Believing the Dream (19 page)

He carefully removed the ribbon and opened the shiny red paper, holding the leather-bound book in his hands. He read the title, tracing the inlaid letters with a fingertip, his voice reverent.

“If I can learn to write and preach like John Wesley, I shall feel I am fulfilling the calling the Lord has laid on my life.” He held out his book. “How did you know I wanted this? If I could only think as clearly as Wesley, perhaps my sermons would change lives too.”

“Perhaps, but I believe it is God who changes lives. We just use our gifts as he desires.”

“Spoken like a true saint.”

“Hardly.” She watched him for a moment. “Is something wrong?”

“Ah, no.” He shook his head. “Other than my aunt dying and my uncle acting like nothing is wrong and . . .”

“Grief does strange things to some people.” She thought back to Dr. Gaskin and his spell of drinking. But he’d come out of it. “What do you mean?”

“In spite of the suggestions of his deacons, he preached the sermon last night and again this morning. His sister is coming tomorrow to take over the household, and then the boys will come home. They’ve been staying with friends. Other than mentioning that the funeral will be after the thaw like others, it’s as if . . .” He paused, the candlelight reflecting in his eyes. “When I asked if he’d rather I found somewhere else to live, he looked at me like he couldn’t understand what I meant. As if nothing had happened.” Thornton rubbed his chin with one forefinger. “Strange.”

Elizabeth wisely kept her opinions to herself. “Would you care for some of Cook’s Scandinavian cookies? She makes them special for Christmas day.”

“There have been so many callers.” Thornton continued as if Elizabeth had not spoken. “She was much loved.”

By everyone but her husband
. Elizabeth snapped her teeth together. All she had to do was let her tongue loose again, and she would be even farther down on her mother’s black list. Like six feet below the bottom.

“But back to your gift. I am grateful indeed that you listened to your instincts.”

His whisper sent shivers racing up and down her back.
If I were
truly thinking of marrying someday, this man would surely make a good
candidate. He has become my best friend, and all because of a joke
. “I was afraid you already had this copy of his work.”

“I shall treasure it.” He folded the closed volume into the protection of his clasped arms.

What would it feel like to be wrapped close against his chest like that?
She could feel her cheeks flame at the thought.
Elizabeth Marie Rogers, there is no way you can manage home, husband, family, and medical
practice, so banish the thought from your mind. A doctor is what you will
be. A good doctor. Please, God, I will be a good doctor, won’t I?

“I hate to break up the party, but it is snowing six ways from Sunday again.” Phillip Rogers made the announcement, then turned to his wife. “I’ll go get the sleigh hitched up for those who walked.”

Within minutes the good-byes were all said, and only the smoke rising from the snuffed candles recalled the earlier party. That and the lingering scent of someone’s perfume.

Elizabeth pushed in a chair here and picked up a cup there. She straightened the curtains behind the Christmas tree and checked to make sure all the candles were properly snuffed, finding one still smoking on a rear branch. To be safe, she went to the pantry for a bowl to put the spent candles in and returned to clear them off the tree.

“I thought you’d gone up to bed.” Annabelle glanced around the room now put to rights and started to leave again. She paused, gave her daughter a questioning look, took one step toward the door and, with a slight shrug that matched the furrow on her brow, crossed to her daughter’s side.

“What is it sitting so heavy on you that you move like an aging dowager?”

“Now, that is an attractive picture.” Elizabeth’s smile twitched the corners of her mouth but never removed the bleakness from her eyes. Her sigh slumped her even more.
If I tell her my doubts, she’ll just say
play the piano and get married
.

“Here, let’s sit in front of the fire.” Annabelle took her daughter’s arm and guided her to a winged chair, which she turned to face the fire now reduced to flaring coals. She pulled the hassock near and sat there herself, without picking up her needlepoint or even the napkin someone had dropped. Hands clasped in her lap, she waited, her brow serene in the flickering light.

Elizabeth did the same, but her fingers refused to stay clasped, picking at a bit of lint, smoothing a crease, nudging back a cuticle.

Finally Annabelle laid a gentle hand on her daughter’s, forcing the activity to cease. “Is it so terrible you cannot tell me?”

If Annabelle had not been watching, she would have missed the minute shake of Elizabeth’s head. One finger rubbed the first knuckle on the opposite hand. “Mother, sometimes I want it all, and I’m afraid I’m asking for too much.”

The silence lay easy, punctuated by the whoosh and hiss of falling coals.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Blessing, North Dakota
December 24, 1893

“I wish Sophie and Grace could come, at least.” Astrid glanced at the snow-shrouded windows and shrugged, a tiny shrug that meant she wasn’t really whining, just wishing.

“Christmas Eve all by ourselves is definitely different.” Andrew dumped another armload of wood into the box by the stove. He brushed the bark and sawdust off his jacket and into the box before taking his coat off and hanging it on the peg by the door. “That wind hasn’t let up an inch. Tries to take my head off every time I step out the door.”

Haakan looked up from a back issue of the
Northfield News
that Thorliff had brought with him. He was reading at the table. “They could come, but Lars and I decided taking a chance even with the guide rope was an unnecessary risk.” Lars, Hamre, and George McBride had come to help milk the cows earlier in the day, and with the other students gone home for the holidays, the two families had been looking forward to all being together this evening. “We’ll celebrate Christmas together when the storm blows out.”

