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“I’ve… I’ve got me a son?” Will asked.

  Rachel nodded.

  “Did you hear that, Clara?” he exclaimed, turning back to where his wife lay, utterly exhausted despite her beaming smile. “We got us a son! She said we done got us a son!”

  “A son,” Clara echoed.

  Rachel continued to work the baby’s tiny arms and legs, smiling happily when the little muscles responded. Little hands flayed the air, fingers fully outstretched. A cry of protest came from his mouth, and he opened large, beautiful blue eyes. Just as her mother had always told her, she knew that what she had witnessed was a living miracle.

  Every child was just that… a miracle!

  “Look at what we got there!” Will shouted from beside Rachel. Staring at his newborn son, his face lit up with a brightness she’d never seen before. “Just gander at them bright eyes! There ain’t a better-lookin’ boy that ever did come into this here world!”

  “Let… let me see him,” Clara said.

  Rachel held a blanket to the fire and warmed it. Wrapping the baby, she cuddled him against her and carried him to his waiting mother. Kneeling beside Clara, she placed the baby in her arms. Clara gazed upon her new son with as much amazement as love.

  “Has… has he got everything?” she asked anxiously. Her fingertips lightly stroked the fuzz of dark hair.

  “Yep! He’s got the right number! I counted!” Will exclaimed proudly as his eyes bounced from his wife to his son. “Ten fingers and ten toes to go along with ’em! Now all he needs hisself is to get a name.”

  “I thought… we’d already decided,” Clara said. “You’d picked a name.”

  “I did,” Will nodded. “If it’s all right with you.”

  “It is.”

  “Then his name is Walter.” Will beamed brightly. “After my father.”

  Having never given birth to a child of her own, Rachel always marveled at how quickly women could recover from the ordeal of birth. After experiencing a pain the likes of which couldn’t be adequately described, their recovery was nothing short of remarkable. She found herself amazed that Clara could so much as raise her head to look at her child. The color had begun to come back into her face and her eyes seemed a bit livelier. She looked exhausted, worn out, but the pain had disappeared.

  What she was witnessing was the beginning of a new life, not just for Walter Wicker but his parents as well. From this day forward, they would go on together, their lives entwined; father, mother, and son. This was a time of happiness and joy, of hopes and dreams, expectations and even fears. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Just like nothing was ever the same for me!

  Rachel turned away from the Wickers as the shadow of a frown crossed her face. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking of what had happened eight years ago that very day. Memories of the day assaulted her from all sides. The entire time she had been inside the Wickers’ home, she had been fighting a constant battle against her remembrances, though it was clear that the parallels were too close to avoid.

  She knew all too well that the birth of a child was not always an occasion for joyous celebration. Sometimes, the beginning of one life can signal the end of another. When such a thing happens, it’s up to the survivors to pick up the pieces, and that was what she’d been doing for the last eight years. Picking up the pieces.

  Chapter Two

  RACHEL LEFT THE WICKERS with the promise she would return the next day to check on the baby. From the tiny house on the outskirts of Carlson, she headed home without any hurry, content to enjoy the beautiful day. High above, the mid-October sun shone down with pleasant warmth, enough to hold off the persistent fall chill carried on the breeze. Lazy wisps of clouds skirted the far edge of the horizon. All around her, the trees showed signs of the changing of the seasons: elms, oaks, and maples exploded in spectacular colors; brilliant reds, deep purples, and even burnt oranges.

  The day is too beautiful for the trip I have to make, she mused.

  Carlson sat to the northeast of the capital city of Minnesota, St. Paul, and its sister city of Minneapolis. Primarily a farming community, it was home to less than a thousand inhabitants. The tall, leafy cornstalks that had stretched skyward in the stiflingly humid heat of July had been almost completely harvested, families spending night and day reaping the fruits of their many labors. Farming was so essential to the town’s well-being that school was suspended during the busiest days of the harvest.

