Elm Creek Quilts [10] The Quilter's Homecoming (13 page)

“Loads,” said Annalise enthusiastically.

For an abandoned cabin, it didn’t look too bad from the outside. It was a square structure, only one story high but twice as wide as it was tall, with what looked to be a sound roof and a shaded porch running the length of the front of the cabin. There were glass windows, and to Elizabeth’s relief, both a chimney and the vent pipe for a cookstove. She had envisioned herself cooking outdoors over an open fire.

The old wooden boards creaked as they climbed the three stairs and crossed the porch. When the front door stuck, Annalise shoved it open and darted inside; Elizabeth followed, but not before sweeping a cobweb from the doorway. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, for the windows, coated with years of grime, let in only feeble trickles of the fading daylight. As Annalise ran from here to there, exclaiming over forgotten treasures, Elizabeth stood in the center of the room, slowly turning, taking the measure of her new home. The front room took up half of the cabin, with the right side set up as a kitchen and the left as a sitting room, where a rocking chair and a three-legged stool stood before the fireplace. An old braided rag rug lay on the floor, so filthy that in the dim light Elizabeth could not tell what color it was. Cinders and soot from the fireplace spilled out onto the hearth, while on the opposite wall, a thick layer of black grease covered the cookstove. Spiderwebs were everywhere, and a rustling in the corners suggested that field mice had made homes in the walls.

Elizabeth pressed a hand to her stomach and took a deep breath. There were cupboards, she told herself firmly. There was a sink with a pump, so she would not have to haul water from the well. The roof—she glanced up at the ceiling to be sure, and felt a wave of relief when she could glimpse neither sunlight nor water stains. The longest wall, facing the front entrance, had two doors hanging ajar. Elizabeth crossed the room and gingerly pushed upon the door on the left. It creaked open to reveal a room half the size of the front room, with a window, a bed, a narrow wardrobe, and a faded steamer trunk. The other room was the same size, but contained two smaller beds, their mattresses sagging in the middle.

Elizabeth leaned against the wall for support, then quickly pushed herself away from it and brushed the dust from her shoulder, resisting the urge to flee. What would Henry say when he saw the accommodations she had arranged for them? She never should have agreed to take the cabin without seeing it first. Had she learned nothing from Henry’s mistake?

“Nana says I can stay to help, but I have to come home before dark,” said Annalise, who had followed Elizabeth inside the second bedroom.

Elizabeth closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Perhaps she could ask to see the loft above the carriage house and choose between the two. Perhaps Mrs. Jorgensen would agree to allow the Nelsons to share the yellow guest room until they could fix up the cabin. But this would not do. They could not live here, not in this state.

“Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth jumped. “Yes, Annalise?”

“Don’t you like it here?” Annalise’s smooth brow furrowed in worry. “I know it’s messy but I’ll help you tidy it up. Nana says…”

“What does your nana say?” Elizabeth prompted gently when the girl did not continue.

“She says one day’s work doesn’t make you a farmer. She thinks you and your husband came out here to buy a house in Meadowbrook Hills or Oakwood Glen like all the other city people but you lost your money and so you had to find work.”

“That’s not true,” said Elizabeth. “We never even heard of Meadowbrook Hills or Oakwood Glen until last night. Henry and I come from farming families. We came to the Arboles Valley for the land.”

“I knew it. Mama said so, too. She says no city girl knows her way around a garden the way you do.” Then Annalise’s smile faded. “Nana says if you turn up your nose at the cabin, you don’t have the mettle to last a week on the farm.”

“She said that, did she?”

“I probably shouldn’t have told you.”

“It’ll be our secret.” First Mrs. Diegel, now Mrs. Jorgensen. Elizabeth was growing impatient with these people who expected the Nelsons to fail.

Henry would be making his way to the cabin soon. She could not let him see the place like this.

“All right,” she said briskly. “Let’s start with the other bedroom first. My husband will be tired and he might want to go straight to bed. I must have it ready for him.”

