Алма Катсу - The Hunger

For as long as she’d been back, sleeping in this old room, she’d been haunted by memories that seemed to have been burned into her skin since she first left.

Beauty, at least, was her solace. She tried again with the tongs. Back in North Carolina, she could always find someone to help fuss with pomade and tongs, someone who enjoyed fawning over her and receiving her attentions, but here in Illinois she had no women friends, no female admirers who looked up to her, as if hoping her beauty and intelligence would somehow rub off on them. Here, in her brother’s home, she was on her own.

Tamsen chose her second-best dress to be married in, a blue wool challis with a pleated bodice and full sleeves. Her best was a sage-colored broadcloth, but green was unlucky for weddings. Ever since she had read of the English queen’s wedding in Godey’s Lady’s Book a few years back, she had dreamed of a white dress if she were to remarry. It wasn’t the expense that had stopped her—George Donner had offered to send to Chicago for any dress she wanted. But marrying George Donner meant she would be living on a farm and would not have many occasions for a white dress. It would be a highly impractical purchase.

Still, that wasn’t the reason , either. She knew that one extraordinary thing was bound to make the ordinariness of her life all the more painful.

Besides, she didn’t feel clean enough on the inside for white.

Through the window, the wheat fields of her brother’s farm were bowing and rising like the tide of a golden ocean. The sky was a perfectly clear cerulean. Her heart swelled. It was so beautiful, the gold gently reaching up to kiss the blue. It made her want to cry. When she next came to Jory’s farm, it would be as a visitor, a stranger. Another man’s wife—again.

When Tully died, her brother had begged her to come to Illinois, pretending it was to help him, though really she knew it was his way of helping her . He didn’t want her to be alone.

But she was. Marrying George wouldn’t change that. She would always be alone, in her heart. Her first marriage had proven that.

Being back here, with the brother whom she’d tried to forget, proved it, too. How she ached with everything she could never say.

Jory was suddenly in the doorway, as if conjured by the heat of her thoughts. His broad shoulders looked a bit squeezed-tight in his best suit of brown wool, the one he saved for Sundays. “You’re a vision, Tamsen.” She noticed a slight strain in his voice, and her breath leapt in her chest.

Of course, it was natural for him to be emotional on a day like today, wasn’t it?

“The wagon is ready whenever you are.” He cleared his throat. She watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall. She thought how funny that word was—Adam’s apple. Hadn’t it been Eve’s?

To avoid his eyes, piercing and bluer even than her own, she stared instead at the stubble along his jaw and nodded.

She stood up and followed him to the door, then took Jory’s hand as he helped her into the wagon, and in the warmth of his palm she felt an impenetrable sadness. She didn’t want to let go, but forced herself to as she slid next to him on the bench. He placed a cloak across her lap to protect her from the morning chill.

The wedding would be held in the Donner farmhouse since it was nicer and bigger than her brother’s. Jory’s three children—two girls and a boy, none older than eight—sat in the wagon bed behind them, whispering among themselves as if they sensed their aunt’s tension but did not understand what it meant. Jory had asked Tamsen to come west for the children’s sake after their mother had died. I can’t raise daughters on my own , he had written. They need a woman to bring them up right . What Jory had not said outright, but she could tell from his letters, was that he wanted badly to see her, too. He had been devastated by his dear Melinda’s death.

They’d tried everything within their power to save his wife. When the only doctor in the area said nothing more could be done, Jory had given most of their savings to a traveling merchant, a smiling German who claimed his tonics would cure her.

He was nothing but a snake oil peddler , Jory had written bitterly afterward. We did just as he told us but it was no good.

Tamsen was ashamed to admit the way she felt when she first got the news of Melinda’s death, so near to the timing of her own husband’s. Ashamed to admit that it had felt, for a moment, like fate. Ashamed to accept the way it broke her open all over again, the idea of seeing her brother after all these years apart and separately married.

Ashamed that her first thought was that the snake oil peddler, the scam artist from Germany who’d led, however indirectly, to Jory’s wife’s death, must have been sent by the devil himself to torture Tamsen, to reawaken long-buried thoughts.

Jory had not been wrong to make the request, of course. Tamsen had been at ends after her first husband, Tully Dozier, had died. It was hard to be a young widow in a small town—men assumed things about women who had known a man’s attentions and suddenly had to do without. There had been incidents. All of them heady and exciting at first, but then ultimately empty.

Still, when Jory’s invitation came, Tamsen was torn. She planned to tell him no, but the bolder part of her heart had agreed—for his children’s sake, she told herself.

Now, she watched as Jory’s strong hands flicked the reins over the horse’s back, nudging her into a trot. He stole a sideways glance at his sister. “You’re prettier than a picture today, Tamsen. I hope George Donner knows what a lucky man he is.”

“I’m sure he does.” She forced a smile.

Jory fidgeted with the reins. “Are you sure this is what you want, though? It’s not too late to change your mind.”

“Now, where is this coming from?” She tried not to sound upset.

“You don’t know this man, not well. It’s only been three months.”

No, she certainly didn’t know George Donner well—but she’d never know any man as well as she knew Jory. He ought to realize that.

“I know enough.” Tamsen knew that her future husband had means: two large farms that belonged to him and his brother Jacob. Fruit orchards—apples, peaches, pears—and cattle. A nice house on eighty acres.

“He’s so much older than you. Do you think he can make you happy?”

She didn’t answer. The question felt far too weighted. She wondered if Jory could possibly sense that. But if he didn’t—if he didn’t understand why it hurt when he protested her marriage—then he couldn’t possibly feel the way she did.

And Donner—he would give her security. A roof over her head, a place in a community, money in the bank. With George Donner, her life was set, her worries would be gone. He was handsome, too, in his own way—though she wasn’t moved by his looks, hadn’t felt excitement rise in her when he’d been bold enough to kiss her.

Nothing like the tingling sensation she felt now, in anticipation of turning this new leaf—and leaving everything else behind.

“I know what’s best for me,” she said quietly. “George Donner is best for me. It’s not like I can just live with you forever,” she added.

Jory cleared his throat. Something flashed across his eyes, and she wondered what it was. “All I’m saying is you shouldn’t be in such a rush. I’m sure you could do better. And I know the children will miss you.” He paused. “We all will.”

She bit back the anger that wanted to lash out and transform itself into sobs. How could Jory be so thoughtless, so unaware? She needed something to hold on to right now. George Donner would be her anchor.