Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel by Caro Claire Burke - 42

“I think we should invite the neighbors for dinner,” Mary says. “We never offer them a meal, do we? It’s not very polite.”

It’s evening. I’m folding clothing by the fire. Mary is chopping potatoes for dinner. Or rather, she’s supposed to be chopping potatoes for dinner. What she’s actually doing, when I look up, is staring out the kitchen window. Watching the men work on the fence. Her eyes follow the taller of the two neighbors as he hammers away. Her hands are frozen mid-chop on the cutting board, index finger paused along the slender edge of the knife. The expression on her face is not the expression of a tired, hardened houseworker, like I’m used to seeing. It’s the expression, I realize slowly, of a girl with a crush.

Such open longing on her face. And from Mary, who runs this household with the cold discipline of a nun. A giddy little thread runs through me. Mary has a crush!

In another life, I would tease her. Mary and Mr. Bearded Homesteader, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. In another life, she would blush and laugh. She would say, You’re so embarrassing, Mom.

In this life, I hear myself say gently, “You’re far too young for marriage, Mary,” and she whips her head around and looks fiercely at me. “Did I say marriage, or did I say dinner?”

She storms out the door before I can respond. I watch through the window as she walks halfway to the field, then stops, calling to them from fifty feet away. The men all hesitate. Old Caleb says something to Mary. She points to the distant dark clouds by the mountains. She’s making a case for bad weather.

Mary has a crush. A gradual warmth fills my heart. Mary would make an excellent mother and wife.

I’m enjoying this rare rush of organic happiness, when one safe thought— Mary is a very good woman —leads to a dangerous one: a good woman eventually marries and has a family of her own.

Which means Mary might leave one day.

No—Mary will leave one day. One day soon. After all, good Christian women tend to marry young.

We are two women living under the same roof, and yet we find ourselves in completely different labyrinthine structures. In order to please the Lord, Mary must leave this place to become the wife and mother of another household. Maeve, too. And in order to please the Lord, I must always stay.

Except I cannot imagine surviving a single day at this ranch without the girls.

The door slaps open. “It’s decided,” Mary says. “The neighbors will stay for dinner.”

The men are young and quiet, disturbingly polite. They eat bent over their bowls, slurping stew quickly, not letting a drop onto the table. While they eat, I watch them closely. Most of their faces are covered by large, bushy beards, but their eyes are familiar. There’s that buzzing feeling in my head; the creaking whine of an overheating engine.

I would really like for this dinner to be over.

The problem is that Mary, clearly, would really like for this dinner to last forever. She has orchestrated it such that we are eating our food across multiple courses—first the biscuits, then the soup, then the pie—and seems intent on learning every detail of the ins and outs of woodworking. It is, in theory, a beautiful thing to witness: a teenage girl unfurling herself like a flower, desperate to feel the warmth of a man’s attention on her face. But this is not theoretical, and so I stare at my stew with a decomposing sensation in my stomach. At one point, I glance up and see Old Caleb, watching Mary with an expression that mirrors how I feel. Disturbed.

A crescendo of fear rises in me.

I set my fork down and look at the taller one. “How’s the soup?”

I feel Mary look at me. I don’t look at her. Nor do I look at Old Caleb, though I can feel him looking at me, too. This is the first thing I’ve said at dinner in a long time, besides please, thank you, no, thank you, yes.

“It’s delicious,” the taller neighbor says. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Where is your farm, anyways?”

The taller neighbor’s eyes flash with something. “Down the hill.”

“Which hill?”

The table is dead quiet now. Maeve is using her spoon to push a single pea around in her bowl. The boys are staring at their empty plates. I can’t see Mary’s expression, but in my periphery I can feel her energy, a furious vibrating.

“About an hour’s walk,” the taller neighbor says finally.

“And what comes after that?”

“Rest of the world, I s’pose.” He gives a nervous laugh. The shorter one joins in, and I direct my gaze at him. “What’s so funny?”

The shorter one stops laughing. “Ma’am?”

“Who are you, really?” The question comes out before I can stop it. And suddenly it’s there, floating over the table, for all of us to see. That’s all it takes: four words, a single question, for a lifetime of faith to snap.

“Ma’am—”

“I’m being held here against my will. This man isn’t my real husband. These children aren’t my real children. I was kidnapped. Taken from my home. Stolen. ”

Silence.

I look wildly around the table, though no one will meet my gaze. “Are you going to help me? Or are you part of the group who are keeping me here?”

There it is, the crescendo of my life. Gone in an instant.

I expect Old Caleb to stand up and drag me, kicking and screaming, to the bedroom, and methodically beat me to death. When that doesn’t happen, I expect him to slam his fists on the table and say, “That’s enough.” But he does neither. He doesn’t do anything. He just stares at me with a strange expression on his face.

The taller neighbor looks to Old Caleb. “That chicken coop is coming along nicely, don’t you think?”

“It is,” Old Caleb says. “It’s coming along real nice.” He lets out a long, slow sigh. “Mary, would you pass the peas?”