The Promise of Home

by Darcie Chan

  “Well,” Daisy said, shaking her head in wonder. “It must still be a pretty special cake.”

  “If she could do this for us, but with silver around the layers and red roses on top, it would be perfect. Plus, each layer could be a different flavor.” Claudia smiled as she envisioned cutting into one of the layers to reveal a moist, chocolate interior.

  “Let me just make a note of the one you liked,” Rose said as she scribbled the additional information on the paper. “That way, Ruth can get a better idea about pricing before she calls you. And Daisy, I’ll be with you in just a minute.”

  “Oh, sure, Miss Rose. I’m not in a hurry. You must be so excited about your wedding, Miss Claudia. I just know it’ll be beautiful, especially with a cake like this one. Maybe someday I’ll get to go to a wedding.” Daisy sniffed and smiled up at her.

  If it were anyone else, Claudia would take the comment as an inappropriate request to be invited to the wedding, but Daisy was so sweet and innocent. Claudia believed she was simply expressing a sincere desire without any ulterior motive.

  “Hmmm,” she said, looking into Daisy’s face. “Well, you know, Daisy, wedding invitations always come in the mail.”

  “The mail? Are you sure, Miss Claudia?”

  “Yep, they always come in the mail. And you never know when you might receive one.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Daisy said. “I think I’ll pay more attention to my mail. I sure like checking each day to see what’s in the mailbox. You know, there might be mail waiting for me right now!” An excited look came over her face. “Miss Rose, I think I’ll come back a little later, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure, Daisy, I’ll be here until five.”

  “Thanks, Miss Rose. See you around, Miss Claudia.”

  Claudia chuckled under her breath as Daisy rushed out the door. As she waited for Rose to finish writing, she began to imagine how her cake would look on a table on one side of the great hall in the McAllister mansion with the gorgeous layers spiraling up. She could picture her hands and Kyle’s, holding bites of cake to feed to each other in front of everyone they loved…

  “What? I’m sorry, I missed that,” she said as she realized Rose had spoken to her.

  “Oh. I was just saying that I never saw you after my son’s accident this past summer. We were up at the hospital in Burlington for a few weeks after it happened, and then it was kind of crazy once we had Alex back home and Sheldon and I decided to stay here in town. I meant to call you a long time ago to thank you for everything you did for Alex when you and Daisy found him. I don’t know what would have happened if you two hadn’t been there.”

  “It’s nothing,” Claudia said. “I did what anyone would have. I’m just happy he’s all right. I see Alex at school all the time, and he’s always smiling.”

  “He does love it here,” Rose said. “He’s made lots of friends, and his teacher, Betty Martin, has done a great job keeping him challenged.”

  “Betty’s a good friend of mine. She’s commented so many times about how brilliant he is, and also that he’s a really great kid.”

  A huge smile lit up Rose’s face. “He is. Sheldon and I feel incredibly blessed to have him.”

  Claudia nodded. “Well, I should get going. Kyle and his daughter are coming over for dinner, and I’m late getting it started. Thanks so much for your help.”

  “Sure. I’ll make sure Ruth sees this note first thing in the morning.”

  She was like a different person, Claudia thought as she left the bakery and went to her car. Friendly, genuine, and normal. She’d heard all the rumors about Rose being a closet drunk, and about the longtime feud between her and Emily. But the sisters had seemed quite civil toward each other, and Kyle had heard from Fitz that Rose had completed an inpatient treatment program for alcoholism. Maybe the sisters had worked out their issues, and maybe Rose was turning her life around. Or maybe Rose is actually a sweet person, and I misjudged her based on my first impression, Claudia thought.

  Pauline had told her that “Sometimes things and even people aren’t what they seem.” It was an odd coincidence to recognize a possible real-life example so soon after visiting The Stitchery, and it made Claudia wonder what words of wisdom the seamstress might offer her at her next dress fitting.

