Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (27 page)

Her thoughts floated free of her bruised and aching body and she was back at the Jorgensen cabin again, safe and beloved in Lars’s arms.

As the weekend passed, Rosa longed for Monday, but that morning she woke before dawn to the sound of retching from Pedro and Maria’s bedroom. Quickly snatching up her robe, she raced next door only to find that Pedro had vomited all over himself, his quilt, and his crib. “It’s all right,
mijo
,” she murmured, carrying him to the kitchen, where she quickly undressed
and bathed him before taking him back to his room. As soon as she had him in a clean diaper and pajamas, she heard the unmistakable sound of diarrhea. Pedro had quieted down, soothed by the comfort of Rosa’s voice and the warm bath and soft, clean clothes, but at this he began to cry again. “It’s okay,” Rosa said as she changed his diaper a second time. “It’s okay.” But as she carried him around the front room, rocking him gently in her arms and whispering a lullaby, a too-familiar dread stole over her. Pedro was only six months old. The other children had been granted at least a year of good health. It was too soon, it was too soon, it was desperately unfair—

“Mamá?”

Rosa turned to find Marta padding into the front room, blinking and yawning. “Oh, Marta. Did Pedro wake you?” When Marta nodded, Rosa sighed and said, “He’s quieting down now. Go back to bed,
mija
.”

Practical Marta promptly realized something Rosa had forgotten. “I’ll hold him while you change his sheets,” she said, crossing the room and reaching for her baby brother.

“You need your sleep,” Rosa protested, but she let Marta take him.

“So do you, Mamá.” Marta cradled her baby brother and murmured soft baby talk to him in a sweet falsetto. “I’d rather hold you than clean up your crib, you know that, baby brother? You know why? Because you are a sweetie pie, but throw up is yucky.”

Rosa managed a wan smile before hurrying off to strip Pedro’s mattress, wipe down the bars of his crib, and put on fresh sheets. When she returned to the front room, Marta was sitting in her father’s favorite chair, Pedro asleep in her arms. “Don’t tell Papa,” she implored as she carefully passed the baby to her mother.

“Never,” promised Rosa solemnly. “Now, off to bed. Thank you,
mija
. I don’t know how I’d manage without you.”

Marta offered her a proud, drowsy smile and went to her room.

Rosa put Pedro down in his crib with a kiss and a whispered prayer, and then returned to her own bed, where John slept or pretended to. Listening and alert, she had trouble falling back asleep and doubted that she would be able to or even that she should. Hours later, she woke with a start to find the sun hidden behind gray storm clouds, John gone, and the aroma of brewing coffee in the air. Pedro must have slept the rest of the night through, she realized as she threw off the covers and hurried to him. She found Ana kneeling on the floor beside the crib, one arm extended through the bars so she could entertain her brother by dancing his teddy bear around. “He needs his diaper changed really, really badly,” Ana reported when she heard her mother enter.

“I could tell from the hallway,” Rosa replied, forcing a wry tone to disguise her worry. More diarrhea. She had seen this before and she knew what the rest of the day would hold, what the next months and years would bring, if God granted her baby so much time. She muffled a sob, asked Ana to go and set the table for breakfast, and changed Pedro’s soiled diaper, silent tears of anguish slipping down her cheeks.

She carried him into the kitchen and set him in his high chair while she prepared breakfast. “Pedro was sick last night,” she told John when he came in from the barn and pulled up a chair to the table.

He frowned, resigned, as she set his plate of bacon and eggs before him. “I guess we knew that was coming. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” Rosa felt an iron hand constrict her
throat. Without a word, she went to the icebox for butter for John’s toast, and as the girls came to the table, she busied herself pouring them glasses of milk so she would not lash out at him.

Gray sheets of winter rain began to fall soon after Marta left for school and John for the barn, muttering about the broken tractor he had been unable to repair. Ana and Maria were listless and tired, despite her attempts to coax them into cheerfulness, so she told them stories and taught Ana how to make paper snowflakes out of old newspapers while Maria played with her doll. All the while Rosa struggled to feed Pedro, or at least get some milk or water into him, but everything came back up, and he went through two diapers an hour until he was utterly empty. He had a fever, which was unusual, but it did not seem dangerously high. She felt herself straining from the effort of maintaining a calm, reassuring demeanor for the children’s sake while inside she felt as if she were gasping for breath and screaming for help in a silent void.