Annalise nodded and ran off for the cleaning supplies they had left on the porch. She swept the room while Elizabeth wrestled the thin, musty mattress outside and beat it with the mop handle. Her skin crawled when she thought of how long it had been abandoned in the cabin, what sort of creatures might infest it, but it would have to do until their first payday. She hoped their first week’s wages would cover the cost of a new mattress.

When the mattress was as clean as she could make it, she wiped down the bed frame, brought the mattress back inside, and set it in place. Annalise had finished sweeping the floor and had turned to clearing the spiderwebs from the corners and the window frame. The window stuck, but with Annalise’s help, Elizabeth managed to shove it open. Soon an evening breeze began to clear away the stale air.

Elizabeth searched the wardrobe for bed linens, but found only a small parcel of mothballs, a sock that needed darning, and something that suspiciously resembled mouse droppings. She pried open the rusted clasp of the steamer trunk and discovered a worn, grayed bedsheet and two faded patchwork quilts. Elizabeth took them outside and shook them fiercely, relieved to see that the trunk had kept them relatively clean. She thought longingly of the crisp sheets and pillowcases in one of the trunks she had left at the Grand Union Hotel, gifts from Great-Aunt Lydia. Mrs. Diegel surely must be wondering why the Nelsons had not returned for their belongings. Elizabeth would find a way to retrieve them as soon as she could.

Annalise helped her make the bed with the better of the two quilts, but the sun was slipping behind the Santa Monica Mountains to the west, and soon the girl had to run off for home. Elizabeth finished the master bedroom, shut the door firmly on the other bedroom to hide the mess, and started in on the kitchen. The pump groaned and complained when she worked the handle, but a spurt of rusty water splashed into the sink, smelling of iron. She pumped until her arms ached, but at last, clear water gushed forth. By then Elizabeth was so thirsty that she threw caution aside and drank from the stream of water, praying that it was clean. She would have preferred to boil it first, but she had no fire, no pot.

She filled the bucket with soapy water, seized a rag, and scrubbed the stove, stripping off layers of grease and decades’ worth of caked-on dust. Twice she had to empty and refill the bucket with fresh water. As the gold-specked white enamel began to shine through, words in her mind echoed the rhythm of her strokes:
We should have known it was too good to be true. We should have known.
She wished Henry were there to put his arms around her and assure her that everything would be all right, that somehow they would find their footing again.

By the time Henry came in, exhausted and smelling of sweat and soil, Elizabeth was filthy and sore, but the cookstove was clean, inside and out, and the rest of the kitchen was tolerable. She quickly put away her scrub brush and washed her hands at the pump as Henry looked around at the cabin, expressionless.

“You should have seen it before I cleaned up,” she said, forcing a smile.

“You can’t stay here.”

“Yes, we can. I know it’s not what we expected but it’s a home. Once I’ve cleaned it properly, once we’ve spread our own things around, it will be as cozy and comfortable as we could ever want.” Elizabeth took his hand and led him to the armchair, but she had to push him into it. When he sat, she unlaced and removed his boots. “Are you hungry?”

He glanced at the kitchen. “Do we have anything to eat?”

“I saved some biscuits from supper.” She took the biscuits from her apron pocket, unfolded the napkin she had wrapped them in, and placed them on his lap. “I’m afraid we don’t have any plates or cutlery. Or drinking glasses. Tomorrow I’ll ask Mrs. Jorgensen if she has a few she could spare.”

Henry raised a biscuit to his mouth, staring straight ahead at the wall, chewing and swallowing mechanically until he had eaten the last crumb. “I don’t want you to go begging for their castoffs.”

Elizabeth was so astonished she laughed. “It’s not begging, Henry, just borrowing a few necessities to get us through until we can collect our own things from the hotel. Honestly. Would you rather eat with your fingers and drink straight from the pump?”

