Page 22 of Mail Order Mercy

“Albert,” she whispered, though she did not know whether she meant to ask him closer or warn him away.

His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth, then returned to her eyes with such restraint that it hurt worse than boldness would have. “I made you a promise,” he said.

“Not to touch me?” Dorothy asked before she could stop herself.

Albert’s breath caught. “Not to ask for more than you wanted to give.”

Dorothy had no answer for that because she did not know what she wanted, only that his stepping away made her feel colder than the room warranted.

Dorothy looked down at Grace so he would not see the hurt that surprised her. She had not expected him to kiss her. She had not wanted to expect it. Their marriage was practical, born of children and cold and need. Yet when he withdrew so carefully, as if desire for her were something dangerous to be avoided, the ache beneath her ribs felt very much like disappointment.

Behind the curtain, Dorothy pressed her cheek to Grace’s soft hair and tried to steady herself. She had told Albert she did not ask for rescue, and she had meant it. She had not asked for romance either. Yet somewhere between his hard biscuits, careful hands, and quiet place on the floor, her heart had begun asking without permission. That frightened her far more than loneliness had. Loneliness was familiar. Hope was reckless.

“Good night,” she said, and slipped behind the curtain before her face betrayed her.

Albert stood in the dim room and stared at the curtain as it settled between them. He had done the honorable thing. He was nearly certain of it. The trouble was that honor felt like he didn’t care for her—and that turned honor into a lie, which was anything but honorable.

He lay down on his bedroll beside the stove, close enough to hear Dorothy settle Grace on the other side of the curtain. The fabric hid almost nothing. He could hear the baby’s soft nursing sounds, Dorothy’s quiet breathing, the small rustle as she shifted beneath the quilt. A few feet separated them. It might as well have been the whole Tanana frozen over and impossible to cross.

Dorothy lay awake too, staring into the darkness above the bed. She had married a man who was kind, careful, steady, and close enough that she could hear him breathe. The curtain between them was too thin to excuse the loneliness on either side of it.

Neither of them spoke. Neither of them slept for a long while. In the crowded little cabin, with children safe and warm around them, Albert and Dorothy lay only a few feet apart and wondered how belonging could feel so close and still so far away.

Chapter Seven

The spring thaw came slowly at first, then all at once.

One morning the snow still lay hard along the cabin wall, crusted gray from weeks of smoke and wind. By afternoon, water ran in narrow streams through the yard and dripped from the roof in steady little beats that made Dorothy look up each time. Mud appeared where paths had been. The Tanana River started flowing beneath the block of ice that had settled over it.

Albert spent every spare hour on the cabin. He patched the last weak places in the roof, reset the door frame properly, and cleared a trench to lead melting water away from the children’s pallet wall. Dorothy watched him work and began, almost without meaning to, to think past survival.

She wanted a garden.

The thought seemed bold enough to make her glance over her shoulder, as if hunger might hear and laugh. A garden meant planning for food that did not yet exist. It meant trusting sun, soil, and time to become useful before need swallowed them. For months, Dorothy had trusted nothing beyond the next meal. Now she found herself studying the muddy patch near the cabin and imagining potatoes, turnips, carrots, cabbage, and peas.

She almost did not trust herself with the wanting. Wanting a garden felt harmless on the surface, but beneath it lay a larger confession. She wanted autumn. She wanted meals not yet cooked, children not yet grown, mornings when the first thought in her mind was not how little remained. She wanted a future large enough to require rows and fences and patience. For so long, wanting beyond necessity had felt like tempting sorrow to notice her again.

Albert listened while she described it, one shoulder braced against the repaired door frame. “Then we will fence it,” he said. “Tommy will pull up every carrot before it is ready if we do not.”

Dorothy hugged the seed packets closer to her chest. “If we fence it too high, I will feel as though I am growing vegetables in a jail.”

“Then we make it high enough to keep out rabbits and low enough to keep from offending your peas,” Albert said.

Tommy, who had been poking mud with a stick, looked offended. “I would only look.”

“With both hands,” Clara said.

“I do not pull up carrots,” Tommy said. “I only check if they are ready.”

“A carrot that has been checked too early is still pulled up,” Dorothy said.

Albert and the children built the fence from scrap boards and straight branches cut from the edge of the trees. Clara held nails in her apron pocket and passed them with great ceremony. Tommy hammered one peg and then announced his arm was tired enough for supper. Grace watched from a blanket Dorothy had spread near the doorway, waving a fist at the mud as if giving orders.

Dorothy stood with seeds wrapped in paper and felt something loosen in her. The fence, crooked as it was, belonged to all of them. It was not Henry’s cabin repaired after loss. It was not Albert paying back guilt. It was something new, made from boards, mud, children’s chatter, and cautious hope.

The letter arrived two days later, blotched from travel and months late.

It came from Henry’s distant relatives, people who had met Dorothy only once and had written with careful sympathy that felt thin for having traveled so far. They were sorry for her loss. They prayed the children were well. They trusted she had found a way to manage, as capable women always did. There was no offer of money, no invitation, no question that required an answer.