, not including Tor, outside. Into that storm.
Panicked, her gaze returned to Tor, who was comforting Clara. Raina knew that they would have to do it, the two of them. Together, these two children—yes, they were children, her heart cried out. How confusing that today she called herself a child while all those nights, in Gunner’s eyes and her own desires, she had declared herself a woman. The irony did not escape her, but she only had a breath to realize it before returning to the desperate situation before her. Two young people, fifteen and sixteen, would have to get these even younger people somewhere safe.