A Promise Kept (FIRST FIVE CHAPTERS)

Prologue

Throughout the first hour of my work, I felt my sister's eyes upon me constantly. I neglected mention of it until such a time as I found it unbearable. Turning to her, wiping sweat from my brow with my floured forearm, I sighed.

"What?" I eventually inquired.

"Are you alright?" she asked, flatly attempting to hide the concern in her tone. I turned back to my work, pulling and pushing harder now until it shook the counter beneath me. "You're strangling it. Not kneading. Here."

She took the small lump from me and began rolling it out methodically, undoing the work I had done. She began to knead in earnest then, her larger hands better able to grasp and press. I sighed again, wiping my brow once more, leaving streaks in the flour covering my arms.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I stared at her but she did not look up from her work.

"I don't see what good that would do," I answered and she nodded, more understanding than she had ever been before.

"Likely none," she said then, handing me the kneaded dough so that I could place it in the oven. "But if it would, I'm here."

When her eyes met mine, I saw a bond there which we had never experienced before and felt overcome by emotions which I, in my young life, had never before experienced and would not come to understand for many years later.

I took the dough and, shaping it into a loaf, placed it in a pan and set it onto the fire. I stood, panting from the exhaustion of an hour's hard labor, and watched it rise, the yeast doing it's duty, as dependable as ever.

Then, I did not grasp what my life would become, how very vividly I would remember the events of that evening, even the smallest insignificant details that, to any other observer, would seem nothing more than moving parts in the daily life of a baker's daughter. But now, I recall it all. The sound of the pens scratching against the page, sealing a fate not even my father could foresee. The awareness of my sister and her recognition of my situation. The way that trivial loaf of bread rose in that blistering oven.

The evening continued for me as it always did, the same as it ever was. My sister and I worked until we were called to dinner and then we ate. It was a meal like any other. Bread of our own making, jellies and jams we had stored away, and whatever salted fish my mother had managed to lay hands on at the market that day. Herring, I believe. Then we washed ourselves off, rinsing the flour from our limbs and off of our faces. We changed into fresh cotton dresses and said our goodnights to our mother and father. As I left the room I remember very clearly seeing my father remove that fateful piece of parchment from his breast pocket and place it, unspeaking, onto the table before my mother.

Sometime later, I laid in bed and listened to them, my mother and father, arguing in hushed voices in the living room. I knew that Evelyn heard them as well. I knew that she was as awake as I was, only feet away from me upon a cot of her own. Her breathing hadn't evened out and calmed the way it did when she slept as I knew from a lifetime of sleeping at her side. Both of us laid in the dark, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the quarrel taking place through our thin walls. Neither of us spoke. Evelyn never said a word. But I knew she had heard.

"How could you?" my mother growled. "Our daughter, Henry. Why? How could you sell her like that?"

"I'm not selling her, Margaret. You need to understand that. I'm in wonder that you don't already. You know, as well as I do, what this is, why this had to be done. We have two daughters, Margaret. Daughters who cannot inherit our shop, this apartment, or anything we own. I am doing my best to provide them with a future and, unfortunately, that depends entirely upon the men in their lives and I'll be damned if I allow myself to be the only man who is."