The Preacher's Daughter

Florence, Kansas, 1878

S
ounds woke him. A shoe scraping against the floor. Muttered conversation. The clink of a bottle. Familiar sounds. The smelly fire had gone out hours ago, and the tiny cabin was cold.

Ben buried his head beneath his arm, adjusted his bony hip against the inadequate padding between him and the floorboards, and slid closer to his younger brother for warmth. Flynn’s belly growled in his sleep. They hadn’t had a meal since early that morning, and it had consisted of eggs and milk his sister had stolen.

“Wake up.” A man’s voice. Gruff in the silence of the room.

Ben peered through the darkness to see the man touch his sister’s shoulder. Several feet away, she jerked and sat up. A light shone from behind the threadbare blanket that served as a divider between this sleeping area and their mother’s, enough light to see that the figure leaning over her was one of Della Foster’s nighttime callers.

“What do you want?” Ben’s sister whispered, shrugging the man’s hand from her shoulder.

“Come quickly. Your mother has taken a fall and I need your help to get her back inside.”

Ben sat up. “I’ll help.”

Ellianna pulled on her moth-eaten sweater over her underwear. “No, you stay here with Flynn,” she whispered and tiptoed around their younger brother where he lay. “It’s just Mama needing help to get to bed again. I can do it.”

She followed the man around the blanket curtain.

Ben sat up and looked at Flynn. Getting to his feet, he peeked to see that his mother truly wasn’t in the cabin. Sometimes she had trouble walking right. And she could be really heavy when she was like that. After tiptoeing to the door in stockinged feet, he stepped outside.

From a little farther on Ellianna asked, “Where is she?”

“Here,” the man replied. “Over here.”

“I don’t see her,” she answered.

“In here.”

Ben followed behind quietly. A horse and carriage sat a hundred yards from the shack. Mama was in that buggy? She never went anywhere.

Ellianna was peering into the carriage.

Ben had a bad feeling. Was Mama dead? Had something really bad happened to her?

“I don’t see anything,” Ellianna said.

Winston Parker grabbed her around the back of the neck. “Get inside.”

“No! No, I—”

“It wasn’t a question.” He shoved her into the carriage and she fell. “Get in!”

“Stop!” Ben scrambled forward, reaching them just as Winston pushed Ellianna all the way inside and tried to climb in behind her and shut the door.

“Let her out of there! Where’s Mama?” Ben grabbed the man’s arm, and Parker flung him away. He pushed Ellianna flat on her stomach and she cried out.

Parker clamped a hand over her mouth and she clawed at him, blindly reaching for his eyes, his throat. His hand slipped and she managed a scream.

Terrified now, Ben beat at the man’s back and head with all his might. A fist met with his jaw and he fell back on the hard earth, seeing stars, momentarily stunned.

The carriage door slammed shut.

Ellie’s muffled cries shot terror through him. “Mama!”

Ben turned and ran for the house. “Mama! Help Ellie! You have to help Ellie! That man’s hurting her!”

Ben had to help her. But how? His eight-year-old brain thought over the meager contents of the room and settled on an iron skillet. He grabbed it and ran out the door.

His mother came stumbling onto the porch at that moment, a bag in the crook of her arm.

“Mama! Help Ellie! Hurry!”

She pushed him away and yanked the squeaky door open.

Ben grabbed her arm. “You gotta help her! He’s hurtin’ her!”

She pulled away and carried her bag inside.

Ben stared after his mother for a moment, then shook himself into action and tore back to the carriage. There was no one but him to help Ellianna. No one but him who cared.

He pounded the carriage door with the skillet, beat the handle until it fell to the ground, but still the door didn’t budge. Inside he heard muffled crying, and it wasn’t long until his own wail drowned out his sister’s.

He wasn’t big enough or strong enough to help her.

Newton, Kansas, 1894

H
er mother had died of boredom. Tedium. Monotony. Lorabeth Holdridge looked up from the worn Bible on her lap to her father, sitting with his eyes closed in prayer. She was convinced that no one could spend every night of their life in this manner without a little piece of their dreams drying up and dying week by week, month by month, until finally there was nothing left alive and their spirit simply left their body.