“But tonight we’ll have Christmas by ourselves.” Ingeborg checked the goose roasting in the oven and scenting the air with rich smells. She tweaked Astrid’s nose as the girl inhaled the goosey fragrance. “A few more geese, and we’ll have enough feathers for a new feather bed. I was hoping to send one back with Thorliff.”

“Thanks, Mor, but I’m plenty warm with the quilts you sent with me.” Thorliff exchanged newspaper sections with his father. “What do you think of all the unrest with the unions?”

“I believe in uniting for bargaining power, but violence isn’t the answer either. If the rich wouldn’t be so greedy, the workingman would give his best when treated right. Like the railroads and the flour mills.” He tapped a finger against the paper on the table. “Kill off the farmers and there won’t be any grain to haul or grind. We know as well as the railroad barons that there has to be profit to keep things running, but they better learn to manage better. Especially when times are tough like now. Drought can’t be planned for.”

“Astrid, you can start setting the table now. Let’s use the new tablecloth and napkins.” Hands protected by two large potholders, Ingeborg pulled the roasting pan from the oven and set it on the stovetop. When she lifted the domed lid, the crisply browned goose gleamed in the lamplight. “My, that smells good.”

“You want I should mash the potatoes?” Andrew leaned around his mother to inhale the tantalizing scents.

“Please, and pour the potato water into that crock.”

He rolled his eyes at her. That’s what they always did, kept the potato water for bread making. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Haakan, you want to hold the platter?”

Instead, he picked up the two long cooking forks and, piercing the goose on both sides, lifted it dripping from the roaster and transferred it to the platter. “Perfection. You want me to carve?”

“In a few minutes.” She scooted the pan over to the hotter part of the stove, and when the pan juices bubbled, she poured in flour she had already mixed with water, stirring it all together to make rich brown gravy. “You could start taking out the stuffing. That bowl is warm for it.” She nodded to the serving bowls sitting on the warming shelf.

Within minutes they were sitting around the table, heads bowed as Haakan offered thanks for the food and their safety, and asked for the same for all those buried under the blizzard.

Ingeborg added her own silent plea as visions of their earlier times flitted through her mind.
Thank you for all you have blessed us with.
Thank you. Mange takk so many times over
. She joined her amen with the others. “Ah, so much we have to be grateful for.” She patted Thorliff ’s hand. “And so wonderful to have you sitting here beside me again.”

Thorliff nodded and turned his hand to clasp hers. “Thank you. My life here is certainly different from my one in Northfield. Someday you’ll have to go there to see it in person.”

“We will be there when you graduate.” Haakan laid slice after slice of breast meat over on the platter. “Who wants the drumstick?”

“Me.” Andrew passed his plate. “Both if no one else wants one. That’s one good thing about goose, all dark meat.”

“I’m as stuffed as that goose was,” Haakan said when they finished eating and sat back in their chairs.

Thorliff reached for one more roll. “I eat so many of my suppers alone at the office that being together means more than the food. And no matter how good Cook is at the Rogerses’, no one makes bread like you do, Mor.

“I made the rolls.” Astrid nudged him with her elbow.

“Oh, then you have learned well.”

“So you don’t eat at the college then?” Ingeborg nodded to the coffee cups, and Astrid got up to bring the pot to the table.

“Cook fixes me a packet, and I eat with the other townies. I think my friend Benjamin sits beside me as much for the cookies Cook sends along as he does for my wit and wisdom.”

Astrid plunked back down in her chair. “Are we going to open presents pretty soon?”

“You think some of those presents under the tree are for you?” Thorliff tugged on one of her braids.

“Yep. My name is on at least two.” She propped her elbows on the table. “But I think there are more that are hid yet.”

“Hidden.”

She gave him one of those you-think-you’re-smart looks.

“We’ll open gifts after the dishes.” Ingeborg stacked the dishes and carried them to the pan on the stove. Astrid and Andrew cleared the rest of the table while Thorliff answered Haakan’s questions about life in Northfield.

“You know all the time I spent helping with the steam engine?”

Haakan nodded, his head wreathed in pipe smoke.

“Mr. Rogers couldn’t believe how quickly I learned to take apart and put together that old printing press, but the work here trained me for that. Our engine here is a saint compared to that cranky thing.”

“You like working on a newspaper?”

“More than I thought I would. Seeing those sheets of paper come out with the columns and type in order is like stitching grain sacks closed at the separator. You know you’ve accomplished something, sometimes at great odds. I prefer writing, but this job is teaching me a great deal. Someday I’d like to bring a newspaper here to Blessing.”

“Really? You do want to come home to live?” Astrid juggled the plate she almost dropped.

“Ja, why? Did you think I was leaving forever?”

“Well, if you went to work for a newspaper in Minneapolis or Chicago or something, we’d never see you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have to get through school first.”

“Seems so strange not to be at church.” Astrid leaned against her mother sitting in her chair.

“We’ll have the program and everything sometime after Christmas.”

“I know, but Thorliff might already be gone by then.”

Haakan knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “Guess I better get the candles lit before Astrid has a fit.”

“Pa!”

The three younger ones stayed in the kitchen until Haakan called them into the parlor.