Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (15 page)

Her parents rejoiced. Rosa and John met with their priest, and the banns were announced on the three following Sundays. Throughout that time, Rosa and her mother quickly planned the wedding celebration—but not without some bewildered protests from her mother that there was no need for such haste. Rosa braced herself for an outburst from Lars that did not come. Perhaps he did not know about the upcoming wedding. He was not Catholic, and so he wouldn’t have heard the banns announced at Mass. Word of the upcoming nuptials spread from neighbor to neighbor, but slowly, and it was possible the news hadn’t reached the Jorgensen ranch. Rosa didn’t know, but she wondered.

As her wedding day approached, Rosa felt jumpy and unsettled and yet filled with a strange, fatalistic hope. She was fond of John and was confident she would grow to love him; she was determined to be a good wife and mother, inspired as much
by love as the need for atonement. Successful marriages had been made from far less.

Rosa and John married in the church where she had been baptized, surrounded by her family and friends and his. She felt quietly content as he took her home to the small, cozy adobe amid the fields of rye along the mesa near the Salto Canyon, her mother’s favorite vista. That night, she could not hide her tears after John made love to her, but he misinterpreted her grief and kissed her lovingly, assuring her that all would be well. She wanted to believe him, but apprehension had taken root in her heart, and she feared that a marriage founded upon a lie was doomed to failure despite all her good intentions.

Two nights later, she woke groggily to a furious pounding on the front door. “Rosa,” Lars shouted, pounding again. “Rosa, come out!”

“What the hell is going on?” mumbled John, turning over in bed beside her.

Outside, Lars’s voice broke and slurred. “Rosa, come out of there! You don’t belong with him. You belong with me!”

Rosa felt a cold fist grip her heart. She sat up, heart pounding with dread, and when Lars persisted in shouting for her to come out to him, to run away with him, John sat up too.

“Is that Lars Jorgensen?” he asked, suddenly wide awake. “What does he mean, you belong to him? I know he was fond of you when we were kids, but you said that was over.”

“It
is
over. Don’t listen to him. He’s drunk.” More drunk than he had ever been, from the sound of it. Trembling, Rosa forced herself to lie down and draw the quilt up to her chin as if she meant to try to sleep through the tumult. “If we ignore him, he’ll go away.”

John threw off the covers. “If I get the shotgun, he’ll go away faster.”

“John,” Rosa cried, seizing his arm. “You can’t shoot him!”

“Of course I won’t shoot him.” John shook free of her grasp. “I just mean to scare him off.”

As John climbed out of bed, they heard the rumbling of a truck over gravel. Another man’s voice rang out, shouting for Lars to come away from the adobe. John went to the window and peered outside. “Oscar’s come for him.”

Quickly Rosa joined John at the window and watched with horrified dismay as Oscar dragged his shouting, weeping, stumbling brother to the truck and half shoved, half lifted him into the front passenger seat. Oscar did not spare a single glance for the adobe as he hurried around to the driver’s side, climbed in behind the wheel, and sped off.

“I guess he heard about the wedding,” John remarked, letting the curtain fall and guiding Rosa back to bed, his satisfaction unmistakable even in the darkness.

“I suppose so.” Rosa sank into bed, sick at heart, wondering how Lars had heard the news. Despite their estrangement, she should have told him herself. To let him find out any other way, after all that they had meant to each other, was cruel.

She had been cruel and thoughtless and worse, but somehow he must have forgiven her, or he would not have rescued them from the canyon, nor would he have joined them on their pilgrimage.

The children woke early, and although Marta tried to keep her younger sisters and brother amused by watching the passing scenery, the novelty eventually wore off and they came to Rosa pleading hunger and boredom. When Lars suggested
that they visit the dining car, the children seconded him so eagerly that Rosa didn’t have the heart to refuse, despite her reluctance to abandon the security of their private car. She tugged Elizabeth’s tan cloche snugly upon her head so that it pushed her short, dark locks forward, concealing some of her bruises. Even so, as she and Lars and the children seated themselves at two tables for four on opposite sides of the center aisle, a few other diners glanced at her face only to look quickly away again. She noted their reactions with grim satisfaction as she draped her napkin over her lap and encouraged the children to do the same. Perhaps, for the first time, people’s inherent cowardice and reluctance to involve themselves in the aftermath of a woman’s battering might protect rather than harm her.

