The Fragrance of Geraniums (A Time of Grace Book 1) (16 page)

M
r. Kinner
returned to school three weeks later. Paulie thought he looked a bit drawn, and
while never a giddy teacher, Mr. K. now wore a faint expression of preoccupied
sorrow as he taught his lessons.

On his first day
back, he stood before the class and apologized for cancelling the choir. “I
know that several of you hoped to continue in it all this year,” he said.
“Unfortunately, it will not be possible for me to direct it. Perhaps next year.
We’ll see.”

In his careful,
private way, Dad had let Paulie know that he’d performed some kind of serious
surgery on Mr. K.’s wife. Paulie felt bad for Mr. K. and his wife, that was for
sure, but he also wished that the special choir could have continued. Stealing
a glance at Grace’s bowed head near him, Paulie knew the true root of his desire:
He’d been looking forward to getting much better acquainted with Grace
Picoletti. So pathetic she looked, yet… something about her thoroughly
intrigued Paulie. She had strength of mind and spirit that the other girls
lacked.

She’d not
allowed him to walk her home again, rushing out of the school building like a
frightened mouse running from a cat.
I scared her off with the invitation to
ride bicycles, I guess.
Paulie passed the mimeographed worksheets back to
Toby.
You shouldn’t have been so forward,
he scolded himself.
You
know that she’s shy.

Paulie sighed
and turned his attention to the first instruction on the worksheet:
List
three adjectives describing a person whom you admire.
Barely thinking,
Paulie’s pencil scratched out, “Delicate, mysterious, enchanting.” His eyes
sought out Grace again; yes, he’d described her perfectly.

He turned to the
second instruction:
Use those three adjectives in a sentence.
Smiling
now, Paulie wrote, “Bejeweled with enchanting blue eyes, her delicate white
face held a mysterious charm for him.”

She deserved
better, but it would have to do, for Paulie was the son of a doctor, not a
poet.

A
cool late October
breeze caused the remaining leaves on the steady oaks to rustle and woke
Emmeline from her doze on the front porch. She winced as her consciousness
rose, reminding her of her still-healing incision. It stretched several inches
long across her abdomen and looked rather grisly, but its appearance – however
horrible – could not compare with the excruciating pain Emmeline had experienced
after the surgery. Just in the last two days or so, the agony abated enough to allow
her to sleep without the aid of drugs.

Her left arm
tingled a little. She must have slept on it the wrong way. Carefully, flinching
a little, Emmeline adjusted her body position on the long wicker lounge chaise
and pulled up the light quilt until it tucked under her arms. The day nurse
could not have known it when Emmeline had asked her to find a quilt before she
left an hour or so ago; but Emmeline’s own grandmother had stitched this
delicate covering almost forty years ago when she was a young woman in her
thirties. Emmeline knew that her grandmother had been a devout woman and that
she often used her quilting time as extra prayer time. Warmth swelled in
Emmeline’s heart as she pondered the idea that she was covered – literally and
figuratively – in the prayers of a faithful grandmother.

She lost all
three of her sons.
Emmeline
traced the delicate hand-stitching with one finger, brooding. Two had died in
the Great War and a third had committed suicide unexpectedly some years ago.
Yet
Grandma never walked away from her faith.
Emmeline squinted down at the
pin-straight patchwork pattern. Actually, her grandmother was fond of saying,
“God only gives good gifts, though the wrapping on them seems ugly at times.”

He only gives
good gifts…

Emmeline’s hands
floated over her abdomen, covered by both her nightgown and the lovely quilt.
Empty.
There was no gift there. And never would be. The place where she had expected
the blessing – the only logical place from which it could come – that place was
barren and scarred. It seemed that God had cruelly snatched away the
half-formed answer to her and Geoff’s prayers.

“Barren,” she
said aloud. Even the word sounded terrible.

Hopeless.

A deep breath.

And then…

Thy best, thy
heavenly Friend, through thorny ways, leads to a joyful end…

The tears rose
up, welling at her lower lids. Emmeline brushed them away with a patient hand.
The tears would come, and she would not be frightened of them. She would not be
ashamed to admit her sorrowful heart’s cry. But now Emmeline knew a hunger for
hearing God’s voice, desiring it to drown out her own pitying whimpers. Her
heavy hands picked up her small personal Bible, tucked away between the side of
the chaise and her wounded body.

Before the
surgery, Emmeline had been reading in the minor prophets; since then, she’d not
stuck with a particular reading plan, as the initial physical pain seemed to
make it difficult for her to even think. But now that the pain had diminished
somewhat, the steadying routine of having a reading plan again appealed to her.
Emmeline smoothed her hands over the worn Bible – Geoff had purchased it as his
wedding gift for her – and asked the Holy Spirit to open His Word to her heart.
“And open my heart to Your word, Lord,” Emmeline finished, her fingers finding
the place in Haggai which she had last bookmarked:

And now, I pray
you, consider from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid upon a
stone in the temple of the Lord: Since those days were, when one came to an
heap of twenty measures, there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for
to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.

The tears nearly
blinded her, but she dashed them with her hand and kept reading.

I smote you with
blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands; yet ye
turned not to me, saith the Lord. Consider now from this day and upward, from
the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the
foundation of the Lord's temple was laid, consider it. Is the seed yet in the
barn? yea, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the
olive tree, hath not brought forth: from this day will I bless you.

Hope, tender and
as yet trembling, gleamed ever so faintly within her. Hers was truly a great
God. He was a God of mercy, a good God who would bless her and Geoff, though
the notion itself seemed utterly false. True, the Lord addressed Israel in
those verses, yet wasn’t Emmeline part of the remnant? And didn’t the Lord
still speak to His people?

