Stephanie Grace Whitson - [Quilt Chronicles 03] (5 page)

Mother frowned. “Why on earth would they do such thing? Cornelia’s ordered all kinds of improvements to their cottage.”

“I know.” Emilie forced a conspiratorial smile. “Bert and I saw. And you are so right about her and ‘improvements.’ She’s having a two-deck tree house built around the big oak out back. And a porch laid out between the tree house and the cottage. She even mentioned having Uncle Roscoe haul the upright piano out for ‘evening entertainments.’”

Mother shook her head. “Cornelia will never stand for the girls jumping ship after she’s had all that done.”

This was good. A conversation that deflected attention away from this afternoon and the
Dispatch
print shop. “May said the three of them wanted to do something special since this is their last summer together. What with April getting married.” She plunged ahead. “Actually, I’m grateful you both stayed up. The cousins were hoping you wouldn’t object to my joining them over at the campgrounds. They’re quite enthused about their plans. They’ve even paid to have a floor installed in the tent. And they’re going to name their camp the Bee Hive. Hang a sign above the tent flap and everything.”

Father tugged on the tip of his mustache. Emilie knew the gesture well. He was hiding the beginnings of a smile. Given half a chance, Father would help his nieces paint the sign. He was probably already designing it in his mind’s eye. If only Mother weren’t here, it would be easy to talk him out of his dark mood over her foray into the press room today.

But Mother was here, and she wasn’t deferring the conversation to Father. “So that’s why you’re so late,” she said. “I was worried it meant there was a problem with the music.” She settled back in the chair.

“The Spring Sisters sound wonderful,” Emilie said. She relaxed a little. “April’s chosen the perfect repertoire for the week. And they’re all in good voice. We’ll do the family proud.” She began to remove her gloves, but then remembered the ink beneath her nails. She laced her fingers together instead—hoping she looked more relaxed than she felt. “I’m late because April insisted we all have a light supper before we practiced.” She chattered on. “The Penner twins were at the house when we first got there, and you know how they are. The way they were hanging on Bert and flirting, poor Junie was fit to be tied. She really does care for Bert—even if she is only sixteen. I hope Bert’s paying attention. They’d be a great match.”

When Mother didn’t seem inclined to discuss the romantic possibilities looming before her nieces, Emilie veered back to coming events. “We’d just finished practicing when Uncle Roscoe brought a copy of the Chautauqua program in. I stayed so the cousins and I could talk over the offerings and decide what we might attend together.”

They had actually spent more time planning which sessions to skip, but that was just semantics. Emilie took a deep breath and looked over at Father with a bright smile. “Did the meeting with Mr. Shaw go well? Are you going to feature him in the
Dispatch
?”

Father ignored the question. Instead, he looked over at Mother. Emilie followed his gaze. Something passed between them. Finally, he said, “The hour is late, and I see no reason to belabor this.” He cleared his throat. “I have decided that this week’s Ladies’ News will be your final foray into journalism.” He paused. “When you write the article, be certain to include sincere good wishes to your successor.”

Successor.
The word landed like a blow. “B–but—you said we’d talk—you—”

“And we
are
talking,” Father said. Again, he looked at Mother. Was it Emilie’s imagination, or was he pleading with her to say something?

Mother spoke up. “We understand that you will be disappointed, and we do not take that lightly, dear. One of the most difficult things any parent faces is the necessity to do the hard things that cause momentary conflict but that will, in time, yield long-lasting benefit for a beloved child.”

Father nodded. “That is the very principle upon which I based my support when you wanted to attend the Female Seminary in Rockford. Your mother had her doubts, but I argued that a short season of pain at being separated from her only child would yield lasting benefit for you.”

Pain at being separated
? Emilie rejected the notion. Mother hadn’t felt pain. She’d been relieved. Not one of the letters she had sent to Emilie in northern Illinois had said a thing about missing Emilie. Not one.

Emilie took a deep breath. She turned away from Mother so that Father could see the tears brimming in her eyes. “I learned to think for myself. That’s a benefit, isn’t it? You haven’t forgotten what you said the day I left, have you? ‘Don’t be led along like a bleating sheep,’ you said. ‘Make up your own mind. Examine the facts. Form your own opinions.’”

