Sister's Choice (33 page)

“No, he came alone.” Cash pulled a chair up beside hers, slapped his hands behind his head and leaned back on the rear legs. “He and my dad went off to have some dinner together.”

Jamie thought that seemed odd, since Manning had wanted very little to do with the construction of Kendra and Isaac’s house. “They’ve suddenly become friends?”

“That’s probably not the best way to put it. But they had some things to talk about. I imagine Kendra will tell you about it later.” He glanced at her. “Why is it these days whenever you or I say your sister’s name you get that look in your eyes?”

“What look is that?”

“It’s kind of hard to describe. Something like a cross between a beagle puppy that’s been kicked around and an old lab trying to learn new tricks so his master won’t put him down.”

“Lord, sad-dog metaphors. Or is it similes? I really didn’t like English all that well.”

“Doesn’t matter. If the shoe fits.”

“That’s a proverb. I know that much.” She reached over and rested her hand on his knee. “I just seem to need more time alone these days, and people tire me. I’m not sure I’m up for my sister’s company right now, that’s all.”

“Just your sister’s?”

“If you’re asking if you should leave, the answer is no. You’re easy to be with. I like that about you.”

If he heard the compliment, he passed right over it. “And Kendra isn’t?”

She tried to tell what part of the truth she could. “There’s a certain amount of anxiety attached to this pregnancy for Kendra and Isaac. I can understand that. I’d feel the same way, if it was me. But I don’t always have the strength to cope with it. And I’m kind of wiped this evening.”

“There’s more going on. Just so you know, I can tell. But I’m not going to push you. So what’ll we talk about? Where are the mischief makers?”

“They’re out with Grace feeding Lucky.” Now that the deer was so big, Grace had started leaving the barn door open, and Lucky was going farther afield every day. One day they would go out to put down hay, and she wouldn’t be waiting. Jamie knew the time would be right, but they would all miss her, especially Hannah and Alison.

“By the time the weather warms again, she’ll be gone for good, won’t she?” she said.

“Not for good. I bet she’ll hang around the general area. We’ll see her now and then.”

“I worry about hunters.”

“That orange collar Granny Grace put on her will help, but there’s no surefire cure for a man who wants to shoot anything that moves. At least the orchard is posted.”

“A time to live and a time to die.”

“You’re getting all philosophical on me.”

She patted his knee, and smiled when he took her hand and warmed it in his. The breezeway was her favorite room in the house, but it was also the chilliest. Ben Cashel had not used energy-efficient windows. If the house belonged to her, Jamie would change that right away.

“What are you reading?” Cash asked.

“Something you ought to read one day. They’re your grandfather’s letters to Grace when he was training at Fort Belvoir. And some of hers that he brought back with him.”

“She kept them all these years?”

“If you read them, you almost wonder why. You’ve never seen such struggling on paper before. And you wouldn’t believe these two people ever lived together in harmony.”

“I guess I’ve never heard
that
marriage described as living in harmony. They were as much alike as a cactus and a willow. But they loved each other. That was for sure.”

Jamie lifted the letters and waved them. “Grace gave me these and told me to see if I could figure out what was happening between them. I think they loved each other but neither of them was willing to admit it, if they even realized it at this point. They wasted some precious time.”

“People always think they have a lot to waste. Of course, that’s not always true.”

She imagined he was thinking of Kary, but she was thinking of herself. She wondered if that was the lesson Grace was trying to drive home by giving her the letters.

She dropped his hand and got to her feet. “I’ve got something to show you. Interested?”

“If you think you can haul yourself to wherever it is. I think those babies have grown since I saw them this morning.”

She glanced down. She truly was huge. Although she had felt like Mother Earth when she was pregnant with her daughters, now she felt like the old woman who lived in the shoe. Old before her time, ungainly, a blot on the landscape.

A giant blot.

“Just how far do you think skin can stretch?” She patted the bump, which was more like a mountain now. “I just keep thinking it’s going to refuse to accommodate me one of these days.”

“As far as it needs to.”

“I feel like a creature from outer space.”

“I think you’re beautiful.”

She saw that he meant it. For a moment, it was even harder to breathe than usual, and not because of the rearrangement of her internal organs.

“You really know what to say.”

He put his arms around her and pulled her close, or as close as he could, considering.

“I think what you’re doing is beautiful.” He stroked her back. “I know it’s not easy. It can’t be as easy as you keep saying it is.”

