“Elsa,” Mama said, her voice surprisingly sharp. “Didn’t you get sick a few days ago?”
“I’m fine.”
Mama pulled off her gloves, one finger at a time, as she walked toward Elsa.
She laid the back of her hand against Elsa’s forehead. “You’re not fevered.”
“I’m fine. It’s just an upset stomach.”
Elsa waited for Mama to speak. It was obvious she was thinking something; her face was drawn into a frown, which was something she tried never to do. A lady doesn’t reveal emotions, was one of her favorite adages. Elsa had heard it every time she’d cried from loneliness or begged to be allowed to go to a dance.
Mama studied Elsa. “It couldn’t be.”
“What?”
“Have you dishonored us?”
“What?”
“Have you been with a man?”
Of course Mama could see Elsa’s secret. Every book Elsa had ever read romanticized the mother-daughter bond. Even if Mama didn’t always show her love (affection being another thing a lady should conceal), Elsa knew how bound they were.
She reached out for her mother’s hands, took them in her own, felt her mother’s instinctive flinch. “I’ve wanted to tell you. I have. I’ve been so alone with these feelings that confuse me. And he—”
Mama wrenched her hands back.
Elsa heard the gate creak open and snap shut in the quiet that had settled in between Elsa and her mother.
“Good Lord, women, why are you standing out in this vexing heat? Surely a glass of cold tea would be the ticket.”
“Your daughter is expecting,” Mama said.
“Charlotte? It’s about durn time. I thought—”
“No,” Mama snapped. “Elsinore.”
“Me?” Elsa said. Expecting?
It couldn’t be true. She and Rafe had only been together a few times. And each coupling had been so fast. Over almost before it began. Surely no child could come from that.
But what did she know of such things? A mother didn’t explain sex to her daughter until the wedding day, and Elsa had never had a wedding, so her mother had never spoken to her of passion or having children, it having been assumed Elsa would never experience any of it. All Elsa knew of sex and procreation came from novels. And, frankly, details were scarce.
“Elsa?” Papa said.
“Yes,” was her mother’s barely there answer.
Papa grabbed Elsa by the arm and yanked her close. “Who ruined you?”
“No, Papa—”
“Tell me his name right now, or as God is my witness, I will go door to door and ask every man in this town if he ruined my daughter.”
Elsa imagined that: Papa dragging her from door to door, a modern-day Hester Prynne; him banging on doors, asking men like Mr. Hurst or Mr. McLaney, Have you ruined this woman?
Sooner or later, she and her father would leave town and head out to the farms . . .
He would do it. She knew he would. There was no stopping her father once he’d made up his mind. “I’ll leave,” she said. “I’ll leave right now. Go out on my own.”
“It must have been . . . you know . . . a crime,” Mama said. “No man would—”
“Want me?” Elsa said, spinning to face her mother. “No man could ever want me. You’ve told me that all my life. You’ve all made sure I understood that I was ugly and unlovable, but it isn’t true. Rafe wanted me. He—”
“Martinelli,” Papa said, his voice thick with disgust. “An Eye-talian. His father bought a thresher from me this year. Sweet God. When people hear . . .” He shoved Elsa away from him. “Go to your room. I need to think.”
Elsa stumbled away. She wanted to say something, but what words could fix this? She walked up the porch steps and into the house.
Maria stood in the archway to the kitchen, holding a silver candlestick and a rag. “Miss Wolcott, are you all right?”
“No, Maria, I’m not.”
Elsa ran upstairs to her room. She felt the start of tears and denied herself the relief they promised.
She touched her flat, nearly concave stomach. She couldn’t imagine a baby in her, growing secretly. Surely a woman would know such a thing.
An hour passed, then another. What were they talking about, her parents? What would they do to her? Beat her, lock her away, call the police and report a fictitious crime?
She paced. She sat. She paced again. Outside her window, she saw evening start to fall.
They would throw her out and she would wander the Great Plains, destitute and ruined, until it was time for her to give birth, which she would do alone, in squalor, and her body would give out on her at last. She would die in childbirth.
So would the baby.
Stop it. Her parents wouldn’t do that to her. They couldn’t. They loved her.
At last, the bedroom door opened. Mama stood there, looking unusually harried and discomfited. “Pack a bag, Elsa.”
“Where am I going? Will it be like Gertrude Renke? She was gone for months after that scandal with Theodore. Then she came home, and no one ever said a thing about it.”
“Pack your bag.”
Elsa knelt beside her bed and pulled out her suitcase. The last time it had been used was when she went to the hospital in Amarillo. Eleven years ago.
She pulled clothes from her closet without thought or design and folded them into her open suitcase.
Elsa stared at her overstuffed bookcase. Books lay on top, were stacked on the floor beside it. More books covered her nightstand. Asking her to choose among them was like having to choose between air and water.
“I haven’t all day to wait,” Mama said.
Elsa picked out The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights. She left The Age of Innocence, which in a way had started all of this.
She put the four novels in her suitcase and clasped it shut.
“No Bible, I see. Come,” Mama said. “Let’s go.”
Elsa followed her mother out of the house. They crossed through the garden and approached Papa, who stood by the roadster.
“It can’t come back on us, Eugene,” Mama said. “She’ll have to marry him.”
Elsa stopped. “Marry him?” In all the hours she’d had to imagine her terrible fate, this had not even occurred to her. “You can’t be serious. He’s only eighteen.”
Mama made a sound of disgust.
Papa opened the passenger door and waited impatiently for Elsa to get into the car. As soon as she was seated, he slammed her door, took his place in the driver’s seat, and started the engine.
“Just take me to the train station.”
Papa turned on his headlights. “You afraid your Eye-talian won’t want you? Too late, missy. You won’t simply disappear. Oh, no. You will face the consequences of your sin.”
A few miles out of Dalhart, there was nothing to see but the yellow beams of the twin headlights. Every minute, every mile tightened Elsa’s fear until she felt she might simply break apart.
Lonesome Tree was a nothing little town tucked up toward the Oklahoma border. They blew through it at twenty miles per hour.
Two miles later, the headlights shone on a mailbox that read: MARTINELLI. Papa turned onto a long dirt driveway, which was lined on both sides by cottonwood trees and fenced with barbed wire attached to whatever wood the Martinellis had been able to find in this mostly treeless land.