When John came in for lunch, she beseeched him to stop by Dr. Goodwin’s house on his way to the train station to fetch the mail. “There’s no sense in asking him to come by,” John replied. “He’ll only say it’s the same thing the older kids get and he won’t have anything for it.”

He left for the station. Rosa put the children down for their afternoon naps, tidied the kitchen, and tried to calm her frantic thoughts with the familiar routine of household tasks, but nothing worked. A knock on the door startled her so much that she jumped, and when she answered it, she was surprised to see Lars standing there, rain dripping off the brim of his hat. In all her worry, she had forgotten that he might come.

“Rosa,” he said, his brows drawing together in concern. “What’s wrong?”

Everything was wrong, everything. “Pedro’s sick,” she said before words failed her. If she let out one drop of her anguish, she knew it would all come pouring out of her, and she could not risk unburdening herself with the children in the house where they might overhear. She tugged on her boots, which she had left by the front door after going out to feed the chickens. Stepping out into the rain, she shut the door, seized Lars’s hand, and dashed through the mud to the barn. Once inside, she dropped his hand, sank heavily upon a bale of hay, and fought back tears, oblivious to her rain-soaked clothes and hair and the cold seeping into her bones.

“What is going on?” Lars demanded. He shrugged out of his coat, shook the rain off of it, and draped it over her shoulders. “Good lord, what happened to your face?” Before she could try to conceal her bruises with her long hair, he sat down beside her and cupped her chin in his hand, turning her face toward him. Steadily his anger rose as he took in the cut on her cheekbone, her bruised jaw, the black eye. “Christ almighty, I’ll beat the hell out of him for this.”

“No.” She turned her head to free her chin from his grasp. “You’ll just make everything worse.”

“Is this the first time he’s hit you or does this happen a lot?”

“Lars, listen to me. That’s not important now—”

“Like hell it isn’t. Rosa, you shouldn’t live this way. It’s not good for you or the children.”

He would never understand that she had no choice. “Pedro’s sick,” she blurted. “He’s had diarrhea for half a day, and he throws up everything I try to feed him. It’s too soon—it’s not supposed to happen so soon! He’s only six months old. I don’t understand how this can be. Each of the other children thrived for at least a year before they fell ill, and it didn’t strike Ana until
she was five. He’s still just a baby. Why is this happening now?”

“Rosa.” Lars put his arms around her and she fell against his chest, sobbing. “Rosa, it’s okay. It’s going to be all right.”

She shook her head, clutching his wool sweater with both hands. It was never going to be all right. She could not lose another child. Her heart couldn’t withstand it.

“Rosa.” His voice was calm in her ear. “Listen to me. Pedro has diarrhea and he’s throwing up. Does he have a fever too?”

“Yes.”

“Well, so does my niece.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “What?”

“Annalise had to stay home from school today sick with the same stomach bug it sounds like Pedro has. A few of her friends had it last week. It’s been working its way through the school all month.”

Rosa took a deep, shuddering breath. Could it be as simple as that, a common illness spread from child to child? She desperately wanted to believe it, but fate was never kind to her children and spared them nothing. “Pedro doesn’t go to school, and Marta isn’t sick, so she didn’t give him anything.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Marta had a mild case, so mild that neither of you realized she was even sick. Maybe someone brought it here when he came to pick up his mail. Maybe I’m that someone, in which case, I’m terribly sorry.”

“Do you really think that’s all that’s troubling him?” she asked, sitting up and blinking away her tears.

He nodded, his hands lingering on her shoulders. “Rosa, sometimes children just get sick. I’m sure he’ll be fine in a few days. Don’t be afraid and don’t lose hope.” Gingerly he brushed a lock of long dark hair away from her face, tucked it behind her
ear, and traced the line of her cheekbone and jaw with a fingertip just above her skin so that she felt the warmth of his hand although he did not touch her cuts and bruises. “Pedro will be fine, but you, Rosa, you need to do something about this. This can’t go on.”

