cooked the bread, Papa,” Mary Louise said, grinning around the two fingers she had in her mouth. He reached to pull them out before she ruined her fine teeth.
“She means she found the bread. Beata hid it in the pantry,” Lise said. “We thought the water for the eggs would never boil, didn’t we, Aunt Caroline?”
“Never,” Caroline agreed without looking up from the hearth. She’d shed her shawl, and her face was flushed from working so close to the fire. She struggled with an iron pot, and Frederich tried not to look at the way her breasts moved under the bodice of her ugly yellow-flowered dress.
There were only three places set. Apparently, Caroline had not intended to join them, nor did he invite her. He lost himself in conversation with his daughters, listening to their convoluted story of how such a fine Frühstück had come about.
“Beata’s going to be upset,” Lise said.
“Beata is always upset,” he said, spreading more jam on a huge slice of bread.
“But she’s going to say we took bread she was keeping for something else.”
“For what?” Frederich asked with his mouth full.
“She never says that part,” Lisa answered, and he laughed.
“Don’t worry, little one. If Beata wants to hoard her bread, then she must come down here and guard her kitchen herself. The biggest trouble with sulking, you see, is while you’re off hiding with your long face, life will go on without you. If she stays away, there’s no telling what we might do with the rest of the food in the pantry—we might even find where she hides the coffee,” he added in a whisper.
He was smiling—until he glanced at Caroline. Then he was immediately reminded of what a disaster this morning had been.
He abruptly got up from the table. “I have too much to do,” he said, the reproach in his voice apparent even to him. He took another hunk of the ill-gotten bread and a slice of bacon with him. He had stayed in the company of his children and Caroline Holt too long. He had nearly let his anger dissipate, and he needed it if he was going to plow the north field and locate his good-for-nothing nephew.
He went back to the barn. He tossed the last bit of bacon and bread to the barn cats, and he climbed the ladder to the hayloft, fighting off a fit of sneezing that came from the dust and the pungent scent of the hay. He stood for a moment peering into the dark corners for Eli’s sleeping form. If Eli hadn’t gone to Caroline, then he had to have slept somewhere.
The loft was empty, and Frederich began pitching the hay into the stalls below. The cats mewed loudly for another handout, and Beata was awake. He could hear her complaining all the way out here.
He moved to the other side and looked over the edge. The door to the stall directly below him stood ajar, and the bay gelding that should have been there was gone.
Frederich stayed away from the house until shortly after noon. The kitchen was quiet when he came in, and he was surprised that there was no meal on the table. Even if Beata was still sulking, he expected Caroline to have at least managed something for the children. He didn’t see the girls anywhere, but she was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs.
“We observe the Mittagessen in this house,” he said.
She looked at him blankly.
“The noon meal,” he said as if to a backward child.
“Lise and Mary Louise have eaten.”
“Is there anything left?” he asked pointedly.
“I don’t know. Beata took it.”
“Took it where?”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
He swore under his breath and went looking for whatever Beata might have put aside for him—or missed hiding. There was nothing. He looked up from his search to see Caroline standing nearby.
“Have you…found Eli?” she asked, not quite meeting his eyes.
“One of the horses and a saddle is missing. Eli had some money put by. I expect he is long gone.”
“Oh,” she said, as if she hadn’t considered that possibility.
When he looked up again, she was putting on her shawl and opening the back door. “Where are you going?”
He saw the rise and fall of her breasts as she took a deep breath before she answered him.
“This—marriage—isn’t going to work. I’m going to ask Avery to let me come home.”
The remark took him completely by surprise, and his temper flared. He had given her the only chance she would ever have for any kind of respectability and she was about to throw it away?
“Avery will not let you come home,” he said bluntly.
“You don’t know that—”
“He made too much of a show among the men of disowning you.”
He walked into the pantry looking again for something Beata might have forgotten to hide. He supposed that the loss of her secret hoard of bread must have convinced her as nothing else could that the rest of them hadn’t suffered enough from her self-imposed absence. Certainly it would be much more difficult to cook and eat without her if no one could find any food. He wondered what terrible thing he had done in his life to deserve Beata. And Eli. And Caroline Holt.
When he came out of the pantry, Caroline was no longer in the room. He leaned over the table to look out the window. She was walking across the field he should have had plowed by now, her gait strong for a few steps then hesitant, as if she were being forced to give in to the pain she still had from Avery’s beating.
Good riddance, he thought. Let her grovel in front of Avery. And when he sent her back again, perhaps she would understand her situation better.
He looked around at a small noise. Both his daughters stood at the bottom of the stairs.
“Papa?” Lise said tentatively. “Did you let Aunt Caroline go?”
He sighed. “She went, Lise. There was no letting or not letting.”
“Aren’t you…worried? Uncle Avery—he might hurt her again, Papa. And we promised.”
“Lise, I can’t tie your Aunt Caroline to the kitchen table so she’ll stay here,” he said, trying not to be influenced by how hard she was trying not to cry. Lise was a gentle soul; she was concerned about all living creatures—whether they deserved it or not.
“Eli said we wouldn’t let anyone hurt her again. He promised, Papa.”
“Lise, there is nothing I can do,” he said, in spite of the fact that he’d made the same promise himself.
“Couldn’t you just—?”
“This is not your business.”
Mary Louise was
