The Letters (23 page)

I
t was a beautiful afternoon in the first week of April, touched with a hint of spring. After Rose had helped Vera eat her lunch, she desperately needed some fresh air. It was strange how one person could change the mood of a room. Some could fill a room with excitement and energy. Jimmy Fisher was like that. Whenever he joined the family for dinner, which was happening more and more often, Rose noticed that everyone laughed more, ate more, lingered longer.

Then there were others, like Vera, who could drain off energy and joy, like siphoning sap from a maple tree. Her mother-in-law had a way of turning a sunny day into a dismally gray one. Well, she wasn’t going to let Vera spoil this beautiful day.

Rose went out to the flower garden to pour clean water into the birdbath. Chase trotted behind her and ran off to chase a cottontail through the privet, the poor fool. He never caught a blessed thing, though he did his best. She noticed the “Inn at Eagle Hill” sign standing tall and stately at the end of the driveway. Galen had built it, Mim had painted it with her careful, deliberate penmanship, and Jimmy Fisher
helped install it. It seemed so official to hang a shingle and the very sight of it brought delight to her.

She glanced over at the guest flat and noticed the curtains were still drawn. On Sunday, Delia Stoltz had a little spark back in her, but now, Wednesday, she seemed to be withdrawing into sadness again. Rose tried to ignore that spike of worry—the last thing she wanted to do was to grow attached to the guests.

But she just couldn’t help it. She knew that Delia Stoltz needed Eagle Hill.

A few days ago, Rose saw Delia take a walk into the hills behind the farmhouse in the late afternoon. An unexplainable pity touched her heart as she watched Delia head up the path, head down, shoulders rounded, fragile and defeated. Yesterday, Rose walked next door to fetch the boys home for supper and couldn’t pull them away until Galen had finished working with a jumpy horse. Galen displayed utter calm—a wonderful example for her sons to observe, especially Luke. When she returned home, Mim and Vera had informed her that Delia Stoltz had entertained a visitor in the guest flat. The male type—but he didn’t stay long, they said. Vera commented on how fine looking the man happened to be, despite being English. Twice, she said it.

Rose had a hunch that fine-looking man might have been the doctor looking for his lost wife. She thought she should check on Delia, but the evening got away from her. Here it was a day later, nearly three, and she still hadn’t had a moment to tend to Delia. Once the boys returned from school, the day was over.

Rose knocked gently on the guest flat door. When there was no answer, she opened the door and softly called Delia’s
name. The blinds were drawn to keep out the daylight, and it took a moment for Rose’s eyes to adjust to the dimness. She found Delia curled up in a corner of the sofa, surrounded by a litter of crumpled, damp tissues.

Rose walked across the room to the window and pulled the cord on the window blind. Delia’s eyes blinked rapidly as the bright noonday light streamed through the glass directly into her eyes. Rose’s heart went out to her; she was a pitiable sight. “Delia Stoltz, you don’t seem to me to be a woman without a backbone.”

Delia remained still, facing her for a very long time, and then Rose saw tears well in her eyes and spill over onto her cheeks. “I know you want to help, but you don’t know what I’m going through.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Rose sat on the sofa, uninvited. “So tell me.”

Delia felt uncomfortable confiding in Rose, wondering if, behind that wide smile and those thoughtful gray eyes, she might be secretly judging her. But if she was, she gave no sign of it. After a few minutes, Delia felt more relaxed in her presence. She thought she might start crying again, but curiously, finally, she was out of tears.

Soon, everything spilled out. Drained and exhausted, she covered her eyes with one hand. “I’m alive. The cancer is gone, I hope and pray. I know I should be grateful for that, but I don’t feel grateful. I feel completely lost.” She opened her eyes, looking for answers in Rose’s patient gaze.

Rose stood. For a moment, Delia thought she was going to put her arms around her and tell her it would be all right,
and that would have made Delia furious. It wasn’t going to be all right.

Instead Rose went to the little kitchen, picked up the trashcan, and started to fill it up with tissues. Then she went into the bedroom and made up the bed, tucking the sheets in so tightly Delia would have to pry them loose to get back into bed.

When Rose finished, she came back into the main room. She leaned against the doorjamb and folded her arms across her abdomen. “My husband had a knack for numbers and accounting. He started an investment company and, for quite a few years, he was very successful. More and more people heard about Schrock Investments. Dozens of our friends and relatives invested their life savings in the company. Then the recession hit and Dean had trouble keeping up those high returns. So he turned to riskier means to pay dividends. He was sure he could recoup the losses. But it all caught up with him. A year or two ago, everything started to fall apart. Everything.

“Dean had put our home up for collateral with bank loans and lost it. We had to move in here with his mother. The investors started to catch wind of Dean’s problems and tried to pull their money out—but there was no money to pull out. It wasn’t there. Dean declared bankruptcy. Not long after that, the police came to the house and told me Dean’s body was found drowned.”

Delia was stunned. “Your husband took his own life?”

Rose lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “We don’t know. We truly don’t. He’d been having some racing heart troubles over the last year and refused to see a doctor about it. It was a very hot day, but why had he gone swimming in an unfamiliar pond? He wasn’t much of a swimmer. The police declared
it an accident—that he was a drowning victim, they said. I hope it was an accident.”

“Didn’t you have an autopsy? That might have answered your questions.”

