Dakota December and Dakota Destiny (8 page)

Such eyes she had. Deep, fit to drown in.

“Sheriff, you going to Millie’s for dinner?”

Caleb thumped the front legs of his chair back on the floor, along with his booted feet. “How many times have I told you not to sneak up on me like that?”

“I—I thought you heard me. I wasn’t being extra quiet or nothing.” Elmer slouched, like a dog that had just been kicked. “I thought you’d want to know that a teletype just came in, about some missing woman. Since you been looking for something about that Mrs. Carlson, thought you’d be interested is all.” He held out a teletype form.

“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Caleb tried to retrieve his heart from down around his boot tops. He laid the paper carefully in front of him. But as he read, his heart settled back in its proper place. This was about some young woman who’d never had kids, just up and disappeared from her home in Fargo. Caleb breathed a sigh of relief. “Send back that we ain’t seen hide nor hair of this person. She probably headed to St. Paul or Chicago.”

“Sure, boss. By the way, how’s that Angel baby and her mother doing? Sure did look mighty purty up there in that manger. Just think, she hadn’t come to town, the pageant wouldn’t a been near so special. Why I said . . .”

“The reply, man, just send the reply.” The sheriff shook his head.

Let Elmer get going, and he wouldn’t stop jawing for a week. As the man left the office, Caleb almost wished he’d let him talk on. When he wanted to learn the town gossip, all he had to do was get Elmer talking and act the least bit interested.

He propped his boots back up and let his mind wander again. Only now he had more questions than thoughts. Who was she—Mrs. Johanna Carlson? Was that even her real name? Was she a widow? Or was she on the run? The latter seemed the most plausible. She had that running look about her and she had tried to take off right after having the baby. He should know about running. But it had been a long time since he’d felt the need.

He’d even thought of sending out a teletype of his own but something kept him from it. She’d been careful to reveal nothing of her past and that would possibly have been an invasion of her privacy. He thumped his boots back down, rattled the coal in the stove, threw in a big chunk, and shut die damper down. After shoving his arms into his jacket sleeves, he turned the sign on the door to “Closed” and left the office.

A few minutes later he knocked on the door of the mansion.

“Why, Sheriff, how good to see you.” When Mrs. Hanson opened the door, the fragrance of cinnamon and apple drifted out. “How’d you know I was baking apple pies?”

“Just a sixth sense, I guess. Sure does smell mighty good. You know if you’d open a place down on Main Street, I wouldn’t have to come so far for my coffee.”

“Don’t you go giving her any ideas, we’d be lost without her,” Clara admonished with a wide smile as she descended the curved walnut staircase. “Come with me and we’ll fix up a tray. I know Johanna is due for some refreshment too.”

“Seems to me we see the sheriff more since she moved here,” Mrs. Hanson murmured just loud enough to be heard by the two in front of her.

“But we’ll never tell, will we?” Clara whispered back.

Caleb could feel his ears heat up like someone held a candle right beside them. “Where’s Gudrun?”

“Working on her accounts. She will join us.”

Caleb leaned over to sniff the perfume rising from the slits in a golden pie crust. “Ah, if I were the marrying kind, I’d ask you to hitch up with me in a minute.” He closed his eyes, the better to savor the fragrance.

“If’n I were twenty years younger, I’d take you up on it.” Mrs. Hanson swatted his hand away from the knife on the table. “Leave off, I’ll make sure you get an extra large piece. Here, I thought this was for after dinner.”

“There’s plenty for that too. Dag over at the shop?”

“Ja, he don’t take off midmorning like some we know.”

Clara giggled from pouring coffee into the silver server. “I’d be willing to bet money that he’ll show up too.” Just then the sound of snow being kicked off boots at the back door made them all laugh.

“Right on time,” Caleb called to the man removing his coat on the porch.

“I smell apple pie.” Dag hung his coat on the tree by the door. “Something told me I was needed at home.” His grin set his blue eyes to twinkling. He crossed to the sink and began scrubbing his hands.

Clara sniffed. “You’ve been at the forge.”

“Ja, that I have. Two teams needed shoeing and Anselm brought in his plowshares at the same time. That is one man that plans ahead. If all the farmers thought like he does, we’d have more steady work and less of a rush at plowing time.” He dried his hands just in time to take the tray from his wife and lead the way to the parlor.

