CHAPTER 38
Adeline loved the dark of the early morning, rising from the warmth of her covers to reignite the embers of the banked fire. The chill of the room energized her while she watched the wakening flame. She lit a straw from the hearth broom and guarded the tiny flame as she crossed the room to light the lantern. She’d had this lantern most all her married life, and it comforted her now on her way across the yard to the kitchen. She set the lamp aside and bent to light the kindling. It caught and the stove readied itself for her eggs. Her ham was long gone, but the scent of yesterday’s cornbread warmed the room.
Lifting her lantern, Adeline stepped down from the kitchen and crossed to the shed, where Thomas would be sprawled, cradling a bottle, or curled round it like a baby. On the floor lay other bottles from other nights. She was never sure how he managed to get them, though egg money was often missing. She studied him, this husband of hers, this man she no longer knew as a man. He is gone, she thought. His children are gone. Perhaps I am gone. She extinguished the lantern and returned to her kitchen. The almost light of early dawn guided her feet. She could have walked this worn pathway blind.
Settled in the light of the stove, Adeline rested her hand on the journal. Benjamin had found it in Charles’s office and brought it to her after the confrontation with Emily. Without the courage to open it, Adeline had dropped the slim volume into a drawer. The book had remained in its hiding place all this time, until last week when, imprisoned in the house by the rains, she had resolved to read it. And she had. Now she struggled with what to do. She ruffled the pages and pushed the book aside.
Adeline sipped her coffee, played at the eggs with her fork, lifted them butter-soft to her tongue. She swallowed. Grief flooded her, penetrated her bones. She lay her head on her folded arms and let it come.
From a great distance, the low mooing of a cow penetrated the vast pain of her awareness. Daylight had slipped into the room. Adeline stirred. She raised her head. The coffee was cold. She rose and threw the dregs out the door. She would not die. She would live her life alone.
Alone is not lost, she thought. Alone is still alive, and I am alive. She poured another cup of coffee, dipped the remaining cornbread into it, and held the bitter crumbs against her tongue. Yes, alone would have to do. There was no remedy for alone.
* * *
The egg was still warm from the nest, straw stuck to its side as Lambert placed it in Emily’s hand. It was neither brown nor white, but a luminous blue, and clear as the morning sky. She held it as if a jewel had materialized in her palm.
“See that nothing-looking hen over there with the bluish feet?” Lambert said. “Looks like she forgot to come in out of the cold. It’s from her. She’ll give you a fresh one every day near about. They’re not blue inside, of course. Looks just like any other old egg. But you can have blue eggs for breakfast, a blue egg for a new day, like Easter all year long.”
The chickens became Emily’s calling, as they had been in her childhood. She delighted in them—how they squawked and scratched around the gate, their heads bobbing, eyeing her sideways as she tossed out corn she brought bundled in her apron. Emily knew each one and named them—Lucy, Juliana, Sylvie, Greta—the way her father had named his cows. She loved their gawky feet, the array of colors to those skinny, scary feet: yellow, brownish, almost white, and the blues from that one strange hen Lambert had made considerable effort to find for her. With those wintry-looking feet came the gift of spring-hued eggs, which he presented to her fresh boiled and warm every morning for breakfast, a daily reminder that life goes on.
* * *
Wood sizzled in the firebox, and bright coals flickered in its dark interior. With a scrap of blue quilt, Emily lifted the coffeepot and poured. Outside on the step, she studied Lambert’s profile against the emerging light. He had the plow on its side, filing at the back edge. As she approached, Lambert rose without turning. She stood beside him, her feet bare against the chill earth. The steaming cup warmed her palms. Emily handed it to him; his fingers were chilled from filing the plow. They stood in the cool air, looking out over the land as the horizon cleared with the rising sun.
“I love this time of day,” Lambert said as he sipped the coffee. “Something about the light. And the smell of the earth. Like everything comes around new.”
Emily smiled and touched his bare forearm, tucked up the fold of his shirtsleeve.
“Having the plow in my hand settles me inside,” he said, rolling the cup in his hands. “Something about the sound of the file shushing away the dull edge. I know it just goes back in the dirt, but it has a rhythm, like life, the plow does. It keeps you walking slow enough to see the world.”
Emily held out her hands for the empty cup. She saw he was studying her.
“I am with child,” she said.
“Ah,” he said, and she felt his coffee-warmed hand on her belly.
Emily leaned her head into his shoulder, letting her belly slide into the assurance and comfort of his palm. With her arm around his neck, the still-warm cup dangled against his spine. This man, she thought. This man will be a father, this man who thought to live out his life alone, this man who has loved me from afar in all these years of grief and sorrow, longer even, through my girlhood. Had I known, she thought, would I have chosen differently? Would this have been my life instead of that? No use to go there. None at all. It had been what it had been. Now she was here with Lambert beside the plow with its gleaming edge, his arm around her, his hand on her belly where their child together waited. She was not afraid.