Return to Harmony (5 page)

“The easy ones don’t always say it exactly right,” Jodie answered, sparking with enthusiasm.

“Words are important,” Bethan conceded. “But I think there are other things even bigger.”

Jodie stopped and looked at Bethan. Her friend did not often challenge Jodie’s comments. “Like what?”

“Like God,” Bethan said, her voice soft yet firm.

Jodie shook her head vehemently. “God’s a
person
. I’m not talking about
persons
. I’m talking about
things
.”

But Bethan was not put off so easily. “But
faith
, how we live and talk to God. That’s a thing.”

Jodie gave her an all-knowing look and countered smugly, “You couldn’t have told me that, not without words.”

Yet now as she stood before the mirror, Jodie found herself wondering whether people or things were most important.

She gave her head a little shake, shrugged, and hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Good morning, Daddy.”

Her father looked up absently from his paper long enough to give his only child a distracted smile. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, sir.” She watched him nod and return to his paper and wondered if he really heard her at all. One day she was going to announce something like she’d fought dragons all night long and see if all he did was nod and return to his reading.

Jodie should have been used to it. She already was old enough to understand that Parker Harland was naturally a silent man, quiet and reserved with all except his wife. Her momma was the only person who could draw him out. Not even Jodie could find a way to hold her father’s attention for long.

Jodie did love her father, though she didn’t feel that she knew him well. She knew some things about him, but it was her mother who had given her the information. Both sets of grandparents had emigrated from Switzerland. Her parents had been born and raised right here in Harmony, growing up with the town. Parker had left only long enough to take his chemist’s training up north, then had returned as quickly as possible. He was the town’s only druggist, and owned the Harland Apothecary. He took his work very seriously. Whenever he was not at work or reading the papers brought in by train from Raleigh, he was busy perusing the scientific journals which he kept stacked on the living room shelves. The only time Jodie had with her father was their occasional walks on a Sunday afternoon, and even then her father seldom spoke. But she knew that in his own quiet way he loved her.

Jodie found her mother to be a very different person. Where her father was strong and solid and silent, her mother was lithe and slender. And very often ill. Jodie knew it was her mother’s health that had not allowed them to have another child, although Jodie had often thought it would be nice to have a baby brother or a sister. Jodie had once heard her mother tell a neighbor that the good Lord had granted her a double helping of joy in the one daughter, since He would not allow her more. Jodie recalled those words whenever she felt a little lonely in their big rambling house.

When she was feeling well, Louise loved to sing. Jodie could always tell when her mother was having a bad day, because those were the times when she returned from school to a quiet home. Otherwise her mother was either humming about her chores or chatting with a neighbor or playing hymns on the high-back piano which stood in the parlor. The only disappointment Louise Harland had ever expressed over her daughter was Jodie’s seeming lack of interest in anything musical. Except, of course, for the pleasure she took in her mother’s singing, occasionally even humming along quietly to herself. And Jodie was not the only one who enjoyed her mother’s happy bearing. Louise Harland cast joy over her husband’s quiet moods like sunshine dispelling mountain shadows.

Noting gladly the brief snatch of a hymn from her mother, Jodie’s thoughts returned to the day ahead.

“Incongruous,” she exclaimed, kissing her mother’s cheek. “Definitely incongruous.”

“My, but if you don’t gobble up words like other children do sweets,” Louise declared proudly. “Did you hear that, Parker?”

“Yes, yes,” her father mumbled, shaking out the paper’s next page.

But her mother made up for her father’s lack of enthusiasm. “You said it just right. Now can you use it in a sentence?”

“It is incongruous how I am so excited about school and the spelling bee today, and then plan to do—well, do nothing all day with Bethan tomorrow,” Jodie announced.

“I could not agree more,” Louise said with a laugh. “And now, my incongruous child, sit yourself down at the table and have your breakfast.”

Jodie half skipped, half ran to the corner dominated by the old maple. It was the grandest tree in all Harmony, a great leafy canopy which spread out over the joining of the two main streets. A half-dozen grown men would have trouble joining hands about its trunk. At present, the tree was crowned by a grand dome of autumn colors, burnished red and orange and copper in the morning light. All the town knew the place as Tree Corner, and it was where Jodie and Bethan met every morning for the walk to school.

This morning, however, there was no undersized copper-haired beauty coming down the lane toward her. In fact, Jodie waited so long she almost decided Bethan was sick, and was ready to start off alone when she spotted the little figure walking slowly toward her. Even at that distance, Jodie could see the dragging footsteps and sorrowful cast to the shoulders. Jodie raced down the street, only to stop when Bethan’s face raised from beneath the bright veil of hair.

The eyepatch was strapped into place.

“Oh, Bethan,” Jodie said, the sorrow in her voice matching the expression in the face before her.

“Momma says I’ve got to,” her friend mumbled miserably.

“Doctor Franklin too.”

“But you’ve been so good.”

Bethan’s visible eye leaked a single tear. “They say it’s not improving. They say if I don’t use it, it might get so bad I’ll go blind in that eye.”