Clara flew up the stairs to the sewing room, her voice calling Johanna as she ascended.

Gudrun came out of her study, leaning slightly on her cane. “I thought I heard a party in the making. Now, where did that Henry take off to?”

Caleb remained at the door to the parlor so he could watch the stairs. Clara came first, Henry’s hand in hers. Sam looked down at his master, up at the small boy, and back down as if to say, you told me to take care of him, I’m just doing my job. Caleb nodded his approval and Sam wagged his tail.

“Johanna will be right down, she’s just changing the baby.”

Good,
Caleb thought,
then I get to see Angel too.
He followed the others into the room that now seemed bare without the Christmas tree in the bay window, and took the chair with a view of the stairs. When she came down, the smile she bestowed on the infant in her arms made him catch his breath. Her smile radiated pure love like the sun radiated warmth. The pallor was gone from her face, along with the lines of worry she’d tried to disguise. Instead of the dark skirt and much-worn waister, a gown of green serge, trimmed in black at the collar and cuffs, set her eyes, those incomparable eyes, to sparkling.

He only got a glimpse of that sparkle but it went right to his chest. Would she ever look at him like that? The thought made him choke on his coffee.

“Are you all right, Sheriff?” Even her voice sounded different, more assured, not so tentative.

“I—I’m fine.” He swallowed and coughed again. “Just went down the wrong way.” He looked up in time to catch a knowing glance shared between Mrs. Hanson and Gudrun. Was he so transparent?

Johanna bent over and held Angel out for him to see. “She’s started smiling already.”

Caleb touched the tiny fist with a gentle finger. Immediately Angel wrapped her fingers around it and turned her head at the sound of his voice.

“Angel, baby Angel, how you doing?” The grasp of her tiny fingers felt like a gift from above.

The tiny, perfectly formed lips twitched and spread in a smile. If he’d delighted in the grasp of her fingers, the smile did him in. She studied him and he her. He touched her cheek with the knuckle of the finger she held and the smile came again.

“She likes you.”

“She better. She and me, we had quite a discussion that night she came into the world.” He looked up at Johanna. “You don’t suppose she remembers me—my voice, do you?”

“Why not? We have no idea how much babies remember. You want to finish your coffee and you can hold her?”

Caleb put his coffee cup back in its saucer on the table beside his chair, beside the plate of pie with only one bite taken. “I’ll take her now. You go enjoy your pie.”

Angel snuggled into his arms with a big burp. Johanna quickly laid a cloth over Caleb’s shoulder and arm. “Just in case.”

“Yes, it wouldn’t do for our sheriff to patrol the town with baby spit on his shirt.” Gudrun lifted her cup to lips that twitched to keep from smiling.

Caleb ignored the chuckles and, in a low voice, kept up a running commentary to the baby in his arms. So long since he’d done this with his own two small ones, he’d have thought he’d forgotten how. But it all came back with a rush. The sweet smell that only came from a baby, the tiny weight of her, the eyes that wouldn’t let him go. He knew they said that babies couldn’t focus this soon, but he’d bet his badge that Angel was looking right at and through him. She stretched, her arms reaching from the blanket wrapped so tightly around her. Tiny fists waved in the air and she scrunched her face at the same time. She burped again, this time a stream of milk coming out the side of her mouth.

Caleb used the cloth and wiped it away. When Johanna motioned that she’d come get her daughter, he waved her away. “She’s fine here.”

“But your coffee is getting cold.”

“No, never mind.” Caleb rocked a bit in the chair. Henry and Sam came to stand beside him. The two might well have been lashed together for the tight fit they were. Henry’s hand looked to be permanently embedded in Sam’s neck ruff.

“So, you think she’s okay? For a three-week-old baby, that is? I know you can’t play with her much yet but one day you will.” Henry looked up at the sheriff and back at the baby. He leaned slightly against the man’s knee, his weight barely felt. As Caleb carried on his one-sided conversation, he continued to rock Angel until her eyelids drifted closed. She yawned, her lips forming a perfect
O
, her eyes wide. After one more relaxing sigh, her eyes jerked open along with her hands and then closed again.

