The Last Letter (3 page)

“Katherine Margaret Arthur.” Jeanie snatched for her daughter’s arm, but she leapt away, humming, cart-wheeling. Jeanie’s face flamed.

Templeton’s deep laugh shook his whole body. He began to wrap her foot. “These feet look to have been damaged by more than a simple run across the land.”

Jeanie bit the inside of her cheek. She wouldn’t confide her utter stupidity to a stranger.

“Let me guess,” Templeton said. “I’d say you had a little trouble parting with your city shoes? Perhaps? The way your feet are lacerated below the ankles, as though stiff shoes meant for decoration more than work had their way with you?”

“Stay close Katherine!” Jeanie shouted to avoid admitting that in fact, she’d kept three pairs of delicate, pretty shoes and only traded one for a pair of black clodhoppers. The clodhoppers that bounced out of the back of the wagon just beyond their stop in Yankton.

Jeanie flinched as Templeton bandaged the other foot.

“Did I hurt you?”

Jeanie covered her mouth then recovered her poise. “No. Let’s finish this production and get moving.” It was then Jeanie realized she was shoeless—and not temporarily speaking. She wouldn’t be able to sausage her swollen feet into the pretty shoes and she had nothing utilitarian in reserve. Frank was a miracle worker with wood, but wooden shoes? That wasn’t an option.

Templeton whistled. “Nice you have such a grand family to cheer you while you make your home on the prairie. Times like this I wish I had the same. No wife, no children to speak of.”

“You’re
unmarried?”
Jeanie smoldered at the thought that not only a strange man handled her feet, her naked toes, but one who was batching-it! A scandal in the eyes of many. Thankfully, there were no prying eyes to add this outrage to her hobbled reputation.

Templeton snickered repeatedly as he moved with a doctor’s detachment. The feel of hands so gently, though firmly, caring for her, nearly put Jeanie in a trance. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had done such a thing for her.

“There. Good as new. Until we get you to the wagon, anyway. I assume you have another pair of boots there.”

“Well, I uh, I…“ She told herself to find her composure, that she was one step away from a reputation as an adventuress or an imbecile if she didn’t put forth the picture of a respectable woman.

“Had a shoe mishap?”

“It could be characterized that way.” Jeanie wanted to die. How stupid could she have been?

She turned one foot back and forth and then the other before having no choice but to look at Templeton and thank him for his assistance. Blood seeped through bandages and she nodded knowing he had been right. She’d have been wrought with infection and open to the bone if he hadn’t wrapped her.

“Thank you Mr. Templeton. I thank you sincerely.” Jeanie put her hand over her heart.

He pulled Jeanie to her feet.

“My pleasure.” Templeton gave another shallow bow then tied an extra shred of his white shirt to a small cobwebby bush to use as a landmark, to show Jeanie and Katherine how the prairie land could work against even the most knowledgeable pioneer.

Jeanie knew she’d been careless that day, but she certainly didn’t need white ties all over the prairie to keep her from getting lost again. She’d be more vigilant next time.

Move on, Jeanie. No time for moping.
Jeanie drew back and lifted her skirts. She stepped onto the fresh bandages then snapped her foot back in pain. She held her breath and pressed forward ignoring the pain.

“It’s
this
way,” Templeton said. “You’re turned around.”

Jeanie halted. Her face warmed further than the heat and anxiety had already flushed it. “I suppose I’ve made some dire errors today, Mr. Templeton.”

“I suppose we all do at first, Mrs. Arthur.”

Jeanie puckered her lips in front of unspoken embarrassment. When was the last time she’d faced a string of endless failures? Never. She wondered if that could be possible, or if she was just making such a fact up in her mind.

“This way, my sweet!” Jeanie pushed her shoulders back, tugged her skirts against her legs and took off in the correct direction, Katherine beside her with Templeton just behind, gently guiding them back to Jeanie’s family, back to the life she didn’t think she could actually live with, but would not survive without.

Chapter 3

1905
Des Moines, Iowa

In the three days since Yale had stumbled drunk into Katherine and Aleksey’s home, the couple had made the decision that their Edwardian home, even with four children, allowed more than enough space to care for both the cancer-stricken Jeanie and Yale, who was slow. There wasn’t much to do in the way of transporting her sister and mother’s belongings into Katherine’s home for other than two trunks and some hanging clothes; they did not own a single item that needed to be moved.

