The Fragrance of Geraniums (A Time of Grace Book 1) (4 page)

S
he was still so
small, this little sister of his with the hair of sunset gold. Fifteen-going-on-sixteen,
just like she’d claimed, but she barely weighed eighty-five pounds, he was
sure. Ben studied her standing there before him, his heart panging with the
knowledge that he would break her innocent, sweet childishness, or what was
left of it.

No matter what way
I cut the pie, the same gross outcome…

“Canary-bird,”
he greeted Grace with the old pet name from their childhood…
Did we ever
have a childhood?
He blew out a cloud of smoke, threw his cigarette stub
down, and crushed its life out. It felt good to master something, once and for
all, here at home.

“Hi,” she gave a
useless greeting. She was unsure of herself, he could see that from the way she
kept darting her eyes from the flashlight’s beam to his face, back-and-forth
like a peeper frog. He moved over, making room for her. She gingerly took the
seat, her slight weight causing the bale to release the aroma of sweet hay, laden
with the ghosts of hot July days.

“You ain’t gonna
be able to get up for school, kid,” he murmured, gazing at her. His sister had
a nose too big for classic beauty, but the rest of her features more than made
up for that, in Ben’s opinion. Big blue eyes, softly curling hair, petite frame
– the whole package. ‘Course, she was still a kid.

“It’s Saturday
tomorrow,” Grace replied, turning her trusting eyes to him and clicking off the
flashlight. Darkness took utter possession of the barn, except for the large
window behind them. That window let in enough of the pregnant moon’s light for
Ben to make out Grace’s expression. So extremely serious, like she knew that
she stood on the edge of the precipice of knowledge.
Well, you gotta grow up
sometime, kid.
He consciously hardened his emotions.
Might as well be
now.
Ben opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Grace did not
wait for him. “Ben,” she started softly, “what’s going on? With… With Papa and…
and…” She trailed off, not knowing how to finish.

He scrutinized
her, curious. “How much do you already know?”

“Not much,” she answered.
“Not for sure. But more than Evelyn, I’ll bet. And more than Mama thinks I do.”

Ben nodded. He’d
give her the basics, then. And he’d start with the least painful. “Well, the
first thing you need to know is, I’m leaving tomorrow, canary-bird.”

She grabbed one
of his arms with both her hands, her strongest grip nothing on his
horse-toughened muscles. “No!” she gasped. “No, Ben!”

He gently
extricated himself from her hold on him. “Got to, sis. Papa ain’t gonna want me
around here after what I did to him.”

Her eyes
searched his face. “What do you mean, Ben? What’d you do to Papa?”

“Punched him
good. Right in his kisser,” Ben ground out, wallowing in the hatred he could
hear in his own voice.

Grace sat
silent, the dim light touching her golden strands. He had shocked her, and he
knew the reason – hearing that the son of Charlie Picoletti would strike his
own father. “He got me, too,” he offered after a moment of silence, turning his
right cheek so that Grace could examine it. It was an olive branch of sorts, to
get her to listen, at least.

His kid sister
sucked in her breath and reached out to touch the raised welt. Papa’s
backhanded whack had resulted in a wound that threatened to close off Ben’s
sight for a few days, if it kept swelling. “What happened, Ben?” Grace
whispered, her fingers floating over the injured cheekbone before they dropped
back into her nightgowned lap.

Ben couldn’t
face Grace when he told her the truth. He jumped up from the hay bale and
stared into the blackness of Bessie’s stall. He could hear the mellow crunching
as the cow moved bunches of hay around with her teeth. Yet the familiar sound
did not comfort him tonight. He pulled out another cigarette – the fourth this
hour – and struck the match hard.

His fingers
glowed orange in the small flame’s light, shaking a little. Shoot, but this was
hard! How did you tell your sister what everyone in town had whispered about
your papa, about her papa – for years, mind you – everyone whispering but no
one saying it out loud? At last, he lit the cigarette and threw away the match.
He glanced over his shoulder. Grace was still there on the hay bale, like a
bowed white birch waiting for the blast of a storm.

“What is it?”
she asked, and he could see her pale fingers gripping the bale’s edge. “What?”

“Caught him
red-handed, that jerk. Caught him cheatin’ on Mama with that loose sister of
Uncle Jack’s.” Ben drew in the strength of the cigarette smoke. “So I punched
his cheatin’ kisser.”

A half-laugh,
strangled with pain, escaped him. “I threw him… threw him into a wall before he
knew what hit him.” He risked another look at Grace. She sat fixed, eyes wide
as rain puddles on March streets.

Finally, she
adjusted her position and dropped her gaze. “Is that… Gertrude?”

“Yeah.
Gertrude,” he spat out the name and mentally followed it with several choice
curses he’d picked up at the racetrack.

He’d met Papa’s
brother-in-law’s sister just once, right before he’d left to make his own way a
few years ago. He and Papa had never seen eye-to-eye on lots of things; that
much was as obvious then as now. But Ben had thought at the time that Gertrude
was just a flirty woman with whom Papa liked to play. Ben didn’t care to deny a
man his toy, mind you, but humiliating Mama and the entire family was another
thing entirely.

“Did you know?
Is that why you came back?” Grace asked.

He sighed. “I
didn’t know for sure. One of them Polish fellows came up to work at the track.
I got into a fight with him over something stupid, and, well, he brought up
Gertrude. Said that Mama was the laughingstock of Chetham.”

He met Grace’s tear-filled
eyes. “When I got back, I asked around. Seems like Papa’s been open about this
love affair with everyone. Except for Mama.”

“Does Mama know,
though?” Grace traced her toe in the dust covering the barn floor.

“Course she
does!” Ben flung the words out. They slapped Grace, and he regretted his
harshness.

“Sure she does,”
he said more gently. “Mama ain’t stupid, Grace. Neither is Papa. He
knows
that she knows. And he don’t care, you see? That’s what gets to me. He don’t
care that he’s killing her.” Ben blinked back the weak tears that sprang up in
his eyes. “And that’s why I’m going. I told him what I think. With my fist.” He
pounded his balled-up right hand into his left palm for emphasis.

Surely, Grace
would understand. Would know that he’d done all he could. How he could use
another shot of brandy right now! With a sigh, he leaned against the frame of
the open barn door. He stared out at the moon, sagging in the night sky.

Long silence
reigned. Bessie crunched her hay. The crickets chirruped in their autumnal
ecstasy. Far off, so distant that it could barely touch their hearing, a robin
began his deep song. The sound gave Ben the urge to tell Grace what bit at his
heart, young though she was. “We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are
looking at the stars,” he murmured.

“What’s that?” Grace
asked, coming to his side.

Ben looked down
into her eyes, then back out at the grassy expanse leading to the house. Would
he ever return now? What was there to return for? “Nothing. Just something I
read in a book once.” He forced a smile. “Promise me something, canary bird.”

“Yeah?” She
leaned against him and gazed up into his face. “What is it, Ben?”

“Promise me that
you won’t settle. You’ll do something with yourself.” His voice had grown more
earnest than he’d meant it to, and he saw fear enter her eyes.

“Whadaya mean,
Ben? Do something with myself? What do you want me to do?” The words fell over
each other, trembling, and, without thinking, Ben grabbed her by the shoulders
and pinned her eyes with his.

“You show Papa
he can’t crush you with all this stuff,” he insisted, willing her to understand
without him spelling it out. Without the words Papa had spoken exploding
through this meadow and barn.

But still Grace
shook her head. “Crush us? What do you mean? What stuff? I know Mama feels bad,
but…” Her voice trailed off as Ben held her gaze. “What is it, Ben? What aren’t
you telling me?”

He bit his
chapped lip, feeling the rough skin with his tongue. “It might be nothing.
Might just be something Papa said in the heat of a fight, Grace. You know, it’s
not every day that your son punches you out.” He managed a laugh and stepped
into the yard, intending to reach the house before she pulled it out of him.

