I had imagined that reaching Cedar Run Ranch would be the difficult part.
I was wrong.
The difficult part was standing in front of Caleb Foster and trying to explain why I had walked three miles through the snow.
He was holding both babies.
The one wrapped in green was crying against his shoulder.
The other, tucked inside a brown blanket, made a weak sound that frightened me more than the louder crying.
Caleb looked at me as though he expected another refusal.
He had already been humiliated once that evening.
I could see no reason why he should trust anyone connected to Amos Pike.
“I know you didn't ask me to come,” I said.
He watched me without answering.
“I heard you at the house.”
His eyes moved briefly toward the darkness behind me.
“Then you heard what your brother-in-law said.”
“I did.”
“He was quite clear.”
I nodded.
The baby in green cried harder.
Caleb shifted the child higher against his chest.
The movement looked practiced, but the exhaustion in his face made me wonder how many times he had done it that day.
“I didn't agree with him,” I said.
Caleb looked back at me.
For the first time, his expression changed.
Not much.
Just enough for me to see that he was listening differently.
I wanted to explain everything.
I wanted to tell him about Thomas, Ada, the doctor, and the mornings when I emptied milk into the frozen earth.
But the child in the brown blanket made another thin sound.
I could not look away.
“May I see that baby?” I asked.
Caleb glanced down.
His arms tightened.
“What for?”
“I'm worried about how quietly the child is crying.”
He looked tired enough to fall where he stood.
But he did not loosen his hold.
“They've both been crying,” he said.
“I know.”
“Sometimes one stops. Then the other starts.”
His voice was flat.
I recognized that sound.
It was the voice of someone who had repeated the same terrible facts so often that he no longer had the strength to put feeling into them.
I moved half a step closer.
The warm air from the house reached my face.
Behind him, a light burned.
I could see only part of the room.
I could see enough to know that the house was warm and that its owner was struggling.
“I came because I may be able to feed them,” I said.
Caleb stared at me.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
The child in green continued crying.
Then Caleb asked a question so quietly that I almost missed it.
“Are you nursing?”
I looked down at my hands.
I had known he would ask.
I had prepared myself to answer.
But there was no simple way to say it.
“Yes.”
His eyes went toward the dark fields again.
I wondered whether he was trying to understand how a woman from Amos Pike's household had come to his door with such an offer.
Then he looked at me.
“Your child?”
I felt the familiar tightening in my chest.
“My daughter died.”
His face changed immediately.
I could see the moment he understood.
He had lost Lydia six weeks earlier.
He knew what it meant to hear a sentence that divided a life into before and after.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
I nodded.
It was all I could manage.
He did not ask me how she died.
I was grateful for that.
I had answered enough questions about Ada.
I had repeated her name to people who did not know what to say afterward.
I did not want to explain the two hours and nineteen minutes while standing on a stranger's porch.
Not with two hungry babies in front of me.
Caleb looked down at the twins.
The child in brown moved weakly beneath the blanket.
I could see his worry returning.
“I don't understand,” he said. “Your family turned me away.”
“Amos turned you away.”
“He said nobody there could help.”
“He didn't speak for me.”
Caleb raised his eyes.
I could see that he was struggling to accept the distinction.
Perhaps he was wondering whether I had misunderstood what I was offering.
Perhaps he was thinking about the impropriety Amos had been so eager to describe.
I did not know.
I only knew the children could not wait for us to settle every question.
“Please,” I said. “Let me come inside.”
He hesitated.
The pause was brief, but I felt every moment of it.
My legs were aching.
My shawl was stiff with cold.
I could barely feel the ends of my fingers.
And I was afraid that he might close the door.
Not because he was cruel.
Because he was frightened.
A stranger had appeared at his home after dark, offering to nurse the children of a woman who had died.
I understood how unusual that must have seemed.
Then the child in brown gave another faint cry.
Caleb stepped aside.
“Come in.”
Those two words nearly made my knees give way.
I crossed the threshold.
The warmth struck my face first.
Then I felt the pain in my fingers as they began to thaw.
I stood just inside the doorway while Caleb closed it behind me.
The sound of the latch was small.
But it reminded me of the bolt at Martha's farmhouse.
One door had been shut against a father asking for help.
This one had opened because his children needed it.
I did not know what that would mean for me.
At that moment, I only wanted the babies fed.
Caleb looked at my shawl.
“You walked here?”
“Yes.”
“From the Pikes' place?”
I nodded.
“All the way?”
“Yes.”
