Wolf Creek Widow (Wolf Creek, Arkansas Book 4) (18 page)

“He told me that, and I understand. Don’t forget that Georgie Ferris is my mother. People have looked down on me and talked about me all my life, and it only got worse when I married Elton. I’m used to it. Nothing would really change if Ace and I...were together.”

“I thought you might say that.” Nita sighed. “I have nothing to tell you to help you except to give him time. He might come to see things differently. I can’t say.” She dumped the two buckets of water they’d already carried from the well into the cast-iron kettle. “In the meantime, he wants me to stay with you to help with the children. Would that be acceptable?”

Meg’s eyes filled with tears. “What about things that need doing at your place? And what about your animals?”

“He’ll see to it that they’re brought here.”

“Then it will be more than acceptable. I’d consider it a blessing to have you here.”

Chapter Fourteen

W
hen Meg awoke the morning after her talk with Nita, the older woman’s animals were in the pens alongside her own. Since they must have arrived in the dead of night, she suspected that Ace had delivered them, and she wondered if he’d spoken with his mother again. She had enough pride not to ask, and Nita didn’t volunteer anything except “Looks like Ace got the critters moved without any problem.”

They finished up the ironing by noon, and Meg asked if Nita minded watching the children while she went to town to deliver it. She didn’t want Lucy out in the chilly air, since she had picked up a runny nose and cough.

Meg couldn’t help comparing this trip to the last one. Instead of driving in sunshine and birdsong, gunmetal-gray clouds hung low in the sky. There had been casual conversation between her and her companions on their last trip to town, and Teddy had been so excited he could hardly contain himself. Her own heart had been light, and her future seemed to hold a promise of better things. Ace had taken that hope with him.

My grace is sufficient to you.

The words she’d read so many times drifted through her mind, a reminder that she was putting her trust and hope in the wrong person. Jesus was the one her faith and future happiness should rest on, not Ace.

All she’d done since he left was bemoan the fact that it wasn’t fair to finally find love and lose it, and to stew about what would happen to her now that he had gone and how she could ever hope to live her life without him. Just like the women in the romance novels of which she’d grown so fond.

Not once had she prayed about their unusual situation or the many things that needed discussing with the Lord. She had not thanked God for sending Ace and Nita to her when she so desperately needed love and help. She hadn’t thanked Him for allowing her to know a man who had shown her what real love between a man and woman should be. She had not asked the Lord to show them both a way to leave their pasts, along with their guilt, behind, nor had she prayed for strength and faith enough to conquer their fears so that they could have a life together.

For the remainder of the trip to Wolf Creek, she prayed from the depths of her heart, not only confessing her own faults and weaknesses, but also asking for forgiveness and giving thanks for the many blessings in her life. She thanked Him for this chance to learn to stand on her own two feet.

When she finished, she felt that perhaps for the first time since the day that had changed her life that her heart was in the right place as she’d talked to the Lord. By the time the buildings of town came into view, Meg felt better than she had in months, perhaps years.

Thankful that she beat the rain, she made short work of delivering the clean laundry to Hattie and Ellie, both of whom asking where Ace was. She received a couple of strange looks when she confessed that she had no idea. Before heading home, she stopped by the doctor’s office to pick up some cough syrup for Lucy.

As Rachel was writing the dosage on the label, she said, “I hear you ran into your mother outside of Ellie’s the other day.”

“You heard right.”

“Ellie said you were white as a sheet when you came in.”

“I probably was,” Meg said with a little laugh. “Conversations with Georgie are never pleasant.”

Rachel handed Meg the brown bottle with a shake of her head. “I don’t understand her. Under the circumstances, I think I’d be trying to mend my bridges instead of burning them.”

“What do you mean?” Meg asked, frowning.

Rachel pressed her lips together, looking as if she’d brought up a subject she’d rather not discuss. “I’m sorry. I should never have mentioned it, but I just supposed she’d told you when the two of you talked. She’s sick, Meg.”

“Sick?” A parade of thoughts marched through Meg’s mind. She’d heard a few weeks before running into Georgie in front of the café that she was ill, but she’d looked fine when they’d met on the street. A little thinner and a bit pale, perhaps, but healthy enough. Or had the flush of color in her cheeks been a bit too bright? “What do you mean, sick? What’s the matter with her?”

