Elsie brought her hand to her forehead to shade her eyes from the sun. She stared across the barren landscape toward the west, toward the great looming black mountains. In the distance great swollen clouds hovered over the peaks. There would be rain today. There was a way in which the air felt so still and perfect, as if it too was holding its breath in the last hours before the storm would come crawling over the plain. Nearby, a cricket creaked away, pausing momentarily when the wind moved just an inch, and then continued its hum. Elsie thought she could hear the sound of barrenness for miles, the rustle of dry corn turning in small inches toward a July sun. Lord knew the ranch could use that rain, just as she could use the news she was waiting on.

The porch door swung open behind her.

“You gonna wait for them all day?”

Elsie turned her head. Ruth was holding the door open. “Close the door,” she said to her sister. “You’re letting in all the dust.”

The child’s face twisted in a frown. “You’re gonna get all burned up, you stand out there with no hat.”

“Get inside!”

The door slammed shut. Elsie turned her face west again; she could imagine Ruth stalking back inside like an angry old puss, no doubt to bother Otto until she pestered him into begrudgingly playing dolls with her. The milk cow groaned from back behind the barn. Elsie sighed and retreated back to the porch steps, not to indulge Ruth, but to just take an ease off her tired legs.

Why was waiting on news so hard when it was probably going to be bad?

Mama and Papa had been at the Gotfried ranch all day. Nothing but suffering had that Elijah Gotfried been through the last six months. His mama and papa dead of the influenza in February, farm failing underneath him—and now his wife Dorothea come on the Denver Pacific a year and a half ago from St. Louis dying on her childbed. And the family so prosperous before she arrived, too.

All the families from ten miles out had gone to lend help—the men for tending to the cattle that had gone neglected of the past week, and the women for delivering that baby and keeping Dorothea alive. Dorothea’s sister was coming in from St. Louis, but her train had been stopped for a day in Lincoln to fix a track damaged by cattle crossing over.

None of it was good. Each night Mama and Papa’d come home looking grim and offering up no news. The families that lived closest went home every night so as to not use up too much of the Gotfried’s space and bring back some food for the next day. Those that lived too far out to take their horses all that way and back, and could spare the help from their own farms, just stayed the nights. It couldn’t go on for much longer, though. Everyone was hoping Dorothea’s sister would arrive already—or that the baby would either come or go, whichever God had planned for it. The same went for Dorothea.

Elsie should have been over there too. Ruth and Otto were perfectly capable of sitting for a few hours without burning the whole ranch down, so that was no excuse, even though that was what Mama had taken to telling the other women after she didn’t come back after the first day. It didn’t seem fair—after all Elsie had been there the very first day when all the trouble started. But right from the start the other women who’d come all the way from La Salle started eying her like she was a coyote on the edge of the chicken coop. They knew. Gossip made it all the way out there to the train depot and then spread around the church like grassfire. Elsie had tried to ignore their quiet titters and went about laying out pitchers of sun tea to leave in the yard.

But there was no way to ignore Dorothea, who once she got wind that Elsie was in her house took to yelling about having no harlot in her house. It was impossible not to hear. That really got the women to glaring in Elsie’s direction and muttering about straining the poor woman, all feverish with that baby in her. Dorothea started screaming about Elsie being inside until Mama finally told her to go sit on the porch until the evening came.

So instead Elsie sat out beneath the only cottonwood on the property for that first long afternoon and watched the clouds tumble over the mountains and grow large and fat and glide toward the plains, promising and hopeful. From her seat Elsie could hear the men in the barn talking about the afternoon rain that was sure to come and wouldn’t it be a blessing to get the dust down for a day or two. Elsie knew better. The air had lacked the right stillness for rain that day. She knew the way it would be: the clouds would hang thick, teasing, maybe thunder once or twice and continue their journey out toward Kansas and darken the eastern sky until night fell, after which Papa would stand on the porch and curse in German while he watched the lightning prickle the horizon. That’s always how those days ended up.

