The Baby Bequest

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“Is Miss Thurston here still?” The fact he couldn’t easily pronounce the “Th” at the beginning of her name caused him to flush with embarrassment. He tried to cast his feelings aside. He had come to talk with Miss Thurston face-to-face over Gunther’s schooling. Altogether, the issue had left a sour taste in his mouth. But a decision must be made—Gunther’s playing hooky had forced his hand.

“She’s about done feeding the baby and then I’m taking her home,” Martin said as he finished the hitching.

“I have come to offer to escort the lady home.”

Martin turned to Kurt. “Oh?”

The embarrassment he’d just pushed away returned. Kurt tried to ignore his burning face. Did Martin think he was interested in Miss Thurston? “I wish to speak to her about my brother, Gunther, before school starts again tomorrow.”

At that moment, the lady herself stepped out of the cabin with William in her arms. She noticed him and stopped. “Mr. Lang.”

Sweeping off his hat, Kurt felt that by now his flaming face must be as red as a beetroot. “I come to take you home, Miss Thurston. And perhaps we talk about Gunther?”

She smiled then and walked toward the cart. “Yes, I want to discuss that matter with you.”

They said their farewells to the Stewards, and soon Ellen sat beside him on the seat of the small cart, holding the baby whose eyelids kept drooping only to pop open again, evidently fighting sleep. Kurt turned the pony and they began the trip to town, heading toward the golden and pink sunset. Crickets sang, filling his ears. Beside him, Miss Ellen Thurston held herself up as a lady should. Only last night had he seen her usual refined composure slip. Finding the infant had shaken her. Did it have something to do with the little brother she’d mentioned?

Kurt chewed his lower lip, trying to figure out how to begin the conversation about his brother. “I still don’t agree with what you have said about Gunther,” he grumbled at last.

“But yet you are here, talking to me” was all she replied.

A sound of frustration escaped his lips. “Gunther...” He didn’t know what he wanted to say, or could say. He would never speak about the real cause of Gunther’s rebelliousness. He would never want Miss Thurston to know the extent of his family’s shame. His father’s gambling had been enough to wound them all. What had driven him even further to such a disgraceful end?

Kurt struggled with himself, with what to do about his brother. Gunther needed to face life and go on, despite what had happened. Would his giving in weaken his brother more?

“Your brother is at a difficult age—not a boy, not fully a man,” she said.

If that were the only problem, Kurt would count himself fortunate. So much more had wounded his brother, and at a tender age. A woodpecker pounded a hollow tree nearby, an empty, lonely sound.

“Gunther and Johann are all I have left.” He hadn’t planned to say that, and shame shuddered deep inside his chest.

“I know how you feel.”

No, she didn’t, but he wouldn’t correct her. “Do you still think to teach Gunther in the evenings?”

“Yes. As you know, you can send him to school, but you cannot make him learn if he’s shut his mind to it. Private lessons would be best.”

Kurt chewed on this bitter pill and then swallowed it. “He will have the lessons, then.”

“Will you be able to help him with his studies on the evenings when I am not working with him?”

“I will.”

“Then bring him after supper on Tuesday.” Miss Thurston looked down at the child in her arms and smiled so sweetly—Kurt could tell just from her expression that she had a tender heart. Something about her smile affected him deeply and he had to look away.

She glanced up at him and asked, “Have you told Gunther about this?”

“I tell him soon,” he said.

“Good.” She sounded relieved.

He, however, was anything but relieved. His fears for Gunther clamored within. They had come to this new country for a new start. He wanted Gunther to make the most of this, not end up like their father had.

They reached the downward stretch onto the flat of the riverside. He directed the pony cart onto the trail to the school. Again, he was bringing her home in Martin’s cart and again someone was waiting on her doorstep. This time a woman rose to greet them. What now?

Kurt helped Miss Thurston down. She moved so gracefully as a shaft of sunset shone through the trees, gilding her hair. He forced himself not to stop and enjoy the sight. Instead, he accompanied her to greet the woman.

“Good evening,” Miss Thurston said, cradling the sleeping baby in her arms.

