His legs folded into a soft sand bank and he sank there, too tired to keep his eyes open, too scared to close them in case he saw the terror of Molly’s wet face again.
A sea breeze ruffled his trouser cuffs. They too, told their story. Dried salt left a mark calf high, yet he couldn’t remember the cold or the water. Only yelling. Molly. Molly.
Oh Molly. How did I let this happen to you?
A whistle of wind sounded behind him. If only it were Molly. Always at his heels, always tugging the other way.
He heard it again. The swish of a skirt.
Sleep would catch him soon and he’d see her in every corner. Soon he’d think that was her kneeling in the sand with a new sea treasure. Her hem on his shoe.
“Shadrach.” A soft voice, thick with tears made him open his eyes. Finella knelt and trembled at his feet. Violent sobs worked her chest and shoulders. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Her plea so deep, it matched his own. Her sorrow poked at his numbness. She was here?
“Finella.” He pulled her close and buried his head in her hair. Held her so tight it was a wonder she managed to breathe at all. For a long time he wasn’t sure if the crying was his or hers. When he eased the embrace, her cheeks still streamed with tears.
“How did you get here?” He brushed her face with both hands.
“The Lawson’s picked me up along the road.”
“You were walking here?”
“I had to.” She patted her eyes with a well-creased handkerchief. “I had to come, to see…” She hung her head and cried again until shallow breaths and short sniffs were all he could hear.
“Did you go in?” He wanted to know if she’d seen her. A piece of him wanted to know she’d come back to face what he’d had to look at all night. What he knew Mrs. Lawson cried over now. But even more, he needed Finella to share this grief with him, more than he’d needed anything in his life.
“Only for a moment. I couldn’t stand to see her like that. So completely gone from us.” She looked up at him, red eyes wide with horror. “What happened?”
He pointed to the beach behind her, where the mouth of Saltwater Creek ran in a thin line from the heart of farmlands to the edge of the sea.
“I didn’t think she’d follow the creek. It’s always scared her, the way it disappears to the left like that. I’d warned her there were snakes along the bank. Never thought she’d brave it.”
He rubbed the stubble on his chin and held his hand over his trembling lips until he was sure he could go on. “She must have been confused and thought to follow the creek to town and not the beach. Must have crossed over and tried to scramble up the bank onto dry ground.”
He shrugged, not sure of anything except the obvious. “I guess she slipped and hit her head on hard ground because she was bleeding from the ear when I found her. But I was already too late.”
Finella touched his hand. “So, she didn’t drown?”
“I don’t think so. Water’s too shallow, even for Molly. She would have pulled herself up, if she could…”
“Is it true what they’re saying in the village? Was Molly coming to find me?” Her voice croaked.
What good would it do to tell her anyway? He couldn’t speak, until her eyes found him. The beautiful brown he’d come to love, darkened to something stormy now. The pain he saw there almost convinced him to keep the story to himself. She’d suffered enough. Why lay more blame where it didn’t belong.
But then he remembered the limp body of his sister. Yes, it was Molly’s heart which drove her to tell the truth. Now he could finish what the poor girl had started.
“Let’s go back. We can talk better at home.” He brushed a tear from her cheek and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Even with a brilliant sunrise to light the way, the awful truth dawned on him.
I have to tell her the way Molly wanted it said.
*
She followed him to the edge of the yard. A freshly built oven rose from where Finella never imagined she’d see one on this farm. Not until recent weeks when farm life had taken a sweet turn for all three of them.
But now… now by unspoken agreement they unwound from each other’s hold and lingered there where he’d cemented their names in a row on the oven’s domed top. Shadrach. And Finella. With Molly’s brick fixed between them.
“Oh Shad,” there were no words good enough to thank him for what she once thought she needed. How swiftly life had knocked fancies from her heart. How complete the loss of Christmas pies she’d promised a blue-eyed girl who only looked for the smallest happiness.
Finella wanted to touch Molly’s name, but kept her fingers clenched in fists. God knew she was not worthy to trace the letters they’d drawn together. Not now.
Just beyond them, smoke rose from the chimney in Shadrach’s house and she guessed Mrs. Lawson would soon need them inside. A part of her wanted to go in to Molly, but something stronger kept her where she stood.
“Shad?” She ventured. “Tell me.”
He leaned against the oven wall, his face as colorless as that morning months ago when he’d woken in delirium. “I remember Mum saying Dad deserved a broken nose for all he’d put them through.”
The huskiness in his words stemmed his story, and he took a moment to collect himself. “She said some kind soul had done us all a favor and thrown a punch when we were too scared to sit up, let alone fight back. Your Christmas napkin? Mum kept it as she found it, all blood stained. Said it served as a reminder someone had delivered justice. It wasn’t until Molly pulled it out, I remembered how pushed around they’d really been.”
Finella listened, too afraid to interrupt Shadrach’s awful memory.
“Molly cried and slept for a full day and night after you left. Wouldn’t eat a thing. Pleaded with me to get you back. I tried to explain our Father did something bad to your Mother, and this made you sad.” His lip trembled, and Finella’s heart bruise deepened.
