Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (6 page)

Marta threw off the quilts and bounded to her feet, but Rosa
hesitated. “What about John? He’s still out there looking for you, looking for us.”

“No, he isn’t.” Lars lifted the lantern and eyed the baskets and bundles. “We need to move quickly. Can we leave any of this behind?”

“I didn’t pack anything I didn’t think we’d need. Lars, wait.” She grabbed his arm as he stooped over to pick up the tarpaulin. “John wouldn’t give up as easily as you seem to think. He’s armed and he’s looking for us.”

Lars spared another glance for Marta and Ana. “No, he isn’t, at least not right now. He’s been arrested.”

“What? But he didn’t find you. Why would—” Rosa felt the blood drain from her face. “Oh, no. Elizabeth.”

Quickly Lars grasped her by the upper arms, keeping her on her feet. “Elizabeth is fine,” he said, quietly and firmly, his gaze locked on hers. “She’s fine. I’ll tell you what happened, but it’ll have to wait. The creek’s rising and we have to get out of this canyon.”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “Marta, Ana, wake Lupita and come help us,” she said. While Lupita yawned and stretched, clutching her doll, Lars spread the tarp on the floor of the cave, piled the sacks of clothing, their remaining food, and the children’s other belongings into the middle, and quickly tied the bundle shut with a rope he took from his coat pocket. Marta picked up one of the valises and Ana the other. Rosa held Miguel, who rested his head drowsily upon her shoulder, and awkwardly lifted the sewing basket, the quilts piled on top.

“Stay close,” Lars warned as he hefted the makeshift sack over his shoulder, raised the lantern, and led them from the cave. The girls followed, although Ana threw Rosa a dubious look before stepping out into the rain, and Lupita balked at the
mouth of the cave until Rosa gently nudged her with her hip to steer her forward. Covering her head and Miguel with her shawl, Rosa brought up the rear.

The gravel path had become slick with mud and rivulets of rainwater running off the cliff side. Rosa was soaked through in an instant, and as they made their precarious descent, a new roaring filled the air, loud and insistent. Miguel stirred beneath the shawl and lifted his head to peer out into the darkness. She murmured soothingly and rubbed her cheek against his until he rested his head upon her shoulder again, clinging to her blouse with his small fists. Lars glanced back often, offering a hand to Marta when she stumbled and lifting Lupita over a puddle. His eyes met Rosa’s, and she managed a shaky smile to assure him all was well, but his expression told her that the worst lay ahead of them.

And then, just as they approached level ground, she spotted it—the creek, rushing and tumbling over its banks, higher than she had ever seen it. In the thin light cast from the lantern, she saw that the pool at the base of the falls had swollen to nearly twice its breadth since she and the children had passed by it before. A few yards ahead, a dark shadow moved over the path, and when Lars abruptly halted, she realized that the trail was submerged in water. “Wait,” he called over his shoulder, shouting to be heard over the roaring of the falls.

Rosa drew the girls back, away from the floodwaters, and they watched as Lars waded ahead, stopping to catch his balance as the current swirled about him. The water nearly reached the tops of his boots, and when he held the lantern high, Rosa glimpsed the path appearing above the surface nearly eight feet beyond him. He forged ahead, his boots becoming completely submerged before he reached the other side. Dropping the tarpaulin
bundle and setting the lantern high on a rocky ledge, he turned and waded back to them. By the time he reached them, the creek had risen past his knees.

“The current’s strong,” he told Rosa grimly, picking up Ana and taking Marta by the hand. “Wait for me here.”

Rosa nodded and watched them cross, her heart pounding, holding her breath until they were safely on the other side. The water continued to rise, and Lars struggled against the current as he made his way back, the strain visible on his face as he forged ahead. Once, he stumbled, and Lupita shrieked as he disappeared beneath the swirling, black waters, but quickly he was on his feet again, water running off the brim off his hat. Rosa could not breathe until he had reached them. He paused only a moment to catch his breath, and then lifted Lupita, who flung her arms around his neck and hid her face within his collar. “Can you leave the basket?” he asked, his eyes on Rosa’s.

She thought of her mother’s quilts, rain-soaked but still precious. She thought of the Rodriguez and Diaz family photos, irreplaceable. She watched the waters swiftly rising, tore her gaze from Lars’s, and shook her head, feeling foolish and stupid and stubborn, but she could not leave them behind.

