Steal the North: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

brought out in me. Not just longing for a child of my own but for my niece, Emmy, whom Matt and I cared for every day for seven months before Kate left town with her.
    Kate
had
to leave Washington. In truth, I knew that before she did. But sisters can share a baby in such a way. It’s not that Emmy loved me more than her mom, but almost as much. After all, it was my voice that lulled her to sleep most nights and Matt or I who brought her warm bottles of milk. Poor Kate would see Jamie in Emmy. I tried to convince her that Emmy got her fair-colored hair from me. We’d nap sometimes, the three of us girls, all on one bed, the baby between. It hurt Kate’s feelings when Emmy reached for me first after opening her sleepy little eyes.
    I suffered my first miscarriage soon after Kate and Emmy left.
    Not wanting to replace Emmy so soon, I was almost relieved. She had this way of looking at me, of pausing in the middle of cooing or crying, and staring intently at me. Perhaps she sensed our time together would be cut bluntly short, like her mother’s hair, and she wanted to suspend it. My breath still catches when I remember those moments.
    My second miscarriage was probably the hardest. It signaled the first wasn’t a fluke and that God had a different plan for me. I wasn’t to rush to the church nursery after service with the other young moms to collect my bundle and then show it off to the older ladies. I was to serve refreshments, straighten hymnals, rinse drops of grape juice from communion glasses as I rinsed the drops of blood from my sheets and the carpet. For a few years, at the special Mother’s Day service, having neither mother nor child, I handed out the corsages, until Matt put a stop to that, saying it broke his heart. He pleaded with me to see a doctor behind the church’s back. He’d take a day off work and drive me to Wenatchee or Spokane. He’s probably the only deacon who finds some of the church’s rules archaic, even barbaric. But we’re to put our trust in God, not man. Matt wasn’t raised in a Christian home. “God helps those who help themselves,” he persisted.
    “I won’t go against the church.”
    “You did before, Beth. We did. For Kate. For us. We did the right thing.”
    I’ve never regretted what we did for Kate. And certainly I’ve never regretted marrying Matt, even if I was only sixteen and he only a year older. We were both ready. My father didn’t give his blessing, but neither did he try to prevent the marriage. The church chastised me for helping Kate, but my father never did. He continued to shun Kate until she left. He never met his only grandchild. For years he refused to talk about Kate. As time passed, however, he started to inquire, casually, then with concern, then desperation, if I’d heard from my sister and if I knew how the baby was doing. He died of a massive heart attack. One day he was alive—I phoned to tell him I’d finished his mending and that Matt had some venison for him—and the next day he was dead.
    After my third miscarriage, Matt and I fought for weeks over his setting up a doctor’s appointment to get a vasectomy. It’s the only time we’ve truly quarreled. He even stayed home from church two Sundays in a row: the first to tie flies at the table, an activity he usually saves for winter evenings, and the second to fish with his new “backslidden flies.” That’s when I took up herbs to help myself. I make natural remedies from plants I grow in my own garden. For the most part, I do so without the church’s knowing the extent. I’ve been likened to a witch with potions. The new preacher, Brother Mathias—he likes us to call him brother, though he’s our shepherd—was so taken with my garden the first time he saw it that he entreated me to plant him a small herb garden between the church and the parsonage. As a single man who cooks his own meals, except when the church widows bring him casseroles, he can use the added flavor. “You’re