tension and fright in her face. It was the same look that found the child in trouble at school or in the mill or just dealing with the neighbors. Some called it pugnacious, and others called it defiant, but Peggy knew it was just the way the good Lord had fashioned the child’s face. Callie got that look when she was frightened of a scolding or worse. Peggy decided to make the promise. At least Callie would be able to lie down and get a few hours sleep before the little ones were up and making a ruckus. “All right, Callie, I promise. Now what have you brought?”
Callie led the way into the kitchen and pushed the basket over to Peggy, her eyes downcast. “Why, that looks like a grocer’s basket. . . Callie James! Where did you come by this?”
“I took it, Mum. I just plain up and took it.” Before the words could sink into Peggy’s mind, Callie began emptying the basket’s contents onto the table. “Look, Mum, bread! And oranges! Jelly and sweet rolls! Here, a chicken for soup and an onion and a carrot! But wait, Mum, wait till you see this!” She pulled out the smoked ham; its sweet tang filled the room.
“Callie . . . I asked you once, now you tell me the truth. Where did you get this?” Peggy’s eyes surveyed the tabletop, already counting the number of meals she could serve. Her housewife’s inventory went to the cupboard where she hoarded the last of the flour that would make dumplings for the chicken soup. One egg, two at the most, along with the flour and they could all eat their fill. The handful of dried peas would make a good porridge when the ham bone was picked clean. Her eyes scoured each item as it was presented from the basket. Sugar, tea, bread. God blessed bread!
“I told you where I got it, Mum. It’s the truth. Now you promised not to toss it out, remember?”
“Yes . . . but, Callie! I thought I taught you better. I’ve never known you to take what wasn’t your own. And now . . . now this!” Peggy sank down onto a straight-backed chair. “It’s wrong, child. And you’ve got to take it back. This minute!”
“No, Mum, I won’t. And you can’t make me. I risked my neck for this basket, and I’ll be damned if I’ll turn it back now.”
“This is a Godly house, Callie! Shame for your language.”
“Mum, can you stop being a mother long enough to think? Think what this will mean to the little ones and to the one in your belly. It’s not like anyone else is starving because I took it. It was packaged to be delivered to Magistrate Rawlings, and you know he’s got more money than God, and he’s an Englishman besides. And the grocer will just raise his prices to those who can pay. Mum, your babies are starving under your very eyes!”
“Near to it, I’ll grant you, Callie, but we’ve managed to fill their bellies somehow.”
“You and I, Mum. We’re the ones who fill their bellies. You with your washing and ironing for the English officers’ wives and me working in the mill. Well, the axe fell tonight, Mum. My hours have been cut and so have my wages. What will we do now? We barely managed before, and now we’ll starve for certain.”
“Something will turn up.” Peggy ran her fingers through her rust-colored curls. There was a time when her hair had been her pride, thick and glossy, the color of the sun in its setting. Now it hung loose, already streaked with gray although she was barely thirty-two. “We’re God-fearing people, Callie, and the Lord looks out for His own.”
“Those aren’t your words, Mum, they’re Da’s! He’s always going around touting how the Lord will provide. It just ain’t so and you know it! And where does Da do his touting? Down at the corner pub after laying abed half the day and eating more than his share.”
“Callie, Callie.” Peggy hung her head, her hand massaging her swollen belly. “I won’t have you talking about your Da that way! Stop it this minute, please, for my sake.”
Once having begun her tirade, Callie was beyond stopping. Even pity for her mother could not still her tongue. “The one who is provided for is Da. And who does the providing? Not the good Lord, I’ll venture. It’s me down at the mill and you leanin’ over the washboard. At least Granda tries to do what he can with that little garden of his.”
“It’s your Da’s back, Callie. Some mornings he can barely walk and you know it!” Peggy tried truthfully. “He’s a man, and a man’s got his pride. He doesn’t want his children to think of him as a cripple. It’s his own torment that he’s unable to work and feed his family.” Peggy wrung her hands in distress. She couldn’t bear it when Callie took on about Thom’s not supporting his family. Times were hard, and jobs impossible to come by. Was there no pity in the girl’s soul? Didn’t she see her father dandle the babes on his knee and sing the songs of old Ireland in the sweetest voice the angels ever heard? Couldn’t she feel the love the man held for his family?
“How can you keep making excuses for him, Mum? Much less sleep with him. You no sooner give up nursing one babe and he puts another in your belly? Why, Mum? Why? How can you still love him?” Callie hated herself for treating Peggy this way—the one person she loved more than any other.
Peggy pushed her hair off her strong-boned face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She realized Callie’s anger toward Thom was born out of the fear of losing her mother while birthing another child.
In the dimness of the early morning light that filtered through the tiny kitchen window, Peggy walked over to her daughter and touched her face. In a soft voice, the voice she always used when speaking about Thomas, Peggy said, “When your time comes, Callie girl, you’ll understand. There’s something that brings a man and a woman together, and not heaven, hell, nor even a baby’s hunger can change it. Makes no matter what he does, nor even if he betrays you. You’ll love him, and he’ll be your man till the day you die.”
Callie’s eyes strayed about the damp, chill room and fell on the two little ones sleeping just past the doorway in the next room, their noses always snotting, their deep-set eyes cavernlike in their thin faces. “Well, I’ll not be like you, Mum. You can be sure of that. My head will never be turned by a handsome face and a strong back, even if he does sing with the voice of an angel! It’s my head that’ll rule my life, not my heart!”
Peggy watched her best-loved daughter’s pretty face flush with the heat of her words. With a deep sigh, Peggy reached out to touch the girl and gazed somberly into her Irish blue eyes. “Well spoken, darlin’, and well meant. But sometimes one must listen to the heart, for not to would be to miss the best life has to offer. Oh, it may be mingled with tears, but I’ll vouch you, it’s still the best.”
Callie looked up into her mother’s face and then buried her head against the round belly. Throughout her life Callie would think of this moment and bitterly yearn for that headstrong, willful young girl, and wish she had heeded her own words.
Chapter Two
The sound of voices awakened seven-year-old Hallie. The little girl came out to the kitchen, sleep-heavy eyes immediately brightening when she saw Callie. “Hullo, Callie. Are you going to take us for a walk later? Are you, Callie? You promised.”
“Come here, sweet.” Callie smiled fondly at the child whose rumpled nightdress was growing so small that her thin legs were bare from the knee down. “Give us a kiss.” The child hurried over to her older sister, smiling shyly with delight.
“Are you, Callie? Can the twins and Georgie come, too?”
Picking Hallie up onto her lap, Callie nuzzled the softness under the child’s chin. Tousling Hallie’s bright golden curls, she hugged and kissed
