Elm Creek Quilts [10] The Quilter's Homecoming (29 page)

Elizabeth sewed as thoughts of Henry, of Rosa, and of her failures that day tumbled through her mind. She worked her needle through scraps of wool until the windstorm of thoughts subsided. Only then did she put away her needle and thread, fold the quilt carefully, and tuck it away in the trunk they used as a table. Sleep eluded her so many nights that she knew it would not be long until she worked on the quilt again.

Back in Pennsylvania, a good night’s sleep could cure her of most worries, but not so in the Arboles Valley, where her secrets were many and confidants few—and where a captive lion roaring with indignation woke her before daybreak. There was no time before hurrying off to the Jorgensen farmhouse in the morning to speak with Henry about Rosa, so Elizabeth’s worries steadily grew as she helped Mrs. Jorgensen and Mary Katherine prepare breakfast. Elizabeth did not want to goad John Barclay into lashing out at Rosa again, but if she did nothing, she would become his silent accomplice, and she could not bear that.

Finally she decided not to wait until Henry found time for her but to speak to Mrs. Jorgensen instead. Despite her stern demeanor and strict management of the household—which Elizabeth would gladly have done without—she was a woman of great common sense, and even kindness. In the months they had worked side by side, Elizabeth had grown to respect her, though she doubted they would ever become close friends. Mrs. Jorgensen might keep her granddaughters away from the Barclay children out of fear of disease, but in this she was not unlike the others in the valley, and Elizabeth could forgive her that. Mrs. Jorgensen had agreed to take on the Nelsons as nothing more than would-be homeowners down on their luck. Elizabeth could not believe she would close her heart to Rosa if she knew what John had done.

The story spilled from her as they set the table for breakfast. Mrs. Jorgensen drew herself up, her mouth in a hard line, as Elizabeth described Rosa’s bruises, her split lip, and how the children had played on as if nothing out of the ordinary had befallen their mother. At Elizabeth’s mention of Carlos, Mrs. Jorgensen pressed, “What did he say when you told him you had found his sister on the mesa?”

“You found Rosa where?”

Elizabeth spun around to discover Lars standing behind her in the kitchen doorway, his face a thundercloud. For a moment she glimpsed the man he might have been in his younger years, the man who drank, the man who had frightened the love of his life into marriage with a man she thought safer.

“At the Salto Canyon,” said Mrs. Jorgensen when Elizabeth did not speak. “On the mesa. You know the place.”

Without a word, Lars stormed back outside. “Go with him,” barked Mrs. Jorgensen, pushing Elizabeth toward the door.

Elizabeth snatched off her apron and pursued him, bumping into Oscar Jorgensen on the way out the door, brushing past Henry as she ran. She reached the garage only moments after Lars, but he ignored her pleas to wait and drove off in a cloud of gravel and dust.

Naturally Oscar and the other men couldn’t help speculating over the source of Lars’s fury. As she set platters of food on the table, Elizabeth overheard Mrs. Jorgensen briefly inform Oscar. Even her discreet words set in motion rounds of conjecture about what Lars intended to do to John Barclay, until Mrs. Jorgensen finally insisted that they not speak of the matter at the table, in a voice that strongly encouraged them not to speak of it elsewhere, either. The men fell into a subdued silence, and for the rest of the meal, Mrs. Jorgensen kept a watchful eye on the window.

The men returned to their work, with still no sign of Lars. As they cleared away the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, Mary Katherine questioned Elizabeth so precisely on her encounter with Rosa that revealing each new detail made Elizabeth feel as if she were gossiping rather than seeking help for a woman in trouble. “Why does everyone seem more concerned with where I found Rosa than with what John did to her?” Elizabeth exclaimed.

“The Salto Canyon takes its name from a Spanish word meaning ‘the jumping-off place,’ ” said Mary Katherine. “It was called that because of the many people who fell to their deaths there, often by accident while crossing the mesa in darkness or heavy fog, but sometimes not. Rosa’s mother took her own life in the exact spot where you say you found Rosa with the children.”

Elizabeth felt a sudden swell of fear. “Do you think Rosa intends—”

“I don’t know, but Lars—” Mary Katherine shook her head, pressing her lips together tightly. “I’m sure that’s what he fears.”

Filled with a sickening dread, Elizabeth imagined Rosa poised on the edge of the canyon, frozen in space for one dreadful moment before leaning forward to embrace the air and plunging to the rocks below. She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth and grasped the counter behind her for support. She never should have left Rosa alone on the mesa.

She worked through the morning anxiously awaiting Lars’s return. It was nearly lunchtime when at last she heard the sound of the car pulling up to the garage. At once, she and Mary Katherine dropped their gardening tools and ran to meet him, passing Mrs. Jorgensen on the way. Lars took one look at their worried faces and answered their unspoken question. “She’s all right,” he said, dropping his gaze and heading out to meet the other men in the orchard.

“Lars.” Mrs. Jorgensen caught him by the arm in passing. “What happened?”

“I found her at the house. She didn’t want me to see her, but when I told her I wouldn’t leave without making sure she was safe, she let me in. Barclay won’t hurt her again, not if he values his life.”

“Lars,” Mrs. Jorgensen said, a faint tremor in her voice. “What did you do?”

Without a word, Lars patted his mother’s hand before freeing himself from her grasp and continuing on his way.

“He didn’t hurt John,” said Mary Katherine, as if thinking aloud, as if trying to persuade herself. “John would have put up a fight, and Lars doesn’t have a mark on him.”

“Mrs. Jorgensen, I’m so sorry I brought this trouble on your family,” said Elizabeth. “I came to you because I didn’t know what else to do. I never meant for Lars to threaten John Barclay.”