He seemed to have difficulty finding an answer.
Then he looked at the bundle I carried.
I had packed almost everything I owned.
I suddenly felt ashamed of it.
I wondered whether he would think I expected him to provide me with a home.
That had not been my reason for coming.
But I could not deny that I had left without knowing where I would sleep.
“I brought some things,” I said.
He glanced at them.
Then he looked back at the twins.
There was no judgment in his face.
Only exhaustion.
“We need to see about them first,” he said.
I felt relieved.
That was exactly what I wanted.
I took off my shawl carefully.
The movement pulled through my sore shoulders.
I had been holding myself stiffly against the cold for so long that my body protested when I tried to relax.
Caleb watched me.
“You don't look well.”
“I've only recently given birth.”
His gaze lowered.
“I shouldn't have let you walk that distance.”
“You didn't ask me to.”
He made a small movement with his head.
I could not tell whether he was agreeing or simply too tired to argue.
The baby in green began crying again with renewed force.
Caleb tried to settle the child.
The one in brown barely moved.
I held out my hands.
“Let me take one.”
He looked at me.
I could see that giving up either baby was difficult for him.
They were all he had left of Lydia.
And he had spent six weeks trying to keep them alive without her.
But there were two children.
And he had only two arms.
Finally, he shifted the quieter baby toward me.
“Careful,” he said.
“I will be.”
I accepted the child in the brown blanket.
The weight startled me.
Not because the baby was heavy.
Because the baby was alive.
Warm.
Moving.
Breathing against my arm.
I had not held a newborn since Ada.
For one terrible moment, my body remembered before my mind could stop it.
I felt the shape of my daughter's small head.
I remembered the weight against my chest.
I could almost hear the doctor telling me there was nothing more he could do.
My hands began to tremble.
Caleb noticed.
“Are you certain?”
I looked down.
The little face inside the blanket was not Ada's.
I knew that.
The child had a different mouth.
Different cheeks.
A different life.
But the need was familiar.
And my body responded to the closeness.
“Yes,” I said. “I'm certain.”
I held the baby nearer.
The child made a weak movement against the blanket.
I watched closely.
I wanted to know whether there was enough strength left to feed.
I did not pretend to possess the doctor's knowledge.
I had no medical training.
I knew only what I had learned from childbirth, loss, and the frightening weakness of my own daughter.
But the need for nourishment was clear.
Caleb remained beside me with the other child.
He looked from my face to the baby.
Then he looked away.
I understood that he was trying to give me privacy.
I appreciated it.
I also felt the awkwardness that Amos had used as his excuse.
Caleb was a widower.
I was a widow.
We were strangers.
And I had come to nurse his infants.
There was nothing ordinary about the situation.
I could not deny that.
But the child in my arms was too hungry for embarrassment to matter.
“Is there somewhere I can sit?” I asked.
Caleb indicated a chair.
I went toward it slowly.
My legs felt weak when I lowered myself.
The walk had taken more from me than I wanted to admit.
For a moment, I sat with the brown blanket gathered around the child.
I listened to the small, uneven sounds.
Then I looked up at Caleb.
“Has either baby been able to take much today?”
He shook his head.
“Not enough.”
“Since when?”
He swallowed.
“Yesterday was bad. Today was worse.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
I thought of the milk I had poured away that morning.
I could still picture it against the frozen earth.
I wished I had known sooner.
Then I corrected myself.
Wishing could not change what had already happened.
I had reached the house now.
There was a baby in my arms.
I needed to attend to what could still be done.
Caleb shifted the crying child against his shoulder.
I could see him waiting.
He was too exhausted to hide his hope.
And I was frightened by the size of it.
He had come to my sister's house because a physician told him to find a nursing woman.
I had followed him because my body still produced milk.
But neither of us knew whether the babies had enough strength left.
I looked down at the quiet child.
The tiny mouth moved.
I brought the baby closer.
“Come on,” I whispered.
The child turned slightly toward me.
I felt the familiar ache rise in my chest.
Ada had done that.
She had searched for me.
She had never been strong enough to feed properly.
Now another baby was making the same small effort.
I wanted to cry.
Instead, I adjusted my hold.
There was no use asking grief to leave me.
It was going to remain.
I would have to work with it beside me.
The child moved again.
I could feel Caleb watching.
I knew he was waiting to see whether the baby would feed.
So was I.
I had walked three miles because I believed there was something I could offer.
Now I had to find out whether the child in my arms could receive it.
Source: life5.aubtu.biz