Beneath her backside, the hard wooden chair deliberately kept her from being too comfortable or allowing her mind to wander. Her father would consider it sinful, but her imagination had been her escape to alluring places ever since she’d been old enough to know there was more to life than this.

She glanced at her seventeen-year-old brother. She’d been waiting to make waves until she was sure he could take care of himself without her here. Until she knew he’d be okay. Simon stifled a yawn behind his hand and raised dark eyes, dull from boredom, to hers.

She crossed her eyes.

The corner of his mouth twitched in an effort to keep a smile from forming.

Ambrose Holdridge reached over and thumped Simon on the knee. He gave Lorabeth a stern look that told her he knew she was the instigator of this disruption.

A knock sounded on the back door. It wasn’t unusual for a caller to arrive of an evening, a parishioner needing prayer or a bit of advice.

“Continue in my absence,” their father said, and left the room.

As soon as Lorabeth heard voices in the kitchen, she whispered, “I’m dying here, Simon.”

“You’ll meet a man,” he began.

“Where? Where will I meet a man when I stay at the Chaneys’ all week, then obey Father’s demands and come home on Friday evening so I can clean, do laundry and tend the garden all weekend? Sundays I play the piano for church, prepare your dinner, bake and iron. Monday morning I head back to the Chaneys’ until the next Friday night. My only moments to myself are late at night after the Chaney children are asleep.”

“You convinced Father to let you take that job,” he said.

“And I love it. I do,” she said earnestly. “I’m not complaining about the work. It takes me away from…from this.” But she’d been functioning at this frantic pace for nearly two years. Now that she’d seen how other people lived and the freedom they enjoyed, she could no longer wait.

Only three chairs remained around the hearth. Her older sister Ruthann had married and now lived in Florence with her husband and new son. Her younger brother Jubal had married and was farming a few miles away.

“I’ve prayed
hard
for that husband, Simon.” She curled one hand into a frustrated fist. Though Lorabeth slept very little, when she did, she often dreamed of a man with a wild untamed spirit like hers. Someone handsome, Lord, she constantly entreated, but not taken with himself. Someone filled with life and vitality who would slash open new horizons and show her the world she craved.

“I know how badly you wanted to attend university,” Simon said with regret in his eyes.

Her father had staunchly refused. University was too worldly for a pure young woman, held too many risks and offered far too much exposure to unseemly conduct. She had responsibilities to the family and to the work of the church.

“I’d be happy for you if you got to go,” she assured him. She’d always gone through the motions and done what was expected, but she’d never really felt alive or content until she’d worked in the Chaneys’ home, until she’d lived in the midst of their family. But glimpses weren’t enough. Hearing their laughter and watching her employers with their children exposed the aching emptiness that had existed hidden inside Lorabeth her entire life. The memory of her mother, thin and pale on her sick bed, begging Lorabeth not to settle for less than her dreams had been nagging at her every waking moment.

For months she’d been thinking that perhaps there was an answer besides the elusive husband she’d been praying for. Perhaps there was a way to take those last few steps away from her father’s suffocating control.

“I have a plan,” she said, keeping her voice low. “You’ll be left on your own for now, but before long you will leave, too. You’ll find someone special. All the young ladies in church are taken with you.”

He grinned. “What’s your plan?”

The back door closed and footsteps sounded on the wooden floor in the hallway. Promptly, brother and sister sat back and composed themselves.

Lorabeth closed her eyes and waited with her heart pounding.

Her father’s chair creaked. “Mrs. Jenkins brought eggs,” he said.

“I need to speak with you, Father,” she said. Carefully, Lorabeth worked out the correct words in her head.

He fastened his stern gaze on her. “Can it not wait, daughter?”

“I have waited,” she told him.
A lifetime.
Her memory dredged up images of her mother, more weary, more downtrodden as each year passed and hope steadily ebbed away. “This is the only chance I have that I’m not baking or doing laundry or sitting in church.”