“Though He slay
me, yet will I trust in Him,” she recalled aloud.
Not because I want a
bloodthirsty God, but because I believe He is as good as He says… that He will
bring life where I see only death.

Emmeline picked
up her journal, eager to remember the things God had spoken to her that day.
Before she could begin writing, however, her gaze caught on a slight figure
hurrying along the street. Staring for a moment, Emmeline recognized her as the
young woman – a girl, really - who often hesitated in front of the Kinners’
house every weekday. Strange, though Emmeline had seen the girl often enough as
she watered her geraniums or swept the porch, she’d never thought to talk with
her or even say hello. A rueful smile grew on Emmeline’s face. Funny how being
laid-up caused you to consider small things like that!

Perhaps the girl
doesn’t want you to say hello.
Emmeline brushed the thought aside.
If
she doesn’t, she can keep walking and ignore me,
she answered herself,
watching the skinny girl take short, quick steps. Sure enough, the girl slowed
down and cast a long look at the Kinners’ home. Her eyes caught sight of
Emmeline reclining there. Emmeline could tell that the girl was about to
quicken her pace and hurry away.

“Hello, there!”
Emmeline called, anxious to greet her before she escaped.

Obviously
startled, the girl stopped in her tracks. She glanced over her shoulder, as if
wondering whether Emmeline addressed her or someone else. Seeing no one, she turned
her surprised eyes back to porch.

Now that the
girl stood still, Emmeline could get a better picture of her. The girl appeared
to have skipped lunch for a month: her ratty cardigan hung like a curtain
around her scrawny frame, and her baggy skirt slouched off her hips. Emmeline
couldn’t be certain from this distance, but she thought she saw the glint of a
safety pin holding the skirt up. “Hello, there,” she said again, sitting up as
much as she could manage. Oh, that she wasn’t crippled by these stitches and
this pain!

The girl seemed
like she might not answer at first. Then, unsmiling, she replied, “Hello.”

“Won’t you come
up to the porch for a moment?” Emmeline asked. Something about the young woman
drew her; she felt urged to not let this opportunity pass by.

The girl looked
in the direction she’d been headed and appeared hesitant. Emmeline’s heart sank
faster than a stone in the mill pond. She wouldn’t come. But then the girl
answered slowly, “Alright.”

W
hy am I doing
this?
Grace asked herself as her feet seemed to move of their own accord up the path
to the beautiful white home. But another question overtook that one quickly:
Is
this woman the one who played the piano?

I need to hurry.
Grace knew that
Mama would want her assistance with supper. But the woman on the porch appeared
so inviting, so different from that to which Grace was accustomed
.
I’ll
only stay a minute,
she promised herself.
Just long enough to find out
why she threw out those red flowers.
Her feet took the porch steps quickly,
her heart thudding along.

At the top, Grace
couldn’t bring herself to raise her eyes from her rubber-banded shoes. Intense
embarrassment crept up her neck and froze her arms tightly against her sides.
Perhaps
it was a mistake to come…

“I’m Emmeline
Kinner, dear.”

The woman’s
words jolted Grace’s head up. Was
this
Mr. Kinner’s wife? The one who
couldn’t have children? Grace stood gaping for a moment, then realized that the
woman waited for her answer without a hint of impatience.

“I’m Grace
Picoletti,” Grace managed. The woman appeared so likable that she felt bold
enough to ask, “Does your husband teach at the high school, ma’am?”

Mrs. Kinner’s
smile spread. “Yes, he does, in fact. Do you have Mr. Kinner as a teacher?”

Grace nodded.
Mr. Kinner certainly had a swell wife, as Ben would say.
I wish I could ask
her about the flowers.

“I see you come
by nearly every day, Grace,” Mrs. Kinner went on, “and I wondered about you.”
Suddenly, gently, she grasped Grace’s hand. “I’m so glad that we could meet one
another today.”

The woman’s
smile infected Grace, and she found herself returning it, though she felt so
uncomfortable with her hand in Mrs. Kinner’s. “I’m glad to meet you, too,
ma’am,” she replied. And she realized that she meant it.

“Now, Grace,”
Mrs. Kinner said, releasing her hand, “every time you pass our home, I see that
you slow down a bit. Are you looking at anything in particular?”

Had it been so
obvious? Hopefully, Mrs. Kinner wouldn’t mind that Grace had been staring.
“Your flowers, ma’am. The red ones,” she added when Mrs. Kinner looked puzzled.

Mrs. Kinner’s
face lit up, and her eyes sparkled. “Oh, the geraniums! My geraniums. You like
geraniums?” she asked. “I like them, too! They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

Grace nodded and
stayed silent for a moment. But the question wouldn’t stay put. “Then why did
you get rid of them? They were so pretty.”

Mrs. Kinner
laughed. “Get rid of them? Get rid of my geraniums? Never!”

Now it was Grace’s
turn to be puzzled. “But… they’re gone. They’ve been gone for a while now.”

“No, no. They’re
not gone, Grace. I just take them inside for the colder months, you see,” Mrs.
Kinner explained. “You’ll see them again on the porch, hanging in those
baskets, when spring comes.”

A smile burst
out; Grace couldn’t help it. The disappearance of the flowers had felt like a
little death to her. Knowing that they would be resurrected, well… Something
inside her rejoiced at the thought.

“I would bring
you inside the house to show you them – I keep them upstairs in my piano room –
but I recently had an operation and find myself rather immobile for the time,”
Mrs. Kinner continued.

Grace realized
that Mrs. Kinner had changed her position on the chaise very little during the
time in which they’d been talking.
She must be in some pain.
“I have to
be getting home anyway, but thank you, ma’am,” Grace said reluctantly. “I’m so
glad about the flowers.” It was silly, she knew, but Mrs. Kinner could little
know how happy she had made Grace today!