Wings of a Dream (38 page)

By the time I’d consumed some oatmeal and coffee, given myself a bird bath and changed my clothes, the sun had risen to full height and I had to lie down again. “Go for me, Henry. Please. I have to know.”

He finally agreed. After he climbed into his car and chugged away, I sat at Ollie’s bedside and watched Frank coax broth between his daughter’s lips.

Seven precious days had slipped away as Ollie, then I, fought off the Spanish Lady that claimed Aunt Adabelle. Days I could never regain. I figured up just over three weeks remained until I must board the train and leave this family behind.

“No more, Daddy. No more.” Ollie’s rasp rent my heart.

Frank dabbed her lips with a damp cloth, and her eyes closed in restful sleep.

I straightened the top of the quilt near Ollie’s chin. A rush of tears dammed behind my eyes, my nose, my cheeks. I took a deep breath, pushed Ollie’s hair from her face as I’d done for my aunt, and laid my hand on her cheek, thankful for the coolness.

The horror of my vigil over Aunt Adabelle returned as a knot in my chest. Did Irene share that experience now or was she in the oblivion of fever, as Ollie and I had been? And Mama. She couldn’t fight off the ravages of the flu a second time. And what if Daddy should fall ill? She certainly didn’t have the strength to nurse him.

“What are you thinking?” Frank’s words came so soft I wasn’t sure I’d heard them.

I tried to smile, to break the sorrow that stretched between us. “Thinking about Mama. And Will. And Adabelle.”

Clara’s unspoken name shouted itself into the silence. My eyes sought his face. “Irene won’t die, too, will she?”

“We can pray.” He bowed his head, his voice booming now as he implored the God of the universe to spare the life of his friend. Although tears rolled down my cheeks, I smiled as I watched him pray. Deep faith, strong character, and a love for others. Could there be a finer man?

“Thank you,” I said when he finished. I wondered if I imagined the tremble in his hand as he straightened the covers over his daughter.

“Irene’s not any worse, but the baby . . .” Sheriff Jeffries’s hat spun between his hands.

I stood, in spite of the wooziness in my head. “I have to go to her.”

Henry took my hand, led me back to the sofa. “She’ll need you more later, I think.”

My hands dropped limp into my lap as Frank came into the parlor and sprawled in a chair. His stubbled chin and shadowed eyes sank into my understanding. He hadn’t rested in days, what with nursing Ollie.

“Please, Frank. Get some rest. I’ll watch her. I promise.” I glanced at the sheriff. He didn’t look nearly as haggard as Frank. “Sheriff Jeff—Henry will stay a while longer and help.”

Frank didn’t protest as I’d expected. Instead, he trudged from the room, bent like an old man with a lifetime of burdens. My throat ached with longing. But I knew he didn’t want me. He considered me only a blessed help in his time of trouble. Nothing more.

I held out my hand to the sheriff, forced my dry lips to smile. “Come help me take care of my girl.”

T
hree days after my feet steadied on the ground again, I stood in the graveyard by the church, a cold wind whipping my skirt around my legs and snaking up my stocking-clad legs. A pale-faced Brother Latham stood over the gaping hole, eyes raw with grief.

Irene’s bundled shoulders shook as she wept silently. I laced my arm through hers, but liquid fear dotted my forehead. What if she swooned? I didn’t think I could hold her up.

But even as the thought crossed my mind, Frank reached over and anchored her from the opposite side. I smiled my thanks, but his face remained blank, as if he grieved a loved one, instead of Irene.

And maybe he did. Maybe this burial made his wife’s more real.

Brother Latham paused several times during the service, but he made it through, prayed a final prayer, and dropped the first handful of dirt on Beulah’s child-sized box below. I winced as the hard clods banged on the soft wood. So different from the squish and plop of Aunt Adabelle’s final farewell.

I squeezed my fingers around Irene’s arm as she bent forward to do what her husband had done. I turned away as the earth flew from her hand, trying to mute the sound. Then, at Brother Latham’s direction, I led Irene toward the church. She needed to sit, to rest. As did I.

Doc Risinger took my arm as Frank gave Irene his full strength to lean on. We climbed the steps, and then Frank slipped back to the grave site. Inside, I unwrapped Irene’s shawl, unbuttoned her coat, led her to the back pew. She bowed her head. Doc Risinger found us there, pulled me just out of earshot.

“She needs time to recover, body and soul.”

I nodded. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

His moustache twitched. “And what about the others that need yer care?”

“Frank can handle them.”

“He’s who I was meanin’. He’s walking on the edge of illness himself, what with nursing ye and Ollie both.”

“Nursing us . . . both?”