  Like thousands of other towns in Minnesota, Carlson was situated on a lake. As she made her way toward Main Street, Rachel caught glimpses of Lake Carlson through the spaces between homes. Open where it butted up against the town, the far side of the lake was lined with majestic evergreen trees that sheltered wild game. Mallard ducks lowered themselves to the lake’s glassy surface, their flight ending as they slid gently into the deep blue water. An abundance of catfish and walleye swam beneath the surface.

  The sound of saws cutting through wood and nails being hammered came to Rachel’s ears as she neared her family’s boardinghouse. Carlson was clearly a town on the rise. New buildings seemed to spring up as readily as the corn that was the town’s lifeblood. Passing Hamilton’s Grocery, Abraham McLintock’s barber shop, and Miller Livery reminded Rachel that while the rest of the community was enjoying prosperous times, her own life seemed stuck in the quagmire of decline.

  Stopping in front of the post office window, Rachel took a good look at herself in the glass reflection. Coal-black hair, one of the features she was happy to have inherited from her mother, fell just below her narrow shoulders. Greenish-brown eyes looked back at her over high cheekbones, a petite button of a nose, and full lips. Her clothes certainly weren’t the latest fashion sent north from Chicago, but her blue blouse and skirt fit her narrow waist and full bosom flatteringly. There was no shortage of bachelors in Carlson who entertained thoughts of taking her as a wife; but with all of her responsibilities, romance was the furthest thing from her mind.

  “Afternoon, Rachel,” a voice called from behind her.

  Struggling mightily to find a smile to fix upon her face, Rachel turned to find Sophus Peterson leading a team of horses down the street, his wagon nearly overflowing with a load of enormous orange pumpkins being brought to market. One of her many suitors, he tipped his straw hat and gave her a wink before he walked past her.

  “Not if it took a hundred years,” she muttered under her breath and continued on her way.

  The boardinghouse she called home sat just off Main Street and across from Carlson’s train depot. Rachel stood in the road and stared up at the building her grandfather had built with his own two hands shortly after his arrival from Pennsylvania. He’d originally come to Carlson in the hope of tapping maple syrup from the thousands of trees in the area, but had ended up having about as much luck as if he’d tried to squeeze blood from turnips. He’d died fifteen years earlier with little more to show for his many labors than what he had when he first arrived; he left only the house as a legacy to his two children. Rachel’s mother, Eliza, had decided to turn it into a boardinghouse when times began to get tough. Drifters and seasonal workers rented the four available rooms a week at a time, and the Watkinses had somehow managed to eke out a living.

  The building had required but not received improvement in the years since her grandfather’s passing. The exterior was in dire need of a new slathering of paint; what little remained from the last coat was chipped and weather-beaten, with several warped planks pulling free from the frame. One of the windows on the upper floor was cracked, a recent occurrence that would have to be fixed before winter. Even the sign that read BOARDERS WELCOME wasn’t immune to decline; one of the bolts that secured the sign had come free, leaving half of the word WELCOME to hang listlessly in the breeze.

  With every passing year, the number of boarders seemed to dwindle; on most days the family felt lucky to have a single room occupied. The only glimmer of hope had appeared years earlier when Rachel�
�s sister, Alice, married Mason Tucker, whose father was at once the proprietor of the town bank and the wealthiest man in Carlson. Mason had promised to help care for his new bride’s family, but then he had gone off to war and…

  “Damn it all,” Rachel swore.

  A fluttering at one of the upper windows attracted her attention and she looked up just in time to see her mother’s porcelain-white arm quickly withdraw from the sunlight. Rachel sighed. Most days, her mother did little more than sit at her window and watch the world go by without her, worrying all the while. Today appeared to be no different. Waiting for word of the Wickers, she was by now quite impatient. Rachel was certain to get a tongue-lashing when she went inside.

  The laughter of a young girl and the playful barking of a dog suddenly rose from the rear of the house; Charlotte and Jasper seemed to have escaped Eliza’s panicked oversight long enough to make their way outside. Rachel hoped that Charlotte was being careful; if she were to come back indoors with a bloody scrape or bruise, Eliza wouldn’t let her outdoors again for a month! Rachel regretted that she would soon have to pull the girl away from her fun.