He raised a censuring eyebrow. “A virtuous woman looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness.”

That same Proverbs Thirty-one woman had a husband who praised her and children who rose up and called her blessed, but Lorabeth bit her tongue instead of pointing out that this was not her own household. Arguing that she was quite inconveniently the last Holdridge female left would only be hurtful, and she would never hurt him. “It’s just that this is my only opportunity to speak with you,” she said as respectfully as she knew how.

“Very well. What’s on your heart?”

Ellie Chaney hadn’t asked Lorabeth to work any more days than she already did, but Lorabeth’s future depended on her belief that the woman would be glad to have her living with them full-time. She chose her words and said, “Mrs. Chaney is expecting another child soon.”

Her father lifted the same dark eyebrow.

“She could use more help on weekends.”

“What about your duties at home?” her father predictably asked. “It’s well and good that you are able to help the doctor’s wife with her children, but not at the cost of your own family.”

“I’m twenty-one years old, Father,” she pointed out. “Ruthann was living away from home when she was nineteen.”

“She had a husband of her own to care for. You do not.”

As if she needed that pointed out. Her neck and cheeks warmed at his reminder. She composed her thoughts before speaking aloud. “I believe I’m old enough to make important decisions for myself.”

His fingers twitched on the Bible he held on his knees. With her heart racing, she anticipated his objections.

Simon darted a look at his father. He seemed to be waiting as breathlessly as Lorabeth.

“I do want your approval and your blessing, of course,” she added. “And I don’t wish to leave you without help. I’m sure I could arrange to come over one or two mornings a week to do laundry. Perhaps I could mention to the Widow Hinz that though the pies she brings you are welcome, bread would be more practical.”

The woman who had taken over as proprietress of the bakery after her husband’s death five years ago supplied the Holdridge men with pastries each week.

“And of course I’ll still be in church on Sunday mornings.” She was proud of herself that her voice hadn’t been pleading or begging, though her heart was on callused knees in supplication.

Simon studied his father for another minute, but clamped his eyelids shut when Ambrose glanced in his direction.

“As you say, Lorabeth, you are a grown woman,” Ambrose began. “I can see that you’ve given this matter much thought.”

She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I’ve trained you up in the way you should go. Now that you are older, I must trust that you will not depart from those ways.”

Her relief was like a weightlessness that started at her feet and worked its way upward. His consent was all she’d hoped for. “I won’t, Father.”

“I will talk with Dr. Chaney to remind him of the enormity of his responsibility while you are living under his roof.”

“He’s a wonderful man, Father. And Mrs. Chaney is a remarkable woman. I’m completely safe in their home.”

“I would be more confident if he attended services on a more regular basis.”

“He’s a doctor. He’s often called away to help people. Mrs. Chaney is always in church with her children and her brothers.”

Her father nodded. “Very well, Lorabeth. You have my blessing to live in the Chaneys’ home.”

She wanted to jump up and hug him, skip and dance around the parlor, shout her joy to the rafters—sing, even! But she held it all inside, a warm tingling expectation that buoyed her young woman’s heart and sang hallelujahs through her veins until her limbs quivered.

“Now we shall continue with our prayer time,” Ambrose directed.

Lorabeth felt like a butterfly that had emerged from its cocoon inside a glass jar and the lid was finally being unscrewed.

Oh, thank You, Lord! Thank You that by next week I will be free! Thank You I can buy some pretty things for my room at the Chaneys’. Help me find time to stop at the library. Oh, and please help Simon find a good wife.

Lorabeth closed her eyes and smiled with her heart.

Lorabeth could hardly contain her excitement the following morning. She hummed a cheerful tune as she snipped flowers from the tidy garden and arranged them in a vase to place before the pulpit, then picked up her pocketbook and Bible. Simon held open the back door and she met his eyes as she passed him.

“I’ve seen the doctor’s home,” he whispered. “It’s big. Do you have your own room?”