It wasn’t Katherine’s decision to have them come. She resisted with all her might but Aleksey, had for the first time in their marriage, asserted the type of overbearing male dominance so many men reveled in regularly. He told Katherine she had no choice but to let Jeanie and Yale live with them. It was Katherine’s duty to nurse her mother back to life or onward to death and it was her job to comfort and house her struggling sister.

Katherine stood in their doorway and watched Aleksey help Jeanie, one awkward step after another, up the front steps and across the porch. Katherine may not have remembered any warmth toward her mother, any sweet, shared moments or precious mother/ daughter secrets, but she felt them from time to time, inside her skin, down in her soul, coursing through her body. Below the surface of her conscious mind was the memory of a woman she once adored. Normally when that flash of love for her mother shot through Katherine, she pushed it away, and let the resentment, the gritty hate that seemed to be layered like bricks, weigh on the goodness, squashing it out.

But now, with her mother being ushered into her home for Katherine to tend until she took her final breath, she let the shot of warm feelings sit a bit; saturate her mind, hoping the sensation would allow her to cope.

As Aleksey and Jeanie entered the front room, Katherine watched Jeanie’s gaze fall over the carved-legged mohair davenport, velvet chair, and an oil painting done by Katherine herself. The thick Oriental rug drew Jeanie’s attention, then when Katherine pushed the button, the diamond-like chandelier jumped to life, drawing Jeanie’s gaze before she settled it back on Katherine’s painting, one she’d done when they lived on the prairie.

Jeanie’s once graceful posture was hunched over an ugly black cane as her hand opened and closed around the handle as though the action soothed her. Jeanie’s brown hair, pulled tight into a bun, was thin, sprouting out of the severe style. The frail woman straightened, stared at the painting then brushed the front of her dress before falling hunched over her cane again.

Katherine told herself to find the love she wanted to feel. She took Jeanie’s elbow and helped her to the couch, hoping it didn’t smell like the old hound that often curled on one corner.

Aleksey kissed Jeanie’s cheek and took her cane, supporting that side as they shuffled to the davenport. Acid rose up inside Katherine and blossomed into full envy at the warmth Aleksey showed Jeanie—the fact that he could touch her without looking as though his skin would combust on contact, as Katherine felt hers would.

Katherine gritted her teeth as she and Aleksey turned Jeanie and settled her onto the davenport. She sighed and squinted at Aleksey. She loved him more than anyone except their own children, but this may be too much.

“I’ll get that sweet tea you made, Katherine.” Aleksey headed toward the hall.

Katherine couldn’t have guessed exactly what her mother was thinking, but the puckered lips and narrowed brows didn’t look positive. “Well,” Jeanie said. “You’re a little late with your spring cleaning, but the place is respectable all the same. I can see you purchase things that last.” Jeanie smoothed her dress over her knees then smiled at Katherine.

“I know you mean that as a joke, Mother, but I don’t appreciate it.”

Jeanie scowled and Katherine flinched, waiting for hard words in return. Her mother opened her mouth and closed it then stared toward the painting with reed straight posture.

The pounding of the ice pick as Aleksey split the ice into cold slivers mimicked Katherine’s heartbeat. She took a deep breath. How could a person feel so uncomfortable with the very person who gave her life? She prayed for Aleksey to speed it up in the kitchen as time moved like a fly in honey for the two in the front parlor.

With a startling jerk, Jeanie grasped Katherine’s hand. She jumped in her seat, so surprised that her mother actually touched her. She stared at their hands then at her mother’s profile. Jeanie gazed at the moody landscape Katherine had created on that awful day so long ago.

“You were such a beautiful artist,” Jeanie said. “I remember when you did that one.”

Prickly heat leapt between their hands, making Katherine sweat with anxiety. Jeanie caught her confused expression then squeezed her daughter’s hand three distinct times. I love you. Each unspoken word was hidden in the three contractions of Jeanie’s grip. Katherine nearly choked on swelling anger as she fought the burst of tears that threatened to fall.