Elbows on his knees, Henry leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. He was silent so long Elizabeth worried that he might have fallen asleep. “You will write to your parents,” he said at last, wearily, without looking up. “You’ll write to them tonight and ask them to wire you the train fare home.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll stay behind and work until I’ve earned enough to repay my debt to your family.”

“And earn your own fare home,” Elizabeth finished for him.

Henry said nothing.

“I don’t think that’s a good plan at all,” she declared. “We’ll earn the train fare to Pennsylvania much faster if we both work. Besides, I wouldn’t dream of going back to Harrisburg without you. What would people think?”

Henry straightened, his mouth set in a grim line. “I’ve made my decision. You’re going back. This is not what I promised you when I asked you to marry me. This is not what you agreed to. I won’t have you living like this.”

“You can’t force me to get on a train,” Elizabeth retorted, her voice shaking with anger. “I am not going without you and that’s final.”

Henry hauled himself to his feet. “I’m too tired to argue.” He paused, looking from one of the bedroom doors to the other. “Is there a bed in this shack or do we sleep on the floor?”

“The door on the left is our bedroom. Our suitcases are in the wardrobe.”

“Is it too much to hope that other door leads to a bathroom?”

“There’s an outhouse in back.”

Henry made a noise of disgust, shook his head, and went outside. Heart pounding, Elizabeth worked the pump, filling the sink with wash water for him. When he returned, she handed him a clean rag to use as a towel. Wordlessly, he took it and scrubbed his face, neck, and hands clean while she turned down the bed. When he finished, he undressed and dropped into bed without looking around the room, and she took his place in the kitchen, emptying and refilling the sink, washing herself as thoroughly as she could. She longed for the claw-footed iron tub back home. If she were there now, she would fill it and submerge herself in the steaming water until the weariness and filth that had worked into her skin melted away.

The cabin had grown dark. Elizabeth felt her way into the bedroom, slipped on her nightgown, and climbed into bed beside her husband. Bedsprings complained; the mattress sagged and gave off a faint, stale odor.

She knew Henry was bone-tired, but she also knew he wasn’t yet asleep. “You never promised me a life of ease,” she said softly. “We expected to work hard here. Nothing’s changed.”

“Everything’s changed,” retorted Henry. “We came here to work as owners of the Rancho Triunfo. Making decisions, supervising the hired hands, planning for the future of our own land. Now we work as hard as we planned to for ourselves, but for someone else.”

Elizabeth lay silently listening to the crickets chirping outside, trying not to hear the whispery scuttling within the walls. “We’ll go back to Two Bears Farm,” she said. “But I won’t go without you.”

“Yes, you will,” Henry said. “I can’t face my family—I can’t face
your
family—until I’ve earned back everything I’ve lost.”

“Everything? Not just the train fare—”

“Every last cent I lost to that cheating, thieving liar. I won’t go home worse off than when I left.”

“But that was your life savings. It will take years to earn back.”

“I know,” said Henry. “If you don’t think you can wait, if one of your rich boyfriends—”

“Stop right there, Henry Nelson,” snapped Elizabeth. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. I am your wife, and I am going to stay your wife—unless you cheat on me, in which case you’ll be in worse shape than you are right now. So don’t suggest otherwise ever again.”

“All right,” said Henry, surprised. “I thought it was only fair to offer you a way out. But you’re still going home as soon as your parents can wire the money.”

“I can’t go home yet. I can’t face my family, either.”

“Why not? You don’t have anything to be ashamed of. It wasn’t your idea to buy the ranch.”

Elizabeth thought quickly. “My hair. Can you imagine what my mother will do when she sees how I’ve bobbed my hair? The sight of it will take years off her life. You’ve known my mother long enough to know I’m right.”

“Then I guess you could—”

“Don’t say I can just stay with Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Fred at Elm Creek Manor. You know someone will squeal.”

Henry sighed heavily. “All right. You can stay until your hair grows out enough. Then you’re getting on a train and going home.”

“Promise? Not until then?”

“Yes. Fine. I promise.”