Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (17 page)

“How could you have?” Lars glanced down the hallway and pulled her into his room, shutting the door behind them. “Rosa, you’ve got to stop blaming yourself. You couldn’t have known. If you served the children bananas and toast for breakfast and they got sick, you couldn’t have known that the banana was good for them and the toast bad.”

“I should have known.” The effort to refrain from keening made her voice fracture through her clenched teeth. “I should have known. And if it turns out that it was all so simple, and that I could have saved all my precious babies, that none of them needed to die—”

She couldn’t speak. She had no words, only tears. Lars drew her to him, and she buried her face in his chest and wept for the children she would have given her own life to save, but only now did she know how, and it was too late, too late.

Lars held her until she had no more tears, until grief and heartache wrung her dry. Then he kissed her gently on the forehead, led her by the hand to her own room, and made her promise that she would try to sleep. “Tomorrow Ana and Miguel will be better than they were today,” he told her. “And the next day, they’ll be better yet. Think of them, Rosa. Think of them and don’t despair.”

With a nod, she agreed to try.

The next morning after breakfast—for which Mrs. Phillips supplied Ana and Miguel with bananas and oranges and rice cereal in abundance—Rosa sent the children out to play in the backyard while she and Lars looked on from the patio and quietly
discussed their circumstances. While the valises Rosa had taken from the hayloft were still comfortably full, travel expenses and the children’s medical bills had already begun to deplete them with alarming speed. Lars wanted to find a job, but Rosa, ever mindful of the police and criminals likely searching for them, worried that he would be spotted. “I can’t stay shut up in this boardinghouse for six months,” Lars told her firmly. “I might as well earn some wages while we’re figuring out what to do next.”

Rosa eventually acquiesced, wishing she knew whether the police were closing in on them or if their search had stalled. Henry Nelson, too, was always in her thoughts, and she longed to telephone the Oxnard hospital and inquire about him. Rather than take that risk, Lars promised to pick up a newspaper the next time he went out. John’s crimes and the suspected deaths of his family in the canyon were shocking enough that they might have caught the attention of local reporters.

The week passed. Every day Lars went out in search of work while Rosa took the children around the city. They rode cable cars and visited libraries; they climbed twisting streets to admire the view from the hilltops and watched ferryboats carry passengers across the bay. Rosa vigilantly monitored every mouthful Ana and Miguel consumed, constantly on guard as if their illness were an assassin that crept after them in the shadows, awaiting the moment when her back was turned to strike. With each passing day it seemed to Rosa that their eyes were brighter, they did not tire as easily, and a new rosiness had replaced their usual pallor. Every day without symptoms made Rosa’s carefully guarded hopes rise in increments as fine as the soft wisps of chestnut brown hair she brushed away from Ana’s face while she slept.

The day before the children’s appointment, Lars was offered a job working in the stockroom of a department store on Union Square. The children cheered, but Rosa hid her misgivings as she congratulated him. Lars loved the outdoors, and she was certain he would soon become frustrated and claustrophobic shut within four walls all day. She wanted to tell him not to take the job, to wait until he could find a groundskeeper’s position with the city parks department or something on the waterfront, but she knew he did not like being dependent—not upon his brother, not upon her, and definitely not upon John, or even John’s illegal earnings. He would rather pay his own way doing dull, backbreaking work than treat their stay in San Francisco as a vacation at her expense.

Lars had also brought home a copy of the
San Francisco Examiner,
and while the children were distracted with their landlady’s cat, he drew Rosa aside and showed her a small article on the sixth page. “Southern California Postmaster Charged with Attempted Murder,” the headline announced.

Rosa murmured a prayer of thanksgiving that the charge was still only attempted murder and quickly read the rest of the article. While Henry Nelson’s doctors confirmed that his condition was improving, he was still unable to offer his own account of the incident. Lars Jorgensen’s automobile had been discovered parked behind a teahouse that Lars had been known to frequent years before, in its pre-Prohibition incarnation as a saloon. Lars himself was still missing, but a Prohibition officer praised him for upholding his civic duty at a time when far too few citizens were courageous enough to report bootleggers and smugglers. Federal agents had been tracking mob activity in Southern California for years, but until Lars’s tip, they had lacked proof that the mob had enlisted the services of local farmers in their
illegal liquor and weapons activities. Thanks to Lars, they were on the track of some highly placed figures in organized crime, and hoped soon to be able to put some of them away for good. One agent who spoke on condition of anonymity admitted he didn’t blame Lars for disappearing. He’d have to be a fool not to lie low for the rest of his life, now that he had made himself an enemy of the mob. For all they knew, the mob had already found him and his bones were bleaching in the Mojave Desert.

With a shiver of apprehension, Rosa drove the image from her thoughts and read on. The previous afternoon, a child’s rag doll had been pulled from the mud two miles downstream of the canyon’s edge where Isabel Rodriguez Diaz had fallen to her death. Although an unidentified family member could not confirm that the doll belonged to one of the Barclay girls, it was believed to be, and therefore Rosa and her four children were presumed drowned.

“Lupita’s doll,” Rosa said, imagining her brother examining the mud-soaked doll, shaking his head, and handing it back to a police officer. She tore her gaze from the paper and fixed it upon Lars. “They think we drowned. Do you think this means they’ll stop searching for us?”

“I think they might concentrate their search in the mud where they found the doll.”

“And when they don’t find our remains?”

Lars shrugged. “I doubt they’ll resume looking for you elsewhere. Even if they do, by that time, the trail will be stone cold.”

