A Touch of Grace (26 page)

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I can’t make up my mind. I know I don’t want to go to Chicago.” She ticked off one finger. “I know I want to be a nurse.” Second tick. “But Dr. Elizabeth says I can train here. If I want to be a doctor, she’ll teach me all she knows.” Third finger. “But something in me wants to go away to school too.” She laid her hands in her lap, fingers entwined. “What do you think I should do?”

“I think you should ask God what He wants for you, and then wait until you have a definite answer.”

“I have and He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry. And school costs a lot of money, and we—”

“Wait a minute,” Ingeborg interrupted. “Are you thinking we can’t afford to help you with school?”

“Well, it is going to cost a lot to replace the livestock, if we do, and I …”

“Don’t you know that Elizabeth has offered to pay for your school, since she wants you to work with her?”

“No. But even so …” Astrid paused. “Did she really say that?”

“Both she and Thorliff have come to me on separate occasions and said they would pay.”

Astrid cocked her head and smiled in the dimness. “We have a good family, huh, Mor?”

“That we do, and I need to get about caring for my fine family rather than crying in an empty barn.” She stroked Astrid’s braid, which hung halfway down her back. “I know better than to let that black pit come even close to me. But sometimes the sadness just sneaks in and I forget that God is in control and we are His sheep.”

“I always wonder about those verses. Sheep aren’t very smart, and they are really smelly. They get ticks in their wool, and they don’t always herd the way they should. Calling us His sheep isn’t really a compliment.”

Ingeborg chuckled. How this daughter of hers could come up with such things, she’d never know. “But the people of Jesus’ time were a lot of them farmers and sheepherders, so they understood Him when He told such stories.”

“I understand that part, but—” Astrid rose and, in one smooth motion, picked up her stool and hung it back on the peg—“I don’t really miss the sheep. The cows and pigs yes, but not the sheep.” She reached out a hand and pulled her mother up. “Now, the chickens … nobody better touch my chickens.”

Arm in arm they strolled out of the barn. Astrid turned and shut the door behind them, dropping the board latch into place. “Mor, do you think there is something wrong with Far?”

“Why do you ask?”

“He seems to get tired easily, and sometimes I catch him leaning against something as if he needs help.”

“I know. I see the same things, and yet we are all getting older.”
Dear God, I hope that is all it is
.

“But sometimes his color isn’t good either.”

Ingeborg smiled inside. This was her daughter talking, speaking the medical things that had always fascinated her, learning the new ways from Elizabeth, yet she had grown up on the old ways of using natural herbs to fight sickness and disease. “I will try to talk to him again, but he keeps saying he is fine, just a little tired. Maybe we should try to get Elizabeth to talk to him.”

“I’ll ask her today.”

“I wonder sometimes what great things you will see. Changes in the medical field are happening so fast.”

“And Elizabeth wants to keep up with it all, but between caring for all who come to her and her family, she just hasn’t the time. Have you thought of helping her on a regular basis?” Astrid asked.

“I’ve thought of it, but I don’t want to intrude. We don’t do things the same way.” Ingeborg stopped by the well house. “I’m not too old to learn new things if she is willing to teach me.”

“I could share with you the books she has given me. I have almost all the human bones memorized and most of the muscles. Did you know that our hands and feet have the most joints and bitty muscles? I’m having a hard time with the nerves.”

“If I have to memorize all that, I’ll stay home and knit or sew.”

Ingeborg glanced up to see Grace striding up the road and past their lane. She looked like she was stomping locusts, the way her feet pounded the ground.

Astrid turned to see what she was looking at. “Uh-oh.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Grace like that.”

“I have. It takes a lot to make her mad, but when she is, look out.”

“I wonder what is wrong?”

The next morning Grace told her mother she had promised to go back and help Sophie again.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Kaaren asked.

“No.” Grace’s fingers slashed the air, along with an emphatic shake of her head.

“You seem upset.”

“I’ll get over it.” At least she hoped so. Lying awake most of the night had done nothing to make the pain lessen. Crying or fuming— there seemed no middle ground.

“Perhaps you should stay and help me and Ilse work on the lesson plans for school.”

“I will tomorrow. I didn’t see Grant yesterday, and I like to play with him and Linnie. Sophie spends so much time at the boarding-house that he doesn’t get a lot of attention.”

“Oh, his tante Helga takes good care of him.”

“We need to bring them out here more.” Grace grabbed a straw hat off the peg. “You could come too.”

Kaaren hugged her daughter. “I hope you have a good day.”

Anything would be better than yesterday
. She’d replayed Toby’s words so many times, they were engraved on her mind.

“Stubborn does not become you.”

Grace caught the glare before it reached her face.
Talk to your
mother
warred with
Handle this yourself, you’re a woman now
. By the time she’d walked to town, she felt a bit more resigned. Surely she’d be able to talk with Sophie. After all, she’d been in love—twice.

Sophie was still at home when Grace opened the back screen door and entered the kitchen. Both babies were crying. Linnie looked like she was about to cry, and Grant was hiding under the table. “What is going on?”

“You take those two, and I’ll nurse these two. That should settle things.” Sophie, hair halfway up in the roll on one side, the other tangled and flying, pointed to the little girl in the high chair.

Grace bent down to smile at Grant, still under the table. “You want to come out and tell me what happened?”

He nodded, his lower lip thrust out. “Sissy cried.”

“And the babies cried?”

He nodded again, his face solemn. “I was bad.”

“I see. What did you do?”

“Spilled the milk.”

“But you did not mean to?”

“No.” He took Grace’s hand and looked at his sister. “Her is hungry.”

