Bittersweet Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #5): A Novel (36 page)

The “girls” were coming for tea; the old gang would be together for the first time in years. Flossy had broken the ring of friendship and fun when she had married and moved away. Now, due to the illness of the grandmother who had raised her, she was back briefly. Marfa and Vonnie would take time off from their busy round of summer duties, escaping for this memorable occasion, this reunion. The four of them would, first, fall into each other’s arms; then conversation would flow, as never-ending as it ever had been when they got together in years past.

They were no longer rambunctious children, however, but women having acquired the manners of the day and accustomed to certain amenities. And so Ellie would serve tea and refreshments. They could only enhance the occasion.

“You’re welcome to come in and meet the girls,” Ellie said to Sam before he left for the fields. “And you, too,” she added, indicating the children.

“We’ll see,” Sam said, hedging. He would be in his dusty work clothes, and this was, after all, a ladies’ tea. As for Hans and Gretchen, they were in their most faded, worn, shrunken clothes,
and barefoot, ready for a day of exploring the meadows, the sloughs, the bush. Their last foray had yielded an elusive tiger lily, which they had borne proudly to Ellie, and which still graced the center of the round oak table.

Hans cast longing eyes toward the sponge cake, and Ellie had an idea he might not lead his sister too far astray today. How proudly she would introduce them, worn garments and all—and no doubt grimy—when they returned from climbing trees or any of the numerous activities that would fill their summer with memories never to be forgotten.

“I’ll save cake for you,” she promised, and she was rewarded by the boy’s grin. A grin so like his father’s that it twisted the heart of Ellie Bonney, and she flashed them all such a smile that Sam went to work with a song in his heart, and the children sped off to their particular pursuits with never a care in the world.

The arrival of Flossy, Vonnie, and Marfa was announced by chatter before ever the screen door slammed behind them. Bonds such as theirs would never be forgotten, never broken. The conversation was punctuated almost immediately by laughter and preceded almost entirely by “Remember when...”

There they sat, in a ring, just as they had so many times over the years. Now, however, they reclined gracefully in chairs, daintily handling china and refreshments, where before they had sat cross-legged on the leaf mold in some shady nook, nibbling wild gooseberries or hazel nuts or whatever the bush was yielding at the time.

Marfa, still chubby, still round of face, still cheerful, still pleasant. Flossy, more worn, slightly shabby, as quiet as ever, as gentle. Vonnie, best dressed, as vivacious as ever, more sophisticated, just as brittle. Ellie, less exuberant perhaps, less inclined to take charge, thoughtful, quick to speak but ready to listen, a woman of charm and grace.

When the “remembers” were exhausted and the reminiscences thoroughly discussed, the talk grew more personal.

How was Vonnie enjoying marriage? How was she adjusting to life in Bliss once again? “Fine,” and “Fine, thank you.”

How was small Bonney developing? Was there a brother or sister in the offing? “Growing like a weed,” and a dimpling “Perhaps.”

How was Flossy’s grandmother doing? How many children were there now, and where were they? “Fairly well, thank you”; “five at last count,” and “with their paternal grandparents.”

And then all eyes turned with interest and curiosity on Ellie, long considered the “old maid” of the group.

“Is there somebody special?” Flossy, the absentee and largely ignorant of the happenings in Bliss, asked, while Vonnie seemed to listen tensely and Marfa, who knew all, sipped her tea complacently.

“I guess you could say so,” Ellie admitted, having tried to prepare herself for the questions she knew would be forthcoming today.

“Sam Dickson, isn’t it? Hasn’t been a widower for long, has he?” Vonnie, widow of a few months when she married again, asked, and managed to sound as if the relationship might be a questionable one.

“Over a year,” Ellie said patiently.

“How do you think you’ll enjoy being an instant mother?” Again it was Vonnie; again there was a needling, very slight, carefully cloaked but there.

Why should Vonnie, married and presumably happy, need to insert unsettling remarks into the one brief visit the old gang would have together? Ellie, knowing Vonnie thoroughly, had expected no less; she took it in good grace.

“When you meet him,” she said, speaking lightly but with a steady assurance to her voice, “you’ll understand. And when you meet the children—”

The words were no sooner spoken than the door was thrust open and two bedraggled, sun-browned, bleach-haired, bright-eyed children stormed in. Stormed in, to immediately subside, abashed before the prestigious assemblage studying them over cups of tea.

Turning toward them, Ellie saw nothing any different than she had seen all across her growing years when she and her friends
had played together—health, satisfaction, weariness. Happiness. All the things life in the bush did for a child.

“Come, Hans; come, Gretchen. I want you to meet my friends,” she said.

The two, silent but curious, stepped forward. The introductions were made; the children squirmed, looked bashful, fiddled with whatever treasures they had accumulated and held in their hands.

“Gopher tails,” Marfa said fondly. “Remember, girls?”

“Yes, I remember,” Vonnie affirmed. “But I don’t remember getting quite so dirty.” And she looked critically at the small ragamuffins standing self-consciously before her.

“We were every bit as dirty! And happily so,” Marfa supplied. “Oh,” she squealed, and the others jumped. “What is that you have there, Hans? What is it? Could it be—?”

Startled, Hans looked down at the object in his hands, turned it over, rubbed it on his shirt. Held it out.

Marfa took it, blackened though it was. Marfa took it, turned it over in her hands, her mouth falling open in pure astonishment.

“Girls! Do you know what this is? You’ll never guess!”

Round it was, with crimped edges. Once it had been shiny.

“Look,” she said, squealing again. “Look!” And she took her handkerchief, spit on a corner of it, and rubbed the dark object. Some of the grime came off; some of it never would—it was permanently blackened. Blackened as though by fire.

