Mona Hodgson - [Hearts Seeking Home 01] (5 page)

“Aunt Caroline, we don’t want you to go.” Her oldest niece sat across the table, sprigs of auburn hair escaping tired braids. The pleading in seven-year-old Cora’s eyes deepened the ache in Caroline’s heart. The fact that they’d had this same conversation every day for weeks hadn’t lessened the pain it caused.

Caroline didn’t dare look at Jewell, for her sister would surely cry again, and she couldn’t bear it. Not tonight.

“I need to go,” Caroline said.

Mary’s little lips pursed in a pout. “Those children don’t love you like we do, Auntie Carol-i.”

Caroline’s breath caught. She couldn’t argue with that. She’d only been around the five Kamden children twice and hadn’t heard them utter anything but polite greetings to her. How did she expect to live with a new family day and night for four or five months? People she didn’t know. Didn’t love.

Caroline ran her fingertip along the rim of her plate. “Now that Uncle Phillip is dead …” There, she’d said it—Phillip was dead. Not coming back to her. She cleared her throat and finished her statement. “Now that he is dead, I need to make a new life for myself.”

“I wish I was goin’ with you.” The freckles that mapped the bridge of nine-year-old Gilbert’s nose belied an innocence his life didn’t satisfy. Life with a father who had come home from the war not only missing a leg but his heart as well.

Caroline rested her hand on Gilbert’s arm. “I wish you were going too. I’ll miss you all.” She didn’t look at Jack.

Her brother-in-law rolled his chair under the edge of the table. “We’re not going, and you are. Now that we have that settled, we can eat in peace and quiet.” After giving Caroline a pointed look, his eyes steely, Jack held his plate out to Cora. “Give me more potatoes. At least they’re fit to eat.”

Caroline bit her bottom lip. It was impossible to do anything in peace with Jack in the house. That was why she needed to leave. She couldn’t save her sister from Jack’s venom, but she could spare herself. Phillip was gone. He’d want her to move beyond what she’d lost to pursue a fresh beginning without him. And without the ever-present dark cloud that was her brother-in-law.

Working in Heinrich’s Dry Goods and Grocery wasn’t a bad job, but when her workday was done, she went home to her sister’s house. To her sister’s family. To her sister’s life. Her chance at a family of her own had died in the war, but was it too much to ask for a life of her own?

Caleb hoisted the last sack into the chuck wagon. He added the coffee and sugar to their respective barrels and stashed jerky in the wagon box under the
seat. When they pulled out next week, he’d miss Saint Charles. Its brick buildings and clean boardwalks. The redbud and oak trees. The river meandering on the edge of town. He had done a lot of wandering during the war and since, and it felt good to be in one place these past couple of months. But soon he’d be wandering again. This time with a caravan of people he’d met here. Including the vacillating Miss Anna Goben.

In this rare opportunity to be alone, he sank onto the board floor and leaned against a barrel. The moment he and Garrett had left the dry goods store that afternoon, his boss had questioned Caleb’s behavior toward the young woman, and he’d thought of little else since. He didn’t know Boney Hughes outside of working with him and living in camp these past few weeks. Nor had the jilted groom asked him to fight his battles.

Caleb sighed. Perhaps he had been unfair in his judgment of Miss Goben, certainly in expressing it. Boney’s love life was none of his concern, and neither was hers.

When the savory aroma of stewed ham and beans wafted through the front flap of the chuck wagon, Caleb’s stomach growled and he stood. It was his night to cook, but Boney had spared them all by volunteering to fix supper.

Caleb slapped his hat on his head, then stepped over the wagon seat and swung down onto the steel tire. Using the spokes of the wheel as a ladder, he jumped off midwheel and landed with both feet on the ground. He fell into line behind Tiny and the others.

Standing at the suspended dutch oven, Boney dished generous portions of beans and biscuits onto tin plates. At the first couple of meals at the camp, the fifth trail hand in their company, Isaac, took the end of the line and sat off on his own. Since then, Garrett made sure the freedman from Savannah was up front and fed. Tonight, Garrett stood directly behind Isaac, followed by Frank and Tiny.

Frank took his plate and looked at Tiny. “There’s no way you’re feedin’ him beans.” His Kentucky drawl drew everyone’s attention. He glanced at the billowing storm clouds overhead, then at their tent cabin. “Not if there’s any chance I’ll be cooped up with him.”

Caleb laughed along with the others, including Tiny.

Tiny shook his finger at Frank. “I ain’t the only one.”

Boney pulled two fresh biscuits from the pan and handed Tiny his plate. “Just you remember, ’twas not me tryin’ to stand between you and food. I say if we all have beans, it don’t make no difference who the culprit is.”

Caleb carried his food to a downed log at the campfire and settled beside Isaac.

The sounds from other camps along the creek provided background noise for the clank of forks against tin. Overhead, a cap of clouds had dropped the temperatures near freezing. Caleb raised the collar on his coat then scooped up a big chunk of ham with his beans. He hadn’t eaten this good since he’d left home. Now, his boyhood life in Nashville seemed a faded dream.

“Mister Boney.” Isaac shook his head. “I’s sorry to hear your bride got cold feet.” He dragged his biscuit through the dregs of his beans.

Tiny nodded and looked at the rejected groom. “Woulda been a different ending, if the little lady had ever tasted your cookin’.” He grinned. “And I was lookin’ forward to the shivaree.”

Heartache wasn’t a light matter. Caleb set his fork on the plate. “If you ask me, that would’ve for sure been a marriage of inconvenience.”

“I didn’t ask.” Boney’s jaw hardened. “And where’d you find so many words for things you know nothing about?”