She could have walked home from the Gotfried ranch, instead of waiting around for something to happen. But it was four miles and on foot it would have taken her over an hour, an hour that would have left her ill all night from the beating heat of July. So she stayed and waited, and tried to force the sound of Dorothea’s shrill words from her head.

Dorothea was a simpering cuss with more education than was good for her, there was no doubt about it. Ever since she’d come off that train from St. Louis she’d been a thorn in Elijah’s side. A wife is even less useful than normal when she’s been raised for being looked at instead of doing work. Everyone talked about her like that; nobody cared much for her. And it was funny, Elsie’d thought, that so many of the ladies were willing to lend a hand when she fell sick—even Mama, who’d never been shy about sharing her choice words about the woman. Maybe it was more for Elijah’s sake than hers. Maybe they all felt so bad for him since he’d sent for her, and then lost his folks and almost his farm too. Maybe they all thought like Elsie did, that Dorothea was nothing short of a curse on that whole family since the day she arrived. But it was hard to ignore the way they’d all turned on Elsie so quick, how they’d suddenly started pretending that they agreed with Dorothea as soon as they were in her house.

She wasn’t a harlot. What a big word for Dorothea to throw out, sick and all or no. It carried the weight of her St. Louis education. Most of the other women from the church in La Salle just used hussy—those women down in Denver with the feathers who entertained the miners were hussies. Nobody had ever used that word in Elsie’s direction. She didn’t know if maybe they thought it, though. Dorothea surely did. She wondered if Elijah did too.

He hadn’t thought so when he’d been pressing his lips to the white skin of her breasts that night under the cottonwood tree, that was for certain.

Of course they had not been together after Dorothea arrived from St. Louis. The woman had put a bridle and bit in Elijah’s mouth from the moment she arrived, as Mama was fond of saying. He would’ve had to be even more sly than his new wife if he’d wanted to go anywhere she disapproved of. And anyway it wasn’t like the two of them had ever been anything except a brief pining romance that lasted one summer—or at least that was what everyone else seemed to think. She was sure they all had their suspicions about what they’d really done, but Mama was so outwardly insistent that there’d been no taking of anything that important and all the ladies knew what that meant so they just shut up. Mama was sure that Elsie’s reputation was still intact, and that was enough for Mama and everybody else.

Elsie had seen Elijah only a handful of times since he married Dorothea under that big cottonwood. Such a busy tree, that cottonwood. Elsie always figured it was a good thing that tree couldn’t do any talking. She’d seen Elijah once at church on Easter morning the year before, but Mama’d put such a grip on her arm from the pew that she knew better than to even blink in his direction. Again at the general store on Main just before his folks took sick. By then Dorothea was already with that baby and insisted she was too frail to leave the ranch. Most people said it was a God-given miracle that she hadn’t taken sick herself when Old Gotfried and Mama Gotfried picked up the influenza, them and half a dozen other ranchers in the area. Elijah had come into town for a load of grain when she saw him—and oh, he saw her. Nodded to her even as he passed her in front of the sacks of coffee, and Lord, she could have sworn he’d managed a little grin for her too. Not just any grin, too—her grin.

That was all. But it didn’t matter. Rumor had reached the train depot long before then that Elsie had been on the Gotfried ranch one evening for something more than supper, and this while Elijah had been waiting for Dorothea to come on the train. It didn’t matter that nothing of that nature had taken place, because the situation was scandalous enough without that—goodness though, if it had! All it took was the rumor of it though—a promised man with a single young girl barely eighteen on his farm without no chaperone, right under the nose of his elderly folks too. Of course the repercussion had not fallen on him, but Elsie—the seducer, the jezebel, the hussy.

No one bothered to point out that he had been the one to call for her that night. No one mentioned the fact that he’d ridden by on his horse past her family’s property and slipped her a note scribbled on the edge of a pamphlet he’d picked up in town that morning. No, nobody cared for that bit of news.

It had been over a year ago—but obviously the women still talked. Obviously their talk had reached Dorothea’s ears.