“But she knew you were more than sad. She knew you were angrier than we’d ever seen you, and she pushed me on it. For hours. For days. Why was Finella so angry? Were we really stained? Why did she need Dad’s name? Why were we stained?”
Finella sucked her breath in. Stained. She had said it. Shouted it across the yard until she’d no voice left. And she could never take it back. Filled with shame, she placed her hands over her face and sobbed.
“I thought I meant those words then, but I don’t. I really don’t. Please forgive me—”
He gathered her against him while she cried again. Until exhaustion and heartache cloaked them in a heavy quiet.
Shadrach ignored her apology. “I told Molly something George Gleeson taught me years ago. To surrender to what I truly believe in. That no matter what I’ve done, or where I’ve come from, I’m whiter than the freshest, brightest laundry my own mother could produce. That’s how my faith unfolds. No more stains. Forgiven. Restored.”
Finella pushed back. “Did Molly understand?”
“Did she?” He laughed and sobbed all at once. “She not only understood, she wanted to tell you. And show you.”
“Me? Show me what?”
He dug into his pocket. “I believe this is yours.”
“The ruby brooch?” Neither of them spoke while Finella held it in her palm. Only the sound of Shadrach’s breathing filled the air between them. “I thought you’d sold it.”
“I sold the pouch of gold dust. I wanted to explain when Molly found the napkin but you were too upset. I figured you needed a few days away from here to take it all in, and then I’d try again. There was just enough gold to buy my land but the brooch I’ve kept all this time, to sell when I was ready to build a proper house. Timber’s not selling for the price of spring potatoes, so I kept it up my sleeve.”
“And you showed this to Molly?”
He nodded. “To keep her quiet. She lay on her bed and twisted the gem to catch the light. And then, just like that she jumped up and said we had to return it. Put her good shoes on an
d insisted I get Old Lou and take her to see you that very minute. When I said no, she had a royal fit and after all her pouting, fell asleep. So I put it in a tin on the top shelf. I talked myself into bringing it to you while I finished my chores. I figured we owed you that much.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I was on my way in to tell Molly to get ready when I noticed… she’d gone.”
“With my mother’s brooch?” Finella pressed it to her collar in a clenched fist.
“I found it pinned to her shirt when I carried her body home.”
“If only I’d not let my temper get in the way of what’s true.” She wanted to look him in the eye and beg for forgiveness, even though words would never come close to what she owed.
“She didn’t just want to return the brooch. I guess she wanted you to see for yourself that she understood grace and forgiveness. Once she wrapped her little mind around it, that girl beamed like torchlight. You should’ve seen her. Bursting to share it with you like some fine seashell.”
Finella needed to hear it, yet flinched with every word. Molly, their own Miss Molly, knew what it was to be forgiven. And didn’t withhold it.
“Can you forgive me, Shad? I should have been the one teaching Molly that lesson. Instead…”
She grasped both his hands in her own trembling grip, the brooch trapped between them.
“I’ll regret my words all my days. And for my punishment I’ll always know I can never ask forgiveness from Molly. Here,” she opened her fingers. “If Molly had brought me this, I would have given it back. I… I don’t care who your father was anymore. All I care about is who you are. Please take it, if you can forgive me.”
He smiled through fresh tears, but the lines remained in his brow. “I forgive you.” He cupped her cheek. “But, if anyone’s to blame it’s me, isn’t it? That’s my punishment. Knowing how much Molly wanted to see you, I should have bundled her into the wagon. Instead, I let her fuss and sleep and made myself miserable out here digging a hole in the ground.” He cocked his head to the left.
Finella brushed her tears away. A mulberry sapling stood in a shallow of water and freshly dug dirt.
“I had it hidden in the barn. I was going to bring it out with Molly’s rabbit blanket and your Christmas pies.”
Finella gasped. He didn’t mean to wound her, she knew that. And if they were to wade through the next few hours, she had to let the hurt not only strike, but as Agatha encouraged, change her.
“You planted a mulberry for me, even after all I yelled at you? How did you not add it to a bonfire after I left?”
“Because I knew where it belonged. I dug a hole so big I could’ve buried three trees there, not one.”
At the word bury, their sorrow deepened. He ran his finger over the word Molly on the brick in the centre of the oven arch. “I need you beside me today, Finella. Can you do that?”
Hand on hand, she pressed hers to his and wound her fingers there. She could only see her name and Shadrach’s now.
“If you’ll let me.”
“What about tomorrow. And the next day? Will you stay then too?”
Tears clouded her vision but her heart saw what she needed. What God allowed her to feel again. “Tomorrow, and every other day.”
42
“The burial reading tells me I must open to the ancient words of comfort in Psalm 90.”
Goliah Ashe ran his finger along the gap between his collar and throat. Too much longer in the blistering sun and Shadrach figured he’d join him in his fidgeting.
Still, he held his chin up even with his good coat scratching his own neck, and busied himself steadying Finella. From the other side, her aunt held a summer parasol over their heads.
He wanted all those gathered at the small bush graveyard, to be sure there was no room for blame or guilt. It’s what Molly had chased down. And didn’t forgiveness at its purest, come with a high price?
