Page 32 of Mail Order Mercy

Everett placed a wooden plaque beside the mill office door. Henry Peabody’s name was carved across the top. Beneath it were the words: Good work is work that lets every man return home.

Dorothy stood before it with Albert beside her and all three children gathered close. The mill had stopped for the brief dedication. Ella and David came. Belle stood with Everett. Lula and Sebastian arrived late because Sebastian had claimed he knew a shorter path, and Lula had believed him against her better judgment.

Everett cleared his throat. “Henry was a good worker and a better man. We cannot undo the day we lost him. We can make certain we learned what his life should have taught us before his death ever did.”

Dorothy touched the edge of the plaque. Grief rose, but it no longer rose alone. Gratitude stood beside it. So did Albert.

Clara slipped her hand into Dorothy’s. “Papa’s name will stay there?”

“Yes.”

Tommy looked at Albert. “Your name is not there.”

“That is because I intend to come home,” Albert said.

The men laughed, and even Everett smiled.

Afterward, the town gathered near the Sanders cabin for food. Tables stood beneath the open sky. Children ran between them. Babies slept in baskets shaded with cloth. The women who had come from Beckham occupied one end of the longest table and spoke loudly enough to make Massachusetts seem only a road away.

Dorothy carried a pan of biscuits made with flour she had purchased from Albert’s wages and her own mill work. She had counted every cup from habit, then added one more because Ella had taught her that sometimes abundance was allowed.

Lula took a biscuit and bit into it. “This may be the finest thing I have eaten in Alaska.”

Sebastian reached for one. Lula moved the pan.

“You said my fish was the finest thing you had eaten in Alaska.”

“I was a newly wed and encouraging you.”

“I have been deceived.”

“Repeatedly,” David said.

Ella laughed softly beside him. Dorothy watched them and remembered the first winter days when Ella’s baskets had kept her children fed. Across the gathering, Clara shared half her biscuit with another child—not because she feared there would be none tomorrow, but because she knew there would be more.

Albert saw it too. His hand found Dorothy’s beneath the table.

“She does not save them now,” he said.

“No.”

The single word held an entire season.

Later, Albert drew Dorothy away from the tables toward the river. The water had settled into its summer course, broad and shining beneath the long northern evening.

“I have something to show you,” he said.

“If it is another account book, I will push you into the river myself.”

“You would have to catch me first. My leg is greatly improved.”

He led her behind the Peabody cabin. Four squared logs marked the edge of a covered porch in the grass.

Dorothy stopped. “Albert.”

“Not a new house,” he said quickly. “You said the cabin remains our home, and it will. This is a covered porch with a storage lean-to along one side. It will move the wood and tools outside and give the children a dry place to play when the weather allows.”

She walked the outline. It was modest and left the cabin itself untouched. From it she could still see Ella’s path, the mill road, the garden, and Henry’s roof beneath Albert’s repairs.