Elsie gazed across the quiet plain, shaking away the unpleasant implications of all that talk. The afternoon had started to drift on without her. The skies were growing foul and dark. Unlike that first day at the Gotfried ranch, there would surely be rain today—and a storm at that. Across the way, a plume of dust kicked up by a distant horse and wagon floated up into the darkening sky. Mama and Papa must have decided to come home early to beat out the storm.

That, or Dorothea had up and done something. Died maybe. A snake curled its way through Elsie’s gut as she imagined the fate of the baby.

Nobody really liked Dorothea, deep down. Elsie certainly wouldn’t have shed an honest tear if she’d taken up the influenza along with Elijah’s folks and died, and she doubted many other folks would have either. But the baby was different. Nobody thought the poor baby deserved to die, especially not straight out into life the way it was.

She watched the wagon grow closer, and then ran toward it as it crossed the edge of the property. The wind whipped her fair hair across her face as she ran.

Papa’s face was grim and locked, eyes set on the back of the horse in front of him. Mama set her gaze on Elsie, and her daughter could see the look of displeasure on her face immediately.

“What news?”

Papa did not slow the wagon any. Elsie took hold of the edge and hoisted herself up into the back.

“Mama, what news?”

Mama turned in the front seat. “It’s only what he should’ve expected, sending for a wife with more money than constitution.”

Elsie was silent for a moment. “Dead then?”

“Yes, dead. And about time too. Poor girl was sitting in God’s hand for two days before she realized it. He kept telling her to get that child out; I imagine He wouldn’t kill the both of them for no reason.”

“And the baby?”

“A girl. Fair-haired like her father.”

Elsie diverted her eyes to the floor of the wagon bed, hoping it would help keep the thought of Elijah’s straw-colored hair from entering her head. It didn’t.

“Dorothea got to hold her but for a minute before she finally up and died,” Mama added.

Elsie looked up again. “What now then? That baby’ll die without her mama to feed her.”

“Sally O’Brien’s taken her until Dorothea’s sister can arrive. At least now the child can eat. Sally can feed two babies but Elijah can feed none. And no doubt it’ll take a weight off him to be free of the child while he grieves.”

There was a mild stirring in Elsie’s chest. She thought she heard thunder somewhere far away and glanced back over her shoulder in the direction of the mountains. In the direction of Elijah.

The wagon rolled into the yard and Papa reined the horse to a stop. Elsie climbed out of the back.

“Take those blankets inside, and call Otto to help bed the horse.”

Elsie gathered the blankets out of the back and hurried inside. She called her brother out from the parlor to put his book down and help Papa with the wagon, and then went for the kitchen. Mama bustled in the door with a basket of sandwiches. Elsie had helped her pack them that morning, but evidently the shroud of Death at the Gotfried farmhouse had prevented anyone from feeling hungry that day.

“Put on the coffee. Papa will want some when he comes in.”

Elsie was itching for news, but she bit her tongue and went to light a fire on the stove. Mama went to calling Ruth in to give her the blankets to bring back upstairs. After the girl had vacated the room, Elsie finally got up her courage.

“What about the baby, then? What will Elijah do?”

“Raise her, I would imagine.”

Elsie frowned, turning to the beans to keep her mother from seeing. “I don’t suppose he’ll know how to raise that baby on his own,” she said quietly. “Can’t raise a baby without a Mama.”

“That’s what his sister-in-law is coming in for.”

“She’s gonna stay here forever? Give up her whole life out there in St. Louis? She’s got babies of her own, don’t she?”

“She might.”

Elsie pinched her lips together as she spooned beans into the pot. “Seems like a mighty big to-do.”

“Elsie Schrieber, you better drop the matter this moment.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

“I know what you’re saying, girl. You better stop saying it right now lest you say something else I don’t want to hear you say.”

“Well, you’re thinking it, anyway. Might as well get it out and say so. Everybody else is, Lord knows.” Elsie turned away from the counter and started to walk out of the kitchen.

Mama reached out quick as a hawk and grabbed Elsie by the chin. She held her daughter’s face in a firm grip.