Jodie bit off further argument. Anyone with a heart could see wearing the patch made Bethan miserable. For one moment Jodie thought of reaching out and undoing the strings. They could put it back in place on their way home from school. But even as Jodie considered it, she realized that Moira Keane was an intelligent woman and also a good mother. Jodie knew instinctively the woman ached for her little girl and would not have taken such a decision lightly. What Bethan needed was support and strength, not a conspirator.

“Well, that’s that, then,” Jodie said briskly. “You’ve got to do whatever it takes to make this thing go away once and for all.”

Bethan fingered the triangular patch. It was black and stiff and covered with shiny silk. The black strings crossed her forehead, pinching the hair in tight above both ears, before tying into an unattractive bow at the back. On her delicate features the patch looked bulky and horrid. Bethan said quietly, “I hate it.”

Jodie made an innocent face. “Hate what?”

Bethan stared at Jodie without responding, then said, “You know—this eyepatch.”

Jodie scrunched up her face and made a pretend search of Bethan’s peaches-and-cream features. “What eyepatch? I don’t see anything.”

“Oh, you.” Bethan swung her books in an arc, and Jodie leaped out of the way in exaggerated fashion. Bethan managed a small smile.

“That’s better,” Jodie said, grabbing Bethan’s free arm and pulling her forward. “Now we have to hurry, and I do mean hurry. I can’t get in Miss Charles’ bad books today. I’ve got a spelling bee to win.”

Despite their best efforts, they were late anyway. Or at least Jodie was. She insisted on walking Bethan down to her class, and gave the room a cold stare as whispers and snickers began over Bethan’s eyepatch. To anyone else, the patch would have been an irritation. For Bethan, it was a crushing blow. She was so quiet, and so sensitive. Jodie picked out the three worst class bullies, singled them out for a warning glower, one at a time, and strode meaningfully from the room. Anyone who made trouble for her best friend could count on big trouble from her.

Because of her self-imposed detour, she was scurrying down the hall to her own class minutes after the morning bell had rung. Jodie saw Miss Charles up ahead, deep in conversation with Mrs. Fitzgerald, and her heart sank. There was no way around the two teachers. She stopped where she was and hoped with all her heart that neither teacher would cast a glance her way.

“I’m still not sure it’s a good idea,” Miss Charles was saying.

“Me neither,” Mrs. Fitzgerald agreed. “I hate the thought of holding a student back. Especially someone as tenderhearted as little Bethan.”

Even before she realized it, Jodie started forward at the sound of Bethan’s name. The two women remained so engrossed in their discussion they did not take any notice of her approach.

Though Miss Amanda Charles was already in her second year of teaching at the Harmony school, Mrs. Fitzgerald had just joined the school. She had been assigned the class of slower learners, while Miss Charles taught the brighter students. These two new teachers were a generation younger than any of the others, which Jodie supposed was why they had quickly become fast friends. She liked them both.

She watched now as Miss Charles bit her lip in agitation, then asked, “You’re sure she can’t keep up?”

“That’s just it,” Mrs. Fitzgerald replied. “She is so shy, it’s hard to tell what is her real potential. But she is struggling.”

“She’s also quite small for her age,” Miss Charles commented reflectively. “Perhaps she would be more comfortable with the younger children. Maybe you are right.”

“No!” The exclamation was out before Jodie could help herself.

She stepped forward, then stopped abruptly as the two teachers turned her way. Her face flushed with her brashness, but she swallowed, took a deep breath, and lifted her chin in determination, even if it did mean getting herself in trouble. “I mean, please, you can’t,” she continued in a quieter voice, almost pleading in its tone.

“That won’t help her at all.”

“What are you doing out here in the hall?” Miss Charles demanded, giving Jodie a rather stern look.

“I was just…” Jodie waved a vague hand back in the direction of Bethan’s class.

“This is not the type of example I would expect from my best pupil,” Miss Charles said, her tone serious.

But Jodie refused to retreat, even if she got in further trouble. “Please, you can’t hold her back. You just can’t. She’s got a problem with her eye already. She’ll be humiliated.”

Miss Charles looked to the other teacher. “What problem is this?”

“A lazy eye. There’s a scientific name for it, but blessed if I can remember it,” explained Mrs. Fitzgerald.

“Amblyopia,” Jodie offered. “I looked it up. It is usually a correctable condition.”

The two women looked at her askance. Even Miss Charles seemed at times uncertain just how to deal with Jodie. Only the week before Jodie had heard Mrs. Sloane, Kirsten’s mother, call her an upstart. Miss Charles had come to her rescue, though, and said it was simply the sign of a brilliant mind, to run where others were forced to walk.

Jodie went on with her explanation. “Her eye isn’t getting better. Yet. So she has to wear this eyepatch sometimes. And she hates it.”

Mrs. Fitzgerald nodded slowly. “Wearing a patch would be difficult for any child—but for Bethan…” Her voice trailed off.

The pleading tone returned. “It would just crush her to have to stay back,” Jodie said. “Please. I can help her with her studies at night. She’s smart. Really. I know she can do the work.”

Miss Charles’ gaze softened. “You would offer your time? Why?”

Jodie nodded and replied simply, “She’s my very best friend.”