The Last Letter (44 page)

“Berries at the end of March? That can’t be right.”

“It’s true.”

“Well, then, berries it is.” Her voice was flat even though she was happy for the invite.

“Let me know when you’re available.”

Jeanie nodded. Templeton leaned forward, his hand cradling Jeanie’s elbow while he kissed her forehead. Her stomach flipped, igniting her nerves, sending excited chills over her skin. They stood there like that, for a minute. His lips on her head, her leaning into him, wanting so much to fall onto the bedstead with him, to be taken care of, held, loved.

When she didn’t move, he finally backed off, placing his hat back on his head. They nodded at one another, saying their silent, “I’m so sorry for the loss of James,” before he left the dugout. How Jeanie wished she could alter her reality, have somehow met Templeton twelve years before rather than Frank. It was only at
that
point, before Frank and she existed as one, that it would be possible to alter her reality, make Templeton her love, to allow him into her life in the way she wanted him.

She shut the door behind Templeton and leaned against it. “My tired heart never found rest until you, Templeton. My heart rests on your love alone.” Jeanie said that aloud to hear it herself, to gauge whether she’d ever utter the words to Templeton so he could hear them. There was no point entertaining the impossible.

Jeanie went to the letter Templeton brought from Yankton. From Frank, somewhere in Texas. It contained a note—five words long—saying he would be returning to the prairie. Jeanie snorted at the words. Had she not found Ruthie’s letter from Frank, the words would have indicated to Jeanie that he was returning to her.

But, she knew better and though she felt nothing in terms of loss for their love anymore, she did feel scared about how she’d survive with the children. Was there a way she could divorce Frank? If he would send her money, yes. But she couldn’t count on that. She did think she could count on Frank’s love for his children, possibly his guilt for his part in James’ death. Perhaps he would send her money. She no longer cared about the societal forces that would shove her out of important circles of friendship, but eating, surviving with pride was another consideration.

Could she stomach Frank in her home? As useless as he was, he was dependable in some ways—at least periodically. Could she bear to look at him? Really, it didn’t matter, what she felt about their marital circumstances paled against the loss of James. That loss prevailed over everything else, but with the death of her Yale, she’d woken up a bit, ready to at the very least care for her children so to not experience another loss and worse, be the cause of it. There was so much she’d never forgive herself for and she would do her best to be sure she never hurt another one of her children and never allowed anyone else to hurt them either. She’d failed at that enough for one lifetime.

“Mama?” Katherine stood in the doorway of the dugout and even with her body completely outlined by the sun, Jeanie could see that Katherine had lost weight with the illness.

“Oh, Katherine,” Jeanie lay Yale in the crib and ran to her daughter, holding her so tight, that Katherine choked. Tommy came in behind her. Jeanie pulled him by the coat, into their hug and she smattered them with kisses until they were pushing away from her, tired from the walk from the Zurchenko’s.

“Here, let me put you to bed. You’re doing well? I mean to have the quarantine lifted, but you’re still both frail. You’re thin as sunflower stalks.” Jeanie felt both of them over their bodies and tucked them into bed.

“Can I hold Yale?” Katherine asked.

“Well, she’s sleeping.”

“I’m not contagious, I swear. They wouldn’t have let us leave.”

“Well, okay,” Jeanie said. She held her breath and lay Yale beside Katherine. She watched as Katherine studied her sister’s face, cooing at her like a little mother.

Katherine’s eyebrows knitted. She looked up at Jeanie and back at Yale. Jeanie said a silent prayer.

“What’s going on, Mama?”

“What do you mean?”

Katherine sat up and lay Yale on her legs, unwrapped her and played with her legs.

Katherine shook her head, opened her mouth and closed it again.

“It’s all right, Katherine. We’re going to all be all right. I promise. Your father will get well, we’ll move to the city, maybe Yankton, maybe…we’ll all be okay.”

“But Yale’s face.”

“Yes?” Jeanie groped her neck then wiped the front of her apron.

“It’s round.”

“Yes, well, she’s finally gaining weight after well, you know, the blizzard, her early start, there wasn’t much luck on this girl’s side at first, was there? Now she has your face, a real cherub. Like you, wouldn’t you say?” Jeanie’s voice cracked.

“Something’s different. I just…I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fever, but I swear this baby
isn’t
Yale.”

Jeanie turned and went to the cook-stove, trying to remain calm. “You’re right, it’s the fever, it must have made you silly,” Jeanie forced a laugh into her words, as though teasing.

Katherine appeared beside Jeanie who was stirring an empty pot. She held Yale out for her mother to see.

“Her flat spot on the crown of her head, it’s gone.”

“Well, a baby’s head changes, Katherine. It’s the way of the world. Change. Heads change. That’s what they do.”

“But, her little mole. Right there, that wasn’t there before.”

