The Snow Child (41 page)

“Oh, Jack. Why does it always have to be somebody’s fault?”

“Because it always is.”

“No. Sometimes these things happen. Life doesn’t go the way we plan or hope, but we don’t have to be so angry, do we?”

He continued eating, but without any pleasure as far as Mabel could tell. It was as if he was gagging down each bite. Finally he gave up and pushed his plate away.

“There’ll be a wedding, I suppose?” The disgusted expression hadn’t left his face.

“Oh. Well. No one has spoken of it.”

“There will be a wedding,” and it was a hard, clear statement that left no room for argument.

“We’ll have to share the news with Garrett and Faina, then,” and she gave her husband an ironic smile. “But I agree. It’s the only way.”

It wasn’t until that night, as she lay in bed considering wedding plans, that she thought of the fairy tale. She climbed out of bed and in her bare feet lit a candle and went to the bookshelf. She removed her loose sketches from the book as she opened it on the table, and then she flipped through the color plates until she found the one she remembered. It was a forest meadow, lush with green leaves and blooming flowers. The snow maiden, her white gown glittering in jewels and her head crowned with wildflowers, stood beside a handsome young man. Fair Spring was before them, performing the wedding ceremony. Overhead, the sun shone brightly.

Mabel wanted to slam the book closed, throw it into the woodstove, and watch it burn in the flames. Instead she turned the pages until she came to the illustration she dreaded. There was the crown of wildflowers, no longer on the snow maiden’s head, but blooming from the earth like a grave marker. She put a hand over her lips, though it was unnecessary. She made no sound.

Jack stirred in bed. Mabel gathered the sketches and slid them back into the book before returning it to the shelf. It would be a long time before she looked at it again, and never would she speak of it.

CHAPTER 49

J
ack was calm. He could undo nothing, but at least he had a plan of action.

It began when Garrett came to him a few days after Mabel’s news about Faina. He assumed the young man had returned to finish the fight or to end all association. Instead he came with his hat in his hands.

“I’m here to ask permission to marry Faina. I know we’re young, and I don’t have much to offer her, but we’re bound together now, and I mean to make the best of it.”

It was like a blow to the chest, and Jack had to sit down in a kitchen chair. Garrett stood by, shifting on his feet and clearing his throat.

He hadn’t seen this coming. He was sure they would marry; he had assumed Garrett would take responsibility. But the boy came to him—Jack—to ask permission.

It hadn’t happened instantly, the way he had always imagined, with a gush of blood and a piercing wail, but instead fatherhood had arrived quietly, gradually, over the course of years, and he had been blind to it. And now, just as he finally understood that a daughter had been flitting in and out of his life, now he was being asked to let her go.

“I’ll do good by her. You have my word.”

Jack’s focus returned to the boy, and when he looked up at the earnest face, he saw what Mabel had tried to tell him—Garrett did love the girl. But was that enough? The boy had betrayed his trust, lied to him under his own roof, and taken advantage of circumstances. Jack eased himself out of the chair until he stood eye to eye with Garrett.

“You will do good by her,” Jack said, and it wasn’t an agreement but a command. He reached out to Garrett, and they shook hands like two men who had only just met and weren’t yet certain of each other.

That night Jack’s plan came to him, and he woke Mabel.

“We’ll build them a home, here on our homestead.”

“What? Jack, what time is it?”

“We’ll build them a cabin down by the river. That way Garrett will be close to the farm, but they’ll have their own place.”

“Hmmm?” Mabel was still half asleep, but he went on.

“Faina and the baby will be close to you, so you can help. We’ll start building right after planting. Maybe we can even have the wedding there.”

“Where? Wedding?”

“Here, Mabel. They’re going to live here, near us. It’ll be good.”

“Hmmm?” But Jack let her drift back into sleep. He was satisfied.