The full-course meal of fried eggs, bacon, hash brown potatoes, toast with jam, and coffee would have been filling and delicious if Rosa had been able to relax enough to eat rather than glancing warily about for suspicious police officers and vengeful mobsters toting tommy guns. Nothing on the menu suited Ana’s and Miguel’s new diet, so after watching Ana glumly sit on her hands so she wouldn’t be tempted to sample any of the tantalizing dishes on her plate, Rosa left Marta and Lupita to finish their lunch with Lars while she took Ana and Miguel back to their private car for another meal of cold corn tortillas. “I hate being sick,” Ana confessed as she washed down another dull bite of tortilla with water.

“The doctor in San Francisco will help you,” Rosa said, and for the first time, it felt like a promise she could keep.

Ana cheered up later when Lars returned with her sisters and offered to take them out to explore the train. Rosa was content to stay in the private car with Miguel, amusing him with
games and songs, cuddling him while they watched the small towns and verdant farms pass by. Gradually the breathless fear that had squeezed her since John left the adobe to kill Lars lifted, replaced by sadness and grief and worry about what might lie ahead of them.

The train pulled into the Oakland station a few minutes after nine o’clock. After disembarking, they carried their luggage to the pier where they would board the ferry to San Francisco. Departing passengers climbed the steps they had recently descended, the conductor called for all to come aboard, the whistle blew, and in a cloud of steam, the train chugged out of the station. Minutes after it departed, another train passed on an adjacent set of tracks heading in the opposite direction, but it did not pause at the station.

“Is that the train we’ll take home after Ana and Miguel see the doctor?” asked Lupita, craning her neck to watch as they walked along.

“No,
mija
,” Rosa said, shifting her sewing basket on her hip and holding tightly to Miguel’s hand so she wouldn’t lose him in the crowd. “That’s a freight train. See? There aren’t any windows for people to look out of, no seats or dining cars. This train carries food and goods, but no passengers.”

Lupita nodded and watched the train pass, intrigued, but Marta threw Rosa a quick, curious look from beneath raised brows, a single glance that told Rosa immediately that her eldest daughter had figured out that they were not going back to the Arboles Valley anytime soon, if ever. Rosa knew that eventually she would have to tell the others, but she dreaded that moment and had decided to put it off until after the doctor’s examination. She didn’t want to tell them they weren’t going home until she could tell them where they
were
going, and she
wouldn’t know that until the doctor provided a diagnosis and recommended a treatment.

“There sure are a lot of freight cars,” said Ana tiredly. She had slept poorly, woken throughout the night by the noise and jostling of the train and by stomach pains. Later, when she could not keep down the cornmeal mush she had eaten for breakfast, she confessed that she had tasted a few bites of chocolate layer cake at lunch the previous day when no one was watching. Rosa was greatly relieved that the cornmeal had not caused her illness, but not so relieved that she didn’t scold Ana for disobeying the doctor’s orders.

“I wonder what they’re carrying,” said Marta, watching the train cars pass.

“Maybe toys,” Lupita guessed.

“Fruits and vegetables, more likely,” said Lars. “Bound for markets throughout California and across the country.”

Lupita seemed about to reply until she caught sight of the ferry. “Are we going on that?” she exclaimed, pointing.

When the children heard that they were indeed, they would have run ahead to join the queue if they weren’t encumbered by luggage. They enjoyed the ride across the bay and seemed sorry when the ferry slowed and docked at the pier in San Francisco. They gathered their things and disembarked, and Rosa waited with them on the platform while Lars went off to make arrangements for a ride to the hospital.

“No need to hire a cab,” Lars told Rosa when he returned. “A station clerk recommended a boardinghouse near the hospital, and a streetcar can take us almost to the front door. The fellow says the rooms are clean and the food is better than what we’ll find elsewhere for the price. Sound all right to you?”

Rosa nodded. Although her first impulse was to make haste
to the hospital, she reasoned it would probably be best to find a place to stay and make themselves more presentable first. With Lars’s help she distributed the luggage among the six of them, and they followed Lars from the platform. The brisk streetcar ride up and down the steep hills of the city offered the children another adventure, and if not for Miguel’s weakness and Ana’s drawn face, Rosa could almost forget they were not an ordinary family out for a holiday—but they were far from ordinary, and although their lives would be forever intertwined, they were not a family.

