Forsaking All Others (38 page)

“Here.” She handed me one of Sister Amanda’s nightgowns, soft white cotton trimmed in silk and lace. This was a change in our working pace, as I’d been handing the garments to Kimana to pin. Still, I took hold of the garment, shook it out, and draped it over the line. I waited for her to hand me the pins to secure it, as I would have, but she simply stood, arms crossed against her ample bosom, until I reached into the bag hanging from the line and retrieved them myself.

Hanging wash had never been my favorite chore, but I’d disliked it all the more since suffering the handiwork of Captain Buckley. With the loss of my fingers, I’d lost the ability to deftly pass the pin from one hand to another while clutching the cloth to the line. These days I held both pins in my right hand, folding my left wrist over the garment to hold it in place until it was secured. Frustrating work, even on mild, windless days like this one. Kimana witnessed my struggle in silence, simply taking a step away from the basket of wash on the ground, and waited for me to bend, lift out a petticoat, and start the process again. At this pace, my hands would be red and chapped, and the particularly sharp, chilling pain was already taking form at the place of my amputation. As I bent to the basket again, however, Kimana stopped me and said, “Hold up your hands.”

I did, my fingers splayed against the clean white fabric.

“Tell me, Mrs. Fox, what do you see?”

“My hands.” A simple answer, yes, but all I could think to say.

“How do they appear?”

Kimana never asked idle questions, so I studied the image in front of me, searching for the understanding she wanted me to find. “They look . . . incomplete.”

“But is there anything you cannot do now that you could do before?”

“Wear a wedding ring.” A small joke, more for my benefit than hers. Still, she granted me a rare, small smile and took my left hand in her coarse, but gentle, work-worn grip.

“You have learned to work through the emptiness. Here—” she traced her finger across the scarred flesh—“is mark of healing. Sealed up. When a woman loses her man, it is like the flesh being torn away. You need time to heal, to let that wound seal itself.”

“But what if I never have another chance?”

Again she looked to my hand. “Do you hate the fingers that remain?”

“Of course not.”

“A woman’s hands are never idle. This hand is your womanhood. Your childhood is gone. Your husband, now, is gone. But your children remain. Do you call this hand worthless next to the other one?”

Slowly the picture took shape in my mind. God had given me these children. He kept my son safe in my womb through a perilous time and brought me safely back to my daughters. The home I would bring them to had its beginnings in my own childhood. All of this grace in the light of my own willful disobedience and ill-conceived actions. Why, then, should I fret over another man’s affections? Why should I doubt that everything God had given me would forever be enough? This was the woman to whom I’d entrusted the lives of my children. I knew I could trust her words of wisdom for my own.

Just then I heard the girls’ voices raised in a fresh, gleeful shout. Indecipherable at first, but then the words “Papa! Papa!” rang clear as morning. I moved the petticoat to the side and saw a wagon coming over the crest.

It was a moment I’d lived so many times before—Nathan coming home. For a moment, the past two years disappeared, and joy gathered in my knees and soared through my heart, taking my breath with it. My first instinct was to run and wait at the place where the hill meets the meadow, and I might have if Kimana had not held me.

“Do you see?” she said. “New skin can fool us into thinking a wound is healed when it is not.”

I swallowed and dug my heels into the earth, watching my girls run to meet their father. But Nathan was not alone in the wagon. The reins were in the hands of my Mr. Bostwick, and between them, looking more diminutive than ever, sat Evangeline, clutching her swaddled Sophie.

At the bottom of the hill, Nathan hopped down. Melissa and Lottie ran into his arms. He swung Lottie up on his shoulders and held Melissa’s hand for the rest of the way, arriving at our little fence just behind the wagon. I stayed at the clothesline as Amanda, with her son balanced on her hip, waited at the gate. There, depositing Lottie on the ground, Nathan greeted both with a kiss. If he even saw me, he gave no indication.

I looked to Mr. Bostwick, who pulled the horses to a stop outside our yard, greeting me with a tip of his hat and a reassuring nod.

Leaving the toddler in his older sisters’ care, Nathan and Amanda made their way to the wagon, where Amanda took the baby as Nathan helped Evangeline from her seat. The child might have been Amanda’s own, given how her face lit up. Anxious at the separation, little Nate ran through the open gate and straight for his mother’s skirts. Soon after, I felt little hands clutching at my own, and I looked down to see my Lottie, her arms wrapped tight around me.

Still at the gate, Melissa. She looked on the gathering at the wagon with a longing I felt in my own heart. When she turned her eyes to me, I knew that my daughters and I would forever share the same wound of my divorce from their father, and hers would run especially deep. At some point, Kimana had melted away, and I held my hand out to my elder daughter. Finally, with slow, purposeful steps, her head cast to the ground, she came to me. She stiffened under my touch, but I would not take it away. I knew we would need to heal together.

Mr. Bostwick climbed down from the wagon and walked through the front gate with all the confidence he showed in everything he did. Nathan barely afforded him a glance as he walked by.

“These are your lovely daughters, I presume?” Mr. Bostwick said as he approached.

“They are.” I introduced each one, but Lottie only clung tighter, and Melissa stared at his spit-shined shoes.

