A Promise to Love (16 page)

They heard a pitter-patter on the roof, and Ellie, Trudy, and Polly came tumbling inside. “It's raining!” Ellie shouted.

“Finally.” Joshua looked up. “We need the rain. It's been such a dry spring.”

“Maybe rain barrels fill up,” Ingrid said. “Give us nice, soft water for washing hair and clothes.”

“Pray that it continues, Ingrid. Our crops need it.”

 15 

The two-day rain brought wildflowers—armloads of them seemed to spring up around their farm overnight.

“Ma always liked flowers,” Agnes said, her nose pressed against the window.

“Maybe you take her some,” Ingrid suggested.

“What do you mean?” Agnes asked.

“Go put flowers on mother's grave.”

“You wouldn't mind?” Joshua asked.

“No. Why I mind?” Ingrid said. “Go.” She made a shooing motion. “Take flowers for mother.”

“If you're sure.”

“I pack picnic. You stay long time. Talk with children about mother,” Ingrid suggested. “Remember together.”

“Thank you, Ingrid. That's very thoughtful of you,” Joshua said. “I think that would be a good idea.”

Although he looked at her a little suspiciously when she said “stay long time” and handed him a basket of sandwiches, he accepted the basket and headed out with the girls.

“Pick many flowers for mother,” Ingrid called as they left.

She knew that Diantha's grave was in a family plot on top of a rise behind Virgie and Richard's house. With any luck, the walk, the picnic, the picking of flowers, the remembering would keep them away for an hour or two.

Ingrid hoped they would stay gone as long as possible. It would give her a chance to do something she had been itching to do—search the house over for that key.

“You and my mother will be all right alone here with Bertie?” Joshua asked.

“We fine.” Ingrid fought back frustration with his slowness to leave. “Go. Have good time.”

The minute the girls and he had left, she placed Bertie in his cradle and scooted it over near the rocking chair where Mary sat basting a new baby dress for him out of the navy blue material Joshua had brought from George's yesterday—in spite of having to make the trip in the rain. Joshua must
really
not want Bertie to wear the pink calico.

“You watch baby?” Ingrid asked.

“Of course.” Mary peered at her over her glasses. “You're going to go looking for that key, aren't you?”

“Ja.” Ingrid was impressed. Mary seemed to be getting more alert each day. “How you know?”

“What woman wouldn't want to know what a man's first wife was keeping locked away in a chest?” Mary said. “Diantha was always cordial to me, but she was a secretive little thing. Where are you going to look?”

“Upstairs in girls' loft?”

“No.” Mary shook her head. “I already checked out all the hiding places up there.”

“You do that?” Ingrid was even further impressed.

“I had to sacrifice to send that fabric each Christmas,” Mary said. “Plus, Barb resented it. It bothers me that Diantha evidently never touched it. I'd like to see it put to use for what I intended it—clothing for the children.”

“Where I look then?”

“I'd look in the bedroom—where it would be handy and where she could close the door so the girls couldn't see where she was hiding it.”

“That make sense.” Ingrid headed toward the bedroom.

“Except that Diantha was an outdoorsy woman. It could be in the barn or one of the sheds. Or even in a tree somewhere for all I know.”

“I never find key!”

“Well, I would look in the bedroom first. Are some of Diantha's things still there?”

“Ja. Joshua angry when I try to sort things for Agnes. I not touch since long time.”

“Where do you keep your things,” Mary asked, “if Diantha's are still there?”

“I have not much.” Ingrid shrugged. “Fits in box under bed.”

“That's not fair,” Mary said.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Ingrid said.

“I tell you what. I'll keep a lookout here at the window, and if I see them coming home—I'll tell you. You'll have plenty of time to put things away. And I'll have a talk with my son about you not having any place to put your things later. When you aren't around.”

“That a good idea!”

Their bedroom was not large, but it was big enough to hold a bed, a dresser with a mirror, a chair, and the trunk. It was actually a long box made of solid white pine. The lock, she discovered, was turned toward the wall, which was the reason she had never noticed it.

Ingrid decided to concentrate on the dresser. She had only emptied one drawer when Josh had come home and found her before. The other drawers were still mysteries.

She ignored the top one—it was the one she had already opened and which had held most of Diantha's dresses. She already knew there was no key hidden in there, and for all she knew, it still held remnants of that sickly sweet perfume Diantha had worn.

The second drawer, she discovered, was filled with Diantha's underthings and nightclothes. There were, in Ingrid's opinion, entirely too many nice things in there for a farm wife to own. Many appeared to be store-bought. How had Joshua afforded so many nice things for Diantha?

“You see Joshua?” she called to Mary.

“No. How are you getting along in there?”

“Diantha have many pretty things,” Ingrid said. “How did Joshua buy?”