“Okay, I’ll miss the little guys. That’s a given. But I’m okay with handing them over. I really am.”

“You’re a grown-up. It’s my job to believe you.”

She pulled away and took his hand. “Come see what I’ve made for them.”

The two baby quilts were folded neatly beside the living room sofa. She held them to herself for a moment, a bit embarrassed. “Now, I know you’re used to seeing your grandmother’s quilts. You have to remember, these are my first attempts. But they’re all done. Every last stitch, all washed and dried and ready for the big day. Kendra hasn’t seen them yet. I think she’ll be pleased.”

“Let me see.”

She set down one and opened the other, the red, black and white. “This is for Twin Number One. I think Kendra and Isaac are still fighting over names. If they finally decide, I’ll embroider it on the back. But see?” She turned it over to show him the heart in the corner that said With love from Aunt Jamie.

“It’s wonderful.” He fingered the binding. “Of course, I’m a guy, so what would I know? But if I were a baby again, I wouldn’t let it out of my sight.”

It was exactly the right, silly thing to say, and she laughed. “I’m really happy with it.” She folded it quickly and unfolded the second. “And here’s the other.”

“Wow, will he be able to sleep?”

The quilt was bright, but she knew that any baby would be entranced. Her own girls had loved sunny, cheerful colors the best.

“And there you have my entire quilting career,” she said, folding the second one.

“They’re both wonderful. And they’ll be treasured.”

“For a guy, that’s pretty good. You said all the right things.”

“We aim to please.”

“I’m not sure what I’ll do with my hands now. This was very relaxing.”

“Finishing must seem like an ending of sorts.”

She knew he was heading back to the subject of giving up the twins. But this time she didn’t deflect him. Endings were on her mind these days. And finishing the quilts
had
saddened her.

“Kendra and Isaac will be the best possible parents.” She held the second quilt against her chest, against the scar that had forever changed her world. “I know I’m turning these babies over to a good, full life with all the love they’ll ever need. In fact, if anything happens to me, I’ve already put Kendra and Isaac in my will as guardians for Hannah and Alison.”

“When did you do that?”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s kind of telling, don’t you think? What made you think of it now?”

She gave the speech she’d prepared. “It was just time to do it, that’s all. I should have formalized something a long time ago. If anything ever does happen to me, then I want to know they’ll be well taken care of. They do have fathers, but I don’t think either one would take this to court. If he did, then my wishes would still be considered.”

“Are you worried something’s going to happen during delivery? Is that why you’ve been so…” He shrugged.

“No. No! I’m fine. But it does bring some things home more clearly. Like planning for the future. I want the girls to be with people who love them. In fact, I hope you’ll stay in touch with them. They’re crazy about you.”

“Jamie…” He took her hands. “Is this what pregnant women do? They obsess about things that aren’t going to happen?”

She made herself nod and smile. “It’s all part of the eternal plan. Endings and beginnings go together. That’s all. It’s natural to think about both at a time like this.”

“You need to get out more.”

She was so glad he had moved beyond the maudlin that she laughed. “Maybe I do.”

“Okay, here’s the plan. Dinner somewhere nice. Just you and me. Music, romance, candles.”

“I feel like Babe, Paul Bunyan’s ox, Cash! I’m not going anywhere romantic looking like this. And besides, there’s no place like that for, what, fifty miles? And I’m not excited about driving fifty miles, even if the sentiment makes me want to cry.”

“Then we’ll do it somewhere close by.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I’ll have to get down to Roanoke over the weekend, but when I come back. On Monday. Be ready for romance.”

“Have you looked at me recently? Like in the last five minutes?”

He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Let me take care of you, okay? Just a little?”

She didn’t know what to say. This was the sweetest moment she had ever experienced with a man. She wanted to hold on to it forever.

And there was that word again.

“What can I do?” she asked, her voice husky.

“Show up.”

“Then I will.”

This time he kissed more than her hand.

By the time Grace and the girls came in from the barn, Cash had gone back to his place to see to his horses. Jamie was chopping onions for a fruit salsa to go with salmon Sandra had delivered from the grocery store, along with multiple bags of goodies. Jamie suspected a conspiracy to keep her from getting behind the steering wheel, even for short trips into town. She was afraid that made sense in January on slick country roads. For the moment, her driving days were finished.

The girls grabbed slices of carrots and apples and ran outside to pretend they were deer in the forest, although they promised they would stay where Jamie could watch from the window.

“Is Cash coming back for supper?” Grace asked, flopping into a kitchen chair.

