Dandelions on the Wind (6 page)

Emilie, wearing a simple skirt and shirtwaist with a calico bonnet, stepped down and offered her hand to help Mrs. Pemberton to the ground.

Maren greeted her friends with her own hugs, taking care not to collide with Hattie’s bonnet. The Beck women arrived last. The elder Mrs. Beck sat beside Mrs. Webber up front. When the surrey came to a stop, Mrs. Lorelei Beck climbed down from the backseat. The senior ladies took a bit longer to step down, backing down the proper metal steps. After greetings and hugs all around, Maren gave each of the horses something to nibble and made sure they had plenty of water, then the parade of women made their way to the house.

Within a few minutes, all introductions seen to, Mrs. Brantenberg settled into a caned rocker by the window in the sitting room. A Hexagon Flowers quilting top draped her lap and spilled onto the braided-rag rug at her feet. Maren sat in a wooden armchair on the other side of Jewell and Caroline, thumbing through a stack of colorful squares.

Mrs. Brantenberg folded her hands and looked across the room to where Hattie smoothed an appliqué onto a block. “Hattie, this week, I do believe it is your place to ask the good Lord’s blessing upon our time together.”

“Yes ma’am.” Hattie played with a brown curl at her shoulder.

Mrs. Brantenberg folded her hands and bowed her head. “Remember to thank the Lord our God for our newest member, dear.”

The activity in the room stilled. Without being too obvious, Maren tried to sneak a glance at Caroline Milburn. The newcomer sat on a sofa beside her sister Jewell, a Double Hourglass quilting top spread over their laps.

At the conclusion of Hattie’s uncharacteristically brief prayer, Caroline pressed a handkerchief to her face.

Mrs. Brantenberg lifted her head. “We’ve all been praying for you.”

Maren nodded along with the other women.

Caroline sniffled. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Unsinnig.”
Mrs. Brantenberg wagged her finger. “That’s nonsensical. You are among friends here.”

Jewell captured her sister’s hand. “I thought it would be good for her.”

“You received word?” Mrs. Pemberton’s voice was flat.

The newcomer shook her head, her lips pressed, taking in a quivering breath.

The poor woman hadn’t heard from her husband, Colonel Milburn, in the four months that had passed since the South surrendered.

“It can take a man awhile to travel if he was deep in the South,” Mrs. Brantenberg said, her tone as calming as a mother’s song. “And some stayed on to fight in the Indian wars.”

Caroline shook her head. “The last word from him”—her words were slow and heavily weighted—“his regiment was being sent to Georgia.”

“To one of the last battles?” Mrs. Pemberton reached up and pressed her mourning bonnet against her cheek.

Mrs. Brantenberg looked at Caroline. “You’ve written to the Department of War?”

“In June, I did. They haven’t responded.” Caroline worried the handkerchief on her lap. “I couldn’t bear to be alone any longer, so I came to Saint Charles. I should’ve stayed in Philadelphia.”

Maren brushed a tear from her own face. Most of the women in the circle were doing the same thing, or shuffling and clearing their throats. Hattie lost her father to the war. Jewell’s husband had returned missing a leg. And now Colonel Milburn hadn’t come home at all. Mrs. Brantenberg was one of the more fortunate ones—her son-in-law had survived the war and returned home yesterday.

“Here, in this quilting circle, none of us are alone.” Mrs. Brantenberg pulled thread through a needle. “Not in our sorrows, nor in our triumphs.”

“While you are waiting for word, there is still hope that he is alive.” Mrs. Webber had lost her husband early in the war. In the time since, she’d been a comfort to several widows in town.

Mrs. Brantenberg shifted the quilt top on her lap to get to the square at hand. “We will wait with you and continue to pray for his safe return.”

The word
continue
struck Maren. Hattie had told her about praying with Mrs. Brantenberg for Mr. Wainwright’s return, but Maren hadn’t seen any evidence while she was living on the farm that those prayers had continued. She also noticed there had been no mention to the quilting circle so far of the prodigal son-in-law.

Emilie turned squares to make a block for the Shoo-Fly baby quilt she was making. “I saw Mary Alice in the store yesterday. She said she was seein’ the doctor this morning. Probably won’t be comin’ out until after the baby’s born, which is why I’m working on the quilt for her baby today. That, and soon I won’t have much time for it.” She sighed, looking at Maren. “I don’t know how often I’ll get to be here. If at all.”