Grace set Grant back up at the table, buttered and sugared a slice of bread for Linnie, and breaking it in pieces, set it on the tray so she could feed herself. She did the same for Grant, and while they were eating, she set about wiping off the table and putting the kitchen to rights, setting the dirty dishes in a pan on the stove and heating water in another.

Sometime later Grant tugged on her skirt and pointed down the hall. Grace took Linnie’s hand and headed for the baby room, where Sophie was changing one diaper while the other baby was squalling.

Grace picked up Joy and cradled her until she could use the surface of the chest of drawers to change her.

“Nobody is happy with anything this morning. I don’t know what came over them. But one starts crying and the rest join right in. I’ve fed them both now, so if you will watch them all, I can go finish dressing.”

Grace nodded and, with a baby in each arm, followed Grant back to the kitchen. Linnie sat down to happily spread bits of bread all over the floor. She grinned, showing her sparkling new teeth, and stuffed some bread into her mouth.

“Sissy bad.”

“No, babies don’t do bad things. She is just playing.”

The look he gave her said what he thought about that.

Grace had long before realized that Sophie would be having problems with two small babies and two little children, very little children. Usually Garth’s sister came over and helped, but something must have happened to her today. Sophie finally came out wearing a blue-and-white gingham dress with short puffed sleeves and a sweetheart neck-line, and she’d gotten her hair rolled up and a smile in place.

“Thank you. One of Helga’s children is sick, so she couldn’t come. I have to find someone to help me here. What about you? At least until school starts.”

“I can come some of the time, but Mor needs me too.” Grace handed Hamre to his mother. “Have you had breakfast yet?”
Why does
she expect me to drop everything and help? I guess because I always have
before. Why does it bother me now?

“No, but I did get the coffee made. Garth had to leave early for some reason, so he was going to eat at the boardinghouse. And I need to get there soon. Once breakfast is over, Lily Mae and Mrs. Sam need to work on the day’s meals and don’t have time for the desk work.”

At the boardinghouse with the children settled down—Grant playing on the back porch, the babies sleeping, and Linnie busy with a wooden spoon and a small kettle—Grace and Sophie sat at the table with cups of coffee.

“Why did you leave suddenly yesterday?”

Leave it to Sophie to leap right in. Grace studied the dark liquid in her cup before looking up again to Sophie. “I talked with Toby.”

“So?”

“He said he is in love with a woman in Grafton and may marry her.”

“So? Aren’t you glad for him?” Sophie paused. “You don’t still think you’re in love with him, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I’ve loved him for years.”

“Oh, Grace, you’re in love with the idea of Toby, not the real him. Why, the two of you have nothing in common, and …”

The more Sophie went on, the tighter Grace’s jaw grew.

“You’ve always been like Andrew, forever sticking up for the underdog.”

“At least I wasn’t flirting with every male in sight.” Fingers flashed and the words slashed.

“Grace Knutson, what a thing to say.”

“Well, it’s true. You have always thought only of yourself. How do you know how I feel or think?” Grace thumped her fist on the table for emphasis. She glared at Sophie, who glared right back.

“But you’re my twin sister.”

“You should have thought of that when you took off with Hamre, leaving broken hearts in your wake.”

“But Grace, you always—”

“Not anymore. I am no longer ‘Grace Always.’ ” “Grace, you are shouting.”

“I finally have the courage to tell someone how I feel, and you— you …” Grace pushed her chair back. “You can take care of your own children! Clean up your own mess!”

She was out the door and on her way back on the road to home without looking back nor left nor right. As she passed the church, it hit her.
What have I done?
She slowed when she reached the lane to Ingeborg’s and turned in, each step heavier than the last. She should go on home and ask her mother to go to Sophie’s to smooth things out. She should go back and make amends.

But why? I said only the truth
.

Ingeborg was alone, sitting in the rocker with her Bible on her lap when Grace walked in. One look at her aunt’s face and Grace crumpled to the floor, burying her face in Ingeborg’s lap. Her tears soaked the dress and apron. She had no idea how long she cried, but the soothing stroke of her aunt’s hand on her hair finally lulled her into hiccups and then sniffs. She mopped her face in the apron and blew her nose into a handkerchief Ingeborg handed her. When she looked up, she saw only love shining in the face above her.

“Now tell me all about it.”

Grace talked with both mouth and hands, spilling out the years she’d buried inside. She told of loving Toby, of the hurt when Sophie left, of all the times she’d wanted something and Sophie took it away, of taking care so that Sophie didn’t get into trouble.

“And now I don’t know what to do.” She stared up at Ingeborg.

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like me like this, angry and shouting and saying things I know I shouldn’t. This is awful.”

“You need some time to get over loving Toby.”

“You think I really love him?”

“I think you have for a long time, and if he loved you back, you would know what to do. But since he says he’s in love with someone else, you have to let go and pray that he will be happy.”

“But that’s so hard.”

“Of course it is, but this is where God will come in to help you if you ask Him and follow His guidance.”

“God doesn’t talk to me like He does to you and Mor.”

“Could it be that you’ve not talked much with Him, not spent time in His Word? Loving God is a lifetime lesson. It never happens all at once. Think how you had to work to learn to speak. I remember you struggled so hard, yet you were so determined. And you still are. I know God has something wonderful in store for you, and if you search His Word, you will learn and grow.”

“I want to be wise like you and Mor.”

“We have both prayed for and sought wisdom for years. You are just seeing the end result of hours of prayer. God always promises wisdom to those who seek it.”

“Mange takk.” Grace rose to her feet. When Ingeborg stood, Grace wrapped her arms around her aunt and the two stood together, locked in love.