Chapter Four
Several weeks passed, and Albert’s visits became as much a part of the Peabody cabin as the stove, the wood box, and the children’s pallet near the wall.
He came before work with milk or eggs or a paper packet of something Dorothy would have sworn they did not need until she found herself using every bit of it.
He came after work with wood on his shoulder, nails in his pocket, or a tool tucked beneath one arm.
He patched the loose board by the door, strengthened the shelf above the table, and fixed the latch Tommy had somehow managed to pull half loose while pretending to be a bear.
Clara listened for his footsteps before supper. Tommy ran to the door whenever a man’s boots sounded on the path. Even Grace, who knew little of the world beyond hunger, warmth, and the arms that held her, had begun to reach for Albert’s face with both hands when he stepped inside.
Dorothy watched it all with gratitude that frightened her.
The children were warmer. Their cheeks were less hollow.
Clara no longer hid bread in her pocket, and Tommy had stopped asking whether tomorrow would have breakfast. Those were blessings, and Dorothy knew she should accept blessings with open hands.
But each time the children brightened at Albert’s arrival, another quiet worry settled deeper in her heart.
They were learning to depend on him. Worse, so was she.
She knew it was ungrateful to fear a blessing.
Ella would have told her so kindly, and Belle would have likely said it with more firmness.
But Dorothy had learned that anything her children leaned on could be taken.
Henry had been strong and laughing and full of promises one morning, and by evening he had become a grave in frozen ground.
If Clara and Tommy leaned too hard on Albert, what would happen if he stepped away?
If Dorothy leaned too hard, what would be left of her when he did?
On Monday, while Albert was at the mill and Ella was helping Belle distribute fabric, Dorothy took in washing from Mrs. Johnson.
She did not tell Albert. She did not tell Ella either, because Ella would have looked at her with worried eyes and found twelve reasons why someone else should do it.
Dorothy needed money of her own. Not borrowed.
Not disguised as trade. Not left on her doorstep before dawn by a man who thought of Henry every time he helped her.
Taking in the washing felt like rebellion, though no one had forbidden it.
With every shirt she plunged into the water, Dorothy told herself she was proving something.
She could still earn. She could still trade labor for coins.
She could still stand at the center of her children’s lives instead of waiting for Albert’s boots on the path.
But the harder she scrubbed, the more she understood that pride could exhaust a body just as surely as hunger could.
By midafternoon, the cabin was full of steam.
Damp shirts hung from a line strung between the cupboard and the wall.
A pair of trousers dripped into a basin by the stove.
The washtub took up the space where Tommy usually played, and the hot water made the small room feel close and sour.
Dorothy’s sleeves were soaked to the elbows.
Her back ached from bending, and Grace had cried twice because Dorothy could not nurse her and scrub at the same time.
She told herself she was only tired. Tired was familiar. Tired could be endured. But when she lifted another shirt from the water, her hands trembled so badly that suds splashed across the floor.
*****
ALBERT OPENED THE DOOR without knocking because Tommy had called for him through the window, and he stopped so abruptly that cold air swept past him into the damp heat of the room.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Dorothy pushed a strand of damp hair from her cheek. “Washing clothes. Mrs. Johnson pays fair,” Dorothy said. “And fair pay is not something I can afford to refuse.”
“I can see that.” Albert stepped inside and shut the door behind him. His gaze moved from the steaming tub to the wet laundry to Grace fussing on the pallet. Then he saw Dorothy’s shaking hands. Fear struck first, sharp and hot, but anger was what came out of his mouth. “Have you lost your senses?”
Dorothy straightened slowly. “I beg your pardon?”
“You are nursing a baby, caring for two more children, keeping this cabin, and now you are standing over boiling water until you can hardly hold a shirt. What happens if you take fever? What happens if you collapse? What happens to them then?”
“Then perhaps you should have knocked before storming in to scold me,” Dorothy said. “I am tired, Albert. I am not foolish.”
She heard how sharp she sounded and was glad of it, because sharpness covered fear.