  What a life for a small girl!

  The inside of the boardinghouse was only slightly better than the outside; dusty banisters lined the once majestic hardwood staircase that rose from the door toward the rooms on the second floor. Chipped tables and chairs filled the small dining area tucked off to the left of the entrance and next to the kitchen. Though she often tried to polish the rich woodwork her grandfather had built throughout the house, Rachel could clearly see the many blemishes and warps. While it must have been something to behold when it was first built, the place now looked shabby.

  Otis Simmons, Rachel’s uncle and her mother’s older brother, came from behind the dining room’s cast-iron stove humming a tune between gulps from a bottle of whiskey. Drops of the amber liquid ran down his stubbly chin and heavy jowls.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little too early to be drinking?” Rachel asked.

  The sudden sound of his niece’s voice startled Otis so badly that he stumbled, nearly dropping his bottle. Sheepishly, he stared at Rachel like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Though in his mid-fifties, Otis was childlike, even comical. He insisted upon combing his few gray hairs across his otherwise bald head. His dingy clothes strained mightily against their seams and buttons on his enormous body, and he had a cockeyed smile that lit up no matter how much he’d had to drink. For an instant, he tried to hide his bottle behind his ample waist and pretend the liquor didn’t exist, but then he just smiled mischievously.

  “I don’t know if I’d be willin’ to call this a drink,” he offered defensively.

  “If it’s not a drink, then what is it?” Rachel asked, willing to play along with her uncle’s shenanigans for the moment.

  “This here ain’t nothin’ but a nip,” Otis explained. “In my book, that sure ain’t the same thing as a drink.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Oh, my darlin’,” Rachel’s uncle exclaimed with a heavy slap at his knee, “drinkin’ is somethin’ you do sittin’ down at a bar while pourin’ yourself a big glassful, whereas nippin’ ain’t nothin’ more than takin’ a few sips here and there. Drinkin’ you do with your friends down at the tavern or, if you’re a particularly lonely sort, yourself. Nippin’ is somethin’ that can be done ’bout any time of day. Hell, I ain’t above nippin’ first thing in the mornin’!”

  “That’s all too apparent,” Rachel pointed out with a disapproving look.

  “I’m livin’ proof that there ain’t nothin’ wrong with it! Why, most fellas my age couldn’t hold half the liquor I can put down in a day. I’m a modern medical miracle if I do say so!”

  “I don’t know if that’s a claim I’d be too proud of.”

  “That’s ’cause you ain’t a drinker or a nipper.” Otis guffawed. “If’n you were, you’d think I was mighty amazin’!”

  Rachel walked over to the check-in counter and frowned as she counted the number of keys still hanging from the pegs; it looked as if they still had no new boarders. “No matter what it is you think you’re doing,” she said, “it isn’t appropriate behavior when you’re supposed to be behind the counter waiting for new guests to come in.”

  “Takin’ a tug now and again from this here bottle’s about the only way this fella is gonna get any entertainment.” He shrugged. “Gets more than a bit dull waitin’ for people that ain’t never gonna come. You can’t blame me for needin’ a little pick-me-up!”

  “Maybe if you’d go out and fix that sign, we’d get new guests.”

  “Ain’t I already fixed that thing?”

  “No, you haven’t,” Rachel retorted, her temper rising to where she could barely contain it.

  “Then I’ll do it today!” Otis exclaimed as if it were the most brilliant idea he had ever heard.

  “You said the same thing last week,” Rachel complained.

  “But this time I done mean it!” he bellowed as he raced back toward the tiny closet from where he had come, his ample midsection jiggling with every thunderous step. Rachel could only sigh; even if Otis hadn’t hurried away to get as far from her complaints as he could, his good intentions would surely evaporate just as soon as he realized he was still clutching a bottle of whiskey. While her uncle was as sweet a man as could be, he was as useful to the house as a three-legged plowing horse to a farmer.