“Is it the store?” Hope rose in Maren. “Business is booming again?” Perhaps now there would be work enough for her in town.

“Business is good. But my father has decided I should go to college.”

“College?”

“Lindenwood.” Emilie pulled her needle high, setting her start-stitch.

“I’ve heard it’s a wonderful school.” Lorelei Beck folded her hands on the pile of fabric on her lap. “As a matter of fact, I wanted to go to the female college before I met Arvin.” She smiled at her mother-in-law.

“Gretchen”—Mrs. Brantenberg looked at Caroline—“my daughter, gone to be with the Lord, was part of Mary Sibley’s book club.”

Emilie nodded. “Well, PaPa thinks higher education is the answer for my future.”

“Your father doesn’t want to give you in marriage?” Hattie’s question hung silent in the air.

“He didn’t say that in so many words, but he’s keeping me busy enough that—” Emilie gulped. She’d been so thoughtless grumbling about her father when Hattie had recently buried hers. “I’m sorry. This must be hard for you to talk about. Fathers and daughters.”

Hattie shook her head, biting her upper lip. Something she did when fighting emotion. “We’ve all lost someone, if not to the war, to … something else. I’m glad you have your father. Mine started
early talking about the day I’d find a young man who had a house big enough for all the hats Granny gave me.” Hattie looked behind her at the hall tree where her chic hat hung. “I was only thirteen.”

Mrs. Pemberton was the first to laugh with her daughter. “I’d forgotten about that.” She held her hand to her mouth. “But she’s right. He objected to having to house all of his mother’s hats when she came to live with us.” Another laugh. “I think she gave them all to Hattie out of spite.”

Maren laughed, seeing that even Caroline Milburn had joined in.

The laugh felt good. And her friend Hattie certainly had a gift—for gab, Mrs. Brantenberg would say, but also for mirth.

“And I think it’s time we change our topic,” Hattie said, feigning frustration. “Since we recently sent off that bundle of quilts to the army hospital, I wanted to propose that our next project be making quilts for the new mental hospital.” She looked at Mrs. Brantenberg, who nodded. “Mother and I have been reading about all the good work they’re doing for those suffering such illness. Not all are as fortunate as Oliver Rengler to have a brother like Owen to look after him.”

Emilie held up her hand. “I’ll make a Scrap Squares quilt.”

“You can count on me for a Log Cabin quilt.” Mrs. Pemberton reached for another block from the table beside her.

“Wonderful!” Hattie said. “Mother’s already working on a Soldier’s Cot quilt for the hospital, and I’ll make a One Patch.”

Maren had just opened her mouth to chime in when Gabi rushed into the sitting room. “Excuse, Oma.” Leaning on the arm of Mrs. Brantenberg’s rocker, Gabi glanced toward the children wiggling in the doorway. “When will PaPa bring your wagon back?”

At the reference to Woolly, Mrs. Brantenberg stilled her needle and bent toward the child. “He didn’t say when.” She fluttered her hand like a bird wing, shooing the girl. “Why don’t you children get the wheelbarrow out of the barn and fill it with kindling?”

Gabi spun toward the other children. “We can see who will find the most.”

“Gabi’s father is in town?” Hattie jerked toward Maren. “Our town?”

Maren nodded.

“Elsa?” Mrs. Webber fairly shouted. “Whatever were you saving such wonderful news for?”

“For my turn.” Mrs. Brantenberg slanted a glance toward Caroline. It made sense that she didn’t want to share such information when Jewell’s poor sister was still waiting for news.

“Well, consider it your turn.”

Their circle leader clasped her hands on her lap. “It’s true that Rutherford—many of you know him as Woolly—has returned. Gabi’s father is back.”

A shiver raced up Maren’s spine.
Returned. Back
. But was Woolly
home
? Mrs. Brantenberg hadn’t used that word. A mindful decision or a mere omission?

“This is wonderful!” Jewell lifted her needle in the air, pointing it at her sister. “It renews my hope that Phillip is still on his way home to you.”

Caroline nodded. “I hope so. And I’m happy for you and your family.”

“His return is an answer to little Gabi’s prayers, and mine.” Hattie’s voice quivered. “When did this happen?”