They disembarked on a street corner a block away from the boardinghouse, a quaint, two-story residence in the Spanish style with stucco walls, a roof of curved red tiles, a deep front porch, and a patch of neatly mown green grass for a front yard. As they climbed the front stairs, they passed between two trellises covered with a deep, rich blush of climbing roses. Instinctively, Rosa glanced at Lars only to find him watching her, and although she quickly looked away, she knew he too was thinking of how, long ago, he had called her his Spanish rose—in affection, in amusement, in longing, in exasperation, in the heat of passion, in the anguish of farewell. Now her bloom had faded and she was simply Rosa Barclay, his rival’s wife.

Lars raised his hand to knock upon the front door, but then he hesitated and knelt down until he was eye level with Lupita. “Girls,” he said. “We’re going to play a game of Let’s Pretend while we’re here, all right?” Lupita nodded eagerly, Marta and Ana, with some caution. “I’m going to pretend to be your father, and your mother and I are going to use pretend names. You can call us Mama and Papa, okay?”

Lupita nodded, adding, “I want a pretend name too.”

Before Rosa could urge him not to make matters more complicated
than necessary, Lars said, “All right, Little Miss. What will your name be?”

“Maria.”

Rosa felt a wrenching tug of heartache. “No, not that.” Not the name of a daughter she had lost.

“Lupita is such a pretty name,” Lars said, with a glance to Rosa that told her he understood everything. “It’s perfect for a pretty girl like you. Why don’t you keep it?”

Lupita’s expression was a changeable sky, her delight at the compliment hidden and revealed again by the shifting clouds of stubborn annoyance at being denied her own way. Eventually pride won out and she agreed to remain Lupita, so Lars nodded as if impressed by her good judgment and knocked upon the door. A gray-haired wisp of a woman in a faded calico housedress opened the door. “Yes?” she greeted them, her eyebrows rising at the sight of the four children and inching even higher at the sight of Rosa’s bruised face.

“Good afternoon, ma’am. My name is Nils Ottesen and this is my wife, Rose.” He put his arm around Rosa’s shoulders and drew her forward, where she managed a smile and a nod. “Our family needs rooms for the night, possibly longer, and we’ve heard you run the most comfortable boardinghouse in town.”

“Do you have any vacancies?” asked Rosa, shifting Miguel to her other hip, thankful that the children had chosen that moment to be quiet and well behaved.

“Well, I might.” The woman’s mouth thinned in suspicion as her gaze traveled from Rosa’s bruised face to Lars’s somber one. “But I can’t have any trouble here or you’ll have to leave at once.”

“We won’t be any trouble,” said Lars, “and we can pay up front.”

The landlady needed only a moment to consider before she opened the door wider. “That’s fair enough. I can give you two rooms, but the children will have to share beds.”

“That’s fine,” Rosa said promptly, ushering the girls inside before the woman could change her mind. In the foyer, Lars signed the register with his alias and handed five dollars to the landlady, who introduced herself as Mrs. Sharon Phillips. She took two keys from a desk in the corner and led them, lugging their satchels and suitcases, upstairs, to two small rooms on opposite sides of a narrow hallway. She recited the hours and rates for meals and left them to settle in, but before she departed, her glance fell upon the quilts in Rosa’s basket.

“Did you make these?” she asked, stooping over to flip over the edge of the one Elizabeth had called Arboles Valley Star.

“No, they’re old family quilts.” Rosa resisted the urge to nudge the basket out of the way so the landlady would stop pawing through her things. “My mother made the star quilt as a gift for me and—and Nils, and my great-grandmother brought the octagonal quilt with her when she came to California to marry my great-grandfather.”

“They’re charming.” Mrs. Phillips straightened and regarded Rosa with new friendliness. “Old scrap quilts have so much character. It’s good to see young people appreciating them. Nowadays everyone fancies quilts made from kits they get in the mail from back east, and that’s if they bother to quilt at all. Can you imagine? That’s cutting corners when they should be cutting templates, if you ask me.”