Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (4 page)

Distracted, Rosa swept her long black hair out of her eyes, her fingers touching a gash in her scalp and the damp, matted hair around it. “
Mija
, we don’t have any others.”

“Papa does.”

“No, he doesn’t, honey.” She needed bags—but she had feed sacks. She had washed and dried several empty cotton feed sacks and had put them in her sewing basket to make into undergarments for the girls. They would do.

“Yes, he does,” Lupita insisted. “He put them in the barn. I saw him.”

Her words sank in, and for a moment Rosa hesitated, studying her youngest daughter. “Marta and Ana, would you carry the clothing piles to the front room, please?” When they nodded, she turned back to Lupita. “Show me.”

Lupita seized her hand and led her from the adobe and across the yard to the barn. A few drops of rain pelted the dry earth around them as they ran. Inside the barn, Lupita dashed to the ladder and scrambled up to the hayloft. Rosa climbed gingerly after her, a sharp pain stabbing her in the side where John’s boot had met her ribs. At the top she crawled through the square opening and out onto the hay-strewn floor, dizzy and gasping.

“There,” Lupita said, tugging on Rosa’s sleeve and pointing to a mound of hay in the corner. “He put them under there. He doesn’t know I saw him.”

Rosa forced herself to stand and made her way across the hayloft, picking up the discarded pitchfork on the way. Dubious that she would find anything useful, mindful of the swiftly passing minutes, she tossed the golden strands of hay aside until the tines struck something hard. Setting the pitchfork aside, she brushed the rest away with her hands and discovered several wooden crates, some large, some small, and three brown leather valises.

Rosa stared at the strange cache. What was John hiding?

“See?” said Lupita, slipping her hand into her mother’s. “I told you.”

“Yes, you did, sweetheart.” Rosa squeezed Lupita’s hand, stooped to open one of the valises—and when it snapped open, she fell to her knees, stunned. The valise was stuffed with cash, hundreds of twenty- and fifty-dollar bills bound into neat, orderly stacks.

“That’s a lot of money,” said Lupita in a small, shocked voice. “Is that Papa’s money?”

“I don’t know.” Rosa opened the second valise and found more of the same. “I suppose it must be.”

“Where did he get it?”

“I don’t know.” Not by mortgaging the farm, that was certain. Rosa waded through the hay to the nearest large crate. It was nailed shut, but when she gave it a hard shove, she heard the tinkle of glass and a faint slosh of liquid. Surely it was alcohol. What other liquid would John need to hide? Somehow her husband had become entangled with bootleggers. That would explain everything—the cash, the roadster, and his mysterious errands.

The remaining large crates surely held more liquor, so Rosa turned to one of the four smaller crates. They were about half the height of the larger crates, long and shallow, but when Rosa nudged one, it made no sound, though it was heavy. She snatched up the pitchfork and tried to pry the nails loose, but her hands shook and the nails held fast. Turning the pitchfork around, she smashed the handle into the top of the crate, hitting it again and again, her teeth clenched against the pain in her side. Finally the plywood cracked and splintered. Dropping the pitchfork and falling to her knees beside the crate, she peered through the hole in the lid and glimpsed the gleaming, polished stock of a tommy gun.

She scrambled to her feet and backed away. “Lupita,” she said as steadily as she could, “go back to the house and tell your sisters to put on their shoes.” She took the handle of a brown leather valise in each hand and glanced up to find Lupita gaping at her. “Lupita, go!”

Lupita flew across the hayloft, down the ladder, and out of
the barn. Rosa dropped the valises through the square opening one at a time, breathing a sigh of relief when they hit the stone floor of the barn and fell over without bursting open. Painfully she descended the ladder, seized the valises, and threw them into the back of the wagon. They had too much to carry to flee on foot.

She hitched up the horses and dashed back to the house through a thin drizzle, clutching her aching side. The girls waited in the front room. Marta carried Miguel, who rested his dark, curly head on her shoulder and whimpered.

“Mamá,” said Ana, her little brow furrowed anxiously, “your face looks scary.”

