She searched the cupboard, and way in the back, she found a jar of homemade strawberry preserves. Withdrawing the jar, she smiled. “For dinner tonight we shall feast on bread and jam. I have a fat packet of China tea in my case so we shall be able to have a very elegant tea party.”
“We can’t eat that,” Dallas said, motioning toward the jar of jam. “Papa says that we must save them for something special. Aunt Alice made them. They were a present.”
Carrie smiled. “Every day is special. There is never a day when you can’t find something to celebrate, and today, especially, there are lots of things to celebrate. I have arrived and you have a new doll and Temmie has a new toy and—”
“He won’t like for you to call him Temmie. He’s Tem and that’s all.”
“Oh, I see. He’s too old to be Temmie, is that it?”
Dallas nodded solemnly.
Carrie smiled. “I’ll try to remember that he’s too old to be a Temmie. Now, let’s get the table set for dinner.”
It was
obvious that the child had no idea what Carrie meant by “setting the table,” so Carrie set her bags on the floor and withdrew a lovely, enormous Paisley shawl. The reds and pinks of the shawl seemed to sparkle in the dull little room that was lit by a single candle set on the mantelpiece. Dallas’s eyes widened as she watched Carrie spread newspapers from a short stack by the fireplace on the table, then spread the shawl over the papers. Next Carrie began looking for clean dishes but could find none. She gave a glance at the stack of dishes in the sink but didn’t think much about them. At home, Carrie knew that dishes went out of the dining room dirty and came back clean, but she wasn’t sure what happened in between.
Since there were no clean dishes, Carrie looked in her bag and withdrew four linen handkerchiefs. “We shall have a picnic,” she said as she spread them on top of the shawl then withdrew four small silver tumblers from the bag. She always carried them when traveling, because her mother said that she was never to use the communal cups that the other passengers used.
Standing to one side, Dallas watched all of this in fascination, and after Carrie brought the silver cups from the bag, the child went to peer into the bag as though it were something from a fairy tale and contained everything in the world.
Removing her cut-crystal hairpin holder from the bag, Carrie wiped it out with a clean handkerchief and filled it full of strawberry preserves. Dallas didn’t remember ever having seen anything but jars put on the table, so this concept of putting food into pretty dishes was new to her. Carrie sliced the bread and placed it on another handkerchief in the middle of the table, then stepped back to look at the results.
“Rather pretty, don’t you think?”
Dallas could only nod. Candlelight played on the silver tumblers and the crystal of the hairpin jar, and the colors of the shawl glowed. It was the most beautiful table Dallas had ever seen. Next to this woman who said she was her new mother and the doll that Dallas was clinging to and that little dog, the table was the most beautiful thing Dallas had ever seen in her whole life.
When Dallas looked up and smiled at Carrie, Carrie smiled back.
It was at that moment that Josh and his son came back into the house, and Carrie saw that having to unload twenty-some trunks full of women’s clothes had not put Josh into a better mood.
“All of them are stacked in the shed,” Josh said, his mouth rigid, his jaws clamped together. “Of course, there’s no room for the horse’s feed and the tools had to be set outside, so if it rains tonight we’re sunk, but those trunks of yours are inside, all safe and warm and protected.” He looked at the table, which his son was staring at in open-mouthed astonishment. “What’s this?”
“Dinner,” Carrie said proudly, waiting for him to admit that he had been wrong about her. He had promised his children their new mother would feed them dinner tonight, and that’s just what she was doing. “The children are hungry.”
Without relinquishing his frown, Josh picked up the crystal jar full of jam and looked at the bread so neatly sliced and laid out on the monogrammed handkerchief. “Bread and jam,” he said contemptuously. “That’s not a very good dinner for children, is it?”
Carrie glared at him, thinking that he was incapable of admitting when he was wrong. “I used what there was. No one, not even the paragon of work that you were expecting, could cook a meal from the little food that you have in this house.”
“There are canned goods,” Josh said, not giving an inch. “You can at least heat something from a can, can’t you? And why has the fire been allowed to die down? Why didn’t you build it up? It’s cold in here.”
The children looked from Carrie to their father in consternation. He had talked to them at length about how they were to be nice to this woman who was coming to take care of them, yet he wasn’t being very nice to her at all.
Carrie just looked at Josh, refusing to reply to his accusations.
At last Josh shook his head in disbelief. “I see. You have no idea how to open a can, do you? And it’s my guess that you’ve never so much as thrown a log on a fire.”
He was right, but Carrie wasn’t going to tell him so. Instead, she just stood where she was and looked at him.
Looking from one to the other, Dallas felt like bursting into tears. “Papa, I like bread and jam. Would you like to see my doll? You can name her if you want, but if you like the name Elsbeth, so do I.”
As Carrie watched him, Josh’s face changed when he looked at his daughter. So far, she had seen two expressions on his face: She had seen him when he didn’t know who she was and desired her, and she had seen rage on his face since he’d found out who she was. But now she was seeing love on that dark, handsome face—a face she already felt she knew so well. She watched as he smiled at his daughter, then sat down and asked to see her doll. Carrie listened as Dallas told her father all about the doll, which was surprising because Carrie hadn’t been aware that the child had even looked at the toy. Dallas showed her father the doll’s pretty underclothes and its legs made of stuffed kid leather.
“I think Elsbeth is the best name for her,” Josh said softly, stroking Dallas’s hair, noticing that it was brushed and neat, and for one brief flash, he looked at Carrie in gratitude.
“I brought Tem a gift too,” Carrie said as she picked up the boat from where she’d put it on the mantelpiece.
Tem gave a longing look at the toy, but turned to his father for permission to take it. Carrie could see by Josh’s face that he didn’t want his children to take anything from her, but she also saw that his children’s happiness meant more to him than any feud in the world. With a smile, Josh nodded to his son.