  When she arrived home, Claudia took in the mail and set her purse on the counter. There were several reply cards from the wedding invitations she had sent out, and she was still opening them when Kyle and Rowen arrived for supper.

  “I haven’t started cooking yet,” she told them. “I stopped by the bakery to see about cakes on my way home.”

  “That’s no problem, it’s early,” Kyle said. “I can help you in the kitchen.”

  “And I can watch the Discovery Channel,” Rowen said with a toothy grin.

  “Sure, go ahead,” Claudia said.

  “She’s been bugging me to get cable,” Kyle said as Rowen grabbed the remote control and made herself comfortable on Claudia’s sofa. “You’ve spoiled her with all your channels.”

  “Compared with most kids these days, she doesn’t watch much TV. Besides, you don’t let her watch junk programs when she’s here.”

  “True,” Kyle said. “Everything in moderation. Although once we move in, that might be easier said than done.”

  “Have Fitz and Ruth found someone to rent your apartment once we’re married?”

  “Nope. Not as far as I know, anyway. They’ve still got time, though.”

  “Yeah.” Claudia opened the refrigerator and started taking out various ingredients for dinner.

  “Hey, I almost forgot. Kevin called me this morning,” Kyle said. “He and Misty want to get together for lunch this Saturday and maybe go looking at the leaves afterward. I thought they could meet us at the bakery. We can go for a drive after we eat.”

  “Sure, that sounds like fun,” Claudia said. She set a package of chicken and a jar of roasted red peppers on the counter. “Their wedding reply card was in the mail today, along with a bunch of other ones. The Swedhins, the Millers, and the Ottusches are all coming.”

  “That’s great! It’s probably a good thing we sent the invites a little early, before people had set holiday plans.”

  “Yeah. Listen, while we’re on the topic of the wedding, I wanted to ask you about inviting one more person.” Claudia closed the refrigerator door and cuddled up to Kyle.

  “Oh, sure. Who?”

  “Daisy.”

  Kyle’s eyebrows went up. “Daisy? Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I just ran into her in the bakery, and I don’t think she’s ever been invited to a wedding. It’d be a nice thing to do for her, and it’d totally blow her mind if she got an invitation.”

  Kyle shrugged and slipped his arms around her waist. “Okay. I wouldn’t mind if she came. It might be a nice thing for her to be able to see the mansion at the reception, too, since she spent so much time up there with Mary.”

  “Thank you,” Claudia said. “Not every guy would agree to having her come, you know. Just shows how lucky I am to be marrying you.” She pressed her head against his chest as he leaned down to kiss her hair.

  “I’m the lucky one,” Kyle insisted. “There aren’t many people who’d want to invite someone like Daisy. But I think you’re right. If she’s never been to a wedding, it’ll be special for her. Something she’ll never forget.”

  —

  In the parish house Monday afternoon, Father O’Brien was looking over his schedule for the next day. He had an early-morning Pre-Cana meeting with Kyle Hansen and Claudia Simon. While he had always conducted the marriage preparation courses for couples in his congregation, Kyle and Claudia wanted to complete the classes through a new program offered on the Internet. The technological world was largely foreign to him. Oh, he had a computer in the church office, and occasionally he managed to send an email or print out a letter. He usually left those tasks to Elsa Green, the wonderful lady who worked as his secretary in the church office.
He was a painfully slow typist, and just the concept of the Internet or the World Wide Web or whatever they called it these days was quite intimidating.

  He had agreed to let Kyle and Claudia complete their classes by computer only after learning that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops considered the online program an acceptable alternative to regular classes, and only upon the condition that they meet with him a few times in person as well. How learning something by staring at a computer screen could ever be as good as learning it in a class, with a real-life teacher, he didn’t know.

  The only other item on his agenda for Tuesday was the interview with Julia Tomlinson from America magazine. Interview requests like hers had come up once in a while throughout his years of service, particularly once he was older than seventy-five, typically the mandatory retirement age for priests. He expected questions about his education and training and the reason for his unusually long tenure and service exclusively to the Mill River community. There might be a bit of additional press coverage stirred up once the interview was in print. Before long, it would fade away, and he would continue on as usual.