“Now you listen to me, girl. You better put that man out of your mind, you hear? You had your time in his life and now you’re done. By Gott you’re lucky it never became anything more and if I find out it did you’ll be finding yourself without a pot to piss in faster than you could blink. What happened that night to start all those rumors is done, and we may wish it didn’t happen but that don’t change nothin’. And you better well know that nobody’s forgotten it. But now it’s done and past. He’s got himself a child now and that’s all of it. You leave him alone and it’ll all slide right out of everyone’s minds. It won’t come a blessed day too soon, God knows.”

Elsie was silent for a long second. Outside, thunder rumbled. The very air was still, holding its breath now just the same as she was. Across the kitchen, Papa made his presence known by the snap of his boots across the floor. Elsie glanced at him momentarily before she pulled her face out of Mama’s grasp and took a step back.

“I don’t wish it hadn’t happened.”

Mama’s face flushed. She turned her head toward Papa. His sun-wrinkled face was still and he offered nothing.

“Franz, I think you’d better get your belt out,” Mama said.

“Why’s he not taken for a serpent in the garden?” Elsie said. Mama and Papa both sent her sharp looks. “He had a part in all of this too! He was just as willing as I. Why’s all the ladies look at me like I’m the jezebel? Why shouldn’t he have been made to marry me instead of her? It says in the Bible—”

“Go upstairs, Elsie. We’ll not be hearing anymore of this tonight,” Papa said.

“Or again,” Mama added.

“Everybody knows he only took that wife because his Mama disapproved of me,” Elsie said. “Wasn’t nobody around here good enough for him, so she made him send away for one. It’s too bad she up and died only after that wife of his arrived.”

“Elsie.” Papa again. Stern now, hard. Mama whispered a quick prayer. Elsie knew the vultures were circling now; Papa never raised his voice unless it was preceding real trouble.

“A girl can’t expect the first man to take an interest in her to marry her,” Mama said. “Just because you’ve got a pretty face doesn’t make you made for a wife from first look. I knew I should have kept you away from that boy. He is a snake for making you think what you do of him, but you know better’n to think that a man would take any of the flames for flirting with a girl.”

“I love him,” Elsie said. Thunder outside the house nearly drowned out her pitiful voice. “And I know he feels the same.”

Papa frowned and turned to go, muttering in German. Mama smoothed her apron and shook her head. “Go upstairs, girl. That’ll be all of it.” Her voice was soft, but not quite gentle. “Be lucky he left you with the only useful thing God gave you.”

Elsie couldn’t help it—couldn’t hold the lie anymore. It had been building in her body like infection for a year and a half. “He should’ve been made to marry me, for what I gave to him!”

Mama’s hand flashed up quick and slapped Elsie dead across the face. The young woman staggered back. Papa turned round, his frame set to shaking.

Mama advanced on Elsie. “You speak straight to me right now, girl. Did he take it or did you give it?”

Elsie started to back away toward the door. Her heart was suddenly pounding in her chest and her face stung. “He said he loved me,” she whispered. “Said he wanted to marry me, so I gave it to him. He was set to ask you, Papa—”

“Elsie Schrieber!”

She had never heard her mother’s voice so shrill before. The sky had grown so dark outside that when the lightning flashed, it lit up the frame of the window behind her. The light made Mama look so much larger in her rage. Papa was like the figure of Death standing there, skeletal and thin. Elsie could hear the rain start to come down outside the door. On the other side of the kitchen, Ruth and Otto came running to see what all the shouting was about.

Elsie turned and fled from them all, unable to stand the shame that was trying to drown her, as heavy and stinging as the rain that was now pelting down over the plains, making rivers of mud in its wake.

A candle illuminated the sitting room of the Gotfried farmhouse. Rain streaked in rivulets down the windows, bouncing the light from corner to corner in odd, long shadows. From within, Elijah looked up from his seat at the cold, empty hearth to see the figure of the drenched woman step up on his front porch.

Elsie pulled open the porch door and stood there in the doorway, heaving for breath. The two stood staring at each other in silence. If the shadow of Death had been hanging over that farmhouse before, it had passed in the smallest breath, like the flutter of a dove.

The smallest of smiles found its way onto Elijah’s face, just a crooked little sweet thing that he had always only smiled for her.