The Widows of Braxton County (29 page)
Fall 2012, the Krause family farm
T
he next day, Kate stood in the apple orchard and surveyed the damage to the house. Thanks to Will arriving when he did and his 911 call before Trudy had tossed the match, the destruction was minimal compared to what it might have been. The kitchen and Trudy’s bedroom had fared the worst, and the rest of the house had water and smoke damage.
Kate shook her head at the irony. The room where Jacob had been murdered was now nothing more than charred timbers.
“What are you going to do now?” Will asked from where he stood next to her.
“I spent most of the night thinking about it,” she replied, kicking at the leaves at her feet. “A crew’s coming in today to rip out the burned areas, then they’ll board it up. I guess after that I’ll start cleaning it out. Most of the antiques were saved, so I’ll get them ready for the estate sale.”
“Are you sure you want to sell them all?”
“Yes, I am.” She stuck her hands in her pockets as her attention roamed over what was left of the old house. “Then the house will be torn down.”
“No more Krause family home?”
She turned to face him. “This never was a home. From what I’ve learned, the families who spent their lives here knew nothing but misery.” She glanced back at the house and the blackened shell of Jacob’s bedroom. “If Trudy was right, and fire does cleanse, maybe now those restless spirits will be free.”
“You finally believe in all the stuff about curses and ghosts?”
Kate thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Last night, I could’ve sworn I heard the music box.” She shook her head. “But that’s impossible. I checked this morning, and it’s still lying in pieces on Joe’s desk.”
“Maybe Hannah was looking out for you.”
“If so, then I owe her my life. Hearing the music box was what got me out of bed.” She smiled up at him. “I also owe you a debt of gratitude. What made you drive out here so late last night?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I kept replaying our conversations over and over in my mind, and I wasn’t proud of the way I acted.” He rocked back on his heels. “I wanted to set things straight, so I took the chance you’d still be up and drove out here. That was when I saw the light in the kitchen and went around to the back—”
“And saw Trudy with her can of gasoline and box of matches,” she finished for him with a shiver.
“Where are you going to live?”
“Not out here—I’m not going to rebuild. I still plan on managing the farm, but I’m going to get a place in town. And I want to keep working at Doc’s and serving as a volunteer at Essie’s House. In fact, the proceeds from the estate sale are going there.”
“You’re not keeping it?”
“No, I don’t need the money.” She gazed back at the house. “After the violence that Hannah must’ve suffered, there’s a certain amount of justice in giving the proceeds from the Krause family heirlooms to Essie’s House. The money will help other abused women.” She gave him a half-smile. “I think Hannah would’ve approved.”
“Hey,” Will said abruptly, “you want to go for a ride? I want to show you something.”
“Now?” she asked with a lift of her eyebrow.
“Yeah, come on,” he said, grabbing her hand and leading her to his car.
Once in the car, Kate turned to him. “I have a confession to make.” She picked at the hem of her shirt. “I . . . well . . . I thought you might have killed Joe.”
The car swerved toward the shoulder. “What?” he asked as he regained control.
“Yeah. Look, I know you and Rose are hiding something—”
“But—” he interrupted.
She held up her hand, stopping him. “I know it’s crazy, but I got the wild idea that maybe Willie had killed Jacob, that Joe knew about it, and you were trying to protect Willie’s reputation. I even wondered if Joe had tried to blackmail you over it.” She finished with a nervous laugh.
“You were right about one thing—”
“Not Joe?” she blurted out.
“No, not that or,” he said, shooting her a sideways glance, “about Willie killing Jacob. But we were protecting someone’s reputation.” He paused. “Johan Bennett.”
“Essie’s mentor? I looked that name up yesterday while I was at the library.”
“Then you must have noticed that there isn’t much written about Johan.”
“Right. The articles referred to him as reclusive.”
“That’s true. Johan lived in Chicago and worked hard to improve conditions for families, specifically women.”
“I read where his writing contributed to changes in the child-labor laws.”
“They did. That book of essays? It’s one of Johan’s earliest works and not as well-known as his later writings.”
“How did a Krause get a copy?”
“My guess is that someone mailed it to Joseph. You saw that the essay, ‘The Sins of the Father,’ had been ripped out?”
“Yes,” Kate answered slowly.
“That essay is about how violence in families can be perpetuating and passed down to the children.”
“The victim grows up to become the abuser.”
“Yeah.”
Kate stared out the window before returning her attention to Will. “That was true in Joe’s family. I don’t know about his grandfather, but his father abused Trudy throughout their marriage. Joe talked about it in counseling.”
“By all accounts he was an abuser and so was Joseph.”
Kate counted on her fingers. “Four generations. That’s where the ‘sins of the father’ comes in.”
Will nodded.
“So who carved those words in the music box?”
“My guess is Joseph. We’ve always believed he was the one who really killed Jacob.”
“Why?”
“We’ll never know. My grandfather once mentioned rumors concerning the death of Jacob’s first wife and Joseph’s mother. She died under mysterious circumstances, but nothing was ever proved.”
“Revenge?”
“Maybe, or maybe he got tired of waiting around for his inheritance. I figure that carving is the closest thing to a confession that Joseph ever made.”
“Johan knew the Krauses?”
“Yeah. Here we are,” he said, turning into the cemetery.
Kate’s eyes widened. “You brought me to the cemetery?”
“I told you that I wanted to show you something.”
Will drove past the rows of headstones, their polished surface gleaming in the morning light. When he reached a corner of the cemetery, he stopped and got out, motioning for Kate to follow.
A slight breeze whispered through the pines and stirred the leaves littering the graves. Artificial wreaths and flowers marked a few of them. Some had bright banners waving next to them that seemed out of place in such a somber space.
Finally, Will stopped at a headstone made of gray granite.