The tears didn’t do any good. Father was clearly more concerned with Mother’s feelings and opinions tonight. “When I said those words, I did not mean to encourage rebellion. I was envisioning my daughter taking her place among the leading women in our community. Well-equipped to tread in her mother’s footsteps—with newly acquired grace.” He sighed. “I have perhaps encouraged you too much when it comes to the subject of independence.” He glanced over at Mother. “And I most certainly did not encourage thoughts of a career in journalism.”

Words tumbled out. “Since when is it ‘too much’ to want to learn? To want to be engaged with what’s going on in the world?”

“
The
world
,” Mother said, “as you seem to define the term, is not something with which a lady concerns herself, Emilie Jane. And it’s time that you accepted the simple facts of your birth.” She sighed and shook her head. “Sometimes I think you resent being born a woman. I don’t understand why you must always challenge everything. The boundaries protect us, Emilie. Why can’t you see that?”

Resentment and simmering anger bubbled up. Emilie wanted to scream. What did Mother know of the world? She lived beneath a glass dome where everything was sunny and rosy and ladies made afternoon calls and conducted fund-raising bazaars to support causes. They threw money at problems. They never got their own hands dirty doing real work. Angry tears threatened. She blinked them away. And then, quite deliberately, she removed her gloves, laid them in her lap, and crossed her hands in a way that exposed the honest results of the afternoon’s experience setting type.

Two spots of color appeared on either side of Mother’s aristocratic nose as she looked at Emilie’s hands. She rose from her chair and went to the doorway leading into the back hall. “Come to the kitchen when you and Father are finished discussing the Ladies’ News,” she said. “I’ll prepare what you need to take care of that.”

“I don’t need your help,” Emilie said. “Dinah told me what to do.”

Mother sighed again. “All right, then. I’ll excuse myself and leave the two of you to discuss the rest of this business.” She crossed to where Emilie sat and bent down for a good-night kiss, murmuring, “I’ll ask Dinah to make cinnamon biscuits for breakfast.”

The faint aroma of Mother’s perfume softened Emilie’s anger. As did the mention of cinnamon biscuits. Mother always apologized through Dinah’s cooking. Perhaps there was still hope, especially if she was going to leave and give Emilie a chance to talk to Father alone.

But Father called for Mother to wait for him. As he rose from his chair, he said, “If you have any notes that would help with the next column, you can bring them with you in the morning. I’ll see that Mrs. Penner gets them.”

Mrs. Penner?
With a sharp intake of breath, Emilie said, “Mrs. Penner? As in—Fern and Flora’s mother?”

“Do we know any other Mrs. Penners?”

“She was quite pleased to be asked,” Mother added with a gentle smile.

“Of course she was.” Emilie snorted. “You’ve just handed one of the worst gossips in town a captive audience.” She glowered at Mother. “This is all
your
doing, isn’t it?”

Father broke in. “Mind your tongue, Emilie Jane. Whatever her faults, Mrs. Penner is a tireless and devoted member of your mother’s Ladies’ Aid Society—and one of Mother’s oldest friends. And do not seek to lay blame at someone else’s feet.
You
are the one who stepped into that print room today and emerged looking like some hapless immigrant mill girl.”

Emilie swallowed. She blinked back tears. She’d lost. She could have made Father see reason—if only they could have spoken alone. Just the two of them. But Father was already at Mother’s side, preparing to retire with her. “My penchant for sparing you the consequences of your choices over the years has not served you well,” he said. “I see that now, and I’m moving to correct that mistake.” He forced a smile. “Once you’ve calmed down, I doubt you’ll be all that disappointed, anyway. You weren’t really happy writing the Ladies’ News. And to be quite candid, a lighter hand and a more…
feminine
, for lack of a better word, tone will not be a bad thing for the column.”

The words hewed a new wound. Father had just said that her journalistic voice wasn’t feminine. A lighter hand would be more fitting for the Ladies’ News. A
different
hand. And Father never “lacked for a better word.” He always said exactly what he meant, which was one reason he and Emilie got along so well. She hated the way women talked around things instead of about them.