“Well, well. What a lovely family.”

I thanked him, then shooed the girls off so we could talk alone.

Mr. Bostwick changed his stance, forcing me to turn my back to Nathan and the others, and said, “There’s a stage leaving first thing tomorrow morning. I think it’s best you and the girls be on it.”

“Already?”

“What did you expect?”

I had no answer, only that the familiar peace of these few days made everything else seem almost dreamlike.

“The divorce?”

He puffed out his big barrel chest, hooking his thumbs in his vest pockets. “You can imagine my surprise when I was given only a few scribbled words to explain such a perilous decision.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else—”

“You should have waited for me, Camilla. It was bad form to come out here.”

“I had to.”

“And stealing the man’s horse?”

“Legally, she is still my horse too.”

Mr. Bostwick rocked back on his heels, looking like he almost admired me on that point. “Well, not any longer. Mr. Fox has agreed not to contest the divorce. He has signed, and I need only file the papers in court. You are, for all intents and purposes, a free woman.” I don’t know what I expected to feel at that moment. When I was first declared Nathan’s wife, I had such spinning joy I feared I would fall over if it ever stopped. Later, when we were sealed together according to the Mormon teachings, I’d given way to a more solemn contentment. Perhaps, at our dissolution, I should have experienced direct opposites of both. Swallowing despair, giddy fear. In truth, both would visit me frequently, but at that moment, I felt only a peculiar void of emotion.

“And our girls?”

Mr. Bostwick leaned closer. “You have full legal custody of all three children.”

Suddenly the boarding of the early-morning stage couldn’t come soon enough. Throwing all propriety aside, I flung my arms around Mr. Bostwick, an embrace he endured with good humor before gingerly disengaging himself. “You and your daughters need to gather your things. I told young Seth I’d have the rig back this evening.”

“How long?”

Mr. Bostwick checked both the sun and his timepiece. “Within the hour.”

Within the hour.

There have been moments in my life I would trade all those remaining to live again, and others which there is no grave deep enough to bury. The moments that followed live in both camps. Somehow, one of Sister Amanda’s pretty carpetbags was filled with nightgowns and favorite blankets, stockings and knit caps and Sunday best dresses. Never mind that trunks of new clothes and things were waiting for them. How could I have thought that such things could ever replace what they’d known all their lives?

All of us moved as if through molasses, except for Kimana, who maintained her reliable, steady pace as she sliced two loaves of bread to make butter-and-cheese sandwiches and wrapped a jar of pickles in a clean, white cloth. The house was crowded with wives and babies, though Amanda and Evangeline largely stayed at the table taking turns trying to soothe the increasingly inconsolable Sophie. The girls inspected every corner of the house, looking for any treasure they might want to take, and I was at their heels, reminding them that there would still be children growing up in this home. Mr. Bostwick remained in the wagon seat, his lap littered with papers, and Nathan had secluded himself in the workshop in the barn, presumably to gather materials to take to the temple upon his return.

That was where I found him when all had been loaded into the wagon bed. Never again would I smell fresh lumber and not think of this place, this moment. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon, and dust motes danced in the beams of light pouring through the narrow windows. Nathan sat upon his workbench, his broad back to me, head bowed low over hands clasped between his knees. He did not hear me come in, and I took a last look at him. Undoubtedly he was in prayer, and I joined him.

Father God, here is a man who so desperately wants to please you. He is a good man—as good a man as he’s been taught to be.

When I opened my eyes, he was looking at me, and I dared not take one step, lest I be turned to salt on that very spot.

“It’s time for us to go,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Then go.”

“Won’t you come out and say good-bye?”

“Good-bye.”

“To the girls?”

“And just how am I supposed to do that? Tell me how I can look my little girls in the eye and say I’m never going to see them again.”

“Just tell them that you love them. And that you’ll miss them. Who are we to say that God won’t cause our paths to cross again?”

He took one step toward me, then had the grace to stop. “Are you sorry they crossed in the first place?”

“No. Otherwise we wouldn’t have our children.”

He looked like he wanted to speak but again showed grace with silence.

“Do you remember where you first met me?”

“Like it was yesterday,” he said, and I believed him.

“At my house, where we’re going to live now, if you go to the edge of my property, there’s a large rock, and if you stand on top of it, you can see that very spot.”

He smiled. “Shall we make a monument?”

“I want you to know I’ll share that story with Lottie and Melissa. They’ll know every moment of our courtship, every story of our lives. And if you write, I promise not to hide the letters.”

“I’ll write.”

“To them,” I emphasized.

“To them.”

“They’ll like that.”

I heard Mr. Bostwick call my name, and I hesitated just long enough for Nathan to come to my side, and we walked together into the sunshine. Kimana was at the gate, on her knees, wrapped within the combined embrace of Lottie and Melissa. At their father’s voice, however, they let go and ran to him.

Whatever they said to each other in those final, private moments remains unknown to me. I went to Kimana, my sister and sometimes mother, and simply stood.

“Close your eyes,” she said.

I obeyed, still seeing the lingering shadow of the sun in my darkness. Then I felt her wide, warm palm on my forehead, and she spoke in the short, nasal syllables of her native tongue. It was, I knