Samson and Sunset (45 page)

  ***

After that night, Patty Cake forged a bond
with our family. She became a fixture at our home. Kelly decided to
make a horsewoman out of her. We were surprised at how good Patty
was with the horses. She wanted to learn to show and go to horse
shows. We took her to a few shows where Kelly was showing one of
Samson and Sunset’s foals. It all thrilled Patty Cake. She went to
church with us on Easter Sunday and came home with us to the Big
House for our big Easter dinner.

  Kelly and Patty had an Easter egg hunt
for all the farmhands’ kids. We had children running all over the
Big House lawn. Now that was fun to watch. She was a sweet girl and
everyone liked her, even Maggie and Sterling. She loved Shay; I
think he made her feel safe. Shay just radiated that warm, safe
feeling. I was hoping she’d get into the nursing program, because,
unknown to my family, I had every intention of having Shay pay her
tuition through nursing school.

  When the white fencing project was
finished, it was amazing at how it made the whole farmstead stand
out.

  Memorial day would be here in a few
days, and Shay was going to have the usual giant open house
party.

  It had become my routine to visit the
graves with flowers the day before the big barbeque. I went to the
graves myself as often as I could, but this was the day I took Mom
to Hudson to visit Daddy’s gravesite. It was hard for both of us.
Kelly and Patty accompanied Mom and me to the cemeteries. Patty had
become one of the family, and she brought out the best in Wes. He
seemed to be acting his age more.

  From the Hudson Cemetery we went to
the Westover Cemetery, where I put beautiful flowers on Cookie’s
and Marie’s graves.

  Marie would have been thirteen on the
16th of June. I remember how she was our little Father’s Day
surprise. Patty had a lot of questions and Kelly tried to answer
them as well as she could. She told Patty she really didn’t
remember Marie; she had been too young. And of course, being the
chatterbox she was, she had to add that Marie wasn’t her real
sister, because of a hospital mix up.

  It was just enough to send that arrow
piercing through my heart again, so I quickly changed the subject.
I told the girls we could go to the cafe in Westover and have a
burger and malt. With that everyone had miles of smiles, and the
conversation was changed.

  Shay’s big Memorial Day barbeque went
off without a hitch. The hands roasted a pig and Shay invited all
his friends, the farmhands and their families, plus all the
neighbors. Mid-afternoon, he took his boat to the lake so anyone
who wanted to water ski could do so. Wes was a great water skier.
I’m sure he got that from Shay. Shay was a great water skier,
especially on one ski. I reminded them that Patty didn’t know how
to swim and if she rode in the boat, she had to wear a life
jacket.

  It was a full day for us. I know Patty
had a blast; those parties were something. She had never seen
anything like it. Shay had hired a small local country music band
to play, and dancing went on ’til around two in the morning. It was
a complete success. Shay and I were exhausted; we showered, fell
into bed and into one another’s arms, with some gentle sex.

  “Good night, princess,” I heard Shay
say as I dropped off immediately.

  ***

We had a full summer planned, but Shay had
already told Wes that he was going to be working on the farm long
hours, daily. He told him if he got his work done then he could go
out evenings, just as long as we knew where he was. Hell, I’ll bet
Shay’s parents never knew where he was. They probably had no idea
what a playboy their son had been. But Shay, knowing what a playboy
he had been, set rules for his time off the farmstead.

  Since Kelly had gotten Patty so
excited about horses, the girls spent a lot of time with them. Shay
had made Samson and Sunset a beautiful white fenced corral. I loved
watching them run through the grass with their foals, it warmed my
heart and made me smile every time I saw it. The years had been
good to Samson and Sunset; they were just a little slower. Hell,
who wasn’t? Well, Shay never slowed down, especially in the
bedroom.

  A few days after the big Memorial Day
party, I picked Patty Cake up to come to our house for dinner.
Sterling and Maggie had gone to California for a few weeks, so they
weren’t there. Hulda outdid herself once again, making a standing
rib roast, baked potatoes, several vegetables, salad, and desserts.
We weren’t very far into the meal when I saw Patty put her napkin
to her face like she was crying.

