A Land to Call Home by Lauraine Snelling Read Free Book Online Page B

to you. Every day you tell me the same thing. While this might be your first baby, it certainly isn’t mine.” Memory of her two daughters lying in the graveyard with their father caused an instant flooding of her eyes. Sometimes she scolded herself for the tears, but they always caught her unawares. “Go on now. I will know when to call you. I do get some warning, you know.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Lars, we talk of this every single day. I am fine, and I will be fine. Besides, the boys will be back in a minute or two. You want they should catch you still in the house in the middle of the afternoon?” She gave him a playful shove and stood at the door to hear him whistling his way back to the sod barn. Flies buzzed at the screen door, demanding entrance, and Paws barked from the other house. She listened to hear if it was his announcing company bark or if he was just playing with the boys. Geese sang their way south, a haunting melody of freedom. Sometimes the sky seemed almost dark with the waterfowl heading for their winter quarters in the Southland. Warm as it was, she could still smell the fragrance of fall in the air. Wishing she could go out and dig the remaining carrots and turnips from her garden nearly drew her outside, but she knew if Lars caught her at it, the look of a wounded boy that covered hisface would make her feel as though she’d been the one delivering the injury.
    She sighed. Some women would call him too protective, but she looked on his way as cherishing her like the Bible said. It also said for women to obey their husbands, and that she was determined to do.
    “Those dishes aren’t going to wash themselves,” she muttered, turning from the outside that called to her. The boys would be back before she knew it. Picking up her song from where she left off, Kaaren poured boiling water out of the kettle and into the dishpan. She shaved several thin curls of soap from one of the last bars she and Ingeborg had made the year before, and dropping the bits of soap in the hot water, she gave it a moment to soften before sudsing it up. Good thing it was nearly time to butcher the pigs they’d kept for their own use. After she rendered the lard, she could add some of that to the fat she’d saved, and they could make soap again. Getting all the fall chores done with a new baby in her arms would take some doing.
    With the dishes dried and put back in her gingham-skirted cupboard, the boys set to their lessons, and one of the geese baking in the oven, Kaaren took advantage of the quiet to settle for the ordered nap in her rocker. She looked longingly at the bed. Perhaps later.
    “Tante Kaaren, I’d best go check on the smokehouse.” Thorliff stood at her side, concern knitting his eyebrows. “Are you all right?”
    “Of course, why?” She blinked to clear the fog from her vision. Hadn’t she just sat down?
    “You were moaning.”
    “I’m sorry. Sometimes the baby makes me do that.” She stretched and yawned. “You go. Baptiste, you come sit by me so I can help you with your words as you read.”
    A groan from the boy huddled over his slate gave his opinion of her request.
    The boys were nearly finished with their history lesson when Paws yipped outside the door. The screen door creaked its way open, and a wizened apple face preceded a body bent only slightly by the age evidenced in the old woman’s nearly white hair. The remaining black strands wouldn’t line a robin’s nest. Metiz nodded at the two boys grinning at the interruption and crossed the room to lay a hand on Kaaren’s bouncing abdomen.
    “Baby, he busy.”
    “Could be a she.” They’d had this discussion several times before.
    “Come soon.” The woman’s gnarly fingers gently probed Kaaren’s belly.
    “Metiz, I have more than a month left, remember?”
    “He not think that.” She laid her head against the fluttering apron, holding her breath to listen. “Maybe two in there.”
    “I know. I am so huge. Bigger than