“Consumption,” Rachel offered in an almost apologetic tone.

Consumption!
Just hearing the word struck terror in Meg’s heart. It was commonly known that anyone diagnosed with that disease had been handed a death warrant.

“How long has she had it?” she asked, feeling a bit queasy.

“I have no way of knowing for sure. Serena told Georgina that she needed to see what was going on, since she’d been running a fever and had a nagging cough and lack of energy for such a long time. At first your mother thought it was a cold, even though she was coughing up blood from time to time. Then she’d get better for a while. When that happens, the patient thinks they’re on the road to recovery, but another setback is inevitable.”

“Is she bad?”

Rachel nodded. “Not as bad as she’ll get if she doesn’t change her diet and get some exercise. So far, she’s fighting that. You know your mother likes her food, and I’ve tried to caution her about overeating. Even though her breathing is difficult, she would benefit from spending time outside as long as the temperature is stable. Moderate exercise would be good for her, as well. Contrary to what everyone believes, some people do recover. Sadly, most don’t.”

Meg’s head was spinning as she tried to absorb what Rachel was telling her. She and her mother had been at odds for her entire life, yet to hear that her time on earth was limited was disturbing. “I’ve heard that moving to a warmer climate can help.”

“It can if the move is undertaken early in the disease’s progression. Most people, including your mother, wait until things have gone too far for a move to make any difference.”

“How...how long can someone live with it?” Meg asked around the unexpected lump in her throat.

Rachel gave a slight, noncommittal shrug. “If the disease is active, time can vary from a few weeks to a few years. The average time is about eighteen months.”

“Georgie?”

“Oh, Meg!” Rachel shook her head. “I have no way of knowing that. God will take her when it’s her time. I do know that her cough is getting progressively worse and so is the amount of blood mixed with the phlegm. She’s started having night sweats, too, which can happen at any time, but it’s usually a good indication that the disease is well established.”

They talked about her mother’s condition a bit longer, and then, feeling as if a rug had just been pulled out from under her, Meg rummaged around in her pocket for the money to pay for Lucy’s medicine and pressed it into Rachel’s hand. “Thank you for telling me, Rachel. You’re a good friend.”

Rachel placed the coins on a nearby table. “I know things have been...rocky between you and your mother, but if you ever hope to mend the rift between you, I wouldn’t wait too long to do it.”

* * *

Torn by conflicting emotions and a depth of sorrow she was hard-pressed to explain, Meg gave the gray her head and the wagon barreled down the bumpy roads toward home. Still, she barely beat the rain. She’d no more than unhitched the mare, rubbed her down and fed her and run back to the house when the cold drizzle started to fall. After giving Lucy a spoonful of the cough syrup, Meg and Nita followed their evening routine of preparing supper and tending the children as needed.

To add to Meg’s distress, Teddy and Lucy were unusually demanding and whiny—Lucy because she was miserable with her cold and Teddy because he was missing Ace. Telling him that Ace had things he needed to take care of in a faraway place did little to ease his tears.

Meg, who tried to never let her feelings spill over into her interaction with her children, snapped at Teddy. She could tell by the concerned looks Nita was giving her that the older woman wondered what was wrong. Only when she started talking about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and how much they would enjoy that big old Tom turkey Ace had shot and hung in the smokehouse did Teddy quiet and eat.

After cleaning up the supper dishes, the two women got the children settled and donned their own bedclothes before they sat down in the rocking chairs near the fireplace. Nita added another log to the fire and Meg carried the lamps from the kitchen to the small parlor area, placing them to make reading easier.

They had fallen into the habit of mending or reading for a while each evening before weariness or the increasingly cold nights sent them in search of their beds.

Meg was doing her best to concentrate on the words of her most recent choice from Libby’s library when Nita looked up from the patch she was sewing on Teddy’s denim pants. “I was going through that pile of worn-out clothes you’d set aside for rags, and I think with the feed sacks we have between the two of us, we could piece another quilt.”

Meg glanced up from the book she was having such a hard time getting interested in. “Really? That would be wonderful. I’ve pieced tops before, but I’m afraid I’ve never done any actual quilting. It wasn’t on Georgie’s list of skills, and somehow I never learned from Aunt Serena, either.”

“I can show you how, and I have quilting frames at my place. It’s a good way to pass the time when it gets really cold.”

