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Katherine stop, tell her that she just needed to settle her stomach, that she was pregnant and that must be getting the best of her. But she hadn’t told Frank of the baby yet, and though Jeanie couldn’t admit she was only partly capable of taking a meal from beginning to end, that splattering blood from one end of the back of the house to the other was something she’d never done, Katherine already knew it and Jeanie was sure she’d keep her secret. They were mother and daughter after all and Jeanie had never felt so fortunate to be able to say that.
    Jeanie concocted a stew that only partly thickened. Nothing was available to make biscuits or cakes, so Jeanie hoped the company itself would do. It certainly wasn’t a dandy-good supper. That much Jeanie knew.
    She and Katherine spread some raggedy linens, loosely described as such, on the floor and used the small table to set the stew to be served to everyone. Jeanie sent Katherine out to gather everyone into the house.
    Frank appeared in the doorway first. “Here. Water. Templeton’s working with the boys. Apparently he’s a whiz with the weather indications and even had a post with the Army until three years ago. James has taken an interest in predicting the weather.”
    “Predicting the weather?”
    “I know,” Frank said. “What good is something like that? Doesn’t matter much what the weather might or might not be in the future, just what it is at the time you’re wondering. I mean since there’s no way to know what’s going to happen.” He tapped his leg, causing Jeanie to worry, knowing he was insecure about something—perhaps it was that James was taking an interest in another man’s hobby—no matter what made him feel insecure it never lead to anything good for Jeanie. But, it was only their recent losses that made it such a problem that he may be an unstable man.
    “What Frank?” She threw her hands up to the sky. “What in damn hell is the matter?”
    Frank bit down so hard Jeanie could feel it in her bones across the room. She dropped her hands as though burdened with sacks of rocks.
    “Nothing, Jeanie. Nothing you could help me with.” And he left the room, shouting to the others that dinner was ready.

     
    The meal was a disaster. The man Jeanie was beginning to think of as “sweet Templeton,” had gobbled up three steaming bowls of the disastrous, somehow bitter, stew while her own family barely managed one slurp. The children and Frank were still operating with visions of one-inch steak, buttery biscuits, thick mashed potatoes, sweet peas, and towering chocolate cake in their minds and on their taste buds, and not yet hungry enough to eat rancid stew.
    She knew Templeton was only being kind as he sopped up every last drop with his finger at the end, saying “dandy-good eats” every three minutes, acting as though it tasted scrumptious not just edible. Not that it was any of that.
    All night Templeton passed back and forth by the bedstead where he allowed the Arthurs to sleep that night. He groaned as his bowels emptied repeatedly, slopping into one bowl and then another he’d dug out of God knew where. The children gagged at the sound and odor and Jeanie spent the night kicking the children under the covers so they wouldn’t humiliate a man for emptying his body of the poison their mother had fed him.
    Waking the next morning, Jeanie was relieved to see Templeton had cleared the pots and acted as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred during the night.
    She couldn’t look him in the eye, even as he searched out her gaze, and even went so far as to reassure her that she would make a fine prairie wife.
    “You’re clearly too smart to be anything but a blazing success,” Templeton had said tipping his hat to her. Jeanie hadn’t known how to respond, so she just let the heavy failure she’d felt turn steely, inside her, inspiring her to be a better person, wife than she’d clearly been when she’d had a army of