A Promise to Love (17 page)

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?”

“Because sometimes it feels like Ingrid loves us more than our own ma did,” Agnes blurted out. “I know what you're gonna tell me—that I shouldn't say things like that.”

Despite his promises to answer any question she asked, he did not know how to answer this one. The truth was, Diantha had reminded him of a ginger-colored barn cat he had owned that had given birth to a healthy litter but had walked away from the mewling kittens and had never gone back. They would have starved had not another mother cat who had given birth a few weeks earlier adopted them.

The ginger cat had gone feral soon after, stalking small prey in the woods, avoiding the other domestic animals in the barn. He had only caught rare glimpses of her from time to time as she had flitted from tree to tree—until she disappeared entirely.

In a way, that described Diantha's behavior too the past few years. It had been the strangest thing to watch this pretty, feminine woman slowly going feral.

He saw other women having child after child and caring for them like lionesses—but not Diantha. When she was in her darker moods, sometimes she went for walks and left the children, no matter how young, to fend for themselves.

Then she would come back, her pockets stuffed with hickory nuts, or wintergreen, or an apron full of blackberries. She would act as though she were slowly coming out of a fog when she arrived home, as though she had forgotten she even
had
a home, or children, and had somehow wandered into someone else's cabin by mistake.

He often feared that she would forget to come home entirely, that she would simply merge and blend into the shadows—like that feral cat—until he never saw her again.

On her good days, Diantha kept them fed and clothed. She even put up food and gardened, but her emotional detachment when they were hurt or sick was disconcerting.

How could he possibly explain this to his daughter when he didn't understand it himself? There was one thing he did understand—Agnes deserved and expected the truth, not some platitude.

“You were right back at the cemetery,” he said. “Your ma did the best she could, but she had a greater struggle with being a mother than most women.”

“That's kinda what I thought too.” Agnes nodded her head. “Pa, I know the only reason you married Ingrid was because it was the only way that the judge would let you keep us—but there's something I think you need to know.”

“What's that?”

“Ingrid always acts like she loves us—even when you aren't around to watch.”

It was such a strange thing for a child to say, but then, Agnes had never really been a child. She had become a sort of surrogate parent long before her mother's death.

“The day after Ingrid came to live with us,” Agnes said, “she told me that it was all right for me to be a little girl—and that I didn't have to do the laundry. She told me to just . . . go play.”

Joshua felt a lump forming in his throat. “And did you?”

“Yeah, Pa. I did. And it felt real good.”

“Did you find something?” Mary called.

Ingrid carried the pillbox out of the bedroom and handed the pills to Mary.

Mary adjusted her glasses, peered at the bottle label, and read out loud: “Graves Pills for Amenorrhea.”

“What is this big word mean?”

“I have no idea.” Mary began to read again. “These pills have been approved by the M.R.C.S. of London, Edinburgh, Dublin as a never-fail remedy for producing the monthly flow. Though perfectly harmless to the most delicate, ladies are earnestly requested not to mistake their condition, as miscarriage would certainly ensue.”

“What all these words mean?” Ingrid asked.

“I've seen advertisements for this kind of medicine in the newspapers,” Mary said. “Some say they are to be used to unblock menses.”

“Unblock menses?” Ingrid said. “How menses get blocked?”

“The only way I know of is with a baby. I overheard two of Barb's friends talking about it. One said that she took something called ‘Female Regulator Pills' every month just in case she and her husband had created another baby.”

Ingrid was appalled. “Women do such a thing?”

“It appears so.”

“What is in these pills?”

“Poisons of some kind. Roots. Herbs. They can cause a woman to lose her baby if it doesn't kill her first. They were advertising these things even back when I was a young woman, but it was never a temptation to me. I always wanted more children than the two boys I had.”

“How you know all this?”

“That's why Barb began to hate me so much,” Mary said. “I saw the pills. I knew what they were for and I told Zeb. They had a terrible fight about it. It's hard for young women to have one baby after another . . . I know that.” Mary stared down at the box she was holding. “But I couldn't stand by and keep quiet. My grandchild had already quickened within her. Barb was three months along.”

Ingrid glanced out the window. “Quick. Give box. Joshua is coming!”

Mary handed it back to her. “Are you going to tell him what you found?”

“I not know.”

“It could be the reason Diantha died.”

“Diantha kill self, getting rid of baby? This hurt Joshua so bad, he cannot stand it. I think I need hide it.”

Ingrid hurried into the bedroom and buried the pillbox deep within the straw along with the diary. Then she tugged the large trunk outside into the front room and opened the lid. When Joshua and the children came through the door, she had pulled one piece of fabric out and was measuring it on the table with Mary's rapt attention.

“You have nice picnic?” Ingrid asked, trying to look as innocent as possible.

When Joshua and the girls entered the cabin, the first thing he saw was that Ingrid had managed to open the trunk.

“You found the key. Where was it?”

“In drawer.” She seemed distracted by some yellow material. “Mary, you hold this end, please?”

“Was there anything else in there?” he asked. “Besides all that fabric?”

She dug the last piece of material out of the trunk and brandished a hand over it. “All empty.”

Agnes pounced on a length of lovely dark rose. “Could you make me a dress out of this one, Ingrid?”

“Ja. I make you fine dress soon.”

He thought he caught a look of guilt on his mother's face, but dismissed it. His mother would certainly have nothing to feel guilty about.

Mary held some dark lavender material close to Ingrid's face. “This would be a lovely color on you.”

“Very pretty! I like.”

Pleased that his mother and Ingrid were getting along so well and obviously enjoying themselves, he grabbed his hat and headed out to the barn. He had spent most of the morning with his daughters, but it was time to get back to work. With Ingrid in charge of his home, he was getting more accomplished than ever before. He had finished planting all the corn and managed to get all his spring wheat planted. Today, he was hoping to start claiming another acre or two of virgin soil with his new John Deere plow.

Hopefully he would get it finished soon enough to have the time to smooth out the newly plowed acre with the metal teeth of his old spike-toothed harrow before starting to put up hay for the winter. He didn't have the money for more seed to plant the new ground now, but if this year's wheat, corn, and oat crop did well, next year he should have enough to plant every inch of his tilled land.

His head was filled with ideas for improving his land now that he was free to work without constantly worrying about and checking on the children. He had never dreamed that having Ingrid beneath his roof would give him so much freedom or heart for the future. As he hitched one of his horses to the plow, he was whistling.