“He took last night’s leftovers and said something about shoveling manure.”

“Then we’ll hope he stays away. After a manure day, Ben knew he had to bathe before I’d feed him. I had standards, even if they weren’t anything like my sister’s.”

“Speaking of Ben, I read the letters you gave me.”

“So, what do you think?”

“I think you’ve left me to stew. There’s a lot more to your story than you’ve shared, that’s for sure.”

“It’s all about the way we refuse to face the obvious, isn’t it? I imagine you could tell from those letters that by the time Ben went to Fort Belvoir for training, he and I were still a million miles apart.”

“Maybe just a continent.”

“As a matter of fact, we were lucky it wasn’t
really
a continent. He could have done his training so far away he wouldn’t have been able to come back before he shipped out. Of course, I was also lucky his buddy Sledge was a Virginia boy.”

“Sledge? Ben mentioned him in his letters to you.”

“If I remember correctly, he had a perfectly normal name, something like John or Phillip. He got the nickname because he was so strong. Ben said he could knock down walls with his bare hands. Which didn’t turn out to be much help with Belvoir’s obstacle course. It was the first of its kind for the Army, and something every soldier who came through had to complete or die trying. Sledge was strong as an ox, but too big to be agile. He fell off the wall he was trying to scale and broke two vertebrae in his back. They sent him home to recover. He came to see me when he was up and around again.”

“The girls are happy outside. I’m happy cooking. You could tell me more.”

Grace made herself comfortable. “I thought you’d never ask.”

1942

G
race stood at the kitchen window and watched two men pacing the length of the nearest cornfield, their arms waving as they gestured to each other. One, an older man named Otis Gaff who lived half a mile up the road, was dressed in dungarees and a light flannel shirt. The other man, whose name she hadn’t bothered to learn, wore a suit. She was inclined to despise them both, making no distinction between rural or urban villains. The older man was planning to steal Ben’s land, and the younger man was going to help finance his thievery.

“Where’s my daddy?” Charlie asked for the third time that morning.

“Charlie, son, your daddy’s in the Army, remember? We talked about this. You’re the man of the house now while he’s away, and you have to be patient and brave.”

“I don’t like that Army,” Charlie said, his eyes glinting dangerously. “It took my daddy.”

“Your daddy went because he had to. We talked about the bad people who are trying to hurt all the good people far away. You have a good daddy, and he wants to make them stop.”

“Don’t want to be man of the house.” He stuck out his lower lip. “I am just little.”

She turned away from the sight of the two men against July’s nearly waist-high corn crop. “You can be the
little
man of the house, okay?”

Charlie fell quiet to sort that out. Grace didn’t bother to tell the boy that soon enough, there would be no house to worry about. A stinky old farmer would own the house and all the land, and with a most unpleasant smile, he had already told Grace he expected her to move out quickly. The moment the papers were signed, he and his wife were moving in, preferring this house to the rambling wreck they called home up the mountain. She shuddered to think what a mess they would make of this one and how soon they would manage it.

She wished she had never painted the kitchen or the downstairs rooms, or the bedroom she had never shared with Ben. And the boys’ room? With its cheerful wallpaper of teddy bears playing drums and trumpets? She might strip off that paper right before she left, just so she wouldn’t have to think about the old man storing tools or maybe bales of hay against its friendly surface.

She had hoped it wouldn’t come to selling the orchard. Ben had tried to squeeze out one more crop before the draft took him. Maybe with just one more, they would have had enough money so that, along with what the Army gave him and perhaps with what she was able to earn, she and the boys could have survived without selling the land until Ben returned.

But all his calculations, his long evenings poring over account books, his days of consulting officials about when he might reasonably expect to be called up, had been for nothing. He had been told that farmers were probably going to be eligible for deferments. Ben had gambled on buying fertilizer and spray, using his cash reserves in hopes they would be replenished and then some, when the crop came in. With only one man to help, he had made the long trips up and down the rows with his tractor and sprayer. First oil, followed by sulfur and lead arsenate, six trips throughout the spring and early summer, caring for the apples that would save them. Then the draft board hadn’t been able to meet its quota of local men. Agricultural deferments were still under debate, with priority for livestock and poultry farmers expected first. Ben’s letter had arrived.

Greetings.

From the very beginning, Ben had planned to serve. He had expected to go. He had just hoped that when he did, the land and his children would be protected until he returned.

