Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (19 page)

Isabel held the baby close as if some small part of her feared Rosa would snatch her away. “I wanted to do so much more.”

Rosa wished she had. “I’ve missed you. I—I understand why you stayed away.”

Her mother glanced up from Marta long enough for Rosa to read new puzzlement in her expression. “I stayed away because you asked me to. Otherwise I would have been there, every moment.”

Rosa shook her head, bewildered. “I never asked you to stay away.”

“Your husband passed along your message.”

“No. You must have misunderstood him. He wanted you to reconsider. He told me that you and Papá had disowned me when you heard about Marta, about when she was born—” The shock in her mother’s eyes abruptly silenced her, and then, after a moment of confusion, Rosa understood. John had lied. Her mother had not known until that moment the truth about Marta’s birth, and Rosa had unwittingly given herself away.

Slowly her mother said, “Marta was not born early.”

Rosa dropped her shopping basket and quickly took Marta back from her stunned mother. “I have to go.”

“Rosa—”

“Tell Papá I’m sorry.” Rosa fled from the store, Marta in her arms.

Dazed, she walked down the street to the hardware store, where she found John conversing with the storekeeper as he browsed the tools. “Rosa,” he said, surprised. “I thought I was supposed to pick you up at the grocer’s later. Are you all right?”

“I—I’m not feeling well.” She spoke the truth; she felt faint and dizzy and needed to sit down. She couldn’t bring herself to confront her husband then, with her head swimming from shock and the storekeeper looking on. “Can we go home, please?”

John quickly made his purchases and escorted her out to the truck. As they drove home, Rosa held her sleeping daughter
and tried to find the words to tell John that she had discovered his lie, but every time he glanced over at her, she found herself unable to speak.

“I heard some interesting news at the hardware store,” John remarked later as he pulled up a chair to the table and tucked his napkin into his collar. “A few weeks ago, Lars Jorgensen asked his father to give him his inheritance early so he could strike out on his own.”

“Isn’t his inheritance the southern half of the ranch?” asked Rosa, filling John’s plate and setting it before him. Anxiety stole over her again at the mention of Lars’s name, which John had made her promise never to speak in his presence.

“That’s right.” John gave her an appraising look. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you knew that.”

Rosa kept her voice steady as she spooned a small portion of potatoes and apples onto her plate. “Everyone knows that, or they ought to be able to figure it out. What else could Mr. Jorgensen fairly do but divide the ranch between his two sons when he passes on?”

“Lars apparently can’t wait that long, and he must have made a convincing argument because his father agreed to give him his share.” John allowed a meaningful pause as he took his fork in hand. “Of course, we both know Lars can be persuasive when he wants something badly enough.”

Disconcerted, Rosa almost let the pitcher slip from her grasp as she filled their water glasses. “I don’t see how working half of the same land he’s always worked is striking out on his own,” she said as indifferently as she could manage.

“It wouldn’t be, which is why he’s sold it.”

Rosa stared at him in disbelief. “Sold it? He sold off half of the Jorgensen ranch?”

John nodded. “To some family from Iowa—Frazier, I think they’re called.”

Rosa set down the pitcher and sank into her chair, stunned. “I can’t believe his parents allowed it.”

“They couldn’t very well prevent it once old Jorgensen signed over those acres to him. They were his, free and clear, to do with as he wished. Still, I bet old Jorgensen didn’t know Lars meant to sell them or I doubt he’d have gone along with it.” Shaking his head, John cut himself a thick slice of bread and put it on his plate, setting the long knife on the wooden cutting board with a clatter. “Frank Johnson heard from one of Jorgensen’s hired men that as soon as Lars pocketed the cash from the sale, he packed a rucksack, climbed on his horse, and rode out of the valley without looking back.”

“Where did he go?”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” Rosa replied, too quickly, clenching her hands together in her lap. They were ice cold, despite the balmy weather. “I’m just curious.”

“Frank didn’t say and I didn’t ask.” John took a bite of his dinner, nodded in satisfaction, and took another. “Anyway, he’s long gone now, and I say, good riddance. This is delicious, honey.”