“Thank you, Nita,” Meg said sincerely. “I’d love to learn.”

“From the way you already handle a needle, I expect you’ll pick it up in no time.”

“Thank you,” Meg said again. Instead of going back to her reading, she clenched the book tightly in her hands and stared at her friend, wondering whether or not to tell her about her mother.

“What’s the matter, child?” Nita asked. “Since you got back from town, you’ve been as pitiful as I’ve ever seen you.”

“It’s my mother.”

“Don’t tell me you two had another squabble.”

“No. I didn’t see her, but while I was getting Lucy’s medicine, Rachel told me that my mother is—” Meg couldn’t stop the little crack in her voice “—dying. She has consumption.”

Meg told Nita everything Rachel had confided about her mother’s condition and the progression of the disease.

“Did she say how long she has?”

“No,” Meg told her with a shake of her head. “She did say that the disease is active and, from the symptoms Georgie is displaying, that she’s probably had it for some time. She says there’s a treatment called the Golden Medical Discovery that might be beneficial. She’s going to look into it, and she claims that a lot of people have recovered with the proper diet and care. Unfortunately, my mother isn’t one to do anything other than what she wants.”

Meg ended her tale with Rachel’s admonition that if she wanted to make her peace with her mother, she should do so.

“Will you go see her?”

“I know I should, but how do I know she wants me to come see her? She’s treated me so badly, and Charlie...” She gave a little shudder. “Charlie gives me the creeps.”

“Well, that’s up to you, but regardless of how she’s treated you or even how you feel about her, she is your mother. She carried you inside her body for nine months, and from what I hear, she came close to dying when you were born. That’s something.”

Meg knew Nita was right, but still, she needed to think on things awhile. Refusing to give Georgie any more thought for right now, Meg asked, “Have you heard from Ace?”

“No, child. Not a word,” Nita told her.

Meg didn’t doubt Nita, but there had been times, especially when he’d first gone, that Meg imagined she could feel his presence. Times she stopped what she was doing and looked around, as if she expected to see him come striding out of the woods. She supposed she was being fanciful, but remembering how he had secretly stayed nearby to keep an eye on her, she felt justified in indulging in the harmless fantasy—another of those romantic notions with its roots in her choice of reading material, no doubt. Of course, back when he was staying in the lean-to, the temperatures weren’t dropping into the thirties at night.

“Do you usually fix a big Thanksgiving dinner?”

The question pulled Meg away from her troubling thoughts. She looked at Nita in astonishment. She’d never fixed a traditional dinner. Elton was seldom home, and she had no family other than Aunt Serena, and she’d been unable to make the long trip to her place alone with two children in tow.

“No. Never.”

It was Nita’s turn to look amazed. “Well, we can’t have that! Thanksgiving was one American tradition that Yancy embraced wholeheartedly, probably because there was food involved,” she said with a tender smile.

“My Irishman did love his victuals. We’ll have that turkey Ace smoked. I prefer to bake my Thanksgiving turkey so I can make dressing from the broth, but I’m sure it won’t be any hardship to eat this one. And we’ll have sweet potatoes and turnips and pecan pie...”

Meg listened to Nita planning the holiday with a sad wistfulness. This was what she’d missed by not having a mother who was interested in a family. She vowed right then and there that she would not do to her children what Georgie had. She would make every day special in some way and she would be the best mother she possibly could.

Meg thought about her conversations with Rachel and Nita throughout the remaining days of October and into November. Between her unexpected grasp of her misplaced faith, her failure to turn things over to God and hearing the story of her mother’s illness, she had more to consider and even more to pray about. She continued to pray for God to soften the hardness of her heart so she might have a future free of the hostility that had taken root there. Maybe when God had healed
her
, she could make peace with
them
.

Her bitterness toward Elton seemed to be easing. Either her prayers were bearing fruit, or the passage of time and the forging of new memories and experiences were as beneficial as everyone said they’d be.

Though she’d never imagined it, forgiving her mother was proving to be harder than letting go of her anger at Elton. How did one let go of a lifetime of heartache, shame and resentment?

She wasn’t sure. What she was sure of was that by failing to give Elton and Georgie the mercy she should, she could never hope to have the joy she wanted for the future. That would be like building a house on a rotten foundation.