  As Father O’Brien stared at Tuesday on his day planner, the items scribbled there suddenly became a bit blurry. He blinked a few times and removed his reading glasses to rub his eyes. It was the second time in a week he’d had trouble reading something. It must be eye strain, he told himself. I’ve been reading more than usual these past few days. After his experience with his hearing aids, the last thing he wanted to do was get used to a stronger prescription for his glasses, but a trip to the optometrist appeared inevitable.

  He sat back in his chair, smiling a little as he remembered himself as a much younger man with perfect senses. After a minute or so, he pulled out the large bottom drawer in his desk and removed a small box. It was in this box that he had consolidated his few and precious personal possessions. Among those items was a portrait taken on the day of his ordination. He’d been in his early twenties, with smooth skin and a full head of hair. Those parts of his appearance had changed dramatically, but his twinkling blue eyes were the same, as was the hopeful smile that still appeared in the mirror today.

  Beneath the portrait were some black-and-white photos in various stages of turning yellow. He lifted them out and slowly looked through them. His father and mother in their wedding portrait. His mother, Anna, and her brother, Frank, standing together as children. A family shot of himself, his older brother, Seamus, their parents, and their grandparents standing in front of the farmhouse. He gave a soft, wistful sigh as he gazed at the images. It was a sad truth that for quite some time, he had been the sole surviving member of his family.

  Other photographs in the box were of Mary McAllister, his closest friend, who had passed the previous spring. She’d hated seeing any image of herself, but she had allowed him to take her picture from time to time so long as he didn’t show her the image afterward. He especially liked his photo of Mary standing beside Ebony, her beloved black Morgan mare. It had been a warm day in late spring, and the breeze had lifted Mary’s hair and Ebony’s mane in a gust. Mary was wearing an eye patch in the picture, the one she always used to conceal the gruesome injury her husband had inflicted on her, but she was hugging the black mare and smiling.

  Other than photographs, there were two objects in the box. A black marble figurine of a horse sat heavily in one corner. It was the carved likeness of Ebony that had been used by Mary’s late husband to rob her of sight in one eye and disfigure her permanently. Despite the terrible damage it had inflicted on her, Mary had kept and loved the figurine, and Father O’Brien had taken it as a keepsake after her death.

  The last item in the box was a dainty silver teaspoon that Mary had given him. This delicate, sparkling object was his most prized possession. The smooth, convex back of the spoon bore an inscription that read: “To my dear friend, love, MEHM.” Mary had been the first person to whom he had confided his greatest source of shame—a compulsion to steal and hoard spoons, with which he had struggled most of his life. If truth be told, he still battled on a daily basis to keep from acting on the sinful habit.

  Mary had known of his spoon problem, but she had accepted him as a friend in spite of it and even conspired to assist him in certain ways. She had given him the engraved teaspoon so he would possess at least one spoon that was not sinfully obtained.

  Father O’Brien gently traced the edge of the spoon with his finger. The memory of Mary’s thin, jaundiced face when she had presented it to him at Christmastime last year was still fresh in his mind. In the months since Mary’s death, he had come to view the beautiful teaspoon from her own flatware as a symbol of the most important parts of his past. It—all spoons, really—reminded him of his struggle as a teenager to care for his family in his father’s absence. More than anything, this one spoon reminded him of Mary and how he had loved her with all his heart as the sister he never had.

  Chapter 10

  April 1, 1934

  “Mother!” Michael yelled. Both he and his uncle Frank lunged around the kitchen table toward her, and Frank managed to catch one of her arms before her head hit the floor. Once they reached her, they gently lowered her down.

  “Anna? Anna?” Frank asked, gently patting Anna on the cheek.

  “Here, here’s a cool cloth for her,” Lizzie said. Michael took the wet towel she held out and pressed it against his mother’s forehead. A few tense moments passed before his mother’s eyelids fluttered open. She focused her gaze first on Frank, then turned her head slightly to look at Michael.

