Although the rest of the family seemed to take it as a matter of course, it seemed odd to her that Diantha would bother to lock up something as mundane as fabric—especially since she didn’t even value it enough to use it. Sugar, yes. It was expensive. A small birthday present, yes. Children were nosy. But fabric? She didn’t think so.
They heard a pitter-patter on the roof, and Ellie, Trudy, and Polly came tumbling inside. “It’s raining!” Ellie shouted.
“Finally.” Joshua looked up. “We need the rain. It’s been such a dry spring.”
“Maybe rain barrels fill up,” Ingrid said. “Give us nice, soft water for washing hair and clothes.”
“Pray that it continues, Ingrid. Our crops need it.”
15
The two-day rain brought wildflowers—armloads of them seemed to spring up around their farm overnight.
“Ma always liked flowers,” Agnes said, her nose pressed against the window.
“Maybe you take her some,” Ingrid suggested.
“What do you mean?” Agnes asked.
“Go put flowers on mother’s grave.”
“You wouldn’t mind?” Joshua asked.
“No. Why I mind?” Ingrid said. “Go.” She made a shooing motion. “Take flowers for mother.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I pack picnic. You stay long time. Talk with children about mother,” Ingrid suggested. “Remember together.”
“Thank you, Ingrid. That’s very thoughtful of you,” Joshua said. “I think that would be a good idea.”
Although he looked at her a little suspiciously when she said “stay long time” and handed him a basket of sandwiches, he accepted the basket and headed out with the girls.
“Pick many flowers for mother,” Ingrid called as they left.
She knew that Diantha’s grave was in a family plot on top of a rise behind Virgie and Richard’s house. With any luck, the walk, the picnic, the picking of flowers, the remembering would keep them away for an hour or two.
Ingrid hoped they would stay gone as long as possible. It would give her a chance to do something she had been itching to do—search the house over for that key.
“You and my mother will be all right alone here with Bertie?” Joshua asked.
“We fine.” Ingrid fought back frustration with his slowness to leave. “Go. Have good time.”
The minute the girls and he had left, she placed Bertie in his cradle and scooted it over near the rocking chair where Mary sat basting a new baby dress for him out of the navy blue material Joshua had brought from George’s yesterday—in spite of having to make the trip in the rain. Joshua must really not want Bertie to wear the pink calico.
“You watch baby?” Ingrid asked.
“Of course.” Mary peered at her over her glasses. “You’re going to go looking for that key, aren’t you?”
“Ja.” Ingrid was impressed. Mary seemed to be getting more alert each day. “How you know?”
“What woman wouldn’t want to know what a man’s first wife was keeping locked away in a chest?” Mary said. “Diantha was always cordial to me, but she was a secretive little thing. Where are you going to look?”
“Upstairs in girls’ loft?”
“No.” Mary shook her head. “I already checked out all the hiding places up there.”
“You do that?” Ingrid was even further impressed.
“I had to sacrifice to send that fabric each Christmas,” Mary said. “Plus, Barb resented it. It bothers me that Diantha evidently never touched it. I’d like to see it put to use for what I intended it—clothing for the children.”
“Where I look then?”
“I’d look in the bedroom—where it would be handy and where she could close the door so the girls couldn’t see where she was hiding it.”
“That make sense.” Ingrid headed toward the bedroom.
“Except that Diantha was an outdoorsy woman. It could be in the barn or one of the sheds. Or even in a tree somewhere for all I know.”
“I never find key!”
“Well, I would look in the bedroom first. Are some of Diantha’s things still there?”
“Ja. Joshua angry when I try to sort things for Agnes. I not touch since long time.”
“Where do you keep your things,” Mary asked, “if Diantha’s are still there?”
“I have not much.” Ingrid shrugged. “Fits in box under bed.”
“That’s not fair,” Mary said.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Ingrid said.
“I tell you what. I’ll keep a lookout here at the window, and if I see them coming home—I’ll tell you. You’ll have plenty of time to put things away. And I’ll have a talk with my son about you not having any place to put your things later. When you aren’t around.”
“That a good idea!”
Their bedroom was not large, but it was big enough to hold a bed, a dresser with a mirror, a chair, and the trunk. It was actually a long box made of solid white pine. The lock, she discovered, was turned toward the wall, which was the reason she had never noticed it.
Ingrid decided to concentrate on the dresser. She had only emptied one drawer when Josh had come home and found her before. The other drawers were still mysteries.
She ignored the top one—it was the one she had already opened and which had held most of Diantha’s dresses. She already knew there was no key hidden in there, and for all she knew, it still held remnants of that sickly sweet perfume Diantha had worn.
The second drawer, she discovered, was filled with Diantha’s underthings and nightclothes. There were, in Ingrid’s opinion, entirely too many nice things in there for a farm wife to own. Many appeared to be store-bought. How had Joshua afforded so many nice things for Diantha?
“You see Joshua?” she called to Mary.
“No. How are you getting along in there?”