  “Patty,” I asked, “is everything okay?
Are you all right, darling?”

  Well, obviously she wasn’t. She shook
her head no.

  “What is it, sweetie? Can I help?” I
asked.

  “No, no one can help me,” Patty said
woefully. “I’ve done a bad thing. When you find out, you’re going
to hate me. All of you are going to hate me.”

  “Patty Cake, everyone at this table
has done things they’re not proud of,” I said. “I can’t imagine you
doing something so bad that you think we’d all hate you. Hate is a
very strong word!”

  Shay, Mom and the kids were all
silent. No one really knew what to say. Shay was probably thinking,
‘Nothing is so bad as to ruin dinner. Whatever it is, worry about
it after dinner.’

  “Patty, we’re all here,” I tried
again. “If you’d like to talk about it. If you’d rather wait, you
can talk to me privately after dinner.”

  “I might as well tell you now,” she
said. “I lost my Gray Angel job at the hospital, they let me
go.”

  I thought to myself: They let this
poor child go because they know she can’t afford the tuition. They
gave her position to someone else who they knew could pay.

  “Did they give your job in the program
to someone else, Patty?” I asked.

  She shook her head, no. “They had to
let me go because they found out I lied on my application.”

  “What did you lie about, Patty?”

  “Well,” she sniffed. “You have to be
fifteen to be in the Gray Angel Program, and I so want to be a
nurse, but because my grandma and I needed money for food I needed
a job where I could get out of school at noon and make some money.
I lied about my age, I put on the application that I was fifteen
and that wasn’t true.”

  “Alright darling, just calm down,” I
told her. “How old are you, Patty Cake?”

  “I’ll be turning thirteen this month,”
she said sorrowfully.

  “Gracious, Patty, you don’t look that
young. When will you turn thirteen?”

  “June 16th. I was born in 1967,” she
confessed, “at that same hospital that fired me.”

  I looked at Shay as all the blood
drained from my face, I felt myself going down. Shay jumped up and
grabbed me, then carried me to our room and laid me on the bed.

  “Callie, I know what you’re thinking,
I’m thinking the same thing. But we have to stay calm. We need more
information. The list of names Willis gave us doesn’t have Patty
Richards on it.” It sounded like it was taking a lot of effort for
him to stay calm.

  “Right now she probably thinks we left
the table because we’re mad at her. She probably thinks you fainted
because you were so shocked at what she’s done.”

  “Go get her, Shay, go get her and
bring her in here, please,” I begged.

  As Shay walked into the bedroom with
Patty, that sweet little girl looked so scared and alone, my heart
just crumbled.

  “Patty, darling, come over here and
sit by me.” I patted the bed. “First, I don’t want you to think
we’re upset with you, because we’re not. But there are some real
important questions Shay and I would like to ask you. They are very
important, so you have to try to answer them as best you can. Can
you do that, sweetie?” I asked, holding her hand.

  She nodded gravely. Gee, it was hard
to believe this child was just turning thirteen, with make-up on
and her hair up she look at
least
fifteen.

  “Patty, we’ve never talked much about
your life. Would you mind very much telling us more about
yourself?” I asked gently.

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to
know,” she said.

  “Patty, were you born in Hudson at the
hospital on June 16th 1967?” I asked.

  “That’s what my birth certificate
says,” said Patty, trying to pull herself together. “I’ll tell you
what I know about myself,” she said, biting her bottom lip. “I
haven’t had a really good life...it’s actually pretty
terrible.”

  By now I was sitting up and holding
her in my arms. I calmed her down and told her to take some deep
breaths and just tell us what she knew.

  With some effort, she continued. “My
mother was dating this guy, Levi Jensen. He’s my dad. My mom was
only fourteen years old at the time.”

  I shot Shay a look and he put his
finger to his lips, though he looked just like I felt.

  “So my mom was dating this guy, Levi
Jensen. He’s the son of my grandma Bertha, who I live with, as you
know. Levi is her son from her second marriage. My grandma was
married four times. When my mom got pregnant, my mom moved in with
my grandma and my dad. My mom was fifteen when she had me, and she
put on the birth certificate that her name was Alice Louise Jensen.
Her last name was Richards, but she wanted me to have my dad’s last
name, so she named me Patricia Suzanne Jensen. The hospital put
‘Father: Unknown’ on my birth certificate because they weren’t
married.”

