Tearing open Sophie’s letter, she read her friend’s words about the rain drenching Cedar Rapids as well. Even with the rain, though, Sophie wrote that she was beginning to enjoy the bustle of the city. She’d obtained a recipe book, and with the instructions, she’d learned she could make almost anything she wanted to eat in her stove.
Sophie said she missed the Amanas and all her dear friends, but Liesel would adore the funny variety shows that played in the theater called vaudeville. And had Liesel ever heard of a library? In Cedar Rapids, the library housed thousands of books, and Conrad told her she could check out five at a time. Five new books every week.
There was a museum in the city with beautiful art and a park along the river where she could stroll when her baby arrived. A church down the street held quilting bees every Tuesday, and there was a new department store near their boardinghouse with bolt after bolt of fabric available for purchase. Once Conrad began practicing law, she would have the money to dress in the latest fashions instead of her old calico dresses.
Liesel dropped Sophie’s letter into her lap, and the smile on her lips slipped away as well. Her friend was happy at last, or at least contented in Cedar Rapids. She should be happy for Sophie, but after reading her friend’s words, she couldn’t muster happiness at Sophie’s enthusiasm for fabric and museums and the library. How could new dresses and artwork replace the kinship of the Colonies? Here Sophie had family and security and a place to serve God, but nowhere in her letter did she mention evening prayers or worship.
Cassie and Magdalena sang a silly song, dancing together with their dolls. Salome laughed as she knitted a pair of stockings, asking them to do it again. Greta soothed her newborn in the rocker, and the others in the room were reading or talking quietly.
None of them noticed her fingers trembling as she slipped Sophie’s letter back into the envelope and stared at Jacob’s letter in her lap.
She wanted him to return to the Amanas, yet when he did, her father and the Council of Elders would ask Cassie and him to leave. Perhaps she could write him, warn him of their decision. Perhaps he could think of some reason to change their minds.
Slowly she pulled Jacob’s letter out of the envelope.
What if, like Sophie, he was writing her to applaud all the luxuries of the city? His delight would only widen the gulf between him, reminding her that Jacob wasn’t accustomed to the simple ways of their Society. He was used to the museums and library and department stores. The outside world was where he belonged.
Sinking into herself, she stared at the neat lines of his writing. Even more than reading about the wonders of city life, she was afraid his letter contained a confession of some sort. Perhaps he was writing to tell her he really had stolen the money like the paper said.
She’d learned how to forgive, but once someone misused her trust, it was almost impossible for her to trust them again. She would love as God called her to do, but she couldn’t trust someone who’d lied to her. Someone like Emil…
Emil hadn’t actually lied, she supposed, but he certainly hadn’t been honest with her. Whether or not Jacob had seen him with another woman, it was clear that Emil had changed his mind about their relationship. He just hadn’t bothered to tell her yet.
When she left the kitchen house on Monday morning, she’d expected Emil to wait for her so they could have a few moments to talk before she left for Homestead. Instead, all she saw was the cut of his shoulders as he rounded the corner of the street toward the bakery. Even her father had been surprised.
Her fingers brushed over the fold of Jacob’s letter. She would never marry Emil, but what if Jacob wanted more from her? What if he asked her to leave the Amanas to be with him?
Never once had she traveled outside the seven villages that made up the Colonies, and while she often wondered about the outside world, she never wanted to leave here. Could she find good on the outside, like Sophie had?
She glanced back up at Cassie, now playing on the floor with her friend.
God help her, if Jacob asked her to leave with Cassie and him, she didn’t know what she would do.
She opened the letter and saw her name at the top.
Dear Liesel.
Heat rose up to her cheeks, and she kept her head bowed, hoping no one saw her blush. Her eyes focused on the first lines of his letter, but before she began to read his words, someone opened the door to their house and stomped into the sitting room. Dr. Trachsel stood before them, his cloak soaking the rug. Liesel wasn’t concerned about the rug, but what she saw in the doctor’s eyes petrified her.
“What is it?” she demanded.
“Your father…,” he began. “He collapsed in his shop.”
She bolted out of her chair, both letters falling to the floor as she tried to process the doctor’s words. Leaning over, she quickly gathered up the letters and stuffed them into her pocket. “What is wrong with him?”
“I don’t know yet,” Dr. Trachsel said. “But Dr. Eisenberg is working in West Amana today. The Amana Elders sent a messenger asking me to come.”
She didn’t have time to seek permission, but Niklas and the other men would have to understand. “I will go with you.”
The doctor nodded. “We must leave right away.”
Glancing back across the room, she found Cassie still playing at the dollhouse, lost in her own world.
Greta spoke from the rocking chair. “I’ll take care of her, Liesel.”
“But your baby…”
“Cassie and Magdalena will help me while you’re gone.”
Cassie turned to Liesel, her own small eyes filling with concern. “Are you leaving?”
She rushed to the girl and knelt down. “My father’s ill, sweetheart. I must go to him.”
The girl nodded.
“Will you help Greta while I’m gone?”
Cassie eyed the door. “I can help you.”