Lars did not waste time in argument. “If you slip and go under,” he said, taking Miguel from her, “for God’s sake, let go of that basket and get to the surface. Nothing in it is worth your life.”

Wordlessly she nodded, gripped the basket tightly, and followed him into the water, drawing in a sharp breath from the unexpected cold. The strength of the current caught her by surprise and she stumbled, but she quickly regained her footing and pushed on, her gaze fixed on Lupita’s dark head on Lars’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around his neck. One small hand
clutched her wrist, the other held fast to her doll, which dangled by one foot down Lars’s back. Rosa gasped as a surge of water flowed past her waist, and a few paces ahead of her, Lars halted and shifted the children’s weight before forging on. Suddenly another surge of water tangled Rosa’s skirts, and as she instinctively lifted the basket and stumbled forward, she glimpsed Lupita grabbing hold of Lars’s coat with both hands. Her doll slipped from her grasp, struck the dark waters, and swept past Rosa too swiftly for her to seize it.

“Linda,” cried Lupita. “Mamá, get her, get her, please!”

Rosa hesitated only a moment before she turned and went in pursuit, but the floodwaters carried off the doll faster than she could stride through the waist-deep water. She knew she would never close the ever-widening gap, nor could she seize the doll without first letting go of the basket. Behind her, Lars shouted for her to come back, and Lupita pleaded for her to go on, and the downpour blinded her and the roaring of the falls filled her ears. Numb from the cold, her teeth chattering, Rosa turned and pushed on through the water to the trail where Ana and Marta waited, where Lars was wading out of the shallows and staggering onto the muddy shore. As soon as he had carried Miguel and Lupita out of the flooded creek, Lupita wriggled free of his grasp and dashed to the water’s edge, tears indistinguishable from rainwater on her cheeks, her sobs drowned out by the tumult of the surging water.

Lars handed Miguel to Marta and hurried back into the creek to help Rosa to safety. “I’m sorry,
mija
,” Rosa gasped as she struggled free of the water. She set down the basket heavily beneath the rocky ledge where the lantern cast a thin circle of light around the shivering children. Ana flung her arms around
her, but Lupita remained at the water’s edge, weeping and gazing off after her lost doll.

“We can’t linger.” Lars squeezed Rosa’s shoulder, strode over to Lupita, and scooped her up. He set her down beside her sisters and hefted the tarpaulin sack over his shoulder. “You can stop crying, little miss,” he told her shortly. “Your mother is fine, and so are your sisters and brother, and so are you.” He took Miguel from Marta. “Can you carry the valises?”

Marta nodded and seized their handles. Lars took the lantern from the ledge, and then they were on their way again, crossing beneath the cover of the scrub oaks to the foot of the trail leading up the canyon wall to the mesa. The climb was more slippery and treacherous than the descent had been, and to Rosa it seemed that hours passed before they reached the top, but at last they did, and the clamor of the falls and the swollen, rushing creek faded to a low murmur behind them. The horses whinnied in recognition as they approached, but Lars led their small party to his car parked just beyond the wagon. As Rosa loaded the children and their belongings inside, Lars strode off to check on the horses. He soon returned and assured the children that the horses were fine and that a little more rain wouldn’t hurt them, since they were on high, level ground and there hadn’t been a single rumble of thunder in the dark skies since the storm began. Ana and Marta seemed to take heart, but Lupita, sitting between them in the back, hugging her knees to her chest and sniffling, was inconsolable without her doll.

Lars took the wheel, and soon they were bouncing and jolting across the mesa. When they reached the road, Lars turned east, away from the Barclay farm. “I thought we’d take the Old Butterfield Road into Camarillo,” he said.

“In this weather? At night?”

Lars shrugged. He knew the dangers, but it couldn’t be helped. “We’re less likely to run into anyone we know.”

“If John’s been arrested, why do we need to hide?”

“We don’t know when he’ll be released.” Lars kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead, barely visible a mere two feet beyond the headlamps. “It’d be best if there’s no one to tell him which direction they saw us go.”