“Oh, don't let that bother you, honey,” Mary said. “She brought them with her into the marriage. Diantha was Virgie and Richard's only surviving daughter and they spoiled her. That girl had more clothes in her trousseau than I probably owned my whole life.”

That made Ingrid feel a little better. Still, the petite size of Diantha's things bothered her. A pair of Diantha's lacy pantalets would hardly fit on one of Ingrid's legs. But she couldn't help taking stock of the possibilities. These very pantalets should fit Agnes in a couple more years. If care was given, they could be handed down to Trudy, and possibly even Ellie. New ones would have to be made for Polly, of course, because Ellie would be sure to wear them out or rip them on a branch of whatever tree she was climbing.

No key in the undergarment and nightwear drawer. She packed everything back in as closely as possible to how it had been arranged, and opened the third drawer—the last one.

This drawer held four different pairs of Sunday-type button-up, high-top shoes with small heels, and they were lovely. The shoes, more than anything else she had found among Diantha's things, made her ache. Such delicate, feminine things! One pair of beautiful, light-color calfskin gloves lay beside the shoes. She picked up one glove and fitted it against the palm of her hand. The fingers were a full inch shorter than hers.

There were two parasols folded up inside the drawer. One that was elaborate, with fringe and cutwork, and one that was slightly plainer. She unfurled the fancier one and held it over her head—imagining how proud Joshua must have been to have Diantha on his arm. Diantha in her small, fancy shoes, her perfect gloves, her lovely parasol.

With a heavy heart, she started to close the drawer and then noticed something else in the far back, a small box. She reached in to draw it out. It was a pretty little box, but when she opened it, she saw that it was nothing more than body powder. Once again, she inhaled the heavy scent of roses.

She could hardly put the lid on quickly enough to mask that smell. What if Joshua came home and found her looking through his wife's things again? What if he smelled that scent again?

As she bent to place the box back where she had found it, she heard something inside of it shift and scrape. Something heavy was inside that scented talcum, something that should not be there.

Wrinkling her nose at the smell, she opened the lid once again and stuck an exploratory finger into the powder. There, at the bottom of the box, was something metal.

She dredged it out, and sure enough, there was the key.

Holding the key at arm's length, she went out to the kitchen.

“You found it!” Mary exclaimed.

“Ja.” Ingrid walked to the dry sink, upon which sat a basin she kept filled for the family's hand washing, and dropped the key into the soapy water.

“Why on earth are you washing it?” Mary asked.

Ingrid didn't know how to explain except to say, “It smell like Diantha.”

After allowing each child, including Polly, to gather a fistful of wildflowers, Joshua took the children the long way around through the woods to Diantha's grave. It would be faster and simpler to walk past Virgie and Richard's home, but he wanted to avoid a confrontation with them—especially when he had the children with him. There would come a time to try to sort things out and make amends, but that time was not yet and it was certainly not now.

The small cemetery held seven graves: Diantha's, still brown from dirt freshly dug, plus her two younger brothers who had died at birth, her younger sister, who died from diphtheria at age two, another younger sister who died from complications from appendicitis at age eight, and two younger brothers who survived to adulthood, but one had died fighting at Fredericksburg, the other had died from dysentery while encamped in Tennessee. His wife, the oldest child, had helped her mother and father bury six brothers and sisters. He had always wondered if this grisly experience had been a factor in her emotional struggles.

“Do you think Ma can see us?” Ellie asked. “Does she know we're bringing her flowers?”

“I don't know, sweetheart, but if she can, I know that she's loving those flowers.”

Trudy added, “Ma always liked spring best, when the wildflowers bloomed.”

“Yes, she did.”

Agnes was quiet, thoughtful. “You suppose we oughta plant a rosebush here sometime?”

“I think your mother would like that.”

“It would make the grave look a little less . . . raw,” Agnes said.

“Time will take care of the dirt,” he said. “But a rosebush would be nice.”

As he stood there, his mind was flooded with so many emotions, but mainly he was angry over the four years that the war had stolen. Neither he nor Diantha were the same people they had been after he came back from the war. He had demons to fight—memories of the battlefield he struggled to put behind him so he could build a life for his family. She had been quiet and withdrawn, wrestling with her own demons.

He had trained himself to think as little as possible about the battles he had fought. Instead, the only moment of the war he allowed himself to dwell on, the image on which he focused during the worst times, was a scene he and his men had come upon in Tennessee in the spring of 1862. They had been traveling fast, bent on a mission that was taking every ounce of their endurance. He was tired, disillusioned, hungry, and then suddenly, while riding through a remote Tennessee valley, they came upon a young mother walking with her little girl in a cherry orchard. The white cherry blossoms had been at their peak, their scent so pure and removed from the smells of the battlefield that it had seemed like the most peaceful, beautiful, gentle thing he had ever seen.

He and his men had not stopped. They had thundered past the young mother on that back road. He had tipped his hat to her as they sped by, and even though they were Union troops, she had gracefully dipped her head in return.