Speak Through the Wind (29 page)

“Not for quite some time, actually,” she said. “It’s Mrs. Hartmann now.”

“Of course. How stupid of me.”

“This is a rather unusual hour for a social call, isn’t it?” Mrs. Hartmann asked, tilting her head up toward her husband.

“Kassandra’s come home, Dianne,” Reverend Joseph said. “At last.”

“Well, she does seem to be the worse for wear,” Mrs. Hartmann said, alternating a pointed glance between Kassandra and the stain on Reverend Joseph’s suit.

“Dianne, can’t you tell what the child’s been through?”

Kassandra found herself becoming less and less with each word. The melting sensation that was so warm when she was in Reverent Joseph’s welcoming embrace seemed to be dissolving her now, and she wished she could become one of those puddles that Jenny could just mop away.

“I should not have come here,” she muttered, already wondering if she had the strength to make it back to the steaming rubble on Mott Street.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Reverend Joseph said, though it was unclear for which of the women the remark was intended.

“Indeed.” Mrs. Hartmann laid a comforting finger on Kassandra’s arm. “We don’t need to make any decisions right now. Jenny?”

The woman couldn’t have been far, because she was in through the door almost before the second syllable of her name. “Yes, Mrs. Hartmann?”

“The reverend and I will take an early breakfast in the dining room. Please see to it that our guest is served in here.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hartmann.”

“Then the reverend and I will leave together to make his morning calls. Will you please help our guest clean up a bit?”

“Yes, Mrs. Hart—”

“And take her clothes to the laundress at Woodbridge. You simply won’t have the time to wash them here today.”

“Yes, Mrs.—”

“In the meantime, do you have a sleeping gown she could wear? I certainly don’t have anything that would fit—or suit her.”

“I’ll take care of everything, Mrs. Hartmann,” Jenny said.

The whole conversation took place in such rapid-fire succession that neither Kassandra nor Reverend Joseph had any chance to intervene. By the time it was over, Reverend Joseph was somehow on the other side of the kitchen door, Jenny was at the stove, and Kassandra was sitting at the table again, teacup in her hand.

“Then,” Mrs. Hartmann said, poised at the swinging door, “take her up to the guest room to lie down. Poor thing looks like she hasn’t slept all night.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hartmann,” Jenny said to the swinging door.

She poked her arms out from under the pile of soft quilts to indulge in a long, back-arching stretch before burrowing down deep again. There was no separating the initial thrill of being here—being back—from the tragic contrast of what she left behind and the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

Once Mrs. Hartmann had swept Reverend Joseph into the dining room for breakfast, Kassandra had no opportunity to see or speak with him again. After she had wolfed down plates full of warm food in the kitchen, Kassandra had been taken back to the washroom where a new linen-draped tub awaited. There, in an eerily familiar reenactment of her first arrival to this house, she submitted herself to Jenny, who scrubbed her skin and washed her hair—rinsing and rinsing and rinsing until every trace of soot and smoke and city was washed away.

She’d confessed to Jenny that it had been over a year since she’d taken an all-over bath, and the woman scowled her acknowledgement when Kassandra stood up for her final rinsing, leaving below a tub full of water so thick with grime she could not see her own feet.

But she was deliciously clean now, wearing somebody’s warm flannel nightgown. She studied the slit of morning light peeking through the curtains and decided she must have been asleep for nearly twenty hours.

The soft knocking she heard on the door was a mere formality because it swung open before the third rap and Jenny stepped through. She was carrying a breakfast tray with a pretty china teapot and cup, which she set on the small table next to the bed before going back to carefully close the door.

“Miz Hartmann’s gonna be in here in just a minute. Wanted to make sure you was awake.”

“And good morning to you,” Kassandra said, sitting up.

“Well, ain’t you the sassy one?” Jenny took a muslin-wrapped warming brick off the tray and slipped it under the covers near Kassandra’s feet. “If I was you, I’d lose some of that sass before talkin’ to Miz Hartmann. She don’t go much for that.”

“Does he love her?” Kassandra asked. “Do you think he is happy?”

“She’s a good wife, don’t you worry about that. You got your own business to worry ‘bout. You ain’t gonna be able to hide that much longer.”

“I am not trying to hide anything.”

“Guess you didn’t have time to mention it yet.” Jenny poured tea from the china teapot into a matching cup and handed it over to Kassandra, who was surprised to realize her hands shook a bit, causing the cup to rattle against its saucer. “But if I was you,” she continued, with a pointed glance at Kassandra’s shaking hand, “I’d wait and tell him first, once you get a chance to talk to him alone. He’s got a soft spot for you, girl. The wife might throw you right straight out again.”

“Just what are you talking about?” Kassandra demanded, lowering her voice only at Jenny’s warning
hush
to do so.

“The baby,” Jenny said. “Now, like I told you—”

“I … I do not have a baby. My baby died three years ago.”

“I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that. I’m talkin’ about this baby right here,” She poked her long brown finger into the comforter, just above Kassandra’s stomach.