  “Anna? Can you hear me? You fainted just now. Are you all right?” his uncle asked.

  “I think so,” his mother said weakly. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve been feeling a little off yesterday and this morning, but I figured whatever it was would pass after a few days.”

  “Do you feel like you can sit up?” Michael asked, and when she nodded, he and his uncle helped her into a sitting position on the floor and then onto one of the kitchen chairs.

  “Have some water, Anna,” his grandmother said as she set a full glass on the table.

  “Thank you, Lizzie. I— Oh, goodness, I spilled egg all over the floor.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. I’ll clean it up, and I’ll see that Frank and Michael are taken care of,” his grandmother said as she retrieved the frying pan. “You best go lie down for a while until whatever this is runs its course.”

  “That’s right, Anna,” Frank said. “Here, Michael and I will walk you back to your room.”

  His mother nodded and, holding on to the back of the chair, slowly rose from it. Michael and his uncle each put an arm around her waist and went with her down the hall, where they helped her lie down on her bed.

  When they returned to the kitchen, Lizzie was staring out the window above the sink. “She’s resting,” Frank said, as she turned to face them. “Mrs. O’Brien, did you have any idea Anna wasn’t feeling well? Did she say anything to you?”

  “No, nothing. Although she did say that the smell of the hobo was making her feel sick before we dragged him out on the back porch.”

  “She almost got sick yesterday morning as well, when we were cleaning out the root cellar,” Michael said quietly. Both his grandmother and uncle looked at him with surprise. “There was a rotten potato. It made a horrible stench when she picked it up, and she had to leave quickly. I didn’t think anything of it, though. The smell of it about made me sick, too.”

  His uncle and grandmother exchanged a worried glance. “Maybe Anna’s right, and it’s just a brief problem that will clear up quickly,” his uncle said.

  His grandmother sighed and turned toward the window again. “For Anna’s sake, I hope you’re right. But it doesn’t sound to me like something that will be going away anytime soon.”

  “You don’t think…” his uncle said. “Didn’t the doctor tell her it would be unlikely? Especially after the others?”

  Michael knew then what possibili
ty his uncle and grandmother were discussing, and it scared him. He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing his mother stiff and unmoving, like the body he’d helped to hide during the night. Almost as disturbing was the thought of a new stone being added to the small cluster of markers in the pasture.

  “Yes, and risky at her age,” his grandmother said. “But he didn’t say it would be impossible.”

  —

  The next morning, when Michael rose for school, it was his grandmother who was in the kitchen fixing breakfast.

  “Good morning,” she said as he appeared. “Your mother was up earlier, but she looked so puny that I sent her back to bed. I think she fell asleep again.”

  “It’s good that she’s resting.”

  “Yes. She needs to keep her strength up.”

  Michael didn’t know what to say to that, although his grandmother’s statement stirred up the uneasy concern that had been lingering inside his belly since his uncle’s visit the previous day. “I’ll be right back. I’m just going to fill up the wood box,” he finally said.

  “All right, but be quick about it, or your eggs will go cold.”

  After breakfast, Michael grabbed his books and cap and headed down the driveway. He made it to the end just in time to catch the old brown bus that provided transportation to Edmunds High School for students who lived in rural areas.

  He had always been an excellent student. English, Latin, and history were his favorite classes, but his marks were strong in every subject, which pleased his mother greatly. It was part of the reason he hadn’t been allowed to go with his father and brother to New York. “Your father needs you here,” his mother had said, trying to temper his disappointment at his father’s decision to seek a job in a different state. “He needs to find work, but he’d never leave Grandma and me here by ourselves for a long period of time. Besides, we both want you to finish school. Your good grades could get you into college, you know, and with a higher education, you’ll have so many more options than your father or Seamus. Try to have patience, Michael. There’ll come a time for you to venture out into the world, too.”