A widowed mother showed up at a reclusive old woman’s gate with two children and nowhere to sleep—then told her, “You need someone to care for you as much as we need a home.”

Chapter 7

The next morning, Elsie sent Nora to town with a list. It was the first time in eighteen years that anyone had gone to town for her, and she handed over the paper like a child handing over a letter to be posted, watching it out of her hands with her heart in her throat.

“White calico,” she said. “Two yards. Thread. And one button. Just one — big, and black.”

Nora frowned at the list. “One button? Elsie, what on earth for?”

“Go on, now. You’ll be late.”

Nora went. She was gone the whole day, and when she came back with the parcels and the change counted to the last coin laid out flat on the table, Elsie said nothing. She carried the calico into her bedroom and shut the door.

And that was that.

For five days, Elsie shut herself into her room after lunch and did not come out until supper. Nora heard her moving around in there. Heard her muttering. Once, a groan, and Nora stood in front of the door with her heart jumping.

“Elsie? Are you all right?”

“I pricked my finger. None of your business.”

And Nora, standing on the far side of the door, laughed silently and went about her work.

On the sixth day it was Sunday, and Elsie came down early. Her hands were hidden under her shawl. She sat in her place, drank her tea, ate her damper, and said nothing while Nora and Ruby moved around her. Then, as Ruby went past on her way to the yard with the milk bucket, Elsie said:

“Child.”

Ruby stopped in that cat-like way of hers, body half turned toward the door.

“Come here.”

The girl came forward three steps. No closer than that. Ever.

Elsie took her hands out from under the shawl and set something on the table.

It was ugly. There was no getting around it. The doll was badly sewn, with large crooked stitches you could have posted a letter through; one arm was longer than the other; the stuffing had bunched up in its belly like a stone in a stocking. Its hair was brown yarn, glued on and coming loose at the crown. And it had one eye — one large black button, sewn on with six careful stitches.

Ruby looked at it. The colour drained from her face.

“It had two eyes in the end,” Elsie said, and her own voice shook. “But I only bought the one button. Your mother told me yours had one, and I didn’t want to get it wrong.”

The child did not move.

“It’s badly made,” Elsie said quickly, defensively. “My hands are stiff and I can’t see up close anymore. If you don’t like it, I’ll throw it away.” And she reached out to take it back.

Ruby threw herself onto her.

Not onto the doll. Onto Elsie. The six-year-old girl who did not cry, who never came close, who had built a wall of buttons and caution around her heart because two people had already died on her — she scrambled up onto Elsie Hartley’s lap, buried her face in the old woman’s shoulder, and burst into tears. She cried the way she had not cried at her father’s wake, nor at the burial, nor when she left her doll in the shack. She cried like a real child — with shouts, with hiccups, with snot, clutching the old woman’s blouse in both fists.

Elsie sat rigid, her arms stuck out in the air, not knowing what to do with her hands.

And then, slowly — so slowly it was like remembering a language she had spoken in her youth — she lowered her arms and closed them around that small, shaking body. She pulled the child against her chest and buried her face in her hair and held on, the way she had not held anything in eighteen years.

At the kitchen door, Nora Callahan stood with both hands over her mouth. Then she turned and went out into the yard, leaned against the wall, bent over, and cried — silently, with the baby asleep in her shawl and the morning coming up gold over the ranges.