Between Earth and Sky by Amanda Skenandore

Author:Amanda Skenandore [Skenandore, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

Wisconsin, 1890

Days passed with their accustomed rhythm—morning lessons, afternoons of sewing, piano, and the occasional social call in La Crosse—but Alma stumbled through them like an unpolished dancer, languid and off tempo.

She visited Charles each afternoon in the infirmary, spoon-feeding him broth and relaying whatever bits of gossip she thought might raise his spirits. He rarely smiled. Pain and despondence deadened his eyes. George had been right on one account. Charles needed his family.

Today, on her way from the kitchen with Charles’s lunch tray, she stopped at her father’s study. “Any news of Charles’s family?”

Her father looked up from the stack of newly opened letters on his desk. “What?”

“Charles’s parents. It’s been two weeks since the accident. Surely they’re on their way.”

“I thought it best not to worry them. Dr. Austin says the boy’s condition is stable.”

“They don’t even know?” Her fingers clenched around the tray. “He’d benefit so from their company.”

“What do you suggest? Have his family journey two hundred miles—in midwinter no less—when all they could do here is fret?”

She realized in that moment how glib her remark—the white man alone being able to heal Charles’s injury—must have sounded to George that night by the well. Doc Austin saved the boy’s life, it was true. His injury would heal. Nothing in the doctor’s black bag could heal his melancholy, though. “Think of what comfort it would bring him to have his family by his side.”

Her father’s attention drifted back to his letters. “The Lord comforts his people and will—”

“I know. Have compassion on his afflicted ones.” Alma sighed, still hovering by the doorway. “Couldn’t we send Mr. Simms with the sleigh?”

He groped for his magnifying glass, speaking even as he read. “The school could hardly do without him for so many days.”

“Oh, Father.” She stomped to his desk, set down the tray, and grabbed his silver-rimmed glasses. Soup sloshed from the bowl. “Just use your spectacles.”

“The writing here is terribly small. How is one ever expected—” He reached for his glasses, but Alma kept hold. At last, his eyes ventured upward. “Sit down, kitten.”

She dragged forward a plain straight-backed chair. He took her hand and patted it. “You’ve always been such a sweet girl. Your concern over Charles does you credit. But he will be just fine. The Lord is watching over him. We are his family now.”

“But his arm . . . perhaps if his parents cannot make the journey to Stover, Charles could be taken to them once he is well enough to travel.”

Her father stiffened. “No, such talk is out of the question. If he were to go to the reservation now, it’s likely he would never return. And what would he do there? Without an arm he would become nothing more than a beggar, wallowing his life away on the agency’s doorstep.”

Her father’s blue eyes had grown wide and cold. She looked down. Her free hand fell to her side, her fingers sliding over the chair’s unvarnished wood.

“But—”

“After Charles heals we’ll start straightaway teaching him a skill, a trade he can perform, limited as he is.

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