“Diantha have many pretty things,” Ingrid said. “How did Joshua buy?”
“Oh, don’t let that bother you, honey,” Mary said. “She brought them with her into the marriage. Diantha was Virgie and Richard’s only surviving daughter and they spoiled her. That girl had more clothes in her trousseau than I probably owned my whole life.”
That made Ingrid feel a little better. Still, the petite size of Diantha’s things bothered her. A pair of Diantha’s lacy pantalets would hardly fit on one of Ingrid’s legs. But she couldn’t help taking stock of the possibilities. These very pantalets should fit Agnes in a couple more years. If care was given, they could be handed down to Trudy, and possibly even Ellie. New ones would have to be made for Polly, of course, because Ellie would be sure to wear them out or rip them on a branch of whatever tree she was climbing.
No key in the undergarment and nightwear drawer. She packed everything back in as closely as possible to how it had been arranged, and opened the third drawer—the last one.
This drawer held four different pairs of Sunday-type button-up, high-top shoes with small heels, and they were lovely. The shoes, more than anything else she had found among Diantha’s things, made her ache. Such delicate, feminine things! One pair of beautiful, light-color calfskin gloves lay beside the shoes. She picked up one glove and fitted it against the palm of her hand. The fingers were a full inch shorter than hers.
There were two parasols folded up inside the drawer. One that was elaborate, with fringe and cutwork, and one that was slightly plainer. She unfurled the fancier one and held it over her head—imagining how proud Joshua must have been to have Diantha on his arm. Diantha in her small, fancy shoes, her perfect gloves, her lovely parasol.
With a heavy heart, she started to close the drawer and then noticed something else in the far back, a small box. She reached in to draw it out. It was a pretty little box, but when she opened it, she saw that it was nothing more than body powder. Once again, she inhaled the heavy scent of roses.
She could hardly put the lid on quickly enough to mask that smell. What if Joshua came home and found her looking through his
wife’s things again? What if he smelled that scent again?
As she bent to place the box back where she had found it, she heard something inside of it shift and scrape. Something heavy was inside that scented talcum, something that should not be there.
Wrinkling her nose at the smell, she opened the lid once again and stuck an exploratory finger into the powder. There, at the bottom of the box, was something metal.
She dredged it out, and sure enough, there was the key.
Holding the key at arm’s length, she went out to the kitchen.
“You found it!” Mary exclaimed.
“Ja.” Ingrid walked to the dry sink, upon which sat a basin she kept filled for the family’s hand washing, and dropped the key into the soapy water.
“Why on earth are you washing it?” Mary asked.
Ingrid didn’t know how to explain except to say, “It smell like Diantha.”
After allowing each child, including Polly, to gather a fistful of wildflowers, Joshua took the children the long way around through the woods to Diantha’s grave. It would be faster and simpler to walk past Virgie and Richard’s home, but he wanted to avoid a confrontation with them—especially when he had the children with him. There would come a time to try to sort things out and make amends, but that time was not yet and it was certainly not now.
The small cemetery held seven graves: Diantha’s, still brown from dirt freshly dug, plus her two younger brothers who had died at birth, her younger sister, who died from diphtheria at age two, another younger sister who died from complications from appendicitis at age eight, and two younger brothers who survived to adulthood, but one had died fighting at Fredericksburg, the other had died from dysentery while encamped in Tennessee. His wife, the oldest child, had helped her mother and father bury six brothers and sisters. He had always wondered if this grisly experience had been a factor in her emotional struggles.
“Do you think Ma can see us?” Ellie asked. “Does she know we’re bringing her flowers?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart, but if she can, I know that she’s loving those flowers.”
Trudy added, “Ma always liked spring best, when the wildflowers bloomed.”
“Yes, she did.”
Agnes was quiet, thoughtful. “You suppose we oughta plant a rosebush here sometime?”
“I think your mother would like that.”
“It would make the grave look a little less . . . raw,” Agnes said.
“Time will take care of the dirt,” he said. “But a rosebush would be nice.”
As he stood there, his mind was flooded with so many emotions, but mainly he was angry over the four years that the war had stolen. Neither he nor Diantha were the same people they had been after he came back from the war. He had demons to fight—memories of the battlefield he struggled to put behind him so he could build a life for his family. She had been quiet and withdrawn, wrestling with her own demons.
He had trained himself to think as little as possible about the battles he had fought. Instead, the only moment of the war he allowed himself to dwell on, the image on which he focused during the worst times, was a scene he and his men had come upon in Tennessee in the spring of 1862. They had been traveling fast, bent on a mission that was taking every ounce of their endurance. He was tired, disillusioned, hungry, and then suddenly, while riding through a remote Tennessee valley, they came upon a young mother walking with her little girl in a cherry orchard. The white cherry blossoms had been at their peak, their scent so pure and removed from the smells of the battlefield that it had seemed like the most peaceful, beautiful, gentle thing he had ever seen.