“We don’t know if that’s what he did,” said Mrs. Jorgensen, resigned. “You did the right thing, Elizabeth. Rosa needed help, and you may be the only person in the Arboles Valley who is not too busy avoiding her to notice.”

“Lars doesn’t avoid her,” corrected Mary Katherine, her eyes fixed on him as he strode off into the distance.

Mrs. Jorgensen gave her a quick, inscrutable glance before returning her gaze to her elder son. “It’s tempting to turn away when a woman is mistreated by her husband, to call it a private family matter and hope it cures itself. That’s the last thing we should do. If we don’t stand together as women against such behavior, it will worsen and spread. If one man hits his wife and gets away with it, it will become more tolerable for other men to do the same. If one woman accepts a beating, other women will believe they should bear it as well.”

“Rosa never should have married John,” said Mary Katherine.

“Well, she did, and that’s that,” said Mrs. Jorgensen sharply. “We have work to do, so get back to it. That garden won’t weed itself.”

She strode off briskly to the house, the screen door slamming shut behind her. Elizabeth trailed after Mary Katherine back to the garden, wondering what Lars had done at the Barclay farm. How could he be so sure that John would not harm Rosa again? How could any of them be sure she was safe?

“You said that Rosa’s mother took her own life,” said Elizabeth after she and Mary Katherine had pulled weeds in silence for several minutes. “Do you know why?”

Mary Katherine stuck her trowel into the earth and sat back on her heels. “Why does anyone do such a dreadful thing? No one knows for certain—or if they do, they aren’t telling. I suppose Rosa or Carlos might know, but who can ask them?” She shook her head and nimbly plucked a few spindly weeds from between the lush carrot tops. “Some people say Mrs. Diaz was never right in the mind after her first grandchild took sick and died, but I think it goes back even further than that, to the time when her parents sold the farm to Mother Jorgensen’s grandparents. To go from owning the land to working it as hired hands for another family must have turned them bitter. I often wonder why they stayed instead of moving on, starting new somewhere else.”

“Perhaps they loved the land too much to leave it,” said Elizabeth. “Perhaps they thought one day they could earn back the farm they had lost, or if they couldn’t do that, perhaps their children might.”

“It could be something like that, I suppose. At any rate, when Rosa and Lars fell in love, Mother Jorgensen and Lars’s father didn’t object. Lars was still drinking then and I think they thought marriage would settle him down. It was Rosa’s parents who were absolutely dead set against it. Rosa might have disobeyed them if not for Lars’s drinking. Oscar told me once that she had agreed to marry Lars on the condition that he get sober, and that he tried, and had nearly succeeded even before Prohibition.”

“Then why on earth did she marry John?” asked Elizabeth.

“I don’t know. Maybe Lars’s sobriety didn’t come soon enough, or maybe she didn’t believe it would take. He sure fell off the wagon hard when Rosa married John. No one had seen that coming. When he finally learned of it, two days after the wedding, Lars got as drunk as a lord and nearly killed himself driving over to the Barclay farm to beg her to run off with him. She wouldn’t even open the door, not that any sensible woman would have to a man in that condition. Oscar had to drag him away before John turned the shotgun on him. Lars was sick for weeks, but after that he never touched another drop of liquor. It was too late, though. He had already lost her.”

When Mary Katherine’s voice trailed off, Elizabeth could not bear to prompt her to continue. It was so unbearably sad for everyone involved, but why had Rosa married John instead of waiting for Lars, as she had promised? As for the tragic fate of Rosa’s mother, surely she must have blamed herself for her daughter’s grief, for the burdens of sorrow she was forced to bear. If she and her husband had not objected to Rosa’s marriage to Lars, they could have lived out their lives in happiness, and the old resentments between the two families might have been forgiven.

A few days later, when Lars announced that he would be going for the mail after lunch, his mother said sharply, “You were up at the Barclay farm for hours on Monday and you forgot to fetch the mail?”

“I guess it slipped my mind.”

She turned to her younger son. “Don’t you need him in the orchards today, so close to picking time?”

Oscar held his brother’s gaze for a moment. “I’ve put Henry in charge of the orchards,” he said shortly. “He can manage without Lars for a while.”

Surprise lit Henry’s expression, and Elizabeth immediately knew that this was the first he had heard of his promotion. Mrs. Jorgensen was clearly displeased, but she never undermined her son’s authority in front of the hired hands, so she merely nodded. As soon as she could get Elizabeth alone, however, she instructed her to accompany Lars to the post office.

“Last time he drove off without me,” Elizabeth pointed out, although she was more than willing to accept the errand. She was eager to see Rosa again, to see with her own eyes that she was all right.

“Be sure that he doesn’t this time,” said Mrs. Jorgensen. “Under no circumstances is my son to go to the Barclay farm alone.”

This time, when Lars went to the garage after lunch, he discovered Elizabeth waiting for him in the car. He did not seem surprised to see her. “Don’t you have work to do?”

She gave him her most disarming smile. “You know me. Always ready to shirk my duties.”

He snorted, but took the driver’s seat and started the car. If he did not openly object to her presence, he did not seem to welcome it, either. He drove along in studied silence, ignoring her, until they reached the end of the Barclays’ driveway. “Thanks for speaking up for Rosa.”

“Of course,” said Elizabeth. “Anyone would have, if they had seen her.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

Elizabeth did not know what to say. The car rumbled to a stop just before the house. Marta and Lupita came running, their feet bare, their long, dark hair hanging loose and streaked with bronze from the sun. “Hi, Mr. Jorgensen,” said Marta, reaching shyly for his hand.

“Hi, girls.” He knelt down to hug them. “Where’s your mother?”

“Inside,” said Marta.

“Don’t go in.” Lupita took his other hand and tugged him toward the grass beneath the orange tree. “Play with us.”