“She’s asleep.” Caleb whispered and Henry, bless his heart, nodded. Between the two, Caleb felt he’d been given a medal.

“You want me to take her?” Johanna started to rise.

“No, we’re fine.” He’d transferred one hand to Henry’s shoulder and commenced to stroke the boy’s back, just as he would a high-strung horse. The boy could hear, he was smart as any ten-year-old if not more, and, wonder of all wonders, he was leaning into the stroking like he couldn’t get enough. Quite a fine piece of work for one morning.

Johanna watched the three from across the room. How could she keep them all from becoming too attached? She would be leaving as soon as the weather allowed. Poor Henry, to be offering his trust only to have it rudely taken away again. But wasn’t it better to have love in your life, even if you would lose it again, than to have no love at all?

She sighed. To whose heart was she speaking after all?

“I need to get back to those altar cloths, if they are to be finished this winter.” She refolded her napkin and laid it on the tray.

“That gold thread tangles something awful,” Clara added. “I’m wondering if there is something we can substitute.” She got to her feet along with Johanna. “I follow my slave driver back to work.”

“You needn’t . . .”

“Johanna, I’m only teasing.” She put her cup and saucer on the tray. “Thank you, Mrs. Hanson, for your usual delicious delicacies. If you need me, you know where I am.”

In a flurry of skirts, the two took the children and headed back up the stairs.

Johanna looked back down once to see Caleb watching her. She started to smile, nodded instead, and continued after Clara. The picture of him with her children refused to leave her mind.

The days fell into a pattern with caring for the children, working on the altar cloths, and visiting with Gudrun, Clara, and Mrs. Hanson, who always found ways to entertain Henry. He could usually be found in the kitchen, helping with the baking. She was never sure how much of his dough went into the rolls or cookies and how much went into him. If he weren’t kneading dough he might be reading in the library with Clara, or in the study, intent on following the lines Gudrun drew on the paper that became his letters. He could now write his name without coaching.

When company came, which was often, Henry fled upstairs to play quietly beside his mother.

Johanna enjoyed working with the fine material and lovely threads for the altar cloths. They were doing green, purple, and white for the major liturgical seasons, of which she’d had no inkling until now, attending the Lutheran church with her mentors. The stack of baby things grew too, far more than Angel needed.

Clara wanted a baby. Dag wanted a son. Gudrun wanted children running through the house and even sliding down the banister. But so far, it hadn’t happened, since their first baby had died right after his birth.

How will I ever repay them for all their kindnesses?
The thought ran through Johanna’s mind often and with never an answer. She’d never had life so easy. No housecleaning, or at least very little. She insisted on keeping up her own rooms, including the sewing room, but Mrs. Hanson and a woman they had come just to clean, kept up the rest of the house. A woman collected the laundry each week and brought the clothes back folded or ironed and ready to put away. All but the diapers, which Johanna insisted on doing, and even for that, she had to struggle to keep ahead of Mrs. Hanson.

“Why, I can do a boiler of those while the soup’s cooking,” she’d say. “You just keep on with those lovely things you’re working on. What a surprise that will be to the folks at the church.”

But somehow the news got out that there was a new seamstress in town and since Miss Sharon only did dressmaking for women and older girls, soon customers were beating a steady path to the mansion door.

“I can’t turn your home into a sewing shop,” Johanna said one day in mid-February. She stood before Gudrun’s desk in the walnut-paneled office. Walnut file cabinets took up the space between the two tall windows and lawyer’s bookshelves with glass fronts lined another wall. Johanna forced herself to stand straight and not squirm. The formal room made her feel like whispering.

“Have I complained about all our visitors?” Gudrun clasped her hands on the green felt blotter.

“No, but . . .”

“But?” Gudrun nodded to the chair in an invitation for Johanna to sit.

“But it just isn’t seemly. Yours is such a fine house, better than the likes of I could ever dream of.” Johanna sat on the edge of the seat, her back as straight as that of her mentor.

“This is no longer my house, as you well know. I too live here on sufferance and when Dag and Clara are happy with the arrangement, so am I. And so should you be.”

“Oh, please, do not think I am not happy. I have never lived in such splendid surroundings and when we leave here, it will be difficult to adjust again. That is part of my concern.” Johanna leaned forward. “You know, I cannot stay here forever.”