It was a lucky gesture as it put her hand in the perfect place to catch the teacup and saucer when Kassandra’s body went numb and she lost her grip.

here never was any question that Kassandra was a welcome guest in Reverend Joseph’s home. She was, after all, given her old room, a place at the table, and an open invitation to join the reverend and Mrs. Hartmann when the couple spent a long winter evening in the parlor. Mrs. Hartmann was quite deft at keeping the conversation lively, speaking at such a quick pace and of such trivialities that the life Kassandra had been living never became a focal point. Too often, Kassandra’s contributions made it obvious that she had lived too long outside the influence of genteel company, and she would interject a comment or a laugh too bawdy and loud for a fireside chat in a reverend’s parlor. At these times, Mrs. Hartmann would deliver a silent, smirking admonition—though Reverend Joseph often seemed to be both captivated and relieved at Kassandra’s outbursts.

When not engaged in artful conversation, Mrs. Hartmann pursued her second talent, which was keeping Reverend Joseph out of the house. Several times each day he was summoned from his study, from his bedroom, from the kitchen to the front parlor where Mrs. Hartmann stood holding his coat, ready to stand tiptoe and smooth it over his slim shoulders. The Ladies’ Aid Society was waiting for him to test its cookies for the baked goods sale in the church kitchen. The ailing Mrs. Farnsworth was depending on a visit. The Christian Temperance Union needed someone to deliver the opening prayer for its meeting.

During her moments alone—and Mrs. Hartmann saw to it that she had several moments alone—Kassandra would sit in the pretty wing-backed chair in front of her bedroom window, or on the comfortable horsehair sofa in the dayroom, or in the warm, fragrant kitchen, wondering how she would possibly tell Reverend Joseph about this baby. It was enough that he had welcomed her into his home unquestioningly. How could she expect him to accept an illegitimate child as well? And, even when she was alone, Kassandra’s face stung as a preview to the humiliation she would feel when Mrs. Hartmann received the news.

For nearly a week, Kassandra had to carry this burden under the watchful eye of Jenny. And it was getting harder to carry.

It wasn’t until a Saturday afternoon when, according to Jenny, the ailing Mrs. Farnsworth would take no comforting visit unless it was the delightful Mrs. Hartmann, that Kassandra had a moment to talk alone with Reverend Joseph.

He invited her into his study, a privilege not offered to her since her return; neither, as far as she could tell, was it ever offered to Mrs. Hartmann. Kassandra hesitated at its threshold. She would be more worthy of walking into the house of God Himself than into this shrine. There was the rug on which she had learned God’s Word. There, the desk and on it his well-worn Bible. And on the bookshelf—where it had been the first time he’d taught her about God’s watchfulness—the tiny sparrow figurine.

“Come sit, Sparrow,” Reverend Joseph said, gesturing to one of the deep leather chairs flanking the fireplace.

She did, and he settled himself across from her. He picked up his pipe and tobacco pouch from the small table between the two chairs.

“Dianne won’t have me smoking in any other part of the house,” he said, lighting the pipe.

“It is a different household indeed,” Kassandra said, smiling.

“My darling Kassandra, I have been waiting for an opportunity to speak with you. I must ask you, will you ever—” his lips quivered in their perch around his pipe, “will you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“Forgive you? What could I ever have to forgive you for?”

Reverend Joseph clamped his jaw on his pipe and looked away for just a moment before answering.

“For weeks before you left home, Clara had been warning me about that young man. She said he was entirely too familiar with you, and she had great concern for your virtue as far as he was concerned.”

“She was—”

“Please. I have waited years to tell you all of this, Sparrow. Let me speak. The moment I realized you were gone, I knew that young man had some hand in it. Had I taken my carriage and left the house immediately, it is likely I could have overtaken the two of you on the street and brought you home. Indeed, that is exactly what I planned to do.”

If only you had …

“But I allowed myself to listen to the counsel of others who, I believe now as I did then, spoke to me out of a genuine, if misguided, concern. I allowed them to turn my heart against you. They convinced me that you were ungrateful and undeserving. They led me to believe that you were a young woman of questionable morals even at that age, and that having you under my roof would be a liability to my ministry and to my own status in the religious community.”

The exact lies I was told …

“And so you must forgive me for not being willing to risk my life for your sake as you were for mine.”

“But … your letter. You said that you did try to look for me.”

“And so I did, but I allowed myself to be detained for several days. I did know where to find you, my darling child. Indeed, I was quite close to you at one time, in my carriage.”

“When was that?”

“It was summer, more than a month after you left. I saw you walking with that young man. I must say you seemed quite happy and content, but I wanted to be sure, so I left my carriage and attempted to capture your attention.”

Kassandra closed her eyes and tried to remember such a moment. She remembered the first summer with Ben, their walks around the neighborhood as he introduced her to the people and places. Surely she would have noticed the tall figure of her beloved caregiver calling out her name.

“Of course,” Reverend Joseph continued, “you didn’t see me. As soon as I was close enough to call out to you, a tall man with a shaved head came to me and—
suggested
—that I leave you two alone. There were others with him—”

“The Branagans,” Kassandra said.

“Hmm? Yes, well, they were quite insistent that I leave their neighborhood quickly, and that it would be best for all concerned—myself especially—if I were to leave you alone.”

Kassandra heard the shame in Reverend Joseph’s voice, and she reached across to lay a comforting hand on his arm.

“I was happy then. I probably would not have gone back if you asked me.”

He smiled. “I intended to go back frequently, hoping to catch a glimpse of you alone. But soon after that first encounter I was struck quite ill with fever, and by the time I had recovered sufficiently to permit another visit, it was late in the fall.”