If Albert saw the trembling in her hands and the weakness in her knees, he might decide she needed saving.
Dorothy could endure hunger, cold, and work, but the thought of being reduced to someone’s burden made her throat close.
She had been Henry’s wife, not Henry’s helpless relic.
She needed Albert to remember that, even if she wasn't sure she remembered it herself.
He heard the harshness in his own voice and hated it. He had meant to say he was afraid. He had meant to say the sight of her trembling had turned his stomach cold. Instead, he sounded like a man giving orders, and Dorothy’s face told him he had chosen the worst possible way to care.
“Do not speak to me as if I am one of the children,” Dorothy said.
Albert dragged one hand through his hair. “I am speaking as a man who does not want to find you ill on the floor. Your children need their mother more than they need Mrs. Johnson’s coins.” He softened his voice too late. “I need you standing, Dorothy. They need you standing.”
“And I am speaking as a woman who needs to know how her children will eat if you decide tomorrow that your conscience is satisfied.”
Albert went still.
“That is not fair,” he said, though the words came out without strength.
“No,” Dorothy said. “It is honest. How long do you mean to go on like this, Albert? Another month? Until spring? Until the town decides there must be something improper about a man spending so much time at a widow’s cabin?”
Albert looked toward the children. Clara sat very still with Grace in her lap, watching them with frightened eyes. Tommy was quiet for once, his hand curled around the edge of the table. Albert lowered his voice. “I would never let people speak ill of you.”
“You cannot stop every tongue in Yeti.” Dorothy’s anger wavered, and weariness showed through it. “And someday you may marry. What then? Will your wife welcome the Peabodys as another household to feed? Will she smile while you chop wood here and mend my roof and bring milk for Henry’s children?”
The question cost her more than she let him see.
Imagining Albert with a wife should not have hurt.
It should have been sensible, even expected.
He was a good man, still young enough to build a household of his own, and no promise to Henry should keep him tied forever to a widow’s cold cabin.
Yet the thought of another woman receiving his easy humor, his steady hands, and the children’s eager welcome made Dorothy feel suddenly hollow.
That hollowness angered her most of all.
He had no answer ready because he had not allowed himself to follow his helping that far into the future.
He had thought only of the next pail of milk, the next load of wood, the next repair.
Dorothy was asking about years, about a life, about what his presence meant when it no longer wore the easy name of obligation.
“I do not want your children hungry,” Albert said.
“Neither do I. That is why I am washing shirts until my hands shake.” Dorothy’s voice softened, which somehow hurt him more than the anger had. “I cannot build our future on your guilt. And I need to know I can stand without leaning on you. Do you not understand that?”
Even as she said it, she wondered whether standing alone had become less a virtue than a habit she was afraid to break.
Independence had kept her moving for six months, but loneliness could dress itself in respectable clothing, and Dorothy had worn it so long she barely knew how to breathe without it.
Albert left the cabin with the smell of lye soap and damp clothing clinging to his coat.
He had insisted on carrying the heavy tub outside to empty it before he went, and Dorothy had allowed it only because she was too tired to fight him properly.
She had not forgiven him. He had not forgiven himself.
Her words followed him all the way to the mill road.
I cannot build our future on your guilt.
He had wanted to protest that it was not only guilt, but he had not known what else to call it.
Duty had begun the visits. Friendship with Henry had led him to the door.
But duty did not explain the way Grace’s small hand reaching for his face could soften the worst day.
It did not explain why the sound of Dorothy moving around the cabin felt more like home than his own empty room ever had.
If he kept helping without offering anything certain, Dorothy was right.
Her future would hang on his mood, his wages, his reputation, and whatever wife he might someday take.
The thought of marrying someone who would resent Dorothy and the children made his chest tighten.
The thought of not seeing those children every day tightened it more.
That evening, Albert found David Sanders stacking kindling beside his house while Ella hummed somewhere inside.
“Do you have a minute?” Albert asked.
David looked at him carefully. “For you looking that troubled? I have several.”