He leaned forward and kissed her gently on her cut cheek, and then near the tender bruise around her eye, and then he stroked her hair again and pulled her close to him so that her cheek rested on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat through his sweater, and as she closed her eyes, his arms slipped beneath the borrowed coat so that he could embrace her. She clung to him for a long moment, listening to the pounding of his heart, and then, still dizzy from relief and overwhelmed by a sudden rush of memories—the touch of his hands, the scent of his skin—she raised her face to his and he met her with a kiss.

As the rain crashed upon the barn roof, the years fell away and Lars was holding her once more and loving her as he had so many nights so long ago when they had stolen away to the abandoned ranch cabin near the apricot orchard, when the promise of lifelong love seemed within reach, and grief and heartbreak were only indistinct shadows on the horizon.

Afterward, Rosa lay quietly within the circle of Lars’s arms, his coat drawn over them for warmth. She could not believe what she had done.

“You should leave,” she said softly, sitting up and brushing loose hay from her hair and dress. “I need to go inside too, to check on the children.” They were probably still asleep, but she didn’t want them to be afraid if they woke and called for her and she didn’t answer.

He caught her by the arm as she rose and straightened her dress. “You aren’t still worried about Pedro?”

“Oh, I’m worried about him. He’s a sick little boy. But I’m not as terrified as I was before you came.” She managed a tremulous smile and clasped his hand. “Thank you.”

He stood, brushed hay from his clothes and hair, and gave his coat a good shake. “But you’re still upset. What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” she echoed, feeling tears gathering. “I’m married, Lars, and not to you.”

“Not for lack of trying on my part.”

“You didn’t try hard enough when it counted,” she reminded him. She felt flushed and dizzy. She pressed her icy hands to her burning cheeks and sat down heavily on the hay bale. “We can’t ever tell John. He can’t ever know.”

Lars stared at her in disbelief. “You mean you’re going to stay with him?”

“Of course,” she said numbly. “We’re married. He’s my husband. What are you suggesting—divorce? You know I could never—”

“Rosa, you’re miserable with him. He hits you.”

“Only when he’s upset.” All the more reason for Lars to leave immediately. She stood too quickly, waited for the room to stop spinning, and started for the barn door. “I can’t talk about this now. You have to go. Please.”

Grimly he drew in a deep breath and nodded. Snatching up his hat from the floor, he wrapped his other arm around her waist and pulled her closer for a deep, soft, lingering kiss. Despite her apprehensions, she melted into him all over again. Then she pulled herself together and pushed him away. “You have to go.”

“I’m coming back, you know.”

“Next Monday.” She squeezed his hand in farewell and then tore herself away. Perhaps by Monday she would know what to
do. She couldn’t think now, with Lars’s smell on her skin and Pedro sick in the adobe and John on his way home. She couldn’t believe what she had done. Already the past hour seemed like a dream, vivid in slumber only to fade upon waking.

She dashed to the adobe without looking back. She heard the roar of the car as Lars started the engine, the sounds muffled by the rainfall and fading as he drove away.

The week passed. As Lars had predicted, Pedro soon recovered and was restored to his usual sweet, happy self, but Rosa’s relief was tempered by her memory of what she and Lars had done. Guilt stabbed at her at unexpected moments throughout the day. Another woman might have been secretly glad to betray an unkind, unloving husband, and consider the brief, illicit bliss small recompense for the pain and misery he inflicted upon her. She might look forward to another encounter the next time her husband was away, and she might even consider running away to be with her lover. But not Rosa. In Lars’s arms she had remembered what it was like to be loved and cherished, and her heart ached with loss now that the fleeting moment had passed and would not come again. It could not. In one forbidden act she had broken every vow she had made to her husband, to God, and to herself.

It took all her courage to tell John that she needed him to watch the children while she went to confession, and that it could not wait, but he revered the church enough to accept that whatever was troubling her was between her and God. The young, red-haired priest who had been so kind when her mother had died a suspected suicide was stern and unyielding when it came to adultery. In the past, Rosa had left the confessional feeling freer, lighter, more capable of living a good Christian life, and eager to fulfill the penance assigned to her by the compassionate
elderly priest. Now, many years and many failures later, his young successor made her feel disconsolate and alone.