The next morning, hours after Odd left for work, she went to the mercantile on Superior Street and bought envelopes, stationery, and half-a-dozen two-cent stamps. It was the first time she'd left the brownstone in days, and the cold came biting like a small dog on the way back up the hill.
In their apartment she hurried to the davenport, took the folded sack out, and placed it in the envelope. She addressed it the only way she knew how:
Mister Hosea Grimm
Gunflint, Minnesota
and placed the postage in the corner and put the envelope back under the davenport cushion. She hid the stationery and envelopes in one of her hatboxes and went to bed to try for sleep. When it did not come she dressed again and went back to the mercantile to drop the letter for delivery.
Each of the next five nights she wrote another letter to Hosea. They got longer as her confidence grew but never asked for or told much.
If she thought writing the letters would slow her unraveling, or appease her guilt for leaving Hosea, if she thought it would help her understand the bitter feelings she had for the unborn child, she was mistaken. Instead of finding solace she found further proof that there was no reckoning with this life of hers. The sleepless nights grew longer and longer, spilling into the mornings, when her guilt was worst. Until those mornings she had been able to separate the causes of that guilt— leaving Hosea, betraying Odd, abhorring the child— but now it became the only state of mind she possessed. Her guilt ravaged her, and she gave up any resistance.
Meanwhile Odd did his best. He still tried to woo her, brought her things to satisfy the cravings she announced randomly, still spoke to her gently and imploringly. But there was no hope in his plea. He knew better. When he took Rebekah to the Lyceum hoping the troupe might succeed where he failed, and when she became sick from the cloud of smoke in the theater, he decided his only hope was that the child— when he was finally born— would compel her to happiness.
So he got up each morning and took the trolley across town and found his relief in the long, philosophical days at Sargent's. At night, after he and Rebekah shared their silent suppers, she would retire to her needlepoint and he to the Bible Sargent had given him at Christ mas. He read every night, not because he was becoming a believer but because any story was better than the one he was living.
It was around Saint Valentine's Day that Odd came home with a dinner invitation from Sargent. Rebekah was sleeping on the davenport, her needlepoint fallen at her feet. He watched her for some time, remembering how he used to revel in her childlike ability to sleep at a moment's notice, how he'd once loved watching the sleep come over her. What he saw now could hardly have been the same woman. She kept him awake at night, her pacing like she was some kind of caged animal.
She woke with a start to see him there, his hand on his chin.
"Odd," she said. She sat up as though she'd been dreaming of fire.
"Hey, Rebekah. Didn't mean to wake you. How you feeling?"
She rubbed her eyes, looked out the window. "You're home early."
"Harald gave me the afternoon off. He's invited us to Sunday dinner. I told him we'd be there."
"I can't go to dinner—"
"Nonsense," Odd interrupted. "You can and you will and we're not going to hem and haw about it. This Sunday. You'll behave yourself, too. These are good, upstanding folks. Put on a smile."
"I don't have anything to wear," she protested.
"We'll head downtown this afternoon and fix that. Now, go and get yourself together." He looked at her fiercely. "Now, Rebekah. Up. Let's go."
Rebekah rose slowly, paused in front of Odd, and went to their bedroom. She came back out ten minutes later. Odd had not moved.
Sunday they had dinner at Harald Sargent's home. Rebekah wore her new dress, sitting at Sargent's bountiful table. Harald wore a heavy woolen suit and necktie, his wife, Rose, an equally heavy woolen dress.
Sargent, his eyes clenched shut, his hands clasped together, intoned the blessing. "Dear God, my savior and my light, with all my love I give thanks to thee. For the bounteous fare set upon this table, for the warmth of this home, for the love of my wife and sons, I give thanks to thee. For my wayward guests, may you show them the way to your heart, may you deliver their unborn child into a world of goodness and show him the way to your love and forgiveness. Yea! May you show us all your love and forgiveness. Amen." Sargent opened his eyes and smiled at his table, his eyes serene where they'd always appeared set in stone before.
"Amen," Rose said.
Odd and Rebekah both smiled demurely, seemed almost to blush in unison. "Smells good," Odd said.