Frost sketches flowers on the windows of the St. Margaret Home the morning Lotte prepares to leave. After breakfast the Sisters embrace her and Wilhelm.
“I’m so grateful to you,” she tells them.
“And we are proud of you.”
“I’ll be here for work every day,” she promises.
As she carries Wilhelm home, fog rises from the ground, shrouds people and animals, houses. Her front door sticks and she presses the length of her back against it, rocks until it gives. Inside, the smell of absence, damp and stale as if no one had lived here for years—not months. Here, too, frost flowers on the windows, but already melting, growing luminous.
Late into that night Lotte is startled awake. Knocking at her door. A steady and relentless knocking.
Tilli. In a panic and without a coat. “I’m strong I can work for you—”
“You can’t be out there without a coat.” Lotte pulls her inside, leads her to the chair by the stove.
“I can work for you in your house and in the fields. I can help with Wilhelm.”
Lotte tucks a blanket around her. “For now—” She keeps her voice as gentle as she can. “—I need to live in my house alone.”
“But you’re not alone. You have Wilhelm.”
“Alone with Wilhelm, then.”
“Please, let me stay.” Tilli’s chin trembles. But she manages to thrust it out and say, “For now.”
Lotte rubs the Girl’s shoulders. “Oh, Tilli—” If she could just hire her, she would; but to let her live here means more, means she cannot turn her out, means making Tilli her family. If only Tilli were not so pushy.
“I can cook and I can darn and I can wash windows and floors and—”
“I need to learn how to live alone with my son.”
“Where is Wilhelm?”
“Upstairs asleep. You’ll see him tomorrow.”
She lets Tilli stay the night, sleep by the stove, and in the morning they walk to the St. Margaret Home with Wilhelm.
One day when Lotte doesn’t get to the St. Margaret Home at dawn, Tilli arrives and insists she take care of Lotte who is feverish, weak. Wilhelm is screaming, full diaper and empty belly. After Tilli cleans him up, she brings Lotte a tin cup with cool water. Lays a damp washcloth across her forehead.
Wilhelm paws at Tilli’s breast. He knows how to open buttons. Is determined.
His mother is watching Tilli who suddenly feels cautious.
“Should I?” she asks. “He’s hungry.”
Lotte nods but it irks her seeing her son at Tilli’s breast. He loves Tilli better than her and it can’t be good for him if this continues. Or for me.
Spit bubbles, Wilhelm blows spit bubbles and Tilli lifts him high. They giggle and he scrambles his little legs in the air to get back to Tilli.
He doesn’t look at me like that. Still, Lotte is glad he has another person who loves him. And that’s true. She should be glad. Also true: Tilli is taking him away from Lotte. My last child.
“He wants to come to you,” Tilli lies, afraid Lotte resents her for Wilhelm’s love. But Wilhelm has been mine till now.
Lotte holds up her arms and Tilli nestles Wilhelm on the bed.
He pats his mother’s face, plants birdie kisses on her nose.
She says, “Mein lieber, lieber Junge.” My dear, dear boy.
His pats get harder.
“That’s enough.” Tilli tries to catch his hands in hers.
His face darkens. He slaps his mother.
But Lotte doesn’t flinch. “It’s because he remembers me tossing him into the sea.”
“He is too young to remember.”
“Oh, he knows, Tilli.”