The Snow Child: A Novel (43 page)

Mabel allowed herself this brief daydream, then pushed it away. As much as she had ever wanted a baby, this one wasn’t hers to take. It was Faina’s, and she at last told her so.

The girl was poised to run, the way she had so many times before. To the forest. To the wild. Away. Mabel reached up and took one of her hands, gently coaxing her to sit beside her.

You can’t run, child. Not from this. It is within you.

Faina’s thin fingers, like the cool, pale bones of a bird, rested in Mabel’s hand. How different from her own crooked hands, warm and heavy and spotted with age.

You will have help, Mabel said gently. From all of us. Me and Jack. And Esther. She’s the most generous woman I have ever known, and she will be only too eager to help. And there’s Garrett, too.

The girl cast her eyes down.

You must tell him, Faina. Now that you understand what is happening, that you two have created a child and it is growing inside you. Now that you know, you must tell him.

He will be angry.

No. He won’t. He’ll be scared, like you, but he won’t be angry. He loves you. And I believe in him, just as I believe in you.

Faina left her sitting alone at the picnic table, and Mabel shivered inside her coat and crossed her arms tightly. It was a lonely, forlorn act, giving up a child. Faina, a frightened wisp of
a thing, disappeared into the forest, and Mabel was angry at the injustice of it—that she should have wanted a baby so dearly and be denied one, and that this young girl should be cursed with one as a burden she might not have the strength to bear.

“Faina is pregnant.”

Mabel knew it was a terrible habit, waiting for dinner to tell Jack bad news, but it was one of the few quiet moments they had together. This time, though, she feared she might have unintentionally killed him. He was choking, coughing until his face was a horrid reddish purple. It went on long enough that She got to her feet, prepared to strike him on the back to dislodge the object, but then he was able to stop and clear his throat. Mabel waited for him to speak, but he didn’t.

“She’s pregnant, Jack.”

“I heard you.”

“So…”

“So?”

“Well, don’t you have anything to say?”

“What is there to say? It’s entirely our fault. She was more innocent than a child has ever been, and we were the only ones who could protect her. We let this happen.”

“Oh, Jack. Why does it always have to be somebody’s fault?”

“Because it always is.”

“No. Sometimes these things happen. Life doesn’t go the way we plan or hope, but we don’t have to be so angry, do we?”

He continued eating, but without any pleasure as far as Mabel could tell. It was as if he was gagging down each bite. Finally he gave up and pushed his plate away.

“There’ll be a wedding, I suppose?” The disgusted expression hadn’t left his face.

“Oh. Well. No one has spoken of it.”

“There will be a wedding,” and it was a hard, clear statement that left no room for argument.

“We’ll have to share the news with Garrett and Faina, then,” and she gave her husband an ironic smile. “But I agree. It’s the only way.”

It wasn’t until that night, as she lay in bed considering wedding plans, that she thought of the fairy tale. She climbed out of bed and in her bare feet lit a candle and went to the bookshelf. She removed her loose sketches from the book as she opened it on the table, and then she flipped through the color plates until she found the one she remembered. It was a forest meadow, lush with green leaves and blooming flowers. The snow maiden, her white gown glittering in jewels and her head crowned with wildflowers, stood beside a handsome young man. Fair Spring was before them, performing the wedding ceremony. Overhead, the sun shone brightly.

Mabel wanted to slam the book closed, throw it into the woodstove, and watch it burn in the flames. Instead she turned the pages until she came to the illustration she dreaded. There was the crown of wildflowers, no longer on the snow maiden’s head, but blooming from the earth like a grave marker. She put a hand over her lips, though it was unnecessary. She made no sound.

Jack stirred in bed. Mabel gathered the sketches and slid them back into the book before returning it to the shelf. It would be a long time before she looked at it again, and never would she speak of it.

J
ack was calm. He could undo nothing, but at least he had a plan of action.

It began when Garrett came to him a few days after Mabel’s news about Faina. He assumed the young man had returned to finish the fight or to end all association. Instead he came with his hat in his hands.

“I’m here to ask permission to marry Faina. I know we’re young, and I don’t have much to offer her, but we’re bound together now, and I mean to make the best of it.”

It was like a blow to the chest, and Jack had to sit down in a kitchen chair. Garrett stood by, shifting on his feet and clearing his throat.

He hadn’t seen this coming. He was sure they would marry; he had assumed Garrett would take responsibility. But the boy came to him—Jack—to ask permission.

It hadn’t happened instantly, the way he had always imagined, with a gush of blood and a piercing wail, but instead fatherhood had arrived quietly, gradually, over the course of years, and he had been blind to it. And now, just as he finally understood that a daughter had been flitting in and out of his life, now he was being asked to let her go.

“I’ll do good by her. You have my word.”

Jack’s focus returned to the boy, and when he looked up at the earnest face, he saw what Mabel had tried to tell him—Garrett did love the girl. But was that enough? The boy had betrayed his trust, lied to him under his own roof, and taken advantage of circumstances. Jack eased himself out of the chair until he stood eye to eye with Garrett.

“You will do good by her,” Jack said, and it wasn’t an agreement but a command. He reached out to Garrett, and they shook hands like two men who had only just met and weren’t yet certain of each other.

That night Jack’s plan came to him, and he woke Mabel.

“We’ll build them a home, here on our homestead.”

“What? Jack, what time is it?”

“We’ll build them a cabin down by the river. That way Garrett will be close to the farm, but they’ll have their own place.”

“Hmmm?” Mabel was still half asleep, but he went on.

“Faina and the baby will be close to you, so you can help. We’ll start building right after planting. Maybe we can even have the wedding there.”

“Where? Wedding?”

“Here, Mabel. They’re going to live here, near us. It’ll be good.”

“Hmmm?” But Jack let her drift back into sleep. He was satisfied.

He noticed the way the clean morning light slanted in through the window and lit up the side of Faina’s face, and he wondered if it was always so hard, being a father. They’d finished a pot of
tea and a few slices of bread with blueberry jam, and he was left with no other way around the conversation he’d promised Mabel. At the kitchen counter, Mabel tried to wash the dishes silently. She never washed them in the morning, but now each plate, each fork, was wiped and rinsed and dried as if it were made of precious china, for she was straining to hear.

Jack cleared his throat, hoping to sound fatherly.

Faina? Is this what you want?

It’s what you do when you love someone, isn’t it?

Your life is going to change. You won’t be able to disappear into the woods for weeks at a time. You’ll be a mother, a wife. Do you understand what that means?

Faina tilted her head to the side in a half shrug, but then she focused her blue eyes on Jack, and their clarity seized him. Her face carried the same look he had seen many times before, a startling blend of youth and wisdom, frailty and fierceness. He saw it when she had scattered snow across her father’s grave, when she had appeared at their door with her hands smeared with blood. It wasn’t sorrow or love, disappointment or knowledge; it was everything at once.

I do love him. And our baby. I know that.

So you want to marry him?

We belong together.

Jack had expected to be happy. Isn’t that what a father should feel? Joy? Not this grief-laden heart? They had hidden their love affair and created a child out of wedlock, but something more weighed on him. Faina would never again be the little girl he had seen darting through the winter trees, her feet light on the snow and her eyes like river ice. She had been magic in their lives, coming and going with the seasons, bringing treasures from the wilderness in her small hands. That child was gone, and Jack found himself mourning her.