The other woman replied, “I am Mrs. Brawley. My husband and I are homesteading just north of town.”

“Yes?” Miss Thurston encouraged the woman.

“I have one child and I heard the preacher say this morning that you needed someone to care for the baby.” The woman gazed at the child, sleeping in the lady’s arms.

“I take it that you may be interested in doing that?” the schoolteacher asked.

“Yes, miss. I could take care of two as well as one.”

“May I visit your home tomorrow after supper and discuss it then?”

“Yes, yes, please come.” The woman gave directions to her homestead, which lay about a mile and a half north of town. They bid her good-night and she hurried away in the lowering light of day.

“Well, I hope this will solve the problem of William’s care during the schooldays.”

Her single-mindedness scraped Kurt’s calm veneer. “You think still they will let you keep the child?”

She had mounted the step and now turned toward him. “Perhaps you are one of those who think a woman who does not wish to marry cannot love a child, and is unnatural. That is the common wisdom.”

Her cold words, especially the final ones, startled him. “No. That is foolish.”

Her face softened. “Thank you, Mr. Lang.”

He tried to figure out why anybody would think that. Then her words played again in his head. “You do not wish to marry?”

“No, I don’t wish to marry.”

Her attitude left him dumbfounded. “I thought every woman wished to marry.”

She shook her head, one corner of her mouth lifting. “No, not every woman. Good night, Mr. Lang. I’ll see you Tuesday evening.”

“Guten nacht,” he said, lapsing into German without meaning to. He turned the pony cart around and headed toward the Stewards’ to return it. Thoughts about Miss Thurston and William chased each other around in his mind. Very simply, he hated the thought of seeing her disappointed. What if she became more deeply attached to William and the town forced her to give the child away in the end?

Why wouldn’t she face the fact that the town would not let her keep William? He wouldn’t press her about this, but in fact, the town shouldn’t let her keep him. The question wasn’t whether Miss Thurston was capable of rearing the child. But didn’t he know that raising a child alone was difficult, lonely, worrying? Didn’t he know it better than anyone here?

Chapter Six

On Monday morning, Ellen inhaled deeply, preparing to face teaching school with William in the room. With any luck, tomorrow he would be with Mrs. Brawley. But until then, she’d have to make do.

She entered the still-empty schoolroom and set William in his basket on her desk. She gazed down at him as he slept, his little fists clutching the blanket. Every time she looked at him or held him, the feelings she had for him deepened, coiling tighter around her heart.

She walked outside into the air that still held no fall crispness, and rang the bell. The children stopped playing and ran toward her, jostling for their spots in the line. They filed in, taking their seats row by row. When all were seated, she shut the door with satisfaction at their orderliness and returned to stand by her desk.

“You still have the baby,” Amanda said and then colored. “I’m sorry, Miss Thurston. I didn’t mean to talk out of turn.”

Ellen nodded her forgiveness. “It is an unusual situation but until his mother returns—” Ellen’s heart clamped tight “—or I find someone to care for William, he will have to come to school. Now, I will begin with our youngest grade. Slates out, please. The rest of you, please take out your readers and begin reading silently where we left off on Friday.”

All went well till in the midst of listening to the fifth graders recite their times tables, William woke with a whimper and then a full-scale cry. The sound raced up her spine. But she reminded herself that she already had a plan for this situation.

Every child stopped and turned their attention to the basket on her desk.

Johann popped up. “Miss Thurston, the baby is crying.”

The other students laughed, and Johann looked abashed and sat down with a plump.

Ellen smiled at him. “I think you may be right, Johann.” She lifted the child and checked his diaper. “Amanda, would you be kind enough to take William to my room and change his diaper? I left everything on the table for you. And mix him another bottle of Horlick’s. That’s all laid out, too.”

Amanda beamed and hurried forward to carry William’s basket through the door behind Ellen. Ellen motioned for the fifth grader, who had been interrupted, to begin his times tables again. She listened to the boy with one ear and to the sounds of Amanda crooning to William in the next room with the other.

Ellen could make this work—she knew she could. All she had to do now was prove it to everyone else.