Love Comes Home (9 page)

“True enough,” Graham said. “Fern said Hattie might even walk down here to set her eyes on Jay.”

“We could go get her,” Kate offered.

“Now you know Hattie don’t like riding in those machines unless it’s an emergency.” Graham gave the car a wary look. He obviously hadn’t changed his opinion of cars either.

“It is an emergency.” Birdie grabbed Jay’s hand. “I thought Kate was never going to let you come home.”

“I’m here now.” Jay followed her up the porch steps where Kate waited, her very presence intoxicating. “Home.”

He remembered the very planks of the porch under his feet, the feel of the Rosey Corner air on his skin, the smell of home. Dogs weren’t the only ones who didn’t forget. Home.

10

T
ori was disgusted with herself. She simply couldn’t keep crying when everybody else was smiling. But when Jay lifted Samantha high above his head to make her giggle, tears filled Tori’s eyes. It looked so natural. So right. That was what Sammy should be doing. But Sammy never would.

“Again,” Samantha demanded when Jay brought her down out of the air.

The child didn’t shy away from anybody. Mama said it was from being at the store all the time. Perhaps, but more than that, she was so like Sammy. He’d never known a stranger either. In every letter home, he’d told her about a new friend. Men from all across the nation. He probably even tried to make friends with his guards in that Japanese prison camp. The men who had killed him.

She would not cry. She would smile. For Jay and Kate. For her mother and father who worried about her. For Samantha. Especially for Samantha.

A few weeks ago, Aunt Hattie had told her to look to Jesus for smiles. “That don’t mean you won’t have troubles. Every
soul is burdened down with troubles from time to time.” Aunt Love knew about troubles. After all, she’d lost her son in the first war. “But the good Lord is right there helping you carry that load. That’s how you can pull up those smiles for yo’ little one even when you’re feelin’ sorrowful. And for yo’self. A body has to keep on smilin’ for yo’self same as others, else the dark can overtake you. You’s way too young to not look for the sunlight of the morrow.”

With Aunt Hattie’s words in her ears, Tori could believe the morrow would be better. But then the dark of sorrow would overtake her again. She hoped Aunt Hattie would come for dinner. That way Tori would have to smile to keep Aunt Hattie from preaching at her. The old woman was getting decrepit, but Fern would walk her down if Aunt Hattie wanted to come. Aunt Hattie had taken Fern in when she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Tori didn’t know what would happen to Fern if Aunt Hattie moved on up to heaven the way she said she was ready to do. Fern had let the dark overtake her for years before Lorena brought light back into the woman’s life with a little simple trust.

For some reason, Lorena hadn’t been afraid of Fern. Tori had never understood why. Tori was terrified of the woman back then. Any time Fern stepped out of the shadow of the trees, Tori was up on her toes ready to run or slipping behind Kate to hide. She wasn’t afraid of her now, only afraid of becoming like her. Fern had lost her love when she was young. Not in a war the way Tori had lost Sammy, but in an accident.

Tori didn’t know the whole story. Nobody would talk about it, saying some things were better not remembered. That’s
the way they thought she was with Sammy, but it wasn’t true. She wanted Sammy’s name in her ears.

That was why it was especially good when Jay held Samantha out in front of him and said, “Look at that hair. And are those freckles sprouting on your nose? You’re your daddy made over.” He pulled Samantha close to kiss her nose and make her giggle again. Then he looked over her head at Tori. “Sammy would have been so proud of her.”

Behind him, Kate frowned a little. Tori knew she was thinking that at any minute, Tori would dissolve in tears at the mention of Sammy. A few tears did spill out of her eyes and streak down her cheeks, but they weren’t bad tears. In fact, she had no problem smiling through them as she said, “I like to think he is. That he watches over her from heaven.”

At least she thought that when she wasn’t angry with him for being in heaven instead of right there in Rosey Corner with her. Sometimes she was even mad at the Lord. That was wrong. She knew that, but the anger lurked in the bottom of her mind like a snake under a rock that slithered out from time to time to check the weather. Why hadn’t the Lord put his hand over Sammy and protected him the way Tori had so earnestly prayed he would? Others had been protected. She’d read their stories in the papers. Miracle escapes from death.

Why would the Lord do a miracle for them and not for Sammy? She couldn’t understand it and she couldn’t ask anybody about it. Not even Aunt Hattie. Some things couldn’t be spoken out loud. She shouldn’t even be thinking such things.

Jay looked at her as the others around them got too quiet. It had been that way ever since she got the news that Sammy was dead. Everybody tiptoed around her like she might fall
apart at the first loud noise. But Jay must not have known that. He handed Samantha off to Lorena and stepped toward Tori.

“You’re right, Tori. You are so right.” He put his arms around her. “When Kate wrote me about Sammy, I didn’t want to believe it. He was just a kid. After that, every time I saw another kid get it, I’d be thinking of Sammy and you all over again.”

She leaned against him the way she sometimes leaned on her father and swallowed the lump in her throat. “You never saw him while you were in the Army, did you?”

“No. But I saw plenty of boys like him. They looked like they ought to be shooting paper wads in school, but instead there they were, storming the beaches. Flying bombers and coasting back to base on fumes. In tanks crawling across the battlefields.”

“And dying.” Tori’s voice was flat. Everybody else in the room was forgotten. Everybody but Samantha. She could never forget her even for a second.

“Too many did. But they did save the world. For us.” He looked back at Samantha, who watched them with big eyes. “For her.”