He noticed the way the clean morning light slanted in through the window and lit up the side of Faina’s face, and he wondered if it was always so hard, being a father. They’d finished a pot of tea and a few slices of bread with blueberry jam, and he was left with no other way around the conversation he’d promised Mabel. At the kitchen counter, Mabel tried to wash the dishes silently. She never washed them in the morning, but now each plate, each fork, was wiped and rinsed and dried as if it were made of precious china, for she was straining to hear.

Jack cleared his throat, hoping to sound fatherly.

Faina? Is this what you want?

It’s what you do when you love someone, isn’t it?

Your life is going to change. You won’t be able to disappear into the woods for weeks at a time. You’ll be a mother, a wife. Do you understand what that means?

Faina tilted her head to the side in a half shrug, but then she focused her blue eyes on Jack, and their clarity seized him. Her face carried the same look he had seen many times before, a startling blend of youth and wisdom, frailty and fierceness. He saw it when she had scattered snow across her father’s grave, when she had appeared at their door with her hands smeared with blood. It wasn’t sorrow or love, disappointment or knowledge; it was everything at once.

I do love him. And our baby. I know that.

So you want to marry him?

We belong together.

Jack had expected to be happy. Isn’t that what a father should feel? Joy? Not this grief-laden heart? They had hidden their love affair and created a child out of wedlock, but something more weighed on him. Faina would never again be the little girl he had seen darting through the winter trees, her feet light on the snow and her eyes like river ice. She had been magic in their lives, coming and going with the seasons, bringing treasures from the wilderness in her small hands. That child was gone, and Jack found himself mourning her.

CHAPTER 50

T
he strawberry plants were just beginning to green and send out their reddish-purple runners. Mabel bent from plant to plant and with a pair of shears snipped off last year’s growth and tossed the curled, brown leaves to the side. When she reached the end of the raised bed, she stood, slid the shears into the pocket of her gardening apron, and pushed the wide brim of her straw hat up from her forehead.

It was still there. The very last patch of snow in the yard, banked in the shade against the north side of the cabin where it had drifted the deepest. It had dwindled in the warming days until all that remained was a circle the size of a wagon wheel.

She squinted up at the sun, already white hot in the sky, and pushed up her dress sleeves. It would be a scorcher, as Garrett was fond of saying. He and Jack were working in shirtsleeves as they planted the fields. They would come home sunburned, she was certain.

Mabel pulled her hat brim down to shade her eyes again, took the rake from where it leaned against a fence post, and began scratching and prodding at the strawberry garden, loosening the soil, cleaning up the rows. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched sunlight glisten off the white snow. It would soon be gone.

She had thought often of Ada’s words about inventing new endings to stories and choosing joy over sorrow. In recent years she had decided her sister had been in part wrong. Suffering and death and loss were inescapable.

And yet, what Ada had written about joy was entirely true. When she stands before you with her long, naked limbs and her mysterious smile, you must embrace her while you can.

When Faina stepped out of the spruce forest, the sun’s rays struck her and set her blond hair alight in a peculiar golden silver, so that even from across the yard Mabel was reminded of starlit fairies and fireflies. Faina’s puppy, grown lanky and big footed, panted up at her and followed her across the yard.

The girl’s lean arms and legs were bare. She wore only the plain cotton dress with its pattern of blue flowers that Mabel had sewed for her. Her stride was long and sure as she moved through the newly sprouted grass and beneath the leafing cottonwood tree, and as she neared Mabel saw that her skin was tanned. She wore no shoes or moccasins. Tall and lean, she showed no signs of pregnancy yet.

Faina stopped at the edge of the strawberry patch and crouched beside the dog. She put one hand beneath its chin and ran her other hand back between its ears, and the dog grinned as it had that first day. When she stood and silently gestured, the dog promptly lay in the dirt, still panting, its black fur gleaming.

She walked down the strawberry rows, and her bare feet pressed so firmly to the ground that Mabel could see the soil squish between her toes. She took Mabel’s hands and kissed her on the cheek. When she let go, Mabel embraced her and held her for a long time, even as she could feel the heat of the sun on Faina’s back.