Caleb swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean any harm.”

“Well, you can save your pity for someone who needs it. I don’t.” Boney tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot, knocking off a glob of beans. “Miss Anna Goben is one of the finest women I know.” He pointed the spoon at Caleb. “And if I ever hear you vilify her again, I’ll tear into you before you’ve had a chance to swallow your fear. That clear?”

Caleb startled. “Perfectly. I didn’t mean to offend you or Miss Goben.”

The spoon plopped into the cook pot, and Boney stomped toward the creek.

While the rest of the fellows let out a collective sigh, Caleb hoped Miss Goben wasn’t inclined to tell Boney of their encounter in the dry goods store. If anyone had the gift of sticking their foot in their mouth, it was him.

A
nna dodged mud puddles on her stroll down the hill. The rains had started Tuesday night and hadn’t let up until suppertime yesterday. For the past several months, Thursdays had been her favorite day of the week. But today was to be her last in Mrs. Brantenberg’s Saint Charles quilting circle. In five days, she would join the wagon train, leaving several of her friends behind.

Watching for the farm wagons and various buggies choking the downtown streets, Anna crossed Main Street and turned toward Heinrich’s Dry Goods store. Today, the circle would meet in the apartment over the store rather than out on the farm.

Caroline and her sister, Jewell, waved from the corner, where they waited on Anna. Caroline’s niece Mary clung to her aunt’s hand. Anna waved and quickened her pace.

“Good morning!” Caroline pulled Anna into a welcoming embrace.

“Good morning.”

Mary held up a quilted doll. “I brought a present for my friend. Did you know Gabi is going to …” She looked up at Caroline. “Where are you going?”

“California.” Caroline’s voice cracked, and her green eyes became moist.

“To Cal … where Aunt Carol-i is going.”

Anna nodded, studying the patchwork doll. “What a nice present.”

Mary rocked back and forth, her calico skirt swaying. “Her name is Mary too.”

“Such a lovely name. For a dolly, and for a sweet girl.” Anna patted the bonnet that contained the child’s strawberry curls. She would miss Jewell and
her children, but her heart truly ached for the sisters. Come Tuesday, Caroline would leave Jewell and her family behind.

They’d just stepped in front of the display window at Heinrich’s Dry Goods and Grocery when the door swung open. Emilie Heinrich McFarland waved them inside. “Come in. Come in. Hattie and Mrs. Brantenberg and all the others are upstairs.”

When they’d finished with the first round of hugs, Anna glanced at the potbellied stove in the center of the store where Johann Heinrich sat at the checkerboard with Oliver Rengler. He greeted them with a nod and a wave as they strolled to the open door at the back.

Anna followed Emilie up the stairs. “Your PaPa, how is he?”

Emilie turned and smiled. “More and more ornery every day.”

“Then he’s doing well?”

“Yes, and he insists that visiting with customers for two hours isn’t work, so he’ll manage the store while I’m upstairs. With Oliver looking after him.” Emilie continued climbing.

Despite the creak of the wooden steps, their friends’ voices found their way down the stairwell, and Hattie’s cackle was unmistakable. Gabi Wainwright’s little face appeared first at the top of the stairwell. “They came!”

Little Mary rushed up the steps, squeezing past Anna and Emilie. “I brought you a present, Gabi!”

Maren’s little stepdaughter, Gabi, swung a quilted doll out from behind her back. “I have one for you too.” The colors were different and the size slightly smaller, but both were from a pattern Mrs. Brantenberg had shared in the quilting circle.

“They’re the same.” Mary set her doll to dancing in the air.

Gabi nodded. “Mother Maren helped me make it.”

Mother Maren
. Anna’s heart warmed. Good had come out of the war too. Gabi’s father, Rutherford Wainwright, had returned home and found love with Maren Jensen and was building a new family.

In the sitting room at the top of the stairs, Hattie Pemberton, adorned in a straw hat, her mother Bette, a war widow, and both of the Beck women huddled around Mary Alice Brenner and her newborn, Evie. Elsa Brantenberg buzzed about the small kitchen. Plates of sliced almond pound cake, anise cookies, and Berliners lined the countertop.

Maren Wainwright came from the corner where the two little girls played with their dolls. She tucked a strand of blond hair into the braided spiral atop her head then greeted Anna with a hug. “It’s not even New Year’s Eve and Mother Brantenberg made her filled doughnuts for us.”

“Everything looks delicious.” Anna sighed. By New Year’s they would all have new lives—some of them scattered across the West, others here.

Hattie joined them and pulled Anna into a warm embrace. “Have you seen the quilts yet?” She directed Anna’s attention to the back of the sofa where the two friendship album quilts the circle had made lay side by side.

Anna took slow steps to the parting remembrance. One quilt was trimmed in red, the other in a cocoa brown. Each woman had stitched her signature in an album block. Anna ran her hand over the scrap square she’d made for the quilt that would remain in Saint Charles. She’d added her mother’s name below hers, even though Wilma Goben, by her own choice, hadn’t been part of the group for nearly a year and a half.

With the greetings completed, the women filled their plates at the kitchen counter, then seated themselves at one of two tables extending into the sitting room.

Mrs. Brantenberg sat in a cushioned chair at the head of the table. The blue paisley dress she wore had her looking more chipper than the occasion might call for. When the older widow had blessed the Lord for their time together and thanked Him for the bounty, she cleared her throat and glanced at the quilts draping the sofa. “As you all know, we’ve made one quilt for those going west and another for those remaining in Saint Charles.” She raised an eyebrow, her mouth curving into a grin. “Someone has changed her mind.”