Liesel glanced back at Dr. Trachsel. He gave her a slight but firm shake of his head.
“Not this time, but I will come back soon.”
Cassie’s lower lip trembled, and the girl reached out and hugged her. Liesel’s heart tore, wanting to stay and care for Cassie yet needing to go to her father. She stepped backward and when she lifted her umbrella out of the stand, Cassie rushed to her, reaching for it.
“Please, no…”
Rain dripped down the window beside the door, but even so, she wouldn’t scare the child. She leaned down, kissing Cassie on the cheek, and slipped the umbrella back into the stand.
“There is no reason for you to be scared, Cassie.”
The girl’s eyes were wide. “Yes, there is.”
Liesel wanted to protest, say that nothing bad would happen to her, but she couldn’t assure a child who’d already lost her mother and didn’t know when her father would return.
She knelt down beside Cassie. “You are God’s child, Cassie. He will take care of you.”
“I love you, Liesel.”
She hugged her again. “I love you too.”
Her heart was full as she walked out the door, and she tried to reassure herself. There was no reason for her to be afraid.
I, the Lord, shall forever bless the obedient children who live in accordance to their faith…. You will have enough and plenty and shall no longer be servants to those who seek only money.
Christian Metz, 1842
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The afternoon sun sweltered Chicago’s marketplace. Bells chimed on the delivery carts, and vendors shouted out to Jacob. “Fresh fish.” “Pretzels.” “Raaaspberries.”
The smell of leather, sausages, and coal clung to the stale air and the hundreds of people who crowded around him. Mrs. Tucker had asked him to hurry to her house, but he didn’t want to spend the little money he had on a hansom cab. Instead he rushed through the busy streets by himself.
When he left Chicago, he thought he would settle into another city like Spokane so Cassie could enjoy all the modern conveniences while he worked. But after
his weeks in the Amanas, city life no longer appealed to him. Now he missed the trees. The rolling fields. The beautiful lake filled with lilies. Even on the hot days he spent feeding the boat’s boiler, he could jump into the Mill Race for a cool swim after he finished his job and eat his supper on the quiet canal banks.
As he walked, he could see the white rotunda of the World’s Fair on the skyline. Just last year, when the economic status of their country hadn’t seemed so ominous, twenty-seven million tourists had come to Chicago to paddle the lagoons, gawk at the exhibits, and ride the giant Ferris wheel—but the gaiety met an abrupt end when Carter Harrison, the city’s mayor, was assassinated.
A wave of solemnity washed over the city with the death of their mayor. It was almost as if the gluttony of entertainment left the entire city with a bellyache…not just from the fair, but from the prosperous years before the fair, as well.
“Italian i-cees,” a vendor yelled in Jacob’s ear.
He missed the tranquility of the Amanas. The solemn stillness that allowed a person to contemplate. He couldn’t imagine a single man or woman in the Amanas shouting at another to buy their vegetables or meat. They viewed each other as friends instead of customers. None of them were pressured to stand out on the street and yell louder than their neighbor to make a living.
Not all the people he’d met in the Amanas had befriended him, but they’d been honest with him from the day he arrived, and they’d valued both Cassie and him. He felt more at home in the Amanas than he’d ever felt in Chicago.
He’d never known his father, and his mother died before his fifth birthday. The German language and traditions reminded him of his comfortable childhood years he’d spent with his grandparents.
He wanted to give Cassie the gift of a home. Security. He’d experienced that security when he was a child and again during the five years he and Katharine were married. When his grandparents passed on, followed by Katharine’s death, he never expected to regain this sense of place again. But in the Amanas he felt rooted again in his faith and in his hope for the future. He’d made his peace with God.
Jacob turned onto a side street and made his way into a neighborhood with small homes and even smaller yards. At the end of the street, he stopped in front of the white painted house Katherine and he began renting months before they welcomed Cassie home. The grass was overgrown and curtains were closed, just as he and Cassie had left it a month ago. A monarch fluttered by, and he watched the butterfly hover over Katharine’s prized rose bush and disappear around the side of the house.
Someone else could have moved into his home by now, but it didn’t matter. Chicago held memories of his loving wife, Cassie’s birth, and their years spent here as a family, but he didn’t belong here anymore.
Water splashed along the sides of the buggy as Dr. Trachsel pressed the horses forward. Closing her eyes, Liesel prayed in earnest for her father and silently scolded herself for not doing something earlier to help him.
When she’d seen how tired he was, she should have usurped his authority on Monday and asked the head Elder to relieve her father of his financial duties. Her father would have been furious for embarrassing him among the other Elders, but she could handle his wrath. What she couldn’t handle was losing him.
“Hold on,” Dr. Trachsel said beside her, and she clasped the side of the buggy as they crossed the bridge above the churning waters. The river had swollen even higher in the past forty-eight hours. Another foot or two and it would crest its banks.
Homestead was built on a hill, safe from the river, but Amana was in the valley. What would happen to their main village if the river broke over the bank?
The draft horses hauled their passengers through the flooded field, and after an hour of slow travel, the buggy arrived at her father’s home. Emil dashed out the front door to take the horse reins from the doctor, but she didn’t acknowledge him. Picking up her skirt, she rushed into the house.
