Elm Creek Quilts [10] The Quilter's Homecoming (30 page)

When he hesitated, Elizabeth smiled and waved him on. “Go ahead. I can get the mail.”

With an uncertain smile, he let the girls lead him off to play. When Elizabeth knocked on the door, Rosa opened it quickly, as if she had been waiting. “I have some letters to mail,” said Elizabeth, including hers in the pile from the Jorgensen family. “How are you?”

Rosa took the bundle. “Better, thank you.” The bruises on her face had taken on a yellowish hue and a scab had formed on her split lip. As far as Elizabeth could tell, John had not added to her injuries. Whatever Lars had said or done, apparently it had stayed John’s hand, for now.

Rosa disappeared into the kitchen and soon returned with a small bundle of mail for the Jorgensens and three letters for the Nelsons. “Thank you,” said Elizabeth, tucking the Jorgensens’ mail under her arm and leafing through her letters to read the return addresses—Aunt Eleanor, Elizabeth’s parents, Henry’s mother.

“I think you should know,” said Rosa, “while I appreciate your concern, I would never take my own life, not while my children live and need me.”

Startled by Rosa’s directness, Elizabeth looked up from her letters and was even more surprised to discover Rosa smiling at her with something close to amusement. “And after that?” said Elizabeth, deciding to be equally direct. “What then?”

Rosa was silent for a moment. “I no longer believe all of my children are fated to die from this cursed illness. Some of them will be spared, and they will need me.”

She spoke with so much certainty that Elizabeth believed her. “Children always need their mothers in some way, even after they are grown. I know I still depend upon my mother’s advice—and my aunt’s. That’s why I write so many letters home.”

Rosa’s smile deepened, became more knowing. “You tell me this because you hope to convince me to wait until I am an old woman before I take my own life. I assure you, you—and Lars as well—you need not trouble yourselves.”

“Then why were you there, in that place?”

“You mean where my mother died?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“Because I loved my mother deeply and I feel her presence most strongly there.” Rosa glanced over her shoulder at the sound of Miguel murmuring in his sleep. “My mother often told me she considered the view of the canyon from the mesa to be the most beautiful place in the valley. She never would have despoiled it by committing such a terrible act there. I miss my mother very much, but I find consolation in knowing what happened to her must have been a terrible accident. She never would have taken her own life, I am sure of it.”

Unwilling to dispel a belief that seemed to bring Rosa comfort, Elizabeth merely nodded.

“Would you like to see her photograph?” asked Rosa. “It was taken on her wedding day.”

When Elizabeth agreed, Rosa took a brown leather album from a shelf beside the fireplace and turned to a page about halfway through the book. A young dark-haired woman, lovely but wearing only a hint of a smile, sat tall in a straight-backed wooden chair, her eyes fixed on the camera and bright with happiness. She wore a dark dress with a satin ribbon around the waist and a cascade of white lace around her neck and shoulders. Behind her stood a solemn, handsome man with a neatly trimmed mustache, broad-shouldered but only of medium height. His hand rested upon his bride’s shoulder.

“You would not know it from this picture, but my father was a very cheerful man. He was almost always smiling.” Rosa smiled herself, wistful, and turned a few more pages, flipping past newspaper articles, letters, and sketches pasted into the album. “Here is a picture you may enjoy more.”

She held out the album, and Elizabeth gasped in recognition at a newer, sounder version of the cabin where she and Henry now lived. A little girl about four years old sat on the front porch steps wearing a lacy white dress, ankles together, hands clasped in her lap. On the grass to her left stood a couple in their midtwenties, but they were not the same couple from the wedding portrait. The man grasped the railing and had planted one foot on the bottom step; the woman stood with her hands straight at her sides. Behind them on the porch, an elderly man and woman sat on rocking chairs. The woman held a baby on her lap bundled in the quilt Elizabeth called the Road to Triumph Ranch.

“My grandparents, and my grandfather’s parents,” said Rosa, indicating the younger and older couples in turn. She pointed to the young girl on the porch steps. “My mother. She could not have been more than four years old when this portrait was made.”

“Did your grandmother or great-grandmother make this quilt?” asked Elizabeth.

Shouts from outside interrupted Rosa’s reply. She hurriedly set the album aside and ran for the door, Elizabeth close behind. In the shade of the orange trees, John had seized his daughters by the arms and was dragging them away from Lars, his face red with rage. “I told you to stay away from my family!”

“Settle down.” Lars raised his palms in a gesture of calm, keeping pace with John as he wrestled the stumbling girls toward the house. “You’re hurting the girls.”

Rosa darted past Elizabeth and flung herself at her husband, fighting to tear his hands from her daughters. John shoved her hard with his shoulder and she fell to the ground. In an instant, Lars was beside her, helping her to her feet. Cursing, John shoved the girls ahead of him into the house and slammed the door.

When Lars began pursuit, Rosa seized him by the arm. “Don’t,” she begged. She placed her hands on his chest and refused to let him pass. “Stay away from him. He’ll kill you.”

Lars did not look as if he cared. “I won’t let him hurt them.”

“It’s you he wants to hurt, not the girls. If you leave now—”

“Rosa, I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked of me but I won’t—”

“Please, just go.” Desperate, Rosa pushed him toward the car. “Go!”

She whirled around and ran back toward the adobe, but before she reached it, John tore open the door and stormed out, something hard and glinting in his grasp. Elizabeth cried out in alarm as he raised his hand to Lars, but suddenly he drew back his arm and flung the object at Lars’s chest. Instinctively, Lars caught it. Clear liquid sloshed inside the glass bottle.