“Lupita, get my sewing basket, please.” Rosa went to the kitchen sink, turned on the tap, and splashed water on her face. She could not bear to look in a mirror and see the ugliness of her marriage written in blood and bruises upon her features. A long time ago, she had been beautiful. She had been loved. Now—now she was frightened, and broken, and alone, and desperate to protect her children from the consequences of her mistakes. The children were all that mattered anymore.

She snatched up a towel from the counter and carefully patted her face dry, then hurried back to the children. “Better?” she asked Ana, who managed a small smile and nodded. Lupita had set the sewing basket next to the satchel; Rosa dug through it and found four cotton feed sacks, and she filled each with a pile of clothing. Distributing the bundles to the girls, she told them to get in the wagon as fast as they could and keep an eye on Miguel. As they darted away, Rosa glanced around for anything essential that they could not leave behind, listening for the roadster over the patter of rain. When John came home, he would be incensed, outraged—and once he climbed into the
hayloft and discovered what Rosa had done, what she had found—

It would have been better, far better, if he had mortgaged the farm to pay for the roadster, but since he had not, she must make sure he couldn’t. Clutching her side, she stepped around the baskets and hurried to John’s desk, where she opened three drawers before she found John’s strongbox containing their most important papers. It was locked, and John carried the key, but Rosa didn’t need to open it. She only needed to keep them out of his hands so he could not sell or mortgage the farm in her absence.

As she loaded the strongbox into the food basket, Rosa’s gaze fell upon the folded quilts, her mother’s last gifts and a wordless promise of forgiveness. Rosa could not leave them behind. Her heart ached as she stacked up the two baskets and draped the quilts over them, and then, at the last moment, she remembered her precious family photo albums and tucked them within the folds of the quilts. For years she had believed her mother had died from a terrible accident, and she had censured all who whispered that it had been suicide. To discover, or even to suspect, that her husband had killed her—a day ago she wouldn’t have believed it, but nothing seemed beyond him anymore, now that she knew what he had hidden in the hayloft.

She hefted the baskets and quilts, staggering back from the weight, and joined her children in the barn. She loaded her burdens into the back, fastened down a tarpaulin to keep the children and their belongings dry, shoved open the double doors, and climbed onto the wagon seat. A moment later they were on their way through a steady gray rain. From the corner of her eye Rosa saw the tarpaulin move, and she knew one of the children, probably Lupita, had come out from beneath the improvised
tent to watch the small adobe as they drove away. Rosa did not turn around for one last glimpse of home, even though she had no idea when they might return.

She urged the horses into a trot, expecting at any minute to hear the roadster roaring after them. The main road wound south past the Barclay farm through rolling hills, and just beyond them, they came upon acres of land as flat as a tabletop, covered in brittle gold-brown grasses and dusty green scrub. The mesa plummeted abruptly at the canyon’s edge, a descent so sharp it looked as if a blade had sliced into the earth. Rosa turned the horses off the road and drove them across the mesa. Even if John overlooked their tracks in the rainstorm, he could not fail to miss the wagon itself, standing out starkly against the light grasses of the mesa, visible from miles away. The wagon was no safe hiding place, but she had never intended to remain with it.

She pulled the horses to a halt a few yards away from the canyon’s edge, in a spot with ample tender grass should they need to graze. “We need to be quick, but please, be careful on the rocks,” she said, peering under the tarpaulin. The children blinked back at her, cold and miserable and scared. “The cave will be warm and dry. You’ll see.”

Marta was the first to move, crawling out from beneath the tarp and handing Miguel to Rosa. While the girls gathered their belongings and climbed from the wagon, Rosa carried her son on her hip and swiftly unfastened the tarpaulin with one hand, folded it twice, and draped it over the food basket, urging her daughters to hurry. When John came after them, and he would come, he must not find them on the mesa. Fear of her mother’s angry spirit would not keep him from pursuing them if they were out in the open. It was the canyon that disturbed him, and
although everyone in the Arboles Valley had heard that the Chumash Indians had once lived in caves hidden within the rocky cliffs, only those who had explored the canyon knew where they were. Even if fear did not keep John away, his ignorance of the canyon’s secret places might help Rosa and the children elude him.