Now, the two men started toward the house, and Grace knew she was going to be required to speak with them. Yesterday, they had arrived with no warning while she and the boys were out walking. She had seen them in plenty of time to take cover among the trees Otis Gaff was so anxious to own. They’d left without discovering her hiding place, but today she wasn’t that lucky.

She dried her hands on a towel and removed her apron. She plucked a protesting Adam from his high chair and entrapped him in his playpen. Charlie, apparently trying hard to live up to his new title, climbed in with his brother to play, and the protests quickly died away.

Grace answered the door, making a note to tell Ben, when next she wrote him, how helpful his oldest son had been. Her letters were perfunctory and practical. News about the boys. Reports on the old farmers’ plans. A description of apartments she had seen where other women with children were moving to be closer to jobs while their husbands served in the military. She hadn’t told him about the overcrowded nursery schools where children like Charlie and Adam spent too many hours packed together with little to do. She was still hoping Sylvie or her other local sister-in-law, Dolly, would agree to take the boys when she went to work.

With no smile needed, she opened the door and stood on the threshold.

“What can I help you with?” she asked, striving to at least sound polite.

“Ma’am, I haven’t heard back from your husband on that new proposal of mine.” Otis realized he ought to remove his cap and took it off now, although he moved so slowly that his point was made. He didn’t even have to be polite to Grace. The Gaffs had the Cashels over an apple barrel. Too old to go to war himself, he could harvest the crop Ben had tried so hard to bring in without a thought for anybody else.

Grace knew nothing about a proposal. “I can’t help,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mr. Samson here,” Otis said, nodding, but not looking at the skeletally thin man beside him, who looked too sickly to pass a draft physical, “he’s not all that keen on these apples of your’n. Thinks maybe they won’t fetch near so much as that husband of your’n tried to tell me they would. Thinks I’m paying too much for trees of this quality.”

Grace knew enough about Otis Gaff to realize he was simply lighting a smokescreen. By blaming the young banker—who looked as if he didn’t know a Lodi from a Golden Delicious—Otis was planning to drive a newer, harder bargain. She wondered if Otis had even contacted Ben. Or, more likely, was he hoping that Ben’s young wife, alone on the land with two small children, would be so worried about her future that she would contact him herself and plead that Ben take this new offer?

For a moment she wondered if she was strong enough to throw both men down the steps. One was too old to put up much of a fuss, one was too thin. And she was furious.

Able or not, she stepped back to give herself a moment to think. She took that one and another before she spoke. “Mr. Gaff.” Realizing that she was still too angry, she took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly before she finished. “We have the best apples in the county, maybe in the whole valley. So there will be no new proposals. I hope that’s clear.”

“Now that husband of your’n might see things different.”

“If you thought Ben would see things your way, you wouldn’t have come up here to stand on
my
porch and insult me. You want me to intercede.”

Throwing serenity to the wind, she took two steps forward, and stuck her index finger against his flannel-covered chest. “Well, I
will
intercede, Mr. Gaff. I’ll tell my husband we need
more
money for our land. Half again as much. And I’ll tell him to make sure he gets every cent of that from
you,
even if he would have taken less from some patriotic, God-fearing farmer who knows what a good apple looks like. Am I clear enough? Would you like me to write that down?” She stabbed him with her finger once more. “Or do you even know how to read?”

“You’ve got no call to talk to me like that. I’ve got a mind to just tell that man of your’n to forgit it! What do you think of that?”

“I think…you’re hard of hearing. I think…you don’t have the brains of a newly hatched chick. Get off our land.” She nodded to the other man. “You, too. Take your proposal and eat it for supper. You look like you could use a good meal.”

Mr. Samson turned paler. “I think what Mr. Gaff is trying to say—”

“Shut up. Just shut up and get off my porch, in your car and off this land. There’s a shotgun just inside my door, and I’m fixing to pull it out in ten seconds and see if it’s loaded.”

The two men looked at each other. “No sense in trying to reason with a wet hen,” Otis muttered.

They left just fast enough to make her think they’d taken the shotgun threat seriously.

Grace closed the door and stood with her back to it. Both little boys were staring at her, their jaws slack, their eyes round.

“Well,” she said, clearing her throat, “I think what we need around here are oatmeal cookies. What do you say to that, boys?”

Two hours later, full of cookies and lunch, both boys went upstairs for naps in the teddybear-wallpapered room. Grace had rarely seen them so well behaved. Of course, they had rarely seen her threaten to shoot a neighbor, either. She was sure there was a connection.

