Forsaking All Others (36 page)

“Come on, come on,” Amanda urged, snapping her fingers. Lottie, however, would not hurry. Her blonde hair was plaited and pinned to make two rings fastened with bows, and her dress was clean and starched, but her downcast face belied such prettiness. Once she reached the bottom step, Amanda took hold of her sleeve and, heedless of Lottie’s little yelp, yanked her across the threshold. The gesture lit a fire in me and I lunged for Sister Amanda myself, but she deflected my grasp and held me at bay saying, “Go sit with your sister. I’ll be in directly,” as if she had little more to do than dispose of a fly on the wall.

The moment the girls were safely inside, however, she spun around, her face a chalky white save for two strawberry-red spots on her cheeks. “So you’re alive, are you?”

Such an odd question. Light-headed from the shock of seeing my little girls after a long, sleepless night, I found myself without any clever response and said simply, “I am.”

She stomped around to the back of the church house and I followed, compelled by the grip she had on my sleeve.

“I knew it,” she said, her chapped hands clenched into fists. “Nothing that man ever told me turned out to be true. Told me you’d been dragged away in the middle of the night. ‘Atonement by blood,’ he said, lest I ever take it in my head to follow your steps. Oh, he was broken up and sad about it for a while. Talked you up like a saint. A real one, like the Catholics. Every night filling your girls’ heads with stories, telling how they look like you. ‘Image of your mother,’ he’d say.”

When she quoted Nathan, her face transformed to the very image of him, and I almost laughed at her talent.

“But then he stopped. He changed. Married himself that horrible woman in town and left me out here with that Indian woman and three children—”

Her voice was shrill, and the accent of her homeland, England, became more pronounced.

Now it was I who touched her sleeve, calming her as best I could. “I’m so sorry,” I said, not sure if I was apologizing for leaving, for coming back, or for the months in between.

Suddenly she was crying, and she wiped both her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her dress—something the woman I’d known before would never do. “Not your fault. You got away. I just can’t understand why in heaven’s name you’d ever come back.”

Her words carried the weight of confession. Both of us knew the danger of discontentment, but we stood in that instant free from its burden—she for the moment, at least. It was like a yoke lifted from both our necks. Never in our months together as sister wives had we shared such a moment of kinship, and we silently granted each other permission to give in to cautious laughter.

“Now tell me,” she said as the last giggle faded, “what are you doing here?”

“I’ve come for my girls.” For the first time, my mission held a ring of joy.

“What you saw—I know I seemed a bit short with them, but it was the shock of seeing you—”

“I understand,” I said, though I doubted it was the first they’d seen of her temper. “Do you—will they be happy to see me?”

“Oh, sister—” tears sprang to her eyes again—“little Lottie prays every night for Jesus to keep you safe. Then Melissa chastises her, saying you’re in the grave waiting for Papa to call you to heaven, and Lottie just cries and cries. I never know what to say, but Kimana tells them that Jesus can keep you safe wherever you are, and that gives them some comfort, but still—”

“What did Nathan tell them?”

“At first, nothing. Just that you were at Evangeline’s. Then later, that you’d simply vanished. Left us all to go back to where he found you and would never be back. He said he didn’t want to scare them.” She gave a furtive look around and behind us. “I don’t want to frighten them now. And if those people in there . . . Well, I can’t imagine the scene. Go back to the house. Kimana’s there with the baby.”

“Your little boy?”

Her face brightened, and I saw the first hint of the vibrant woman I’d known. “Little Nate. He’s my life, my very life.”

“So you understand why I have to take my girls with me. I have a home ready for us with my mother back in Iowa.”

“Away from all this?” She inclined her head toward the wall on the other side of which a new song burst forth, singing of Adam-ondi-Ahman. I remembered Nathan teaching our girls that song before bedtime, telling them of Adam and Eve, sent from the Garden of Eden to live after their fall.

“Just think,” he’d said, “the mother and father of all mankind living in the land we call Missouri. And to think, one day, it will once again be the holiest of places with a gathering of all the prophets.”

How my ears had burned listening to such lies. I blamed the firelight for the flush on my face, unable to voice the shame I felt at my silence. And now, there they were inside, singing the lies I’d allowed them to learn.