Rosa knew he was right, so she sank back into her seat, cradling Miguel and stroking his head until he drifted off to sleep. Before long, silence from the backseat told her that her exhausted daughters had fallen asleep too, but she was too nervous to speak while the car creaked up the narrow, winding road to the summit. Once they cleared the pass, she breathed a sigh of relief as the car rumbled down the road into the Camarillo Valley. As long as the brakes held, they were sure to make it the rest of the way to Oxnard safely.

She glanced over her shoulder to be sure the girls were still asleep, and then she turned to Lars. “Tell me what happened.”

Lars hesitated, rubbing the stubble of golden beard on his chin. “Like I said, I was hauling a load of apricots to the packinghouse in Camarillo when John came after me. I didn’t get home until hours after it was all over.”

“After what was all over?”

His reluctance to tell her was evident in his pauses, and in the glance he gave her as they descended into the foothills. “My brother told me John showed up at the house, waving a pistol and demanding that they send me out.”

“Didn’t they explain that you weren’t there?”

“I don’t figure John was much up for a rational discussion of the facts, but Oscar shouted that I wasn’t there and that he’d better shove off because Mother had called the police. Evidently
John didn’t believe him, because he shot out the window Oscar had been standing at only seconds before.”

Rosa gasped. “Was he hurt?”

“No, he’s fine. On account of the rain, everyone was inside—the family, the hired hands—so they decided to wait it out until the police arrived. Then what do they see but Elizabeth driving up to the house in my car.”

“Oh, no.”

“She’s okay too,” Lars quickly went on. “John fired at her, but she threw the car into reverse and sped off back the way she came until she was out of range. Then she turned the car to block the road, to cut off his escape.”

“Did John go after her?”

“No, but he threatened to. For a while he paced in front of the house in the rain, shouting that they needed to send me out or he’d go after Elizabeth. As you can imagine, Henry wasn’t about to let anyone harm his wife—” His voice broke off and he shot Rosa a quick, sidelong look, and Rosa felt herself diminished in comparison, a wife that a husband did not value enough to protect. Lars cleared his throat and fumbled for her hand, which he squeezed and held on the seat between them. “So. So Henry and Oscar and one of the hired hands—Marco, maybe you remember him—they slipped out the kitchen door. Oscar and Marco went around one side of the house, while Henry went around the other and snuck across the yard to my car.”

Rosa took comfort in the warmth of his rough, callused hand around hers. It seemed a lifetime ago since they had last held hands in the shade of the apricot orchard, blissful in each other’s company, the sun warm upon their shoulders, the air fragrant with spring blossoms. “And then?”

“And then Henry told Elizabeth to get out, or he pushed her
out, or something, and while she took cover in a ditch, he drove the car straight at John.”

Rosa knew John, and she knew he wouldn’t have jumped out of the way. “John fired at him.”

Lars nodded. “The bullet shattered the windshield. When he took aim again, Henry tried to swerve out of the way, but the car struck a rock and flipped on its side. Henry managed to climb out, but John had that pistol fixed on him and was coming closer, so Henry must have thought he had no choice but to charge him.” Lars drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “John shot again, and that time he hit him. Close range, right in the chest.”

“
Dios mío
.”

“When they heard the gunshot, Oscar and Marco came running. They tackled John and wrestled the gun away from him. The police showed up shortly after that. One squad car took John to prison, and the other took Henry to the hospital.”

“Do you know if he survived?”

Lars shook his head. “Elizabeth rode along with him, but last I heard, she hadn’t yet called with any news. From what Oscar told me, Henry was wounded very badly. It’ll be a miracle if he pulls through.”

“Oh, poor Henry,” said Rosa. “Poor Elizabeth. She has no one else in the Arboles Valley, no family, no money—what will she do?”

“She has work and a place to live,” Lars reminded her. “My family will look after her. Don’t worry. And don’t write off Henry just yet.”

Rosa nodded. For all their reserve, the Jorgensens were kindhearted people, more forgiving than her own family.

“By the time I got home, the police had taken everyone’s
statements and had left,” Lars said. “Oscar filled me in and helped me get the car upright, and I headed straight to your place.”

“By then I was already in the cave with the children.”

“I didn’t know that. I thought maybe he’d—” Lars cleared his throat and continued. “He never came after me like that before. I knew he must have finally figured out about the girls, or maybe you told him—”