“It’s your mother’s recipe,” Rosa murmured. As John turned the conversation to the farm, she picked up her fork and moved the food around on her plate, but her stomach was in knots and she knew better than to try to eat.

Lars had left the Arboles Valley, left her, without even saying good-bye, without meeting his daughter. That should have been what Rosa wanted, but with no idea where he had gone or when he might return, she felt as shocked and bereft as the night he had failed to light the lantern in the oak grove.

But there was nothing she could do, no comfort to be found except in loving Marta.

The next Sunday, John, Rosa, and Marta went to early Mass instead of the midmorning service they usually attended. As the parishioners filed out of the church afterward, Rosa passed her parents and brother in the aisle. A greeting died on Rosa’s lips as her father gazed through her as if she and the baby in her arms were as insubstantial as vapor. Behind her father’s back, Carlos and her mother shot her furtive, sympathetic glances before they too turned away, without a single word for her, without a loving kiss for her baby. She had never felt more alone, and with nowhere to turn, no safe refuge, she dared not confront John about his lies or his inexplicable determination to drive Rosa and her mother apart.

In anguish, she sought counsel from her parish priest, who had heard her confession and absolved her of her sins before her marriage and again shortly after Marta’s birth. He expressed sorrow when, after reciting her venial sins, she confessed that she still thought of Lars often and worried about him, wherever he was. The priest urged her to concentrate on prayer whenever her thoughts strayed to Lars, and reminded her that in all things she must accept the will of God and submit to her husband. As Rosa left the confessional, the priest added that if her father should come to see him, he would remind him that the Lord called all Christians to forgive others as they wished to be forgiven, and this included wayward daughters. “Don’t lose hope, my child,” he told her, and his compassion brought tears to her eyes.

If Rosa’s father did hear the good priest’s message, it failed to sway him.

One afternoon, Rosa was pushing Marta in her stroller after running an errand at the bank for John when she heard someone
call her name. She turned to see her mother dashing across the street toward her, and after a quick, tearful embrace, they hurried off together down a side street where fewer eyes would see them. There her mother cuddled her granddaughter and delivered the devastating news of her father’s decree: Rosa was dead to him, and her mother and brother must disown her as well.

“You’re speaking to me now,” said Rosa hollowly.

Her mother shifted Marta to her shoulder, defiance flashing in her eyes. “You’re my daughter and I could never abandon you. I see no good whatsoever in your father’s command that I renounce you or in your husband’s attempts to keep us apart. And so I see no reason to obey them.”

Rosa felt long-dormant hopes stirring. “Do you mean that you’ll see me again, me and Marta?”

“Of course,
mija
, but we must meet somewhere far from prying eyes.” Isabel stroked Marta’s soft, dark locks, thinking, and then her face lit up. “The mesa, our picnic spot near the canyon. Would you be able to slip away and meet me there without raising John’s suspicions?”

Rosa assured her that she could. A few months after their marriage, John had taken a second job as the Arboles Valley postmaster, and once a week he went to the train station to collect the mail. If Rosa left soon after John departed, she could take Marta to the mesa and visit with her mother, and return home before John arrived. He would never know that his wife and daughter had been away.

They agreed to meet on the mesa once a week if the weather was fair and if their husbands did not unwittingly intercede. Mindful of the waning afternoon and the men waiting for them at home, they embraced and parted with tearful, hopeful smiles.

A year passed. Rosa devoted herself to her family, finding happiness in the minutiae as well as the milestones of Marta’s childhood—first words, first steps, first hugs and kisses—and it seemed to her, day by day, that John grew happier, more confident, more content. She had never seen a prouder man than the day he held his firstborn son in his arms. “We’ll name him John Junior,” he declared, cradling the baby tenderly only minutes after his birth. Watching them together from where she lay resting in bed, Rosa was overwhelmed with love, and joy, and hope. Their daughter Angela was born a year and a half later, and for a while, Rosa believed that despite the sorrow of her continuing estrangement from her father and brother, God had heard her prayers, and she and John would be happy together.

Then, only a few months after Angela was weaned, she fell seriously, chronically, incomprehensibly ill, plagued by diarrhea and stomach cramps that left her listless and bloated. A few months later, John Junior began to suffer from the same symptoms. Only Marta thrived, glowing with robust good health as she sweetly tried to help her mother care for her younger siblings.