But Grace caught
him by the arm before he could go four feet. “What is it? What did Papa say?”
she begged, eyes wide, pulling on his scrappy shirt.

Well, she might
as well know what kind of man had fathered her. Ben swallowed and straightened
his shoulders. “He’s bringing her here,” he said hoarsely, barely comprehending
the statement, though he said it.

“What?” Grace
frowned, obviously puzzled. “Who? Papa? Who is Papa bringing here?” With her
typical nervous gesture, Grace scraped her hair behind her ears.

“Gertrude.” Ben
nearly vomited the name. “He said he’s bringing Gertrude here. To live.”

G
eoffrey Kinner
pushed the pile of essays to the side of his desk, neatening the stack with his
aching hands. Graded at last. He smiled and leaned back, glad to have finished
early enough to get the lawn mowed.
One last time before winter sets in
,
Emmeline had reminded him today as she’d kissed him after breakfast.

Emmeline.
He could hear
the old ivory keys yielding to her artistry in the room above him. Geoff’s
smile widened. That instrument never cooperated with him so well as it did with
his wife. But then, Emmeline queened over all she touched in life, it seemed.
Even
me,
he thought, fully grinning now. He rose from his chair, stretching his
back, hearing the joints crack into place, feeling like a dog who had snoozed too
long in a sunny patch.

The piano grew
louder as he moved into the hallway, taking his time. He relished the way Emmeline
embellished the old hymns, adding a little extra chord here, a long string of
notes there. She played “Great is Thy Faithfulness” today; Pastor Reed probably
had listed it as a hymn for Sunday’s service. Emmeline always liked to practice
the hymns ahead of time.

Geoff climbed
the stairs softly, avoiding the creaky fourth step. He reached the threshold of
the music room just as she came to the last stanza. He leaned against the
doorjamb, thumbs hooked under his suspenders, gazing at his beautiful wife.

True, Emmeline had
never possessed the movie-star-vixen attractiveness that seemed all the rage
nowadays. When Geoff asserted that she was, quite simply, perfect in every
particular, his wife usually rolled her caramel eyes and pointed out some
imperfection of which she knew. But to Geoff, Emmeline’s loveliness came from
within, a rose opening to show its deep inner worth. He found her deep brown
hair, flowing down her back like dark waves on the beach, and her olive
complexion very pretty, it was true. But Geoff saw even deeper imprints of
beauty in his beloved: her compassion for the poor and elderly, her zeal for
the gospel, her unwavering commitment to the truth. These and so many other
traits had drawn him toward Emmeline when they’d met so young – only fifteen –
and kept him fixed to her now that they were an old married couple in their
late twenties.

She pressed the
last chord onto the upright’s keyboard and paused for a moment, mouth open as
if breathing in a final gasp of music. Then, whirling around on the short piano
stool, she turned to face him. “Geoff.” She smiled. “I’ll get lunch ready in a
jiffy. Are you hungry?”

He nodded. “I
could eat a rhinoceros. Finished grading those papers, so I can mow the lawn
after lunch.”

“Super,” his
wife replied, rising from the stool. Gently, Emmeline pulled the hinged lid
over the keys. “We’re having chicken salad sandwiches,” she informed him,
taking her folded cardigan from the armchair near the window.

“Sounds good,” he
commented, and they began to descend the staircase together.

“I forgot to
ask,” Emmeline said suddenly. “How many children signed up for chorus? I know
you were expecting a low turnout.” She gave him a sympathetic smile.

“Oh, it wasn’t
too bad,” Geoff replied as they reached the bottom of the staircase. “Maybe
twenty-five.” They turned into the tiny kitchen. When they’d first purchased
the house three years ago, Emmeline had sewn yellow-checked curtains for the
windows and cushions for the old but sturdy wooden chairs. When Geoff’s mother
heard about the cheerful color scheme, she’d sent some matching quilted
potholders, too. Now the once-dismal room exuded a light-filled welcome.

