The Children's Blizzard(73)

    Because what good was a woman if she wasn’t complete? What man would have her? Anna had been brought up to believe that a woman was only as prized as the man who made her his wife. Of course, that belief made her tie herself to a man who was enviable on the surface, but underneath, weak as pudding. Still, she couldn’t shake her upbringing.

In maiming Anette, she had spoiled any chance the girl might have for a good marriage. So it was up to Anna to fix her as best she could—to save her. And in doing so, she would save herself.

The moment she opened the door and beheld Anette’s mother—that horrifying hag, that heartless shrew—Anna’s mind started whirling, trying to stay one step ahead of her. This was danger. This was evil; evil as black as Anna’s own.

Maybe that’s why she recognized it instantly.

“You see my poor, poor child, my daughter? What she has been through?” Mrs. Thorkelsen was saying now as she cuddled Anette—actually putting the girl in a kind of stranglehold. The Newspaper Man looked at her skeptically. “And now, thanks to you and all those kind people, we won’t have to suffer again, will we, min datter?”

    “What do you mean, we?” the Newspaper Man replied.

Anna watched as the hag shoved Anette off her lap and rose to glare at the Newspaper Man, who took a step back, unprepared for the look of repulsion in the woman’s eyes.

Fool, Anna thought. What a fool that man was. He was not a worthy opponent for this woman, despite his big city airs and his words in the newspapers that had lured her here in the first place—couldn’t he see how he himself was to blame? No, of course he couldn’t; he was just a man. It would take a woman to save Anette.

“I assume you’re after the money?” Anna asked the woman, ignoring the sputtering Newspaper Man. Raina and Gunner were also in the kitchen now but silent. Witnessing.

“I am only concerned about min datter, who has suffered so in your care, losing her hand! Almost dying! I will take her with me and give her all that she desires, thanks to the kind people. The things only a mama can provide.”

“Oh, Mama!” Anette’s little face radiated joy—Anna had never seen her look this way. The girl had never smiled, she had never laughed before the blizzard. But first the Newspaper Man, and now the arrival of her mother, had done this. Transformed a sullen—no, desperately unhappy—creature into a real child. One who could laugh and smile.

One who knew that she belonged to someone—Anna’s heart pinched with guilt again, remembering how she’d treated the girl from the start.

“You really have come for me then, Mama? You really do want me? And we can go back home?”

    “Yes, or maybe even—how would you like to go somewhere else, just you and me? Maybe not back to the old place, not back to that bast—your stepfather? Maybe we start over somewhere nice, just the two of us?”

Anette nodded and buried her face in her mother’s bosom. She began to cry, softly, but they were tears of happiness. Anna couldn’t bear it, she couldn’t look at this heartrending tableau—the mother was now patting Anette on the back, murmuring “Min datter, min datter,” over and over; she even managed to produce touching tears. Crocodile tears, more like it.

Oh, Anna knew this woman. And she could imagine, too well, what would happen if she took Anette away. She’d burn through all the money, she’d drag the girl from flophouse to flophouse, she’d never see that Anette got an education. She would most likely sell her again, but by that time, Anette would be a young woman. And the kind of selling that entailed made Anna shake with fury. It took all her self-control not to tear that hag’s eyes out right now.

Anna glanced at the others—Raina, Gunner, the Newspaper Man. Their faces, too, revealed their fear—but also their helplessness.

“She is her mother.” Raina was the first to break the spell; she spoke in English, so Mrs. Thorkelsen couldn’t understand. But the woman was so busy clucking over her daughter, she didn’t take notice—she was putting on a show, staking her claim—and Anette was loving it, believing every false declaration of endearment and devotion. Ach, that poor child! Another thing she must do—teach Anette not to be so gullible.

“A mother can take her own child,” Raina continued. “What can we do?”

    “We signed no papers,” Gunner admitted. “Legally, Anette is not ours. I doubt there are any birth certificates or marriage certificates in that woman’s possession—papers don’t seem to mean much out here, other than land claims—but if this went to any kind of court, no judge would deny that it’s the mother’s right to take Anette back.”

“I’ll be damned if she takes her,” grumbled the Newspaper Man. “She sold her own daughter. She’ll take the money and the girl and run, and we’ll never find Anette again. That is not going to happen, I promise. I can…I can write something up about her in the newspaper, expose her for who she is.” But he, too, looked helpless in spite of his anger, and Anna snorted. A pen, mighty as his appeared to be, was nothing on the prairie. It was no weapon against the basest elements of humankind, and those were what the prairie brought out in people. There was no refinement here. Only the elemental instincts and emotions: greed, evil, might, right. A pen was no weapon against a determined woman.