“I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Oh, but I do,” she said. “Not about the church so much. Seems one’s as good as another. But I don’t much like sharing my husband, and I don’t know that I’d want my daughters growing up to do the same.”

“I’m divorcing Nathan. Legally,” I added when her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I don’t know what that will mean for you. There’s still Evangeline, but the girls and I will be gone. I guess that will make you first wife.”

She offered a weak smile. “I do love our husband, you know.”

“He’s your husband,” I said, “not mine. But I know what it means to love him.”

Silence again inside the church house.

“I’d better get inside,” Amanda said. “The girls’ll be worried. You can wait for us at the house. If you like, I can talk to them on the way home, tell them it was an awful mistake and you’ve just been traveling. . . .” Her voice trailed as she grappled with what would be an impossible conversation.

“No. Don’t say anything. Just come home as quickly as possible. And don’t invite Elder Justus for dinner.”

“Well, that’s not likely to happen anyway.” In a spontaneous burst of camaraderie, she took me in a surprisingly strong embrace before disappearing around the corner.

I made my way back to the grove to find Honey waiting patiently. A hooded woman astride a horse would surely attract attention in our small town, and truth be told, my legs relished the idea of a long, stretching walk. So, assured that all Saints were safely tucked inside the church house, I led her along the edge of the clearing. Dew still sparkled on the ground despite the efforts of the sun. I dropped the reins and allowed Honey to follow of her own accord. I peeled off my gloves and untied the cape’s thick ribbon, instantly refreshed as I lifted the heavy wrap from my shoulders. The tiniest breeze touched my skin and cooled my scalp.

From inside came another round of singing, this time one of the rare hymns shared by Mormons and Gentiles alike. I recalled the warm familiarity I felt lifting it with my voice within those very walls, and now, with them well behind me, I hazarded a soft utterance to the morning.

A mighty fortress is our God, a tower of strength ne’er failing.

For just a moment the volume of the congregation increased, calling back my attention, and just as they and I proclaimed our God a mighty helper, there they were—my little girls framed in the church house doorway. I saw their lips mouth,
Mama!
and my world was reduced to four little running feet as the expanse of dewy grass between us grew smaller and smaller. I fell to my knees within seconds of their touch and held them to me—one in each arm. Still I remember the sweet smell of their hair, the hot, wet tears on my neck, our sniffling, soft words saying nothing of any great meaning. Honey gently stepped aside as our reunion became one great, silly, rolling mass with bits of blue sky appearing and disappearing behind the close, beautiful faces of my children.

Once we’d righted ourselves, I looked past them in time to see Amanda step back inside and close the doors.

“Lottie looked out the window and thought you were a ghost,” Melissa said, sounding as mature and authoritative as ever. “And she pestered Auntie Amanda to let us go outside and see.”

“But Auntie said I mustn’t disturb.”

Hearing Lottie speak brought new tears to my eyes. Gone were the soft, round sounds of the little girl she’d been. Her voice had thinned along with her face, and traces of Amanda’s accent were unmistakable.

“So we waited for the first prayer,” Melissa began.

“—and I prayed and prayed that you weren’t a spirit—”

“—and when we started singing, Auntie Amanda told us to go see for ourselves.”

“Well, what a wonderful thing for Sister Amanda to do.”

“Do we have to go back inside?” Lottie’s pout harked back to the child of my memories.

“Of course we do,” Melissa said, already attempting to stand.

“No.” I grasped her hand and held her close. “Think of the ruckus we’d cause. Let’s go home. We can surprise Kimana. And besides, I’d love to meet your little brother.”

At this Lottie erupted in new glee and leaped to her feet. She reached for my hand to help me up and, with unbridled childish horror, recoiled at what she saw. “Mama, your fingers!”

This captured Melissa’s attention, but she appeared more intrigued than frightened. “Frostbite?”

“Yes.” I stood, feeling more than a little self-conscious as I brushed my skirt. “Do you see why I always tell you to bundle up?”

“Will they grow back?” Lottie’s nose hovered inches above my scarred flesh.