Rosa fervently hoped so. She finished reading the rest of the article only to discover that John was considered a flight risk and was being held without bond. She felt faint with relief knowing that he could not pursue her. If only someone at the prison would think to question him about his mother-in-law’s
suspicious death, which had occurred at the same place where his wife and children had likely perished—but Rosa doubted anyone would. If John were convicted, whatever punishment he received for the attempted murder and racketeering charges would have to suffice for her mother’s murder as well, as profoundly unfair and inadequate as that would be.

A thick blanket of fog cast a gray, chilly pall over the morning, but Rosa’s spirits had not been so bright in years. Ana and Miguel had not had a single recurrence of their symptoms since they began the banana diet, and Rosa was sure they had put on weight. Although she did not dare say the words aloud, in case she had imagined improvement where none existed, she trusted that the doctor would give them good and welcome news that day.

Later, she almost wept from joy when Dr. Reynolds confirmed what her mother’s heart had already known. Ana and Miguel had gained weight, their pulses were stronger, and they would almost certainly continue to improve as long as they remained on the banana diet. Rosa could not let her vigilance slip, not for a single cracker or cookie, not for a single crumb of bread or cake.

“Before you go,” Dr. Reynolds added as Rosa and Lars thanked him profusely and the children beamed, “I took the liberty of inquiring about a place for you, Mr. Ottesen.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Lars, “but I’ve already found work.”

“I think you’ll want to at least consider this,” the doctor assured him, and Rosa touched Lars’s arm, a silent plea to hear him out. “I grew up on a farm, and I know how it feels to be in love with the land. Neither the passing of the years nor the devotion to another profession will ever strain the soil from my
blood.” His gaze grew distant for a moment, as if he were looking down from a hilltop upon the acres he had worked in his youth. “When you mentioned you were a rancher, I remembered a conversation I had not long ago with a patient and former neighbor of mine, a man named Dante Cacchione. He and his wife, Giuditta, are third-generation winemakers from the Sonoma Valley, but as you can imagine, they’ve fallen upon hard times in recent years because of Prohibition.”

Rosa nodded, and Lars remarked, “I imagine there’s not a lot of money in winemaking these days.”

“They’ve managed to keep their vineyard going by selling wine grapes, but they aren’t earning enough profit to pay for field hands. Their only help comes from their children.” Dr. Reynolds looked from Lars to Rosa and back, earnest. “I won’t pretend you’ll earn a fortune, but the Cacchiones are willing to offer room and board for your entire family and a modest wage if you agreed to work for them through the harvest next fall.” He nodded to Rosa. “They’d appreciate your help as well during the busiest parts of the season, Mrs. Ottesen, if you can spare time away from the children.”

“My eldest girl can watch my younger children if I’m needed.” Not for the first time, Rosa wondered how she would get by without sensible, reliable Marta, her strong right arm. “But what about bringing Ana and Miguel to their weekly appointments?”

“It’s a quick train ride between here and Santa Rosa, and the fares are quite reasonable,” Dr. Reynolds assured her. “It would be much less expensive than renting a place in the city, and you’d have all the benefits of the country air for the children’s recuperation.”

“What about schools?” asked Lars. “We would need to enroll Marta and Lupita right away, and Ana, when she’s ready.”

“I’m ready now,” Ana piped up.

Rosa smiled and stroked her daughter’s soft, chestnut brown hair, which seemed to have grown thicker in the past week. “As soon as you’ve regained your strength,” she promised.

The doctor smiled. “I attended Santa Rosa public schools, and I received a fine education, if I do say so myself.”

Lars folded his arms over his chest, nodding as he mulled it over. “It sounds like a good opportunity. What do you think, Rose?”

His use of her alias gave her a momentary start. “I—I think it sounds wonderful.” The children would thrive in the fresh air and sunshine of the countryside, far from the din and frenzy of the city and the press of the crowds. She knew Lars would much prefer laboring in a vineyard than placing boxes on shelves in the windowless back room of a department store. As for herself, she understood completely the doctor’s inherent love for the land, and felt herself longing for broad, tilled vistas and fresh fruit warm from the sun with greater urgency the longer she spent her days surrounded by steel and concrete.

“Would you care to discuss it privately for a moment?” the doctor asked, turning toward the door.

Rosa and Lars exchanged a look. Lars raised his eyebrows in a silent question and Rosa quickly nodded. “I think we’ve already made up our minds,” said Lars, reaching out to shake the doctor’s hand.

M
rs. Phillips was disappointed to learn of their imminent departure, but she wished them well and invited them to visit whenever they returned to San Francisco. The next morning, she treated them to a sumptuous breakfast, including rice porridge with brown sugar and bananas for Ana and Miguel, hearty bacon and eggs and biscuits for the adults, and as a special birthday treat for Lupita, waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. Lupita smiled radiantly and basked in the attention when Mrs. Phillips led all her guests in singing “Happy Birthday” to her. It occurred to Rosa that as a middle child between a responsible eldest sister and two chronically ill siblings, Lupita was rarely the center of attention, and she was grateful that their landlady had made her birthday special.

But in the midst of all the excitement, Lupita forgot the new rules and offered to share her birthday waffles with her siblings. As Ana declined with a rueful shake of her head, Marta suddenly shouted a warning and pointed across the table to Miguel, who was digging eagerly into Lupita’s breakfast. With a gasp,
Lupita snatched the fork from his hand before he could take a bite. He stared at her, thoroughly disappointed and speechless with bewilderment, his lower lip quivering. “I’m sorry, Miguel,” Lupita apologized. “I forgot.” She shot Rosa a look of stark horror through eyes misty with tears, realizing how close she had come to making her little brother sick again. Rosa assured her that no harm had been done, but it was a good reminder to all of them that they had to be especially careful with Miguel. He was too young to understand what he could and could not eat, so they had to be aware for him.