  Patty looked down. “I guess my mom and
dad started fighting a lot right after I was born. One day my mom
met a guy who was a truck driver. She took a cab out to the truck
stop and took me with her. We went with this trucker. Then he was
really mean to us so we lived with some other guy. There were a few
more men, all of them were mean and drank a lot, but my mom drank a
lot, too. A couple of years ago my mom didn’t want to be bothered
with me so she gave me back to my dad. But he was married and his
new wife didn’t want me, so I had to move in with my dad’s mom.
That’s my Grandma Bertha.” She paused. “That’s really all I know
about my past.”

  I just held her on the bed. We were
both very emotional and Shay was sitting on the other side of the
bed taking it all in, wiping his eyes.

  “Kathrine, I know how upset you are
with me for lying, but we needed the money so much, Grandma Bertha
always bought liquor, so there just wasn’t any food, and we’d be so
hungry.
I’d
be so hungry, Kathrine. I understand if you
don’t want me to come back here to your home. I truly have always
wanted to be a nurse. Please forgive me, Kathrine and Shay, I’m so
sorry.”

  I was brushing her hair back from her
darling little face, trying to keep it out of her tears. “Patty
Cake, my sweet, sweet, child. I’m not one bit angry with you. But I
need a big favor from you. I need you to go be with Kelly for a
while and let me have some time with Shay. Can you do that,
sweetie?”

  She nodded. Shay went and got Kelly
and asked Kelly to take Patty to her room for a while. After Shay
shut the bedroom door he came and held me. I fell apart.

  “That’s our child, Shay! I know that’s
our child. How many times have I looked at her big brown eyes and
seen your face? That’s my baby, Shay,
that’s my baby
and I
want her. Shay, I need her. Don’t let anyone take her away from me
again,” I cried.

  “Callie, for the very first time I’m
going to say this: I think you’re spot on. I think we’ve found our
child. And also, Callie, I think she’s definitely my daughter. I
know that’s my little girl.” I could see him biting his lower lip.
“Do you think we should tell her any more information tonight,
Callie?”

  “Shay, as upset as Patty is, I think
we need to tell her right now! She’s so heartbroken. I think she
has the right to know what we know. We have to go on from here and
get to the truth. Yes, Shay, let’s tell her what we know and what
we think.”

  To Patty, her whole world had just
collapsed. She had no idea she may have just put our whole world
back together.

  Take Me Home

  Shay went upstairs and asked Patty to
come back down to our room. That dear sweet child walked into our
room like she was facing a firing squad.

  “Come over here, darling,” I said,
patting the bed. “Come here and let me hold you. Shay and I want to
share something with you. There is a possibility that we could be
wrong about what we’re going to tell you, but we don’t think we
are. Patty, sweetie, we’re going to tell you a family secret. Then
we’re going to tell you what we think has happened. Are you ready
to hear some alarming news, sweet, little Patty Cake?” I asked her
gently.

  She crossed the room and climbed into
my arms. I know she felt secure there.

  Once she was nestled comfortably, I
continued. “On June 16th, 1967, I gave birth to a very tiny baby
who was put into an incubator. Later, when we took her home, she
was a sick baby and, at ten months, she had heart surgery and
died.”

  “Was that the baby in the cemetery?”
Patty asked quietly. “The little grave that said, Marie?”

  I nodded. “But when she was ill and we
lost her, we found out she wasn’t our little girl. The hospital had
mixed babies up and we got someone else’s baby. There were eight
baby girls born that day. We found all but one of those babies and
had tests done and none of them were ours. Patty, we think you are
that baby.”

  I was getting shivers as I said it, my
eyes filling with tears. “We think you’re our little girl. We’d
like to have a blood test run to see if you’re our daughter…if
that’s okay with you, Patty Cake…”

  Patty looked into my face and it was
as if it were Shay looking at me. Did I always see this and just
not realize it? She had the look of someone wanting something to be
true, afraid to hope in case it’s not.