  In the end, she knew that if she wanted the sign rehung, she’d have to do it herself.

  Rachel’s mother’s room on the upper floor of the house faced the street and train depot beyond, her two windows affording her a view of Carlson’s newest arrivals and departures. The interior was dark and gloomy; heavy lace curtains allowed little sunlight to penetrate, and the oil lamps were lit only in the darkest hours of night.

  Eliza Watkins’s favorite place to hold court over her tiny fortress was a small table next to one of the tall windows, its surface littered with used teacups and saucers. There was also a vase containing a single rose, long since dead and drooping, most of its petals fallen. Two chairs sat waiting for another guest to join her, but it had been many years since a social call was paid upon the co-owner of the house.

  Rachel was hardly inside the door when her mother set upon her, breathlessly asking questions. “Is the child all right?” Eliza said in a rush. “Was the birth okay?”

  After all the years her mother had sequestered herself in her room, Rachel was still momentarily surprised by Eliza’s show of compassion. Though it would have taken a team of wild horses to pull the older woman from her exile, such resolve didn’t mean that she worried only for those around her. Only hours earlier, Rachel had pleaded with her mother to accompany her, begging her to come and do what she was skilled at: bringing a new baby into the world. But the horrible memories of what had happened eight years earlier proved too strong to budge her, and so Rachel had gone, as many times before, alone.

  “It was a healthy baby boy,” she answered with a smile.

  “He had all of his fingers?” Eliza prodded, starving for the tiniest of details. “All of his toes? There weren’t any complications? Did you remember to tie off the birthing cord the way that I taught you, because if you don’t there can be complications!”

  “Everything was fine,” Rachel assured her. She decided against telling her mother about newborn Walter Wicker’s short struggle for breath; there was no point in needlessly worrying her further.

  “Oh, thank God!”

  Eliza Watkins had been a beautiful young woman, and that beauty hadn’t deserted her as she aged. Her silky hair, already bone white, was pulled back fashionably and piled atop her head. Piercing green eyes had once held many a man in rapt attention. Her features were delicate, almost fragile, but though she was small of frame, it was clear that she wasn’t a woman averse to work; her hands, in particular, were still strong. She showed her age only in the many wrinkles that lined her cheeks, underscored her e
yes, and furrowed her brow.

  “Why did you go out without a coat, or at the very least a shawl?” she asked her daughter. “You could have caught your death of cold! You know how quickly the weather can change this time of year!”

  “It’s a beautiful day, Mother.” Rachel sighed. “You should know, you’ve done nothing but watch it from your window.”

  “Why must you always ignore my advice? Alice never defied me!”

  Rachel had long ago accepted that she would never be the apple of her mother’s eye; that was an honor reserved for Alice, even though she had died eight years earlier. The constant comparisons could still rankle, but she’d long since learned how to swallow her upset.

  “You don’t need to worry so,” she remonstrated.

  “It’s a mother’s right to worry about her children,” Eliza argued, wringing her hands compulsively; there had been times over the last several years when she had chafed them so badly that they had bled. “The way you traipse out the door without a second thought, all willy-nilly and carefree, why it’s nothing short of a miracle you haven’t ended up just like your poor sister!”

  “Mother…” Rachel said, her voice trailing to a whisper.

  As difficult as Alice’s death had made life for Rachel, she sometimes forgot how heavy a toll it had taken on their mother. Eight years ago that very October day, Eliza Watkins had done everything she could to save the life of her oldest child, while struggling to bring her first grandchild into the world. It didn’t matter that Alice hadn’t wanted to be saved, that she’d wanted nothing more than the cold embrace of death. Eliza carried the burden of Alice’s death as her failure and nothing less, a failure that had cost them all dearly and from which they had never recovered.

  Before Rachel could say anything else, could offer some small condolence, her mother turned back toward the window and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I’m sure you noticed that Charlotte’s already escaped outdoors,” she said. “She’s just like you were at that age… she won’t listen to a thing! If you turn your back for a second, she’ll be gone.”