Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (12 page)

Lars ran a hand over the golden stubble on his jaw. “What do you intend to do about it?”

“How can I sit here and wait when I know there’s a doctor who’s successfully treated this illness in other children? I’ll wire Dr. Reynolds’s office at the hospital to let him know we’re on
our way, and I’ll take Ana and Miguel to see him.” She indicated the train schedule. “There’s a nine-twenty-six train tonight that would have us in San Francisco by half past nine tomorrow morning. I can afford a private car, and room and board in San Francisco for however long the regimen lasts.” Or so she hoped. She had no idea how long the children would need to be treated.

Lars inhaled deeply, thinking. “All right then. We’ll take the train. You and the children can wait here while I go out and buy whatever we’ll need for the trip. First I’ll wire Dr. Reynolds at the hospital so he’ll be expecting us—”

“Lars, I didn’t think—” Rosa pressed her hand to her side as a sharp pain stabbed her. “You don’t have to come with us. You shouldn’t come. I can’t ask you to leave your home, your family, the ranch—”

“You don’t need to ask. I’m offering.”

“But Lars,” she said, at a loss, “I don’t know when I’ll be coming back. It could be months, years, if ever.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “All the more reason for me to come with you now.”

“Lars—”

“No, Rosa.” He held her by the shoulders. “I’ve kept my distance, and I’ve let John be a father to my daughters even though he did a spit poor job of it, because that’s what you asked me to do. Now you’re telling me that I might never see them, or you, again, and you think I’m going to just put the five of you on a train and wave good-bye from the station?”

“I suppose I didn’t—” She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t know what to say.

“I’m coming along,” he said emphatically. “You’ll need my help, and there’s nothing to keep me in the Arboles Valley if you and the children leave.” He made a short, dry laugh. “Don’t forget,
I reported John to the Prohibition bureau. Eventually some corrupt officer on the bootleggers’ payroll will tell them who tipped off the feds, and they’ll come looking for me.”

Rosa pressed a hand to her mouth, stunned. She had not considered the danger he had placed himself into for her sake, to free her from John. He could not go home again, not now, not anytime soon.

“I have to disappear anyway.” Lars managed a rueful smile. “I’d prefer to go with you and the children, so I could be useful, at least.”

“Of course,” said Rosa, in a voice barely above a whisper. She was suddenly profoundly glad that he would be coming with them. “Of course.”

R
osa rejoined the children while Lars went out to wire Dr. Reynolds and to buy the supplies they would need for their journey. He returned an hour later with three secondhand suitcases, clothes and a razor for himself, a sleeve of paper cups, and a paper sack full of corn tortillas, stuffed peppers, white rice, and black beans, still hot. Rosa spread a blanket on the floor and filled cups with water from the bathroom tap. As she passed around the food, she announced that the meal was an indoor picnic to celebrate the exciting journey they would embark upon that night. The children brightened and chattered happily as they ate, querying Rosa and Lars about the towns they might pass through and what they might see along the way. Rosa answered their questions as best she could, keeping a watchful eye on Ana and Miguel and making sure only the corn tortillas and white rice passed their lips.

After supper, while Lars went to his own room to pack, Rosa transferred her and the children’s clothing to the suitcases and refilled a single basket with the remaining food. As she
worked, she said a silent prayer of thanksgiving when Ana and Miguel both kept their suppers down. Miguel had only a mild bout of diarrhea, which, Rosa told herself, could very well be a lingering symptom from the previous day rather than the onset of a new attack.

Just as she finished packing, Lars knocked on the door and beckoned Rosa into the hallway. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the kids, but we made the front page.” He took a newspaper from his coat pocket, unfolded it, and gestured to a headline just below the
Oxnard Press-Courier
masthead.

“Oh, no,” Rosa murmured as she began to read.

ARBOLES VALLEY RANCH HAND SHOT

Local Postmaster Terrorizes Neighbors

Wife and Four Children Missing

As of press time, then, John was in police custody, which meant he wasn’t looking for them. The authorities suspected that Rosa and the children had drowned, so they were probably concentrating their search downriver from the canyon and might not investigate surrounding towns as thoroughly as they otherwise would have done.