“How do we know it won’t just happen again when she grows up?” That made her mad too. Why couldn’t the first war, the war her father fought in, have been enough?

A shudder went through Jay. “God forbid.”

She’d never seen him look so grim. The Jay she remembered was always smiling and trying to make people laugh. But that was before the war. “I’m sorry. Don’t let me spoil your homecoming.”

“Don’t worry, Tori.” His smile bounced back. “Nothing
could do that. It’s good to be home. To see you. To see all of you.”

Kate stepped up beside Jay to kiss Tori’s cheek. That was enough to summon up Tori’s tears again. So she was glad when Mike’s car pulled up outside to divert attention from her.

Lorena peered out the window. “Mike and Evie are here.”

“I thought they’d be at church,” Jay said.

“They’ve found a church in Shelby County,” Kate said. “Halfway between here and Louisville. Evie says the church is three times bigger than ours and that you should see the collection plates when the deacons carry them back to the front. Spilling over with bills. And not all ones, either.”

Jay laughed. “What’s she doing? Campaigning for Mike to take over the pulpit there?”

“She might like that, but remember, I told you Mike’s not preaching right now.” Kate lowered her voice as though afraid Mike could hear her outside. “He’s not sure he’ll ever take a church again.”

Jay looked surprised, but he didn’t say anything. Tori had been surprised too when Mike came home. He wasn’t the same Mike who’d always had a ready answer or prayer for problems before he went to war. She missed that Mike. They all missed that Mike. Evie most of all. But at least he came home. That was what Tori wanted to tell Evie. But she didn’t.

Evie’s smile looked forced when she came in the door. Her hat was new and perfectly matched her charcoal suit. Jay and Mike shook hands and clapped each other on the back. Two who came home. Then Fern helped Aunt Hattie up the steps and all the hugs started over. Mama came in from the kitchen to make sure they all stayed to eat.

Lorena still had Samantha, so Tori told Mama she’d finish putting dinner on the table as she slipped past her out to the kitchen. They’d closed in the old back porch when they piped water to the house from the well and put in plugs for the stove and refrigerator. The new kitchen was smaller than the old one that now held the big dining table for when everybody was home, but it was cozy with room for a small table and chairs.

Tori liked to cook. Not as much as she liked to fish, but in the winter, the fish didn’t bite. In the kitchen, she could take a recipe and put all the ingredients together and make something turn out right, the way it was supposed to. Even better, nobody seemed to mind when she went off by herself to cook.

People were always trying to keep her from being by herself. Especially that Clay Weber. He would not give up asking her to do things. Every week, sometimes twice a week, it was something different. A movie. A trip to the library in Edgeville to get his little sisters and Samantha picture books. Did her mother need help unloading the stock at the store since Daddy wasn’t feeling well? Roller-skating. There was a new rink in Frankfort and didn’t he remember that she used to like to roller-skate? She didn’t know how many times she was going to have to say no before the man got the message.

Just that morning at church, he’d found her in a back pew trying to keep Samantha quiet while the older ladies went over their Sunday school lesson in the front of the sanctuary. He sat down beside her without even asking, and what could she say? The pew didn’t belong to her. Then he offered Samantha a sucker, not asking if that was okay either. Of course the child wanted a sucker, but if Tori had wanted her
to have a sucker, she’d have given her one. Sticky hands and Sunday dresses didn’t go together, but Clay didn’t appear to know that.

“Suckers used to keep my sisters quiet in church when they were little,” he whispered with a glance up at the Sunday school ladies.

Mrs. Jamison and Mrs. Wilson let their eyes wander from Miss Sadie talking about how Mary had pondered in her heart things like the shepherds coming to see her baby. It was obvious from the looks on the two women’s faces what they were pondering about Clay and Tori.

Samantha reached for Clay and Tori let him take her. It would serve him right to get sticky sucker juice on his suit. But he was ready for that too with his handkerchief out to wipe Samantha’s hands without her making the first complaint.

He waited until the bell rang to signal the end of Sunday school to ask, “Would it be all right if I bring the girls by your house later today? Mama helped Lillie and Mary make Samantha a rag doll. It’s not store-bought, but Mama is pretty good with a needle.”

“I’ve seen your mother’s dolls. They’re wonderful, but the girls should keep the doll for themselves.” Mary was only seven and Lillie nine, not too old for dolls.

“No, they wanted to make something for Samantha. They think she’s the cutest kid ever.”

Tori wanted to tell him he shouldn’t use his little sisters to get his way, but maybe she judged him wrong. The girls did really like playing with Samantha. And what could it hurt to let them give Samantha a present?

Now here in the kitchen, she stirred sugar into the applesauce and wished she’d said no. Clay would show up at the
house and everybody would think she wanted him there. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him there. She didn’t care whether he came or not. She simply didn’t care.

Tori looked out the kitchen window over the new sink to where some hens scratched in the dirt. Maybe Graham’s pond wouldn’t be frozen over. She could go pretend to fish. But she couldn’t take Samantha. It was too cold.

She sighed. She couldn’t escape. She didn’t truly want to disappear on a Sunday afternoon. Sundays meant family.

She didn’t want to escape family. She just wanted to be that girl she was before the telegram came. A girl who cared.

11

T
hey gathered around the dinner table, laughing and talking. Everybody except Evie. Kate didn’t know what was wrong with her, but something was. Evie picked at her food with her preacher’s wife smile pasted on. Whatever her problem was, it could wait. Jay deserved the spotlight today. Not Evie and whatever crisis she was deciding to have.