Chapter Nine
Albert returned to the mill two weeks later with a cane, a stiff leg, and instructions from Dorothy that Everett was expected to enforce.
“No lifting,” Everett recited. “No climbing. No standing in the water. No being struck by timber of any size.”
“The last seems unnecessarily broad,” Albert protested.
“Your wife was specific.”
Albert looked toward the mill road, where Dorothy had stopped to speak with Ella. “She usually is.”
The accident had changed more than Albert’s stride.
The lower crossing remained closed, and the men had built a temporary path farther uphill.
Everett had ordered every support, handle, rope, and blade examined before work resumed.
A red mark appeared beside anything questionable.
No man was permitted to erase it except Everett.
Albert watched the inspections and thought of Henry. The old guilt had not vanished. It had changed shape. It no longer demanded punishment. It demanded usefulness.
He found Everett in the office bent over a ledger. “We need a regular safety check.”
Everett looked up. “We have one now.”
“We have one because I nearly drowned. In six months, men will get busy. In a year, someone will decide a cracked support can last one more week.”
Everett leaned back. “What do you propose?”
Albert set a sheet on the desk. He had made the list while confined to bed: equipment inspected each Monday, defects written down, repairs assigned, dangerous stations closed until cleared, and two men responsible for every river operation.
“No trades of assignment without the foreman recording them,” Albert added. “No man works alone near a blade or high water.”
Everett read the page twice. “Henry would approve.”
“I hope so.”
“Dorothy will. That may be the more immediate concern.”
The first Monday inspection found a worn belt, two cracked handles, and a brace beginning to split beneath the drying shed. Work stopped while each was repaired. The delay cost half a day. No one complained after Albert told them what half a day was worth compared with a funeral.
Dorothy began helping Belle keep the safety ledger.
She wrote clearly and asked questions men sometimes avoided.
If a repair was marked complete, she wanted to know who had checked it.
If lumber was ordered, she wanted to know when it would arrive.
Everett endured the questions for three days before placing a chair for her beside the office desk.
“You have hired my wife,” Albert said.
“Your wife hired herself. I was merely informed.”
Dorothy looked up from the ledger. “The mill owes Henry more than sorrow.”
Everett’s humor faded. “It does.”
Together, they wrote Henry Peabody’s name on the first page of the new record. Not as the cause of the rules, but as the reason no one would be permitted to forget them.
That evening, Dorothy told the children what they had done. Clara listened solemnly. Tommy asked whether the book would stop logs from hitting Papa Albert.
“The book helps men remember what to check,” Dorothy explained.
“Then make it very loud,” Tommy said. “Papa Albert forgets things.”
Albert looked offended. “Name one.”
“Standing up when Mama says not to.”
“That was one time.”
“It was three,” Clara said.
Dorothy hid her smile in Grace’s hair.
The cabin changed with the warmer weather.
Albert built a cradle that fit beside the bed and moved Grace from the basket she had nearly outgrown.
He repaired the roof after the boards dried and added a narrow lean-to along the back wall for wood and tools.
It was not another room, but moving supplies outside created enough space inside for Clara and Tommy to have separate small pallets.
“We are practically wealthy in floor,” Dorothy said.
Albert measured the cleared boards with mock seriousness. “Another three feet and we may host a dance.”
“You are still limping.”
“Then it will be a dignified dance.”
Their first disagreement after reconciling came over Dorothy’s work at the mill. Albert did not object to the ledger. He objected to her walking home alone when spring rain turned the road to mud.
“I crossed that road before I married you,” she said.
“You did many difficult things before you married me. The purpose of having me is that you need not do all of them now.”
“The purpose of having you is not to gain another person who decides what I may do.”
Albert stopped. That truth landed where she intended it.
“No,” he said. “It is not.”
They stood beside the stove while supper cooled and the children watched with great interest.
“I worry,” he said at last. “I have not learned how to do it quietly.”
“I have spent months doing everything alone. I have not learned how to hear worry without mistaking it for control.”
“Then I will ask. May I walk you home when the road is bad?”
Dorothy considered him. “Yes. And if you are working, I may walk with Belle or Ella.”
“Agreed.”
Tommy raised his hand. “Are you done arguing?”
“We were discussing,” Dorothy said.
“It sounded like arguing with good manners,” Clara observed.
Albert nodded. “That is marriage, according to Everett.”
The children accepted this explanation and returned to their potatoes.
In early summer, a letter arrived from Dorothy’s mother.
Dorothy had written to her soon after marrying Albert, sending the news on the first uncertain mail route of the thaw.
Her mother’s reply came faster than expected, carried on the first reliable river traffic.
Dorothy read it at the table while Albert repaired a harness strap.
Her mother had learned of Henry’s death from Dorothy’s delayed letter. She wrote of grief, worry, and helpless miles. Then she wrote that Dorothy’s father wanted her and the children to return.
Albert’s hands stilled.
Dorothy continued reading. There was money enclosed for passage as far as it would carry them. Her mother promised a crowded room, familiar faces, and help with the children. The words offered everything Dorothy had begged the darkness for six months earlier.
“You could go,” Albert said.
She looked at him. “Could I?”
“I would not keep you here if you wanted your family.”
“Would you come?”
The question startled him. “If you asked me.”
“Even if there were no mill?”
“I can work somewhere else.”
“Even if my mother tells you the proper way to do everything from splitting wood to breathing?”
“I have survived you.”
Dorothy folded the letter, crossed the cabin, and put it into his hand. “Read the last page.”
He did. Her mother had added a final line: If you have found a reason to remain, tell us his name.
Albert looked up.
“I am going to tell her your name,” Dorothy said. “I am going to tell her about Ella and Belle, the mill ledger, the garden, and the cabin that is too small for sorrow to keep its own corner. I will tell her I want to visit one day. But I am not leaving my home.”
Albert set the letter down and drew her into his arms. “Are you certain?”
“I chose Yeti when I had no choice about anything else. I choose it again now. And I choose you.”
Clara looked up from teaching Tommy his letters. “We choose Papa Albert too.”
“Even when he limps?” Dorothy asked.
Tommy considered. “He can still carry Grace.”
“A stirring endorsement,” Albert said.
The garden began as four crooked rows behind the cabin. Dorothy planted potatoes, carrots, turnips, and cabbage. Clara placed each seed as carefully as a coin. Tommy buried three stones, one button, and the wooden horse before anyone stopped him.
“It wanted to grow,” he explained.
Albert cleaned the dirt from Henry’s horse and set it back on the shelf. Then he carved Tommy a small wagon to pull behind his own horse. Clara requested a bird. Grace received a round creature that might become a bear once Albert decided where its ears belonged.
On a bright evening in June, Dorothy stood outside with Grace on her hip and watched Albert help the older children water the rows. His limp was nearly gone. Clara spoke to him with complete confidence. Tommy followed him with complete disorder.
Ella came along the path carrying a basket. “I made too much.”
Dorothy looked inside at a loaf of bread, a jar of preserves, and enough biscuits for two breakfasts. “Do you ever make the correct amount?”
“David says I should stop trying.”
Dorothy took the basket. Months earlier, accepting it had felt like failure. Now she knew help could move in both directions. She handed Ella a packet of mended linens and a jar of salve Belle needed.
“Friends do not keep accounts,” Ella reminded her.
“No,” Dorothy said. “But they do carry baskets both ways.”