Downstairs, she cleaned the cookie-scented kitchen, dusted and swept, but her heart wasn’t in any of her activities. She wondered how to tell Ben the latest tidings. She had no doubt Otis would come slinking, slithering back tomorrow or the next day, magnanimously offering to go back to his original terms. All Ben had to do, of course, was sign the final papers. Now that he knew where things stood, Otis would make sure it all happened quickly.

She wished she could change the days that had led up to this one.

The months before Ben had shipped out to Camp Lee for processing hadn’t been easy. With the war at his back, Ben had worked even longer hours than before, hoping for a miracle. Although he’d eaten dinners at the house every single Sunday after the Pearl Harbor bombing, there had been no more leisurely afternoons of checkers with Charlie or revealing conversations about their future. They conversed in snatches as they ran from one chore to the other. Always about practical things, such as what she needed from town, or whether he could afford to buy more gravel for the road.

Most evenings, Ben was upstairs asleep before she even finished the supper dishes. In the mornings, he didn’t wait for her to get up and make breakfast. He went without until the boys were finished and she was able to bring something out to him.

Sometimes, she mulled over the odd intimacy of that one afternoon, the powerful sense she’d had that there was more to Ben than she’d ever guessed. She wondered if she had imagined the physical pull she’d felt. And if not, if she had indeed been ready to kiss him, was that only because there were no other men in her life except the one she had married?

Now, with the boys in bed and a little time left to herself, she went to the dining room cupboard and pulled out a box. In the midst of cleaning and airing one of the many extra bedrooms just after Ben’s departure, she had found it tucked under a bed, and the contents had surprised her. Although her sister’s only sewing supplies seemed to consist of thread in neutral colors and fabrics of dull and duller hues, the box was filled with scraps of bright prints. She had discovered the reason at the bottom. A pattern from a mail-order quilt company was neatly folded into an envelope.

The pattern was called Sister’s Choice.

For the first time since Anna’s death, Grace had felt her sister’s presence. She didn’t know why Anna had sent away for this pattern and chosen these fabrics. Perhaps the design had appealed to some hidden desire for color and complexity in her life. But whatever the reason, Grace had realized this was another—hidden—side of the woman she had known. Anna was not entirely the somber, rigid woman who had tried so hard to subdue her. Anna, too, had yearned for joy and laughter.

Looking at the box of scraps, Grace had felt closer to Anna in death than she ever had in life. She wondered if her sister would have found the courage to make the quilt. And if she did, would she have proudly showed it to Grace? Or was this a side of her that no one was allowed to see?

Grace had decided then and there that she was going to do what her sister no longer could. As a reminder that there had been more to Anna than she had realized, Grace was going to make the quilt, using the scraps Anna had so carefully saved and boxed. When the quilt was finished, she would show it to Anna’s sons and tell them all about it. This part of their mother was a part Grace wanted them to know.

Now she pulled out the pieces she had cut yesterday, using a template she had carefully glued to cardboard. She made herself at home in the chair closest to the front window and threaded her needle. Minutes passed, and she was halfway through piecing the block when she heard a car coming up the drive. She got up to peer out the window, expecting to see their hired man coming back from dinner at his home down the road. Or even Otis returning with hat firmly in hand. But this car was a stranger’s, and the man getting out was not one she knew.

She debated what to do. She was alone with the boys, and the shotgun she’d threatened the men with was more or less a fiction. There
was
a shotgun locked away on the back porch, and she
did
know how to fire it. But it wasn’t waiting by the front door, and she had no time—even if she’d had the inclination—to fetch and load it now.

She could pretend not to be home, and might have if the man had clearly been a tramp wandering up the front drive. But he had driven up in a nice enough truck, and his clothes were clean and fit him well. He was a large man, with a squarish head resting on a thick neck, but he didn’t look mean. He looked pale and a bit weary, and he walked as if each step was harder than the last.

The hired man would be back soon, and he always checked in with her before he went to work. She decided answering the door was safe enough as long as she didn’t invite the man inside.

Before he reached the front steps, she walked out on the porch, closing the door behind her. He stayed on the ground, shading his eyes to look up at her; then he grinned.

“Well, you’re as pretty as Ben and your picture say you are, ma’am. Good day and nice to meet you. My name’s Sledge.”

Only a moment passed before she realized who this had to be. But in that moment she had already begun to consider his words.
As pretty as Ben and your picture say you are.