Angela died in March 1917, John Junior seven months later, a mere few weeks after Ana was born. As the household plunged into grief, John seemed to conflate Ana’s birth and her elder siblings’ deaths. He never warmed to her, never held her unless Rosa urgently needed him to, offered no suggestions for her name. On the morning of her christening, Rosa reminded him that they had to have a name before the ceremony. John replied, “My son is dead. Call her whatever you want.” Rosa chose Ana Maria, in the desperate hope that the Blessed Mother would protect her namesake.

The sunny hours spent on the mesa with her mother and the
children were Rosa’s only respite from the grief that pervaded her home, offering her solace even on the anniversary of John Junior’s death. Wind swept the mesa as Rosa and Isabel sat near the canyon’s rim watching five-year-old Marta amuse Ana, who had grown into a lively toddler. Despite the melancholy anniversary, Rosa had to smile as Marta threw handfuls of golden grass into the air around her younger sister, who squealed and laughed as she tried to catch them. But it was a wistful smile, since Isabel had just finished telling Rosa how she had spent the morning laying flowers upon her grandchildren’s graves. Rosa had never visited the cemetery after John Junior’s funeral; it would be more than she could bear to see headstones engraved with her beloved children’s names. Marta and Ana were as healthy and happy as any two girls in the Arboles Valley, and the child within Rosa’s womb seemed to be growing steadily, but sickness and death seemed to lurk in every shadow. Her daughters’ vitality seemed a cruel illusion, and she no longer expected to see them reach adulthood. With no future to hope for, she had learned to be content with every moment, and that was enough to endure each day.

Then Isabel, gazing upon her granddaughters at play, said, “They’re so full of joy and light. I don’t see anything of John in them.”

With a jolt of recognition, Rosa knew then God had sent her an opportunity to redeem herself by telling the truth, even if it meant that her mother too would renounce her, and her last refuge would disappear.

“Mamá,” she said softly, “there’s something to what you say.”

Her mother turned her head sharply, her gaze keen. “What do you mean?”

There Rosa’s courage faltered. “There is something of John in the girls, though you might not want to see it because you despise him.”

Her mother studied her for a long moment. “I do despise him,” she admitted, turning her gaze back to her granddaughters. “I think I understand his grief, though I’ve never lost a child, but I can’t forgive him for lashing out at you. You should be able to draw comfort from each other in your mourning. Instead John seems to blame you.”

Rosa laughed shortly. “He’s not the only one.”

“Ignorant people, whispering cruel rumors,” her mother said in disgust. “Pay them no mind.”

Marta proved to be as devoted a big sister to Maria when she was born in the winter of 1919 as she had always been to Ana. John and Rosa were blessed with another son in the spring of the following year, and for a brief, precious time, all four children thrived. The perpetual scowl left John’s face, and he treated Rosa with kindness he had not shown since the early months of their marriage. Then Maria fell ill, and then Ana, who had so long eluded the strange sickness that had claimed her siblings that her parents had begun to hope that, like Marta, she would avoid their fate. Soon after John Junior passed away, in a rare display of tears, John confided to Rosa that his eldest sister had died in childhood after suffering from a similar affliction. “We must resign ourselves to the will of God,” he had choked out, roughly brushing away his tears with the back of his fist. Then he had bitterly added, “At least we’ll still have Marta when all the others are dead and buried.”

Distressed and angry, Rosa poured out her heart to her mother. “You mustn’t give up searching for a cure, no matter
what your husband decides for himself,” Rosa’s mother said staunchly, embracing her with one arm and cradling baby Pedro in the other. “And I will help you. I’ve heard of a powerful
curandera
in El Paso, someone I haven’t consulted before. I’ll write to her today.”

Reluctant to tear herself away from the comfort of her mother’s company, Rosa lingered on the mesa longer than she should have. When she finally arrived home with the children, she found John sorting mail in the front room. “You’re home early,” she said breathlessly, managing a smile in passing as she took the children to their bedrooms and put them down for a nap.