All was silence in the study, while Emilie fought the urge to raise her voice. To cry. To beg. None of which, she knew, would move Father, and all of which would only serve to assure Mother that they’d just done the right thing. Mother had no inclination to come out and be honest about what she thought—or felt—about things. She called honest arguments “unseemly emotional outbursts.”

Taking a deep breath, Emilie willed her voice to remain calm and steady as she rose from her chair, her gloves clutched in one hand. “I should see to my hands.”

Something in Father’s expression shifted. Was that relief shining in his eyes? He gave a little nod.

Mother spoke again. “In time, you’ll see that this was for the best, my dear.”

Emilie turned to go, pausing just long enough to look back at Father. “When I was setting type today, I heard that the daily print run will increase by thousands during the assembly.” She swallowed and allowed the bitterness she felt to sound in her voice. “Thousands of people could have read my work. How could you take that away from your own daughter and give it to Hazel Penner? How could you?”

She made her way out into the hallway and into the kitchen. Father called after her in a gentle voice she hadn’t heard in a long time. She heard Mother murmur something. She ignored them both, moving from pantry to kitchen table to stove and back again until she had everything she would need. She warmed water and mixed Dinah’s concoction, then dipped all ten fingers into a bowl. And as she sat there staring at the squares of pale light cast onto the kitchen floor by the moonlight streaming in the windows…she wept.

N
oah Shaw (born LeShario) loved walking at night. It was a habit borne of necessity, for once he’d appeared on a small-town stage, “The Man of Many Voices” effectively surrendered anonymity. To have any chance of privacy, any chance of simply enjoying new surroundings, he’d learned to do so by moonlight.

Standing out in a crowd wasn’t a new phenomenon. It wasn’t even all that bad. He owed his career to it. Being tall for his age had landed him his first dramatic role—Abraham Lincoln in a second-grade school pageant—and in every school pageant thereafter until Ma died.

When his voice dropped into the lower registers and his schoolmates were still squeaking and squawking, that saved him more than one fight after school. The average boy from Missouri might not like the idea of Italian last names and dark Sicilian coloring, but no one was going to pick a fight with a boy who sounded like a full-grown man, who towered over them, and whose dark eyes warned them away.
“I’m not looking for trouble, but if you start some, I’m not the type who runs.”

In point of fact, Noah LeShario had rather enjoyed being different—until, at the age of eleven, he fell head-over-heels in puppy-love with blond-haired, blue-eyed Sally Bennet, a newcomer to St. Charles, Missouri. Sally took a shine to spindly Eldridge Mason, who had his very own pony, which he rode to school every day. No one had ever been allowed to so much as touch the creature until Sally. Once Eldridge showed her how to give his pet sugar cubes, the two of them spent nearly every recess near the tethered pony. And Noah knew jealousy for the first time.

The day he finally rounded up the courage to try to lure fair Sally away from both the pony and its owner by offering to help her practice her part for the upcoming school pageant (in which he would, of course, be Abraham Lincoln), Sally snubbed him. Later that day, Noah heard her snickering about it with Eldridge Mason. “Surely if he only used soap more frequently,” she sneered, “some of that brown would wash off.”

The wound opened by those words festered, until one day Noah decided to take action. He’d seen how Ma lightened lace and fabric and how she removed stains. Maybe the recipe would help him look more like fair-skinned Ma—and less like he needed a bath in the eyes of Sally Bennet.

Buttermilk made no difference at all. Lemon juice failed, too.

Ma caught him just as he was dipping a rag into oil of turpentine. “What do you think you’re doing!”

Noah ducked his head. “I don’t want to be Sicilian. I want to be American. And I want to look like you.”

When Ma finally got the whole story out of him, anger flashed in her blue-gray eyes. She cupped Noah’s chin in one hand and leaned down to stare into his dark eyes. “You got your good looks from one of the best men who ever walked this earth—a man who died saving my life and yours, too. Don’t you ever let me catch you trying to erase God’s handiwork again, do you hear me?” She couldn’t say any more. Tears choked off her words.

The idea that he’d made his little mother cry broke Noah’s heart. He flung his lanky self into her arms and choked out an apology. That night after Ma was asleep, Noah crept across the room they shared above a bakery to retrieve the small mirror atop her dresser. Moving over to the window, he looked at himself in the moonlight.
I look like Pa. He was brave.