“Of course not, silly,” Melissa said. “They’re flesh and bone.”

Lottie looked up, her eyes wide as dollars. “Did it hurt?”

“Not as much as being away from you.”

I could tell it took all of my little girl’s strength to reach out and touch that unfamiliar hand, but when she did, I felt the years slip away. I held my other out to Melissa, but she preferred to take Honey’s reins, recounting how angry her papa had been when I’d taken the horse the first time.

“But you’re both back now,” she said, setting the pace with slow, resolute steps.

“Yes.” I tried to guard my reply from falsehood.

We walked along the narrow stream leading to our house, the chatter of the girls running as fast as its water. They told me of Amanda’s son, Nate, but I said nothing of the brother awaiting them elsewhere. Lottie had started school, and she loved it, though arithmetic gave her fits. Melissa had memorized Mark Antony’s speech from Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
and was quoting the last familiar line when the little home we’d shared came into view.

Even from this distance, I could see that the property had taken on what my papa used to call a “widow’s look.” The small fence around the house had fallen into disrepair with its gate hanging at an unlatched angle. The woodpile was down to just a few split logs, and nary a tool was to be seen. Still, a thin ribbon of smoke came up from the chimney like a beckoning promise, and I answered with my quickening step.

Some would be puzzled as to how I could feel this to be a homecoming, knowing that my true home was a bright-yellow house hundreds of miles east. They might not understand how, having so recently reunited with my mother, I could ever hold my arms out to the small, brown woman who had walked so slowly from the front door, only to stand perfectly still at the gate. But those people, I think, have never been held in arms as soft as Kimana’s.

I fell into her that morning the way I imagine one would land in a cloud. She smelled, as always, of flour. Speechless, we held each other until I stepped away. Her round, unlined face was just as I remembered, though she’d grown more streaks of silver in her hair. Small, button-brown eyes brimmed with tears, and her chin quivered in an effort to maintain a calm demeanor.

“So,” she said, her voice the same iron-flat, “the mother fox has come back.”

I nodded, too enthralled with this woman to speak. It was she, I knew, who had fed my children, tucked them in at night, brushed their hair, and bandaged their wounds. Most of all, I knew her prayers blanketed them head to toe, night and day. Stronger and closer than even my own.

Kimana took my face in her broad, soft hands. “I knew it. Even when Mr. Fox said you passed over, our Creator told me you were still alive. I have prayed for this day, Mrs. Fox. I have spoken your name in the night and the morning.”

“I know you have.” Unlike Kimana, I allowed my emotions to flow unchecked. Tears, however, weren’t enough, and I felt my knees give out beneath me, sending me once again into her embrace. My body, it seemed, had used its final bit of strength to get me here, but I could not take another step on my own.

“Poor child,” Kimana said, half-leading, half-carrying me to the house.

I felt Lottie’s hand in mine. “Is Mama sick?”

“No, little one,” Kimana soothed. Whatever other words of comfort she shared, however, were lost to the darkness that overcame me before I even saw the door.

Chapter 31

In my dreams, a child cried, and I reached for him. Rather than finding a familiar, soft bundle, I found myself tangled in thin arms, my fingers entwined in silk.

“Mama, can you hear me?”

The voice at the edge of the darkness was both familiar and not, as was the face I saw when my eyes fluttered open.

“Mama, are you awake now?”

Lottie, of course. Nose to nose beside me on the goose-down pillow. She’d taken her braids down and her hair made a golden cloud in the afternoon sun pouring through the window.

“Are you ready to get up?”

That made three questions before I could peel my lips apart to work up a response. I closed my eyes and nodded, humming an affirmative answer, and drew her closer to me. She remained still for a few minutes but soon became a mass of wiggling elbows and knees.

“Auntie Amanda’s been home from church for hours, and Kimana has biscuits and gravy waiting for you.”

At the mention of food my stomach turned itself inside out as my brain scrambled to remember the last time I’d had anything to eat. More than a day, by my fuddled calculations.

“Tell her I’m coming.” The last word was stretched around an enormous yawn that sent Lottie into her own. Playfully, I nudged her out of the bed, and she scampered out of the room announcing my imminent arrival.