“I do. The quilt on the bed was one of Mrs. Chaney’s wedding gifts. It’s red and blue, Simon. She wears colorful dresses and she laughs and plays with the children. The doctor reads them bedtime stories from books of fables written by a man named Aesop. I wish you could see it all. I wish I could take you with me.”

She took her place beside her brother as they walked the width of their yard behind their father to the United Congregational Church next door.

“They truly are good people?”

“Truly,” she assured him.

He gave a nod and touched the back of her hand. “Don’t worry about me, Lorabeth. This is my last year of school and then I plan to apprentice to one of the tradesmen in town.”

He was a thoughtful young man, and she appreciated his effort to set her mind at ease regarding his welfare.

This morning she didn’t mind arriving an hour before service or straightening the hymnals on the backs of the pews or dusting the organ and the windowsills.

Her father handed her a sheet of paper listing the hymns they would be singing that morning, so she took a seat at the organ and practiced the chords and notes she could play without music. She turned to the pages anyway, because her father thought it looked prideful and careless to have the music memorized.

When the people began filtering into the building, she watched for the Chaneys. Eighteen-year-old Flynn, Ellie’s younger brother was the first family member she saw, and he was carrying three-year-old Anna on his arm. Her red-blond hair had been threaded with blue ribbon and fashioned into two braids.

Lorabeth noted that her father was occupied in a conversation before hurrying to the aisle where the Chaney family had begun to settle. Five-year-old Lillith greeted her with a hug, so Anna leaned from her uncle’s arms to do the same. Nate and David, ten and eight, had their heads together as though they were concocting a scheme, but David looked up to notice her and both boys grinned ear to ear. Nate was the spitting image of his brown-haired father while David had Ellie’s violet eyes and delicate chin.

Finally she reached Ellie. Caleb was holding his wife’s elbow to guide her into their row. Lorabeth had to hurry to the pew ahead and lean over the back to speak to her employer. “Ellie! No, don’t get up.”

“Good morning, Lorabeth.” Ellie stood for a hug anyway, a challenging task because of the girth she carried out front. Her friends were predicting twins. Her lilac-colored dress made her eyes look almost purple. Her delicate appearance belied a strength of character Lorabeth had grown to appreciate. “You’re positively glowing this morning.”

“I have exciting news,” she explained. “My father has given his blessing for me to stay with you
permanently.
I can be there with you even on Saturdays and Sundays from now on.”

Ellie’s smiled dimmed slightly.

Lorabeth’s breath hitched in her chest.

“This is such a surprise,” Ellie said. “I don’t know what to think.”

Lorabeth had placed all her hopes on Ellie accepting her. She’d faced her father and won his approval. If Ellie didn’t want her full-time, her dream would be dashed. She’d been so sure. She’d been so…impulsive.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Ellie asked, concern creasing her brow. “You’re a young woman, Lorabeth. You deserve time for yourself. I don’t expect you to work seven days a week. You do so much for me now, and I can’t afford to pay you what you’re worth.”

“My pay is sufficient, that’s not a problem. And I won’t work seven days. If it’s all right with you, I’ll take a couple of mornings off during the week.” Lorabeth’s heart pounded in apprehension.

“But of course it’s all right.” Ellie grasped Lorabeth’s hand. “I don’t know what I would do without you. You’re the best present I ever got.”

Relief lifted the cloak of concern from Lorabeth and she could breathe again. Tears smarted behind her eyes.

“No more than you deserve, my dear.” Caleb Chaney had overheard and now wrapped his arm protectively around his wife’s shoulders.

“If you’re certain this is what you want, then I’m delighted,” Ellie told her, still clinging to her hand.

There was no doubt in her mind. She had promised her mother she wouldn’t abandon her dreams, and this was an important step toward keeping that promise. “I’m certain.”

The room had grown quiet. Lorabeth turned to find people settled in their pews and her father casting her a stern look from his place behind the pulpit. She gave Ellie a last appreciative smile, then squeezed her hand before releasing it and hurrying to her seat at the organ. She played the introduction to the first hymn, and the people stood.