The woman patted her arm. “Give me a few months and I’ll be able to tell you if it’s a boy or a girl, based on how low you’re carrying.”
Agnes stared at her, speechless, feeling as though someone had poured a bucket of melted snow over her head. She pressed one hand over her belly, inside her open coat. “Can it be true?” she whispered, leaning against the counter for support. “How can you guess that?”
“I didn’t guess. I’m a midwife, I know it for certain. I’ve tended to women in the family way for as long as you’ve been alive, and there’s no hiding a babe on the way from me. But, my dear,” Katharina added, her eyes wide, “don’t tell me you didn’t know?”
Agnes shook her head, her breath coming in gulps as she gazed down at her stomach. It was true that she hadn’t bled for months, but after so many disappointments, she had taken it to be simply a peculiarity of her body. She had not allowed herself to hope.
“Can it be true?” she repeated, her eyes filling with tears as she thought of telling Oskar.
Katharina took her hand and squeezed it. “Congratulations, Agnes. I’m happy for you and Oskar. You’ve been delightful additions to our town, and I’m glad you will add a third.”
The tears spilled down Agnes’s face as she hugged the woman. How could she and Oskar have ever called the Brauns busybodies? They were wonderful, lovely people, particularly Katharina. “I hope you’ll be one of the first people I introduce my baby to,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion, and the midwife’s smile split her face as Agnes rushed out of the bakery without buying anything she had intended to. She ran all the way home, and when she reached their cottage, she could hear her husband whistling as he fed the animals out back.
“Oskar!” she cried joyously. “I have to tell you…”
The rest of her sentence died in her throat when she saw the basket sitting at the gate.
It was made of pale, woven straw, with a frost-blue ribbon tied around its handle. A piece of blue-and-white-checkered flannel covered the gift inside, but Agnes could see a note with familiar handwriting peeking out from the folds. Her knees trembled as she bent to pick it up.
To my former neighbor:
I am well. I have gone elsewhere and will not trouble you again, knowing what a burden my friendship has been to you. I wish you had been the person I thought you were, but I see now that you are just like everyone else. To say I have been bitterly disappointed would not do justice to the heartbreak you caused me. I suppose I ought to thank you for reminding me why I should never trust anyone. I wonder if you meant to use me the whole time.
But it doesn’t matter now. You have chosen to break your promise, and you can only hope that the consequences will be kind. It is out of my hands entirely.
In this basket, I enclose a gift I was making for you when I thought you were still my friend. I don’t want it in my possession anymore.
Mathilda
Agnes pressed her fist against her mouth, her shoulders shaking with sobs as she read the note again. There were several splotches on the page where tears had marred the ink, and they hurt even more than the words. She imagined Mathilda weeping at her table as she wrote this last angry good-bye, while down the hill, she and Oskar went carelessly on with their lives.
Tears blurred her vision as she reached for what lay in the basket under the flannel. It was a beautiful baby girl’s dress of blush-pink wool, embroidered with little yellow flowers.
“Back from market so early? I thought you’d be gone longer,” Oskar said cheerily, coming around the side of the cottage. He stopped short at the sight of her. “What’s wrong?”
But Agnes could not find her voice.
She held up the baby’s dress from Mathilda, hoping it would do all the talking for her.
Elva slid out of bed and put on her slippers. Last month, for her seventh birthday, Mama and Papa had given her this little bedroom all to herself, with its pretty yellow curtains and a big window facing the barn and the river Main. She was glad she didn’t have to share a room with her brothers anymore. Rayner, who was five, would hear her sneaking out and demand to come, too, and that would wake up little Cay, and then Mama would be upset. But Elva was a big girl now, so she could come and go whenever she liked…as long as her parents didn’t know.
She crept down the corridor, moving noiselessly past the boys’ room, and sat at the top of the staircase. The downstairs was bathed in cheery light, and she could hear the grown-ups talking and laughing. She lowered herself a few steps to catch a glimpse of the party and gasped.
How pretty the ladies looked! They wore festive dresses of ruby and green and deep gold, and the men looked nice, too, with their dark coats and groomed mustaches. But Mama looked the loveliest and Papa the handsomest, Elva thought, swelling with pride at the sight of them standing before the fireplace. Mama wore blue ribbons in her hair that matched Papa’s sparkling eyes as he laughed at something Herr Steiner, the baker, was saying.
“A toast, Oskar!” someone called, and several other men voiced their agreement.
Papa raised his glass. “Dear friends and neighbors, thank you for joining Agnes and me on this final night of the year. We wish you good fortune ahead—as much good fortune as we have had. Eight years ago, we were penniless, with only a cottage, a cow, three goats, and each other.” He looked at Mama, and she slipped her hand into his. “Now we have three children, a new home and farm, a few more cows and goats…and considerably less peace and quiet.”
Everyone laughed.
“Don’t forget the chickens and the horses, Papa!” Elva clapped her hands over her mouth as the adults laughed even harder, swiveling their heads to the staircase where she perched.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” Mama exclaimed, but Papa grinned and held out his arms, so Elva ran right into them. He picked her up and kissed her, and she giggled as his whiskers, which were the same bright gold as her hair, tickled her.
“I want a sip of that, please,” Elva told him, pointing at the amber liquid in his glass.
Papa shook his head. “Whiskey is a grown-up drink, my love. But you can hold it quietly for me while I finish my toast, all right?”
“All right.” Elva felt proud in her father’s arms, holding on to his glass as all the adults looked at her. Papa began to speak again, his deep voice rumbling against her shoulder, and she amused herself by looking at the guests through the whiskey. It turned them all funny shades of burnt orange and copper, like the autumn leaves she and Rayner loved to roll around in, and the glass made their faces look blurry and wobbly.
She held the drink closer, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and looked inside. She could see her own face in it. She blinked an eye, and so did her reflection. She blew a kiss, and so did the Elva in the glass. She wiggled her eyebrows, and as she did so, she noticed something funny about her reflection’s chin. There was a dark spot that looked just like a little black horse.
As she watched, entranced, her reflection disappeared and in its place was Papa’s barn. The horse wasn’t one of Papa’s, though, and it had been tied to the door of the goats’ pen. Elva frowned, wondering what a strange horse was doing with her father’s goats. The rope was just short enough that the animal couldn’t reach a bale of hay stacked against the wall. It strained forward, pulling the rope taut, and Elva saw the door of the goats’ pen begin to tremble. And then, all of a sudden, it burst open and the startled goats began running out!