The village midwife scooted out of the way, and Dr. Trachsel threw his drenched cloak and hat over a hook and rushed to her father’s bedside.
“All this fuss,” her father said with a valiant smile. “And there’s nothing wrong with me.”
While the doctor listened to his chest and checked his pulse, Liesel felt as if her own pulse was about to explode. She couldn’t watch her father slip away, not even to enjoy eternal life. His soul was ready to meet His Maker, but she wasn’t ready for him to go.
Emil was beside her now, and she could see the worry mirrored in his face.
“Is he going to be all right?” Emil asked.
“Shh…,” she whispered. He waited beside her in silence until Dr. Trachsel motioned them into the hallway.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked.
The doctor stuffed his stethoscope back into his black bag. “He’s exhausted, Liesel.”
“So he needs a few days of rest….”
“Not days.” His eyes were sad. “It may be weeks or even months before he can return to work.”
“He won’t stay away from the carpentry shop for weeks.”
“He doesn’t have a choice.” The doctor eyed the door. “Ruth can care for him until Dr. Eisenberg returns, but we must leave for Homestead before the river overflows.”
“We can’t leave yet,” she insisted. “We should spend the night.”
He shook his head. “I have patients I must care for in Homestead.”
“I will stay here, then.”
“It may be days before you can return.”
“Vater needs me to care for him.”
“Are you certain?”
“Greta is watching Cassie, and as long as it rains, I won’t be needed in the gardens.”
“I will tell the Elders you are here.” Dr. Trachsel removed several small boxes from his bag. “Albert will need a grain of quinine every hour in a teaspoon of brandy, and the potassium bromide will help him rest.”
She held both boxes to her chest. “Will he be all right?”
“As long as you can keep him in bed…”
“I won’t let him move.”
“And I will help her,” Emil said, stepping up beside her. “He won’t get past both of us.”
“Very good,” Dr. Trachsel said. “When Dr. Eisenberg returns, he can assist you with further medication.”
The doctor slipped his hat on his head, and rain blew in through the open door as he left the house. The lantern flickered in the hallway, and she turned to face Emil looking down on her.
“It isn’t necessary for you to stay,” she said.
“I will sleep in the sitting room…in case you need me to go find help.”
Three families lived on the second floor of the house—any of those men could go for help if she needed it—but she didn’t protest Emil’s words. Not because she wanted him to stay, but because she knew he would argue and she had no energy left to fight.
If he wanted to, he could sleep in the sitting room. She would stay vigilant by her father’s bed.
“Liesel…,” he said as she stepped toward her father’s door.
“What is it?”
“We need to talk soon.”
“Yes.” She patted Jacob’s letter inside her apron. “Yes, we do.”
Mrs. Tucker answered the door before Jacob knocked. Her red-splotched cheeks were stained with tears, and her voice was strained when she invited him inside. He didn’t ask about the children but assumed they were playing in another room.
Mrs. Tucker sat on the couch and pointed for him to sit across from her.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said as he squirmed in the uncomfortable chair.
She blew her nose in a handkerchief. “Orwin told me that your wife passed on last year.”
“She did.”
“And you still mourn?”
“I’m still sad when I think of her, but God has been faithful to my daughter and I.”
“Aye,” she said. “I pray for His faithfulness…and I pray th
at God will forgive us too.”
“God always forgives.”
“I’m not sure this time….” Her words trailed off.
He thought back to his train ride out of Chicago and his anger toward God. He’d practically cursed His Creator and even still, God hadn’t let him go. “I haven’t deserved God’s love, but I’ve learned that nothing is outside God’s span of forgiveness.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Hirsch.” Leaning down, she slipped a large metal box out from under the sofa. Then she reached into her pocket and held out a key.
He stared at the key for a few moments before looking back at the box again. Could it be?
His hands shook as he took the key from her hand, and he looked over at her face again. Tears fell fresh down her cheeks.
He didn’t reach for the box. Not yet. “Where did you find this?”
Instead of answering the question, she told him a story. “My husband never trusted in himself and his abilities. His mother, you see, planned most of his life. He wanted to become a teacher, not a banker.”
She blew her nose again. “He couldn’t refuse his uncle’s offer at Second National. With his mother’s urging, he packed up and moved us to Chicago, but he was never happy in his work.”
“So he stole money?”
“I don’t believe he meant to. At least, not at first.”
“All the entries were from last winter and spring.”
“He began…” She sighed, fanning herself with her hand. “He began to go see a psychic in January to ask for advice.”
“For his work at the bank?”
“That’s how it started. He didn’t know if he should stay at the bank or pursue another career. He didn’t believe in the power of prayer, but the psychic, well, she gave him tangible answers.”
“The woman recommended he embezzle the money?”
“She told him his life was short and he needed to prepare for the future.”
“Aah… So he prepared by taking other people’s money.”
“I’d like to think he was doing what he could to provide for his family.”
“And you knew about this?”
Love Finds You in Homestead, Iowa Page 20