With her free hand, Jeanie brushed some hair back from Katherine’s face. Katherine, still as marble, wanting her mother to stop touching her, cleared her throat, feeling like she might pass out.

“Oh, I know,” Jeanie said. “So very serious you are. I was once that way…I…well. I’m sorry, Katherine. I shouldn’t have…I
should
have told you everything years ago, but…“ Jeanie’s gaze went back to the painting. “I want to explain.”

Katherine nodded once but angled her shoulders away, trying to put as much space between them as possible. Katherine couldn’t go down
that
old prairie path again. It was too late for explanations. She would have sprinted out the door, but her legs were numb. The only energy in her body seemed to exist inside the space between her and her mother’s intertwined fingers.
Hurry Aleksey.
Katherine closed her eyes. Aleksey returned with a tray and tea, ice cubes clinking in the tall glasses.

He set the tray on the table in front of the women. Katherine silently begged him to notice her blood had rushed to her feet, that he should hoist her over his shoulder and take her away from this woman who, in merely touching Katherine, made her unable to render useful thought, to move, to live.

Trust Aleksey, Katherine told herself. She told herself to hope, to believe that something would be gained from this operation— from what Katherine saw as self-inflicted torture.

But, with Aleksey standing there, handing out tea, acting as though it were perfectly normal that Jeanie was there, with Yale asleep upstairs, Katherine decided she might never speak to Aleksey again.

Chapter 4

1887
Dakota Territory

Jeanie, Katherine, and Templeton crested a hill and stopped. Jeanie was eager to get to their wagon but relieved to give her smarting feet a break. She lifted one foot then the other, grimacing, as Templeton discussed their trek up to that point. He motioned back in the direction they had come, where he had tied a piece of his shirt to a bush, saying that even though the path to the crest upon which they stood had risen slightly and slowly, that Jeanie should always be aware of how deceptive the prairie land could be.

She turned in place, taking it in, seeing that on that sloping land the world seemed to open up but also it hid things. The fat, blue sky stretched in every direction without a landmark to mar a bit of it. Like the tie on that bush. It was gone, as though it never existed. Jeanie shook her head. So, it wasn’t just that she and Katherine had been irresponsible in getting lost earlier, it
was
tricky land.

Templeton walked Jeanie and Katherine twenty yards further over the slope. And as though a magician had lifted a curtain, there appeared, one hundred and fifty yards east, a small frame home and the Arthur’s wagon sitting near a crooked barn. Even from that distance, Jeanie could make out Frank, their eleven-year-old son James, and Katherine’s twin brother Tommy fiddling with the wagon wheel.

The three of them walked east as though searching for something lost in the grass. Frank swaggered; his wiry body bore his unconscious confidence. But, he tapped the side of his leg—the one outward sign that something was bothering him. His movements were like a set of fingerprints. Jeanie could pick him out of a thousand other men if they were all in shadow, she was sure.

Katherine tore away from Jeanie and Templeton, galloping, twirling around to wave at Jeanie before breaking into full sprint to greet her father and brothers. Tommy glanced up at his approaching sister then carried on with his play—walking a few yards before throwing himself to the ground, shot, by some evil intruder.

And her James. Jeanie’s first born. He lagged behind, but leapt into the air as Katherine raced by him and slapped his backside, making her fall into giggles that carried over the land. James had perfected a subtle, bellow of brooding, never quick to laugh or lash out. Each of them unique though together they formed a mass of love and pride, each one inhabiting a chamber of Jeanie’s heart. If one were to disappear it would surely kill her instantly.

Templeton pointed west, past Jeanie’s nose. “If Katherine fell into the pond I think you’re describing, you must have seen that tree.”

Jeanie nodded toward the crooked one she’d seen earlier.

“That’s the bee tree. It’s actually part of the Henderson’s, no,
your
homestead, now. You can’t see the tree from everywhere, but it’s an anchor of sorts. Then there’s another anchor just over there, at the far end of the Hunt’s property, a cluster of six or seven trees.”

Jeanie rose to her toes to look.

“Your bee tree and the Hunt’s cluster are the most obvious landmarks between the five closest homesteads in Darlington Township. Gifts, sprouting from the land to guide and direct us.”