The Children's Blizzard(71)

Good Lord, the woman was ugly—that was his first, uncharitable thought. He actively flinched from her. His Anette—yes, that was how he thought of her now, with no embarrassment—was not a pretty creature, not at all. But she was not ugly, he would never hear her called that. She was as yet unformed; she still had time to grow into a beauty—he knew he had an idiot’s touching faith in the transformative power of a few years. But when Gavin beheld Anette’s mother, for the first time he doubted whether that would happen.

The woman hadn’t seen a bath in weeks; her hair was greasy and scraped into a bun, and she had a round, porous nose, few teeth, heavy eyebrows. She obviously had not put on her good clothes for the occasion—then it struck him with horror that maybe she had. Misery and poverty clung to her like the ragged shawl she was wearing, the dirty apron, the soiled dress. She was the most pathetic creature he’d ever laid eyes on.

    But there was a gleam in her eyes, which were small and shrewd. She smelled opportunity, that was immediately obvious even to someone who played poker as badly as Gavin did. Opportunity in the being of the daughter she had sold to the Pedersens a year and a half ago.

“Sold her for two chickens and a pig,” Gunner confirmed when he came in from the barn a few minutes later. The two men were in the parlor, while Anette’s mother fawned over the girl in the kitchen. “The woman sold me her child for livestock. I heard of the situation through a neighbor, that there was this family that lived about a day’s ride away in a hovel. The mother was eager to get Anette out of the house—she didn’t seem able to stand the sight of her; she didn’t shed a tear when she left the girl here. We’ve not heard a peep from her since.”

“Why did you do it? Why were you a party to this—” Gavin couldn’t even find the right word, he was so disgusted by the entire transaction.

Gunner’s face reddened; he turned away to pour himself some coffee. “For my wife—Anna—it’s not quite so simple. You’re from the city. You don’t know how it is out here.”

“No, I don’t suppose I do.” And Gavin didn’t hide his sneer. He also didn’t reveal that Raina had told him some of the story already, how Anette had been overworked by the Pedersens to the point of abuse.

And now this—what to do with this woman who obviously thought to get her hands on the money being deposited in her daughter’s name in a bank account in Omaha? Or maybe even wanted to take her back to the terrible place from where she’d come, and there was no way that Gavin Woodson was going to let that happen.

    Over his dead body would anything bad happen to Anette.

Anette, who kept him coming back to the Pedersens time and time again. Anette who, in his mind, had assumed the characteristics of an orphan in a Dickens story. This little girl, so dear and amusing—she did not realize she had a sense of humor, which was one of her most endearing qualities. But she said the funniest things, like when he had given her a single glove, right hand, of course; the left glove thoughtfully missing. Anette mused that perhaps there was someone out there with two left hands who needed an extra glove. Or when he told her that someone had wanted to give her a piano, and she laughed and said she’d never been able to play before and she certainly couldn’t now, could she?

The funny little waif had stolen his curmudgeonly old heart. His maiden of the prairie—the original one—was only a distant memory. But the idea she had inspired was still with him and was now embodied in this little girl who had suffered mightily, and not only in the blizzard. When Gavin was back in Omaha writing these stories, the stories that were driving subscriptions through the roof, the stories that might, if he were lucky, get him back in the good graces of Pulitzer back East, he fretted about Anette. He wondered if she was going to bed early enough. He worried if she was eating healthy, hearty food—the Pedersens didn’t seem pinched for money, but, still, he could never know for certain. Anna Pedersen acted like a woman who had repented for a great sin—almost too eager to please, to nurture, to nurse. She seemed genuinely sorrowful, desperate to atone for her past behavior toward the little girl, but a woman like that, well—Gavin knew women like that, or so he believed he did. Women who had relied on their looks for so long that they’d gotten spoiled and selfish. And then, too, she was obviously a hothouse flower plunked down in the middle of the cold, withering prairie soil. What resentment she might have about that he couldn’t begin to know—but he could guess.

    But as long as Raina remained there to watch over her, he was reasonably assured of Anette’s well-being. However, Raina couldn’t stay forever. School would be out in the early spring, in time for planting, and Raina now had options before her: proposals and money and an education, the world was truly hers for the taking. She would leave the Pedersens. And where would that leave Anette?

That Gavin could take her in, make her his ward—again, something out of Dickens—did cross his mind. But his situation in Omaha—a stifling room in a boardinghouse—didn’t seem proper for a little girl. What he wanted for her was a life she’d never known nor could ever have expected before the storm and its aftermath—a life of ease, of love, of stability. Gavin couldn’t provide that. He was a man without close relations. He had no idea how to do family things like carving a turkey at Christmas or saying prayers at night or making sure children bathed often enough—Christ, he could barely remember to do that himself.