The rain made the climb down the switchbacks precarious. The children often stumbled, and Rosa grew hoarse encouraging them over the sound of the driving rain. She urged them along ever more swiftly, past the steep walls where cacti and chalk liveforever clung, past the waterfall that tumbled over rocky outcroppings into the Salto Creek. There, live oak trees provided some shelter from the storm, but soon the trail led them into the open again, deeper within the canyon but still far too close to the mesa. If John spotted them from above, he would pursue them. They had to be out of sight completely to have any chance of escaping him.

The way grew steeper, too steep for small hands and feet, so Rosa told the girls to leave their makeshift bags on the rocks. Unfolding the tarpaulin, she quickly flung it over their bags and baskets and held up one edge so Ana and Lupita could duck beneath it. “I’ll be right back,” she told them. “Don’t move.”

“Don’t leave us!” cried Lupita.

“I’ll be right back,” Rosa repeated, bending to kiss them. Ana put her arm around Lupita’s shoulder and tugged the tarpaulin over them.

Carrying Miguel, Rosa led Marta up to the cave she thought would afford them the best shelter—it was large enough for them to stand comfortably, the entrance was partially concealed by scrub and brush, and the path to it was visible only if one knew precisely where to look. When they reached the cave,
Rosa handed Miguel to Marta and went back down for the other girls, leading Ana up first to get her out of the rain, and then going back for Lupita, the younger but stronger of the pair. When they were safe, she returned for their clothes and food and the valises, making several trips and often glancing to the rain-drenched skies, expecting any moment to hear angry shouts and see John glaring down at her.

At last they were all within the cave, too cold and miserable to speak or to do anything but sit and shiver and gaze out at the silver sheets of water streaming over the mouth of the cave. Rosa had matches but no dry wood to burn, no means to build a fire. Then she remembered her mother’s quilts, and after wringing rainwater from her long hair, she told the children to change into dry clothes and gather around her. When they were all huddled together, she threw the quilts over them. “It’ll be all right,” she told them, forcing a confidence she did not feel into the words, as they shivered and watched the mouth of the cave and waited. “It will be all right.”

“What if Papa comes after us?” asked Ana.

“He won’t,” said Marta, glancing up at her mother with a silent plea for confirmation.

“What about the horses?” Lupita chimed in. “We can’t leave them in the rain.”

“We can’t bring them in here,” Marta pointed out.

“They’ll be fine on the mesa,” said Rosa. “There’s no lightning, and they don’t mind a little rain shower.”

“Papa will see them and know where we are,” said Ana.

“The horses will be all right and so will we,” said Rosa, but she could not promise them that John would not eventually come. Involuntarily, her gaze went to the two valises leaning up against the wall of the cave, the brown leather striped black
from the rain. He would come for the money if nothing else. She remembered, too late, the third valise left behind in the hayloft, but at that moment it was less use to her than a pile of dry firewood would have been.

Gradually they grew warmer, but no more comfortable or less frightened. When the children grew hungry, Rosa fed them biscuits and cheese, and she almost wept from despair when Miguel promptly vomited. What was she thinking, fleeing across the mesa and cowering in a cave? Ana and Miguel could not endure the cold and damp long, and soon even strong Marta and bright Lupita would become listless and ill. But where could she go? She had no friends except Elizabeth, who had placed herself in grave danger by racing off to warn Lars. John had had a head start and a faster car, and he was armed. Even now Lars might be dead by John’s hand, ambushed in the Jorgensens’ garage or apricot orchards.

She clamped her lips tight to hold back a moan of grief and despair. She could not bear to think of Lars dead—Lars, the only man she had ever truly loved, the only man who had ever truly loved her.

From the time Rosa was a very young child, her mother had warned her never to trust a Jorgensen, never to set foot on the lands they had unscrupulously wrested away from Rosa’s great-grandparents, and never to speak to the Jorgensen children at school.

An obedient daughter, Rosa avoided the Jorgensen boys, but she could not resist studying them from a distance with apprehensive fascination—Oscar, a serious, towheaded boy two years younger than she, and Lars, his grinning, confident older brother, two years ahead of her in school. Quiet, diligent
Oscar interested her less than his elder brother, who was popular and admired, given to pranks outside the classroom but intelligent and studious within it. He was quick to anger and quick to forgive, tall and fair-haired, with eyes as brown as a walnut shell and a smile that suggested that he found life endlessly amusing.