Smiling, Will pointed to it. “Kate, meet Johan Bennett.”
Kate’s chin dropped as she stared at Will. “Hannah? Hannah was Johan Bennett?” She shook her head. “But how? I don’t understand—I thought Hannah spent her life in an insane asylum?”
“She spent ten years,” he answered grimly. “Her sister and brother-in-law worked for her release, but it wasn’t until Willie became an adult that they managed to get her out.” He wiped a dead leaf off the top of the stone. “They both moved to Chicago where Willie went to medical school and Hannah found a job as a secretary.”
“When did she start writing?”
“Right away, but she did it under her pen name.” He chuckled. “When her essays started causing a stir, she quit and wrote full-time.”
“No one ever made the connection?”
“No, not even when she became successful. She was always very careful to keep her past, and the fact that she was a woman, secret. She didn’t believe that she’d be taken seriously if it got out she’d spent ten years in an insane asylum.”
“She was probably right. I take it Rose and her family knew?”
“Yeah, in fact Hannah helped Essie get established.”
“And both families have kept her secret all these years?”
A look of sadness crossed his face. “Hannah went through hell and back, first with Jacob then in the asylum. We’ve always felt that the least we could do was respect her wish for anonymity, even after she’d passed away.”
Kate knelt by the granite stone and traced the lettering of Hannah’s epitaph.
A VOICE NOT SILENCED
I
’ve often been asked where I find the inspiration for various stories. In this case, this book was inspired by a real event that happened in Iowa in the early 1900s, and by the intriguing book
Midnight Assassin
by Patricia Bryan and Thomas Wolf. I’d like to thank them for creating such an interesting book and for whetting my desire to learn more about women’s issues during that time period. (Thank goodness I live in this age!)
Another big thanks to my editor, Emily! You not only spot the holes in the story, but give me specific ideas on what I need to do to fill them! The story is better and stronger thanks to your input and I can’t tell you how much I value your comments!
My agent, Stacey—for the past seven years, you’ve guided my steps down this crazy path, and I never would have made it without you! Always patient and kind, you have been a joy to work with!
To Alexx Miller, my beta reader. Thanks for being there with the praise and/or swift kick in the keister, and for knowing which I needed the most at any given point in time!
To my friend and fellow author, Tamara Siler Jones—thanks so much for being the “voice of reason” during the process of this book and for the endless brainstorming! I knew that I could always count on you to give it to me straight!
Mark Shepherd, Dallas County Deputy Sheriff and Medical Examiner Investigator—thanks, Mark, for all of the valuable information about law enforcement procedures and ideas on how to set up my poor characters!
And
thanks for the tour of the Dallas County Jail! So happy that you didn’t make me stay, and I pray I never have to enjoy your hospitality!
And, as always, a heartfelt thanks to my family and friends. You’ve been on this journey with me since the beginning and I know it hasn’t always been an easy one, but your love and support has never wavered.
To all the readers who’ve spent their time and their money on these tales I spin—without your interest, my stories would be just another file on my hard drive. As you can see a lot of people had input into this story, but all errors and mistakes are mine alone! Hopefully you, the reader, will forgive those oversights and enjoy the story!
P.S.
Insights, Interviews & More . . .
Meet Jess McConkey
J
ESS
M
C
C
ONKEY
, aka Shirley Damsgaard, is an award-winning writer of short fiction and the author of the Ophelia and Abby mysteries and
Love Lies Bleeding
. She lives in a small Iowa town, where she served as postmaster for more than twenty years.
The Story Behind
The Widows of Braxton County
E
VERY AUTHOR
is asked the question “What inspired you to write this book?”
Personally, my inspiration never comes from the same place: TV, news articles, a book of nonfiction, a tale told by a friend. Often a story or pieces of a story will be influenced by more than one thing. At other times I might not even be aware of what exactly started my brain churning.
However, in the case of
The Widows of Braxton County
, it’s easy for me to pinpoint the source of my inspiration. Several years ago, I attended a book signing at a semilocal independent bookstore (which sadly is no longer in business) and listened as the two authors explained how they came to write a book detailing a murder that happened here in Iowa over a hundred years ago. I bought the book, read it, and found it to be much more than a story about a murder and its aftermath.
Midnight Assassin
by Patricia Bryan and Thomas Wolf not only deals with the Hossack family’s tragedy but goes into detail concerning women’s lives at the turn of the twentieth century.
I knew life was hard back then— farming is backbreaking work—but until I read this book, I had never stopped and thought about how difficult it could be for a woman living during that period. In 1890, women had little control over their lives. First they were under the jurisdiction of their fathers, and then after they married, as was expected, under that of their husbands. In some of the situations written about in
Midnight Assassin
, women were little better than slaves, with no recourse when situations were bad. There were no women’s shelters, divorce was considered extremely shameful, and not only was family counseling unheard of, it wasn’t the “done thing” to air your dirty laundry in public. Some of these women were truly trapped in a life not of their own making.
Reading
Midnight Assassin
made me want to learn more. I learned about the Cult of True Womanhood, a middle-class value system that arose during the 1820s and flourished for the rest of the nineteenth century. It promoted the idea that a woman’s place was in the home. A woman’s role in life was to provide a refuge for her husband; she was thought too fragile to face the hustle and bustle of the outside world. The watchwords of the Cult of True Womanhood were piety, purity, submission, and domesticity, and these ideals were advocated in popular literature and from the pulpit. A true woman devoted her time to unpaid domestic labor. In 1890 only 4.5 percent of married women were employed outside of the home. Some states even had laws legally limiting a woman’s working hours so work wouldn’t affect her duties to her family. Needless to say, under conditions such as these, a widow whose husband hadn’t provided for her would have been devastated financially, left with little means to care for herself and her children.