His bushy eyebrows inched up and down like caterpillars across a sidewalk. “Aye, girl. Didn’t ye know?”

“But Sheriff Jeffries . . .” The fog in my brain vaguely remembered Frank by my bed, soothing words, gentle hands. But hadn’t I dreamed that?

Doc shook his head. “Sheriff didn’t come until the last. He took the little ones to the Crenshaws’, but he had other things to tend.”

My mouth gaped as my head whirled in confusion. Frank took care of me? Me and Ollie? “But he . . . How could he manage us both?”

“Blamed if I know. But he did. Better than most, I might add. Went without sleep. Without food.” Doc shook his head. “Couldn’t bear to lose ye, either one.”

Either one? My throat tightened, and tears blurred my vision. Could it be true?

“Rebekah?” Irene’s voice croaked like an old woman’s, clawing at my heart.

“I’m here.” I knelt beside her.

She closed her hand over mine as she hauled in a bucketful of air. “Thank you. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. Nola Jean’s a good girl, but she doesn’t understand. Not like another mother.”

Another mother? Did she really think of me like that? I felt so young. So inadequate in the face of her grief. I’d never birthed my own child, let alone buried one. But after watching Ollie suffer, I guessed I had more understanding than a schoolgirl would.

She squeezed my hand and forced another smile, all at the same time. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. I still choose to bless the name of the Lord.”

I pressed my lips together. If she could believe those words in light of the death of her child, I determined I could, too, even if every desire of my heart ended in destruction.

I stayed over at the Lathams’ the next day to help, though Nola Jean took care of things. I sat with Irene, letting her talk about whatever came to mind. When the silence stifled, I asked her questions, forcing her to think beyond her pain.

“Tell me about Frank and the sheriff. They don’t seem to be friends, exactly.”

“Oh, honey, that’s an old tale now, but neither one of them can seem to forget. Clara used to laugh at them both. Like two dogs circling a carcass picked clean, Adabelle used to say.”

I laughed. Mama would not have approved of such an expression. “What happened?”

Irene sighed. “It was just after Clara and Frank came here. You know all about that, I expect.”

“Ollie told me their story.” I wondered if Irene knew about the story Ollie had told me of Nola Jean’s young suitor.

As if reading my thoughts, Nola Jean arrived with two cups of tea. Irene held her daughter’s hand a long minute before letting go, but Nola Jean didn’t linger. Irene sipped at her tea. “Clara and Frank, both of them no more than children, rented a room at the Jeffries’s house.”

I leaned forward. I hadn’t expected that.

“Henry was right about their age, but still in school. Frank went off and worked on the railroad, hoarding money to buy that farm. That left Clara and Henry often in each other’s company. Clara invited sympathy, with her frailty. Just the kind men like to champion.”

Unlike me. A girl with gumption. Maybe that’s why Mama kept trying to arrange things. She feared I’d end up like Aunt Adabelle, far from home, taking care of other people’s families. I chewed at my thumbnail. I guessed she had a right to that fear.

Irene set her cup aside and leaned her head on the back of the chair. “Really wasn’t anything to tell. Frank came home late one night, found them together in the parlor. Playing checkers, if I remember right. He was young. He hauled off and hit Henry square in the nose. Clara was furious.”

“And they never reconciled?”

“Henry and Frank kept an amiable truce, mostly. Then Frank left for the war. Clara and Adabelle needed Henry’s help, and he always gave it.”

It explained some things—but not what I felt to be a recent deepening of that rift. “I’m glad you told me.”

Irene looked right into my eyes, and I felt she could read all the way to the bottom of my heart. “Be careful with them, Rebekah. With both of them.”

My stomach twisted; my mouth went dry. I gulped the rest of my tea, wishing I could tell Irene all my uncertainties, my fears. About Henry. About Frank. About my ability to know my own heart. But she had burdens enough to bear at the moment, so I remained silent. As I carried our empty cups to the kitchen, I realized Irene’s intimations terrified and excited me all at the same time.

B
rother Latham preached from the sixth chapter of Matthew the Sunday after we buried his youngest child. I latched on to verse thirty-four: “Take therefore, no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

It was easier said than done, for my thoughts constantly drifted toward the dwindling number of days and Frank’s continued refusal to discuss telling the children of my upcoming departure. I tried to force my mind away from Frank and Henry and Irene—and how it would rip out my heart to leave Ollie and James and Dan and Janie behind.

My heart swelled as I watched Janie change each day. My baby. At least she felt like mine. And that made the battle over worry even more difficult. Day passed into night. Night into day. Yet each bird with wings outspread reminded me again that God cared for me, that He knew every wind that blew my way and changed my direction. And He knew the days that remained of my welcome in this home.