Rosa was unsettled to read that she was wanted for questioning, but the report that she and the children were assumed dead gave her new reason to hope they could elude anyone searching for them, as long as they took every precaution to conceal their tracks. She folded the newspaper and returned it to Lars. “The police know you left home in your car, and they’ll be looking for it. You should sell it and use the money to purchase a ticket for the express to Los Angeles.”

His eyebrows rose. “I gather you want me to make sure I’m seen on the platform awaiting its departure too.”

Rosa nodded. “If you can board the train and slip out just before it leaves the station, that would be even better. In the meantime I’ll buy tickets to San Francisco for the six of us.”

“All right,” said Lars after thinking it over. “We’ll do it your way, except I can’t sell the car. It’s not mine to sell. I’ll take you and the children to the station, and then I’ll find some out-of-the-way place, park the car, and walk back to the station. Eventually someone will notice that it’s been abandoned and contact the police, and they’ll send word to Oscar to come fetch it.”

Rosa agreed. Lars’s plan would also save them precious time. “Before we go to the station, do you think it would be safe to return to St. John’s?”

“You want to get a second opinion from another doctor before we set out? I don’t think we have time.”

“No, that’s not it. I want to leave some money with the kind nurse who treated me yesterday, enough to pay for Henry’s treatment.”

“Oh, Rosa.” Lars sighed. “I admire your good intentions, but I hope I can talk you out of it.”

“I have nearly twelve thousand dollars in those valises, Lars.” The amount seemed to startle him, but she hurried on before he could interrupt. “That’s more than enough to pay our way for a long while. The Nelsons aren’t wealthy people, and I want to help them. I owe Elizabeth that much. When I was unhappy and desperate, everyone else abandoned me, even my own brother, but Elizabeth became my friend.”

“Not all of your friends abandoned you,” said Lars mildly. “Some of us were told to keep our distance. Rosa, think about it. You’re front-page news. How many people read the paper this morning and remembered seeing a distraught, injured woman with four children at the hospital yesterday? We can’t do anything else to draw attention to ourselves, and offering a substantial amount of cash to settle another patient’s bill is going to attract attention.”

Rosa felt herself wavering. “What if you go alone?” she persisted. “You could take the money to Sister Mary. I’m sure she’d be discreet.”

Lars shook his head. “Your heart’s in the right place, but paying someone else’s bills is going to stir up curiosity no matter who delivers the money. If anyone comes around later asking questions, we don’t want the hospital staff to be able to give them a good description of me, or you, or the children, for that matter.”

“I think it’s a bad idea too,” Ana suddenly spoke up. With a gasp, Rosa spun around to find Ana and Marta standing just inside the open doorway. How much had they overheard? “I like Mrs. Nelson but it’s too dangerous to go back to the hospital. What if somebody sees you and takes you away from us?”

“
Mija
, no one could ever take me away from you.”

“Then why are we hiding?”

Rosa hesitated. Lars had made his point and had nothing more to add, but Marta and Ana were shooting her pleading looks, and she knew she had lost the argument. “Very well,” she said. They were right; even the slightest chance that the police or the bootleggers might be checking local hospitals for them posed too great a risk. The children needed her more than Elizabeth did.

She could not pay for Henry’s medical care, but someday she would make it up to the woman who had befriended her and had given her reason to hope when so many other people she had known her entire life had turned their backs on her.

While Lars went down to the lobby to settle the bill, Rosa retrieved her shears from her sewing basket and took them into the small bathroom, where she balanced them carefully on a small ceramic shelf meant to hold a water glass and stared at her
reflection in the cracked mirror. She had once been radiantly beautiful—dark, wide-set eyes fringed with long lashes; high, elegant cheekbones; full, red lips that curved gracefully into a beckoning smile. Worry and care had taken the glow from her skin and etched twin grooves from nose to chin around her mouth, which was usually either pressed into a hard line as it was now or twisted into a melancholy frown. Her eyes were haunted and shadowed, and she had become too thin, so the high cheekbones gave her face an almost skeletal cast. Her only remaining beauty of the many she had once carelessly taken for granted was her hair—long and thick, raven black with a sheen like obsidian, unmarred by gray. She wore it unfashionably long, braided into thick ropes and pinned up at the nape of her neck, and when she took it down at night, it cascaded down her back to her waist, a dark, silky waterfall. As the popularity of the bob had soared, her hair had become her most unique, admired, and recognizable feature.