Shadrach was not too sure what Goliah had spoken about in the church. He’d spent all his energy keeping his eyes off the cedar coffin he’d carried in. But here, with bird sounds from the pink gums overhead, he let Goliah’s words sink in.
“It’s fitting we begin the burial of our dearest Molly Jones by remembering the God she belongs to. For while she’s no longer with us, she most certainly is with Him. I want to speak to those who cannot fathom the loss of this dear girl. To you, and me, and those who can barely stand in the glorious sun and contemplate the horror of the last few days.”
Finella leaned into Shadrach and while he may have sat at attention, his heart bent at their joint grief. With Aunt Sarah’s slender frown the least of his concerns, he wrapped his arm around Finella and squeezed her shoulder.
“Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard?” Goliah read from his book. “The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is he weary. There is no searching for his understanding.” Goliah’s voice grew louder. “He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might, he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.”
Shadrach closed his eyes for the familiar ending.
“They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.”
Goliah went on. “You might think that’s all a preacher needs to say to a gathering of bereaved. That in life’s darkest moments, they will find rest and the promise of renewal. While this is true, I am not done.
He looked at the sky before continuing on. “I leave you with this question. Are we to walk away from bitterness with the hope of strength alone? Are we to soldier on for the sake of soldiering on? Perhaps not, dear ones. For God himself, tells us what Molly would want us to think on as we depart. ‘Yea, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness have I drawn thee.’
“Molly shared great love with the people she knew and trusted. Even with her limitations, she tried to express this love as best she could. I think if she were able, she’d tell us love is the greatest. That forgiveness allows us an open door to really love and be loved. By one another, and by the Everlasting, Creator of all things.”
He closed his book with a sad tip of the cover, and motioned to Shadrach to take a handful of dirt for their final goodbye.
*
Finella’s empty palm trembled. Aunt Sarah offered a handkerchief to wipe her stained fingers, but a smudge of earth remained. Six months ago the stain would’ve vexed her like a twig in her shoe. Today, she held onto it for as long as she could.
One by one the mourners moved away. To their wagons and jinkas for the ride back to refreshments at the little church house. Finella joined Shadrach in accepting sympathies so raw she could barely stand to hear them. Glad it was over, yet desperate at the thought of leaving Molly where she lay.
And so they stayed. A weak but firm smile from Shadrach assured the straggling Mrs. Lawson they needed one last moment, and even Aunt Sarah let them go with bruised reluctance.
“Can we ever learn to live with our guilt?” Finella asked when the empty graveyard echoed with a magpie’s song.
“If we never let it go it means we don’t believe God is big enough to take it.” They walked away from the grave. “I think we’ll mourn her all our life, but not under a cloud of guilt. I don’t want to remember her that way. Do you?”
Finella smiled. “No. I want to remember her running across the sand, hair flying everywhere, finger in her mouth because she was too scared to let you touch her splinter.”
Shadrach hung his wrist on her shoulder. “Or completely jam-smeared and laying on her bed sorting new shells, the end of her braid in her mouth.”
“Me telling her to spit it out.” How it crushed her to talk about their Molly like this. Gone forever. But how deeply good to share her, just the two of them.
“When I wouldn’t bring her to you, she told me something I’ll never f
orget.”
Finella stopped walking. “Tell me.”
“She said, ‘Finella loves us, Brother. She’s cross because it’s hot now and not cold like England, and she misses her Mum and Dad. But we have to find her and love her back.’ ”
Too many to count, the cuts cleft Finella in places she didn’t know pain resided, and she lost her battle with tears one more time. “She did?”
“She did.” He brushed at her tears with his thumb. “Best way we can honor her is to grow that love for one another and fill our days with it.”
She turned to look at the fresh grave. An earthy mound where a sleeping child still held her heart.
“Wait. I need to get something.” She ran back to where they’d laid her. Her chest rose and fell a few times before she had enough breath for words.
“I will always love you, my darling Molly. You taught me true forgiveness. Cloaked me in a love I’ll never forget. I promise I’ll make rosehip cordial every summer and look out for the best shells on the beach. I’ll love Shadrach and care for him and always trace my finger along your name between our three bricks. And even without the bricks, I’ll never, ever forget you.”
She reached for an overhanging eucalypt branch and picked a cluster of gum nuts and fluffy petals. She kissed the tiny pink bouquet, split it in half, and threw one half onto the grave. The other she cradled in her dirt stained hand.
43
Shadrach tossed his empty crates from the steamer deck onto the jetty. Jon Tripp loaded them onto the trolley, along with the trunks of the last wave of January holidaymakers. Another week and they’d say goodbye to summer’s visitors.
While his crates may have returned empty, Shadrach’s pockets held the reward of late summer crops ripe for market. That and a small tin of fresh raspberries he’d bought at the last minute for Finella.
It was Molly he’d thought of first when he walked past the Eastern Market fruit stalls. Pierced by the sight of berries, he’d stopped to remember the girl who loved red jam. But Finella was the girl he longed to share them with, now.
Carry Me Home Page 29
