Through a Glass, Darkly. Charlotte Miller

      “Yes.”

      His hands reached out, his fingers to touch her flat stomach through the fabric of her dress—Elise, his Elise, with a baby inside of her. His baby—he could only stare at his hands for a moment. Elise was going to have a baby. They were going to have a—

      He looked up at her, finding her watching him closely. For a moment he was too dumbstruck to speak. “We’re havin’ a baby?” he heard himself say.

      “Yes,” she said, and he felt himself begin to smile a moment before he realized—

      “You’re happy about it, ain’t you?” he asked, searching her eyes, needing to know.

      But suddenly she was smiling, almost with what seemed to be a mixture of relief and worry, as well as with happiness. “You know I am.”

      “That’s not th’ reason you’re willin’ t’ stay here, is it? Just because—”

      “You know it’s not. After everything we’ve been through to be together—” For a moment she fell silent. “There are a lot of things we both will have to get accustomed to. Everything is so different here, it will just take time for me to get used to it. You have things to get used to as well, you know—” She was suddenly smiling again, looking genuinely happy for the first time since they’d arrived in Alabama. “At least I’ve had a little time to get accustomed to the idea of becoming a mother—”

      “A mother,” he said, smiling, the worry leaving him for now in the face of concepts he had not considered coming to them so soon. “You’re going to be a mother.”

      “And, you’re going to be a father—the two things go together, you know.”

      He was grinning helplessly, and he knew it. He just kept touching her stomach, amazed that inside of her was a new little person. “We’re havin’ a baby.”

      “You’re happy about it, aren’t you?”

      He looked up, surprised that she had even asked. “You know I am.”

      “I’ve just been worried, with everything else—”

      He shook his head. “None of that’s important. Don’t even think about it; I’ll take care of everythin’. All you have t’ worry about is takin’ care ’a yourself, an’ our baby.” He grinned, returning to touching her stomach, amazed at what they had done. “How long have you known?”

      “Since just before Daddy found out about us—”

      “Since—Elise, that’s been—” For a moment he could only stare up at her. “Why ain’t you done told me?”

      “With everything that’s been happening, having to worry about getting away, and Daddy hurting you like he did, you almost dying—I couldn’t add even more to the burdens you were already carrying—”

      “Burdens? Elise, this ain’t no burden. A baby is the farthest thing from a burden.”

      “You won’t mind there being an extra mouth to feed? Three of us to support, instead of just two?”

      “Lord, woman, what kind ’a man do you think you married? A man’s got t’ know children’ll come along if he loves his wife th’ way he’s supposed t’. I knowed there’d be more ’n two of us sooner or later. I guess I never thought about it happenin’ s’ soon, since it took my folks s’ long t’ have me after they got married.”

      She smiled at him. “It must have happened one of the first times we were together.”

      He grinned to himself, then stretched up to draw her lips to his. After a moment, he stood and pulled her up into his arms, to hold her close to him, more content in that moment than he had ever been. “I love you, Elise Whitley,” he said quietly against her hair.

      “Sanders,” she reminded him, bringing her eyes to his.

      “Mrs. Sanders,” he said, looking at her for a long moment, knowing in that instant what it was to be truly happy.

      Janson lay awake before dawn that next morning, having slept very little through the hours of the night. Elise’s body lay warm against him, her head on his shoulder, as he stared at the dark shadows that played across the whitewashed ceiling. Daylight would not be long in coming, but there were decisions he still had to make, choices he had never thought to consider. There were three people he was responsible for now—three—and yet he had no job, no roof of his own to put over their heads, no future he could offer his wife or their child. In bringing Elise here to this life he had offered her, in bringing her to his grandparents’ home to live off what amounted to little more than their charity for a time, he had been doing all that he had known to do in the circumstances in which they had found themselves. There had been no way they could have stayed in Endicott County, Georgia, and lived as man and wife. William Whitley would never have allowed his daughter to live openly as the wife of a dirt-poor, half-Indian farmer—they had both known that, even before her father had tried to kill him, even before her elder brother had thrown him, unconscious, down a well to die, even before that same brother had stolen the money he had worked so hard for and saved, money that would have brought them a much better life than any he could see for them now. Janson had not even known about the baby then—but he could never have left Elise behind in Georgia, could never have left her behind in her beautiful house and gone on to any kind of life of his own.

      Now she was his responsibility, she, and the baby she carried—he was a husband now, and in a number of months would be a father. For the first time he understood how his own father must have felt, in struggling so long, and in finally dying, to try to give his son something that would have been his own. Now that son would have a son or daughter of his own—what could he give his child? And, what could he give Elise? In bringing her here, he had not allowed himself to think beyond the very fact of their being together, trusting that he would find a way for them to build a life—but he had to think beyond that fact now. He had to put a roof of their own over their heads, had to put his own food on their table, had to be the husband and father and man that his parents had raised him to be.

      Elise moved slightly in her sleep, curling closer to him as she lay on her side, her soft hair brushing his neck as she settled again, sighing softly in her sleep before becoming quiet. He pulled the patchwork quilts closer about her, for the room was cold still in spite of the fire he had gotten up to put wood on twice already in the night. He moved to press a cheek to her hair, closing his eyes, and losing himself for a moment in the warm feel of her against him—but the thoughts would not go away. He owed her so much more than he was giving her now, so much, in light of all she had given up to become his wife. Elise Whitley’s children were meant to be born to wealth and luxury, to a fine home, to a world of electricity and running water, of motor cars and radio and more money than you could ever need—not the things he could give them.

      But she had chosen him, and now he had a choice to make, a choice he had never thought to be brought to, but a choice he could no longer see a way around.

      He woke her gently in the hour before dawn, and loved her with his body for a time before they rose from the bed to go into this world he had brought her to. He could not help but to watch her as she helped his Gran’ma prepare breakfast that morning, realizing that she had probably never before cooked anything in her life—there were a great many firsts ahead for both of them, he realized.

      He was not surprised when, as that day wore on, he found his steps leading him toward a path through the winter-quiet woods, and toward the land that he had been born to, toward the home he had known for the first nineteen years of his life, and the dream that both his parents had given their lives to have. The sky to the west was low and gray as he broke free of the woods at the edge of the winter-dead cotton fields, the air heavy with moisture. It would rain before this day was over, a hard, cold rain that would sit on the red land for days before seeping in.

      His steps finally stopped as he reached a rise, where he could see the small, white house where it sat beyond the apple orchard and the clay road. He stood beneath the barren branches