Within weeks of my suggesting remarriage, Papa quit his factory job and relocated us to Eden Springs. I didn’t realize my question had instigated the winter move; being a child, I was concerned solely with the strangeness of a place that wasn’t our home. As I’d heard it, the dreary peninsula on Lake Superior was shaped like a demon’s thumb, and the closest thing to Dutch folks in Houghton County were mostly Belgians, hence not our kind.

In short, every element struck me as foreign. It was the very reason Papa had selected the area, I eventually came to understand. For a truly fresh start, a person had to move on. Wade into the unknown. And if that didn’t work, one could drown out the past.

Or try.

Careful not to rouse him from sleep, I lifted the unlidded flask from his callused hand and went to set the container down. Its swishing sound teased my curiosity.

I took a sniff. Potent and piney with a touch of lemon. The home-brewed gin was known as a close substitute for genever from the old country. What I learned right then was it smelled more appealing straight out of the flask than stale on a drinker’s breath.

Papa was a levelheaded man. He must have had good reason for ignoring the homilies that warned against indulgence, to say nothing of his skirting the law.

His snores and weighted breaths plodded on.

He did say I was a big girl…

Tempted, turning away, I raised the flask to my lips. What was intended as a sip flowed out a gulp. It blazed down my throat and lit a fire in my chest. I dropped my quilt, suppressing an eruption of coughs.

Papa twitched and shifted his legs, eyes still closed.

Palm over my mouth, I put the flask on the table and extinguished the candle with a flurry of hand flaps. Darkness set my pulse to a gallop.

Hastening back toward the moonlight of the main room, I snatched my quilt and closed the door behind me. I muffled my release of coughs while retreating to my mattress. Gradually the flames inside me tapered to a smoldering warmth. And at last I understood:

Papa didn’t drink to drown his memories; he drank to burn them away.

Thankfully, soon after, I found other ways to forget.

Chapter 12

The very next night, I was trapped in a casket, struggling to escape, when something grabbed my arm. I belted out a shriek as the grip shook my body, shook it again, until yanking me free of the box and out of the dream.

Or was I still in it? It was hard for me to know, balled up on my side, quaking with Arie’s eyes locked on mine. Were we back in the stairwell, crammed in the pile?

“Hey, it’s okay,” he whispered. “Just a nightmare.”