He and his men had not stopped. They had thundered past the young mother on that back road. He had tipped his hat to her as they sped by, and even though they were Union troops, she had gracefully dipped her head in return.
From that moment onward, he had vowed that if the Lord allowed him to make it back to Michigan, he would plant a cherry tree, and he wouldn’t stop planting until he had acres of those trees with the white blossoms. He had envisioned his beautiful Diantha walking through that cherry orchard someday, and he imagined her feeling the same peace while strolling beneath those blossoms that he had felt those brief seconds his battle-weary eyes had feasted upon it.
Now, that would never happen.
A cherry crop was a good crop to invest in, and that’s what he told people was his reason for planting and nurturing it. But the real reason, his secret reason, was that to him, an orchard represented peace and hope.
The girls carefully laid their little bouquets on their mother’s grave.
“Should we say something, Pa?” Agnes asked. “I mean, we’ve put the flowers on Ma’s grave. Now what?”
Now what, indeed?
“Do you girls want to say something?”
“Like what?” Agnes asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe something nice you remember about her?”
“Ma didn’t get mad at me for climbing trees,” Ellie offered.
“That’s true,” Joshua said.
“And she made good flapjacks,” Trudy added.
Everyone nodded in agreement.
“Ma . . .” Agnes shrugged. “Did the best she could.”
That about summed it up. Diantha had done the best she could.
Polly had lost interest in flowers and was starting to tug on the picnic basket, which also had seen service as the strudel basket and Bertie’s coming-home basket.
“Are you hungry, Polly?”
She nodded enthusiastically.
“Where would you girls like to have your picnic?”
“Let’s head on over to that grassy place beside the spring,” Agnes said. “That’s the best place for a picnic. It’s getting hot standing up here in the sun.”
It struck Joshua how relieved the children seemed to be to walk away from the cemetery. Children were not built to grieve—that was for adults. Children were built to grow and live.
With Mary still keeping watch, Ingrid moved the trunk away from the wall, got down on her knees, and fit the key into the lock. It turned easily, as though it had been used frequently.
The lid creaked as she opened it.
“What do you see?” Mary asked.
Mary’s hearing was much sharper than Ingrid realized, and she made a note to remember that.
“Purple material,” Ingrid said. “With flowers.”
“Oh, I sent that last Christmas. What’s next?”
“Pretty yellow.”
“Really? That was Christmas before last.”
Layer by layer, Ingrid dug through the treasure chest of pristine material. Evidently Diantha had sewn nothing.
At the bottom, as though it had been deliberately tucked as far down as possible, were two things that had nothing at all to do with clothing. There was a small, flat, round box and some kind of a diary.
“Is Joshua coming?” she called.
“I don’t see hide nor hair of him,” Mary answered.
Ingrid opened the notebook. On the inside cover, Diantha had written her name. On the next page, Ingrid saw very odd handwriting. Even though the paper was lined, the sentences ran downward, practically dripping off the lines. There were many splotches and dabs of ink and crossovers as well. The handwriting alone gave her a bad feeling.
Ingrid debated what to do. She sincerely doubted that it held things that Diantha would want her family to know or she would not have taken such pains to hide it.
If this notebook was turned over to Joshua, she might never know what was in it, but if the notebook was left in the trunk, the knowledge of it being there would eat her alive. She glanced up at the clock. It had been exactly one half hour since the children and Joshua had left. At the very least, she and Mary should have another thirty minutes to safely examine the notebook and pillbox.
The problem was, she didn’t know what was in the notebook. If Diantha had chosen to say bad things about her mother-in-law, it could very well break Mary
’s heart. Mary did not need or deserve that, and once she had read it, there would be no erasing it from her mind.
In the end, Ingrid chose to compromise. She unbuttoned the side seam of their straw mattress, shoved the notebook inside, and took the pillbox out to show Mary.
16
It was lovely at the spring.
“You want me to go get Ingrid, Pa?” Agnes asked. “She would enjoy being here with us.”
“By the time she traipsed all the way here toting Bertie, we’d probably be finished with our picnic.”
Polly was happily splatting barefooted in the shallow pool while Ellie and Trudy munched bacon sandwiches and made little leaf boats to blow across the smooth surface of the water.
“Can I ask you about something, Pa?” Agnes said in a voice low enough that her sisters couldn’t hear her.
“Sure.”
“There’s something that’s been bothering me, but you gotta promise not to get mad.”
“You can ask me whatever you want.”
“I haven’t had a whole lot of experience with mothers. All I’ve ever known is Ma.”
Joshua wondered what was coming next. With Agnes, he never knew. The girl could ask some of the most unexpected questions of any child he had ever known.
“What do you want to know?”
“Was Ma . . . normal?”
His heart lurched. “Why?”
Agnes concentrated all her attention on a small pebble that she tossed back and forth from one hand to the other. “I probably shouldn’t ask.”
“You can ask me anything you want,” Joshua said. “I’ll do my best to answer, but what do you mean when you ask if your mother was normal?”
A Promise to Love Page 15