Going to the refrigerator,
Emmeline nodded. “It’s tough for some students to commit to staying after
school, probably. Some of the farm kids have a lot of chores.” She pulled out
the chicken salad she’d made from last-night’s dinner remains and began
spooning it onto slices of homemade bread.

“Yeah, that’s
true,” Geoff agreed. He took down two glasses from the cupboard and poured
water into them before setting them on the table.

His wife placed
their lunch plates near the glasses. “For some, there’s not much choice,
though. It’s either have the children do the chores or don’t eat.” Geoff pulled
out her chair for her, his mouth watering as he looked at the chicken salad
heaped high on the grainy bread.

“Let’s pray.” He
reached for his wife’s small hands and asked the Lord’s blessing on their meal.

The chicken
salad tasted as delicious as it looked, and Geoff enjoyed several bites before reviving
their conversation. “Speaking of kids being poor, I did have one surprising
student sign up for the chorus.”

“Oh?” Emmeline
raised her eyebrows, mid-bite. “Who?”

He shook his
head. “I don’t think you know the family. Catholic, I believe. Or, if not, they
don’t go to First Baptist,” he said, referring to the church that he and Emmeline
attended.

She nodded. The
large Catholic church rose tall across the street from the high school where Geoff
taught, and it received hundreds of congregants each Saturday and Sunday for Mass.
“Go on,” she said.

Geoff swallowed another
bite before continuing. “Her name’s Grace Picoletti. I had her in a literature
class last year and I’ve got her again this year. Good student, very quiet. I
had her older sisters a couple years ago… and I think I might have had her
brother or maybe a cousin of hers the first year I taught.” He shook his head.
“Never expected her to sign up.”

“Did you have
her sing for you?” Emmeline took an apple and bit into it.

“Yes, and, boy,
can that girl sing.” Geoff reached for an apple, too, selecting a deep red one
blushed with the gold of sunlight. “You wouldn’t know it to look at her. She
seems like just another kid from one of those poor Italian families, the ones
that scrape by, selling milk from the family cow, you know?” He smiled,
remembering. “Her shoe nearly fell off as she was leaving. She had attached the
sole with a rubber band.”

“Oh, poor
thing,” Emmeline exclaimed. “I hope you didn’t have her sing in front of
anyone, Geoff.”

“No, of course
not. It was after school, and I think she waited purposely until everyone else
had their turn and left. Nobody but she and I was there.”

“What part will
you have her sing?”

“Soprano at
first. That is,” he paused, “if she comes back. When that incident happened
with her shoe, she pretty much fled the auditorium. And forgot her permission
slip.” He shook his head, remembering how he’d found the paper in the aisle
after the girl ran away.

Emmeline smiled.
“She’ll probably be back.” She rose, the legs of her chair scraping the floor,
and picked up Geoff’s empty plate, stacking it on her own. Geoff admired his
wife’s easy grace as Emmeline brought the dirty dishes to the sink. She filled
the basin with warm water and shook in a handful of soap flakes. “By the way,”
she said, plunging the plates into the soapy mixture, “I have a doctor’s
appointment this afternoon.”

Geoff raised his
eyebrows. “Why? Is something wrong?” He felt his throat tighten at the thought.

“No, I don’t
think anything is wrong,” Emmeline answered, her back to him. He heard a happy
note enter her voice.

Geoff sat for
just a second, then he found himself at the sink beside Emmeline. “Emmeline!”
He took her shoulders with both his hands, turning her toward him. He knew. He
knew what secret Emmeline’s words held just by looking at her beaming face.

Yet, his chest
tightened a little. They’d been through this so often, with so many
disappointments… “Are you sure?” He hated to ask it.

But his wife’s
eyes shone at him. “I waited until the fourth month this time, Geoff. All the
other times… We lost them before then.” She gave him a butterfly of a kiss.
“Don’t be afraid to hope, darling. I think that God has answered us at last.”

At an utter loss
for words, Geoff could do nothing but fold Emmeline in his arms. Joy burst in
his heart like firecrackers, lit by faith.

He has answered
us.