“I remember what you are even if she doesn’t,” John snarled. “Crawl back inside your bottle and leave us alone.”

Rosa threw Lars one last, beseeching look as John clamped his hand around her arm and shoved her inside. Lars stood frozen in place, clutching the bottle in stunned disbelief. Elizabeth expected him to cast the liquor aside, but he turned the bottle over in his hands in a trembling caress, his eyes fixed on the closed door of Rosa’s home.

“Lars, leave it.” When he did not seem to hear her, Elizabeth hurried over and reached for the bottle. “Just leave it and let’s go.”

But Lars’s grasp tightened on the bottle. “I can’t just leave them. Not again.”

“There’s nothing you can do today.” Elizabeth tried again to take the liquor from him. “We’ll think of something. We’ll come back. Leave the bottle and let’s go.”

Slowly Lars’s gaze traveled from the adobe to the bottle. He stared hard at the label and took a step back, then tucked the bottle into his pocket.

Elizabeth wanted to snatch it from him and pour it out on the dusty ground, but Lars returned to the car so quickly she had to run to catch up with him. He started the engine barely before she had shut her door and drove off as if determined to put distance between himself and John before his anger overcame his better judgment. Suddenly he shifted in his seat, winced, then pulled the liquor bottle from his pocket and tossed it into the backseat.

“You should have thrown it from the car,” said Elizabeth. “What good is that going to do you?”

Lars ignored her. When they reached the Jorgensen farm, she scrambled over the backseat for the bottle, but he grabbed it from her fingertips. He slipped it into his pocket as he strode off to the house.

She watched him go for a moment before collecting the mail she had scattered over the front seat, disappointed and afraid. It chilled her to think how precisely John Barclay had aimed his attack, stabbing at Lars’s old wound, handing him the means with which he could destroy himself. Should Elizabeth tell Oscar his brother had a bottle on him? Should she warn Mrs. Jorgensen?

Mary Katherine had declared that her brother-in-law had lost so much because of his drinking that liquor had lost the power to tempt him anymore. How could she be so sure? Why keep the liquor if not to drink it?

How could Lars risk falling back into his old ways when Rosa needed him so desperately?

Henry surprised Elizabeth by returning to the cabin early, before she had a chance to read the letters from home. “What’s going on with Lars and the postmaster?” he asked, tugging off his boots.

She bent her head over the envelopes to conceal her disappointment. When the door had swung open, her first, foolish instinct was to think he had hurried home to see her, the way he had once hurried over to Elm Creek Manor as soon as his chores were done. Now he came home in a rush only to satisfy his curiosity, not because he couldn’t bear another moment apart.

As she fixed him a cup of tea, she told him what she knew about Lars, John, and Rosa. Henry listened intently, prompting her with questions until the entire story had drained from her. Or at least, most of the story.

When she had finished, Henry disappeared outside and returned with firewood. With nightfall, the cool ocean mists had rolled in to blanket the valley. As Henry lit the fire, he said, “Why were you out riding that Sunday when you found Rosa on the mesa?”

After all that had happened, she had almost forgotten what had taken her past the mesa that day. “After everything I’ve told you, that’s what you find most curious?”

“Don’t evade the question. Why were you going for a ride by yourself?”

She leveled her gaze at him. “I’ve asked you many times to spend Sundays with me. I would have preferred to have your company that day, but as you’ve often said, you have to work.”

“So why go alone?”

“It’s better than staying here,” she snapped, “shut inside the four walls of this cabin wondering what I did to displease my husband so much that he can’t bear to spend a Sunday alone with me.”

“That’s not why I took on the extra work and you know it.”

“Oh, yes, I know.” She flung back the lid of the blue trunk, snatched up the Road to Triumph Ranch quilt, and sat down with her back to him. “You can’t wait to earn enough money to put me on the fastest train east.”

“What were you up to, Elizabeth?” He came around to face her and planted his hands on the arms of her chair, but she ignored him and threaded her needle with trembling fingers. “I know you weren’t out sightseeing. What were you looking for—or whom?”

“Oh, for pity’s sakes! Horses! I was looking for horses! Do you honestly believe I was riding around looking for some handsome farmer to cure me of my loneliness?”

He drew back as if she had struck him. “No. I thought you might be looking for Mae.”

“Mae?” she echoed, incredulous. “Mae’s long gone. Honestly, Henry.”

He scrubbed a hand through his hair distractedly until it tumbled into his face. He looked suddenly like a hurt little boy. “Is it true that you’re lonely?”

“Of course I am. How could I not be?”

“But we’re together every day.”

“You hardly speak to me. You never touch me. I feel farther apart from you than when I lived in Harrisburg and you lived at Elm Creek Manor.”

“I never lived at Elm Creek Manor.”

“You know what I mean. When I stayed at Elm Creek Manor, and you came to see me there.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” He lowered himself wearily into the other chair. “Why were you looking for horses?”

For a moment she considered refusing to tell him, to punish his silence with her own. Instead she told him about the deal she had struck at Safari World, her misguided search of the valley, her inevitable failure. She did not tell him that she had meant to put her earnings toward buying back her quilts from Mrs. Diegel, or that she had hoped to win over the wranglers so they might introduce her to their colleagues in the movie business. Henry would not approve of either venture.

“I should have known they didn’t want prize horses when they dismissed my suggestion to buy Bergstrom Thoroughbreds,” said Elizabeth. “That Bergstrom is the most beautiful horse in their stables. Why wouldn’t they want another?”