Rose looked down at the ground. “I refused it. Maybe that was a mistake. I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t want to have my questions answered.” She walked to the window and looked outside at the boys, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with hay toward the goat and sheep in the pen. “If Dean took his own life, our church believes he would lose his salvation. It’s the ultimate way of turning against God. Of saying that God couldn’t help a person out of a bad spot. I guess I felt it was better not to know why he died.” She spun around to face Delia. “But then there’s God’s mercy too. Dean was stressed to the breaking point. I can’t help but believe that God would understand. I pray so. I pray it every day.”

Delia wasn’t sure how to respond. She had never given suicide much thought other than pity. A terrible, terrible pity. She’d certainly never concerned herself about the afterlife.

“I was left to pick up all the pieces for Dean. I’m doing all I can to pay investors back what was owed to them. But this will follow me until the day I die. I want to make sure it doesn’t follow my children.” Delia saw her hands tighten into fists as she added quietly, “I will not let that happen.”

“You have every right to be angry.”

“Oh . . . believe me, I was. And I can be—it doesn’t take much to flare it all up again. Whenever I get a call from that Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer with another twist and complication, I churn with feelings of anger all day long. But I know I can’t live like that. I can’t live on the precipice of anger. Husband or no, the world keeps on turning.
I have children who need raising and a mother-in-law who needs tending to.

“So on those days, when anger returns, I go back to the beginning. I ask God to help me forgive Dean for not being all I wanted him to be, to help me forgive him so I can move on.” Rose gathered a few dishes from the coffee table and put them in the kitchen sink. She turned on the hot water faucet and poured dish soap into the sink, swishing her hand to stir up bubbles. “Life doesn’t always turn out the way we wish it would. Maybe we all have to get to the point in our lives when we face that fact. But I do know that God brings good things out of bad events. I’ve seen it, over and over. God doesn’t waste anything. Not a thing.”

Delia closed her eyes. “I don’t know how to get there. How to get past the anger and disappointment. I wish I did, I wish I were more like you, but I just can’t seem to do it.”

Rose turned off the hot water and faced Delia. “For me, that’s when I pray the prayer that always works.”

“What’s that?”

She lifted her eyes toward the ceiling and raised her soapy hands, palms up. “Help.”

Two cars drove into the driveway, one right after the other. Rose rinsed off her hands and grabbed a towel as she went to the window. “The first car is our vet. She’s coming to look at the colt. He’s not eating enough. I don’t know who is in the second car. A young fellow.”

Curious, Delia rose from the sofa to join Rose at the window. “Why, that’s Will. That’s my son.” It was the first time in weeks that she felt a genuine smile tug at her lips.

“Would you look at that,” Luke said, excitement in his face. He had just arrived home from school and was delighted to see strange cars in the drive. He loved visitors.

The boys were standing in the doorway of the guest flat, watching Delia and her son embrace. Rose scowled fiercely at the boys until they backed off. She shooed them away to give Delia and her son a moment of privacy.

“Why’s he crying?” Luke asked, as they walked to the barn.

“He’s just unnerved—he’s come a long way and I imagine he’s just overcome at seeing his mother,” Rose said.

“But he’s a man,” Sammy said. “Men don’t cry.”

“Men have tears in them, same as you,” Rose said.

She went out to the barn to find the vet, a young woman named Jackie Colombo. Silver Girl’s colt still wasn’t thriving, so Jackie had come up with a few other remedies to help the little horse gain weight.

“He’s just born a little too early,” Jackie said. “Like a premature baby. I’ll show you how to mix up some high-calorie meal for him.” She carried a sheaf of hay to a worktable and took a knife to it, cracking and chopping that hay into baby-size pieces, almost like grain. Then she mixed it with some oats and a little molasses and a chopped apple. She held a handful out to the colt and he snorted over it suspiciously, but nibbled at it. He dropped more than half of it as he tried to chew it, but he went after the stuff he’d dropped. By the time Jackie was packing up to leave, his little sides were starting to fill out.

Sammy came bursting back into the barn. “Mom, something’s wrong with the missus eagle!”

“What makes you say that?” Jackie asked.

Sammy turned to the vet. “She’s screeching and screeching.”

Rose’s heart stopped. “Sammy, where’s Luke?”

“He climbed a tree to get a close-up view of the eagles’ nest.”

The vet stuck her head over the stall door. “That nest must be forty feet high.”

“I know!” Sammy said, proud of his brother’s prowess. “He’s up there!”

“Why would he try to get near the nest?” Rose said. “You boys know how dangerous eagles can be.”

“We been watching them. They head up north during the day to hunt. They haven’t been coming back to the nest by the creek till the sun starts dropping.” Sammy’s eyes were as wide as a dinner dish. “Luke said the nest was at least six feet wide and made mostly of sticks. Some of the sticks are bigger than me, he said. In the center of the nest is a soft spot made of grass and wool. Wool—from our very own sheep!” He took off his black hat, looking sheepish. “I almost forgot. Luke said he was having a little bit of trouble figuring out how to get down.”

Even in the barn, they could hear the screeching sound of an eagle in distress.

“Something must be wrong with her.” Sammy waved his arm at the vet. “It’s good you’re here. You can fix her.”

“I wouldn’t have any idea what’s wrong with her,” Jackie said.

“I do,” said a man’s voice. “She’s defending her home. She’s trying to warn you off. We’d better go get your brother out of that tree before she starts making a run at him.”