“What are you
saying,
Katherine? That I traded our Yale in for another? Just where would I find another baby in this Godforsaken dung-hole?” Spit flew out of Jeanie’s mouth as she became enraged with unfamiliar feelings. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know, Mama, it’s just—”

Jeanie took deep uneven breaths and before she realized what she was doing, she slapped Katherine. Tommy ran to their sides, his mouth gaping.

“I should have taught you a long time ago to respect your elders. Hasn’t your mother been through enough this year not to have her daughter tell her she’s a baby switcher. Of all things,
of all things.
As if it were
possible.
As if it were so.”

Jeanie’s rage vibrated inside her skin, so hard she could hear it. And before she said or did another thing that would forever haunt her, she ran from the dugout and didn’t stop until she reached the tree. The tree that held half of what had been dearest to her in the world. How could she not have known they were more important than escaping scandal in Des Moines?

How could she have ever agreed to leave, to follow Frank into a wasteland he had no business in? How could she have been so utterly stupid? There’d be no answer for Jeanie in that vein and all she could do was take the next right step, even if it felt wrong, even if just a year before that next step would have been unfathomable. All that was left for her to do was to burn the letter, get rid of the last trace of evidence that there was a baby born to Ruthie Moore and Frank G. Arthur.

Jeanie had been interrupted by Greta when she was attempting to burn not only Frank’s letter to Ruthie, but the letters that she’d written in the year leading up to her elopement. She’d managed to torch half of the letters, but then Greta pulled her away, in a panic because Anna had gone missing. They found her in the garden, napping without a care.

By the time Jeanie returned to the hole she’d dug to burn and bury the letters, she found them all gone. The wind had obviously had its way with the correspondence and she thought it fitting that her relationship with Frank should have blown into the atmosphere, scattered like tree pollen.

Back at the dugout Jeanie found Katherine asleep, her body curled around Yale’s. Jeanie had buried the truth of Yale so deep that looking at them there, knowing they shared the same father, that they had the same round, blue eyes, the same tiny noses, that even though the baby had Ruthie’s jaw-line, thin lips and black hair, as clear as fresh scrubbed windows, it didn’t matter because no one but Jeanie knew the truth. And she could live with it if it meant keeping them together.

Over long open patches of prairie Jeanie felt Templeton’s eyes rest on her as she gazed down at Yale, fussing with her blankets. She knew he was attempting to pry into her soul and discern what she’d done to turn her playful toughness into bitter resentment.

They arrived at the berry bushes, laden with plump, crimson orbs. She tucked the sleeping Yale into the back of the wagon. Katherine and Tommy ran over the land, stretching their legs, running so far away that finally Jeanie was alone with Templeton while he helped her pluck the berries into her baskets. She dodged every gaze, every question until Templeton grabbed her by the arms so tight her fingertips momentarily went numb. She dropped the basket.

“I’m going to live in Yankton for a bit, Jeanie. I want you to come with me. But I know that’s impossible right now. But maybe it won’t be impossible forever.”

“It’s impossible forever.”

“I’d like to write to you if that’s okay. I’ve already penned a book of poems, words of yearning for James, what he meant to me, what
you
meant to me, mean to me. I didn’t realize I’d constructed my very own Frank G. Arthur style air castle in my own mind. But mine isn’t full of business propositions or stately homes, it was built of you and the kids.”

“I
can’t
Mr. Templeton. This entire line of conversation is impolite at the very least.”

“Do you deny the way we’re connected in some unspoken way, the ease with which I befriended James as though he were my own, the fact that you reside in my heart?”

“I
can’t.
I simply can’t. Frank is coming back and this is no time to—”

“He wrote? When’s he coming?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure.” Jeanie was positive that Templeton was aware of Frank’s infidelity, but she wouldn’t fill him in further, to confirm for him that she was going back to a man who had treated her so shabbily when Templeton thought so highly of her. She shouldn’t have cared, as though it were possible to really hide something, but she had bigger secrets to protect. Yale. Ruthie. Everything.

She felt a surge of shame. Ruthie was a lot of things, but she deserved a proper burial and Jeanie had denied her that. She did a sign of the cross over her, made a cross out of bended sticks and horsehair, prayed over her body, with every shovelful of dirt, she did her best and promised Ruthie, hoping her soul was there to hear it, that she would do her best to care for her baby, in the fashion she would her own, that she forgave her.

Templeton’s face drooped, no trace of the half-smile that had always been present just a short time before. Jeanie stared at her curled black boots, remembering the way she’d sworn to herself that she’d be back in silk slippers by this time.

“You’re remarkable. You understand that, right?” Templeton drew Jeanie’s chin up, electrifying her body.

“You’re mad.”

“That may be. But it doesn’t change your magnificence. Who you are. Everything you are, what you think you were is still inside you. You weren’t wrong when you told me that true riches were held in the heart and entertained in the mind.”