[Return To Red River 01] - A Dream to Follow by Lauraine Snelling

Author:Lauraine Snelling [Snelling, Lauraine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, A Dream to Follow
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2010-07-25T05:00:00+00:00

When Thorliff told his mother about Manda that night after supper, Ingeborg laid down her knitting. “She cares for Baptiste, doesn’t she?”

“Ja, but how did you know?”

Ingeborg smiled her mother smile. “Thorliff, I’m not blind, and I have been around enough springs to see budding affections.”

“They been friends for a long time.”

“I know. Like you and Anji.”

Anji, the flower of my heart. Thorliff could feel the burn start in his neck and ears. And his mother wasn’t even teasing him. All he could see was love in her eyes, and he knew that love applied to Manda and Baptiste too. He nodded. “I don’t know what to do for them.”

“Not much you can do.”

He debated telling her what Manda had said about going to Montana but decided to keep the confidence. Instead, he stood and crossed to stare out the window. The moon shone bright enough he could have taken his book outside to read. Questions bubbled and snorted within him like an awakening volcano. Guilt rose like steam. How can I dare think of going away to school when we’ve had no rain? Yet how can I not go? Lord God, what is the best?

“Son, what is it you are stewing about?” His mother’s voice floated softly through the dimness and called him back to young boy days when he had sat at her feet and told her his stories.

Thorliff shook his head. I’m supposed to be a man now, and yet I want to hide my face in my mor’s apron and let her tell me everything will be all right. “Nothing, just—”

“If you are still worried about going away, put those thoughts from your mind. You have the bank draft from Mr. Gould, and I have money put aside. You’ll find work there to help pay also. Remember the story Jesus told about the talents? The only man he scolded was the one who buried his talent in the ground.”

“I know. But I would only be postponing, not burying. I can write here too.”

“How many stories have you written since school was out?”

“Only one, but winter is when I write the most. There’s more time then.” He leaned against the window frame and looked at his mother. While her face was in shadow, the moonlight caught the clicking knitting needles and the whiteness of her fingers passing the yarn around the dancing ivory. He could feel her gaze upon him, a gaze of love and imbuing strength. Ingeborg Bjorklund did what needed to be done, no matter the cost. While she wasn’t his birth mother, she was the only mother he’d ever known. After his father, Roald, died in the blizzard, she’d kept the family and the land together by sheer will. He remembered her working the farm and the fields, breaking the sod and planting, doing the work of a man, of several men, really. And they had survived.

Could he do less?

“Is it wrong to want something else than the farm? Far is so set on—”

“Andrew will till the soil, and you will till men’s minds.

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