“I think this belongs to you, Grand Panjandrum,” Marfa twinkled. And she held out the insignia of the Busy Bees—the badge made from the end of a tin can.

A tin can lid that had been pounded and twisted into shape by Ellie herself, a tin can lid worn by each of them in turn.

Ellie took the object in her hand and stared at it blankly. Then, turning to Hans and Gretchen, she asked, her voice echoing oddly in her own head: “Where did you find this?”

“In that old burned-out cabin across the fields,” Hans said proudly. “Me and Gretchen dug around in there all afternoon. We found some ol’ bottles...”

“It has a hole so’s we can wear it,” Gretchen spoke up for the first time. “Hans is going to put some string through it so’s I can wear it around my neck. What do you suppose it means—BB?”

“Busy Bees,” Marfa said promptly. “It means Busy Bees. And I wore it when I wasn’t a lot older than you. We all wore it. We never knew what happened to it. Say,” she said in a puzzled tone, “how do you suppose it got into Aunt Tilda’s cabin?”

The silence careened, screaming, around the room.

And three pairs of eyes swiveled slowly and looked at Vonnie. Vonnie’s pert, usually fresh-colored face was pasty white.

Ellie called the meeting of the Busy Bees to order. She called for the reading of the minutes; no one, it seemed, had done anything to further the cause of the club, to carry out its purpose for existing.

“Hasn’t anyone found something helpful to do?” Ellie, as president, asked.

No one had.

“Well, neither have you!” Vonnie pointed out triumphantly. “And if anyone should, you should. After all, you’re the one wearing the badge most of the time.”

“You’ve all had turns. And anyone can have a turn that wants it,” Ellie defended, rubbing the shiny circle hanging from a string around her neck.

“It’s my turn,” Vonnie pouted. “Flossy had it, then Marfa, then you again. It’s my turn.”

Ellie removed the Busy Bee insignia; they were all fond of it, but she had special feelings for it, having designed it and pounded it out with her own hands. Still, Vonnie should have her turn.

“You can have it, oh,” she offered generously, “for the rest of the month.”

“That’s better!” Mollified, Vonnie slipped the shining bit of tin around her girlish neck and fingered the crimped edges, preening a bit, an exercise that came naturally to her.

“We can’t leave here,” Ellie said, returning to the problem at hand, “until we come up with something to do to help someone. It’s the purpose of the club, you know. What do you suggest?”

“Wash the heads of the Nikolai—”

“We did that already, silly!”

“But it should be done every week!”

Ellie interrupted the argument between Flossy and Vonnie, agreeing that something new, something challenging, was needed now.

“Knit winter socks—”

Flossy’s tentative suggestion was silenced by the pained expression, the rolled eyes Vonnie turned her way.

After a moment’s silence, Flossy, the compassionate one, tried again. “Help ol’ Aunt Tilda?”

Voting it a good idea, plans were laid. Ellie and Vonnie would work as a team, Flossy and Marfa another.

“I’ll start out,” Ellie, the organizer, offered. “I’ll explain to Aunt Tilda what we’re doing and how I’ll come each Saturday. After a couple of hours Vonnie can arrive, and on the following Saturday Flossy and Marfa can do the same. Right?”

Nods of agreement.

“Saturday, then,” Vonnie said. “Fine with me. I’ll be there with bells on.”

But it had not been bells. Vonnie had arrived wearing the Busy Bee badge. The badge that disappeared and was never seen again, that never turned up, that was forgotten in the turmoil and trauma following the death of Aunt Tilda.

Now, years later, the girls recalled it; Vonnie’s white, defiant face confirmed it.

The inquiry of the Mounties had not unearthed it; Vonnie had denied it. “I never went that day,” she had reported.

“Vonnie,” Marfa said now, slowly, “you were there that afternoon. You were there, after all.”

Vonnie blinked rapidly, stammered an “Uh...”

Marfa continued, in a voice of absolute certainty, a condemning voice. “You...
you
were the last one to see Aunt Tilda alive.”

Under the accusing eyes of the three people who knew her better than anyone else, Vonnie tossed her head, recovering herself.

“What of it?” she asked.

“It means that, that there was no fire when Ellie left.”

“Who said there was? Not me, for heaven’s sake! What other people thought—that’s their own business!”

“The badge, Vonnie,” Marfa pursued. “How did it get left in Aunt Tilda’s cabin, to lie there in the ashes all these years?”

Panic rose in Vonnie’s blue eyes. “The old lady grabbed it, all right?” she shrilled. “It was shiny, and she kept looking at it, and when I tried to fluff up her pillow, she grabbed it, wouldn’t let go!”

“And when you jerked away, did you knock over the lamp?”

“It’s not my fault the lamp was there! Ellie put it there, before she left—”

“It was dark in there; we all know that,” Marfa, the reasonable one, said. “And it had to be close to Aunt Tilda so she could light it... blow it out—”

“What if the old lady shoved me into it! Whose fault is that, I’d like to know! Not mine!”

No one condemned her, but the eyes of Marfa and Flossy looked at her gravely, even sorrowfully. In Ellie’s eyes the smallest flicker was lit, a flicker that presaged an eruption of gratitude to God so heartfelt it could never be adequately expressed. But she would try; her whole life long she would try.

“Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge,” Vonnie concluded belligerently.“The old woman was already on her deathbed, everyone knows that.”

Silently, without further talk, the party broke up and the three visitors said their good-byes, Marfa and Flossy subdued, Ellie in a daze, Vonnie abrupt, her face no longer white, but as red as... fire.