“Yesterday afternoon … in time for supper.” Mrs. Brantenberg’s voice was as devoid of emotion as her expression. “Rutherford has gone to town today. I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”

Back
. Again, she hadn’t said
when he’ll be home
. The word choice had been intentional. Mrs. Brantenberg no longer considered the farm his home.

And if he didn’t stay, Maren had little hope of ever seeing her homeland again.

Seven

A
snort startled Woolly, and he opened his eyes under a canopy of green leaves. One of the two horses tied to an oak branch offered another snort.

Woolly sat in the bed of the wagon, surrounded by stacks of boards, a barrel of nails, and flour sacks. How long had he slept? The memories of his visit with Miss Jensen early that morning and seeing Mary Alice Brenner in front of the lumber mill began clearing the cobwebs from his mind. Stretching, he realized he should’ve left his arm in the sling a bit longer—it might have kept him from doing too much with his wrenched shoulder while he was in town. He’d best get back to the farm while there was still light enough for the horses to find their way home.

He untethered Boone and Duden, backed them up to the wagon’s doubletree, and hooked the traces. Although he’d rather live and work on the farm and be close to Gabi, his mother-in-law’s silence made it clear she didn’t want him there. He’d gone into town to look for employment, but with so many former slaves flooding the workforce here, there wasn’t much work available for him.

Thankfully, when he’d mentioned going into town to get supplies, Mother Brantenberg offered him the use of the wagon if he’d pick up a few supplies for her. He deserved the cold shoulder she’d turned his way, and if all she could offer him was the treatment of an employee, that would have to do.

Woolly goaded the horses onto the main road, and the wagon rose out of the bottomlands, through the stands of birch and sycamore trees lining the small German family farms common to the area. Some farms still had a look of abandonment and disrepair, but most showed signs of a new postwar hope and vitality. He remembered the first time he’d made this trip from town. He’d stepped off a steamboat in Saint Charles and walked into Mr. Johann Heinrich’s dry goods store looking for work. He had done farm work for his folks growing up in Virginia, and that’s all he knew. Johann told him of Christoph Brantenberg who was looking to hire a farmhand and sent him this direction. That June day, he’d found work and met his future bride.

This trip he had a lot at stake—a future with his daughter, his gift from Gretchen. He was rehearsing what he’d say to his mother-in-law as her apple orchard came into view. At the intersection, he reined the horses onto Brantenberg Lane. The now-empty log cabin he and Gretchen had lived in sat at the corner of the Brantenberg property. The day he left for the war, he’d hired George Ransom, a freedman up from Mississippi, to work the farm. And now the family was gone, chased away by raiders.

It hadn’t taken long for the cabin to sag. The roof probably wouldn’t make it through the winter, and it was in better shape than most of the farm.

Thinking about what Mary Alice had said about the land in California, he had a notion to go west in the spring. But now wasn’t the time to entertain such thoughts.

When he glimpsed Mother Brantenberg walking to the barn, Woolly’s pulse quickened. Fortunately, the horses were anxious to be home and sped their gait. He parked the wagon beside the barn and hopped down from the seat. He’d unload it later.

Before he reached the barn door, Mother Brantenberg stepped back outside, swinging a bucket. Her wooden work shoes pounding the dirt path, she marched past him to the watering trough outside the corral.

Woolly walked up beside her. “The place needs some repairs. I purchased some supplies.” He chose not to mention the conversation with Higgins about her financial state.

Mother Brantenberg glanced at the wagon. “Lumber.” Her gray eyebrows arched. “Higgins gave you credit?”

“I used money I saved from the army.” That he should’ve been sending home to her. “I want to help around here.”

She scooped water from the trough and poured it over the pump head, then hung the pail on the spigot and began to pump the handle.

He removed his cap, praying for the right words.

She stilled her arm and the flow of water tapered to a drip. Her lips pressed, she peered at him. “Did you expect a hero’s welcome?”

“No ma’am.” He drew in a deep breath. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

Her jaw set, Mother Brantenberg turned toward the vegetable garden.

If a soft answer turned away wrath, what then of no answer? Even if Mother Brantenberg’s silence didn’t necessarily hold wrath, it knotted his stomach. But his mother-in-law had never been one to rush her words. She’d once said that while some folks liked to chase their words about a room, she preferred to hold them close until they were ready to be let loose. He should count her silence a blessing.

He rested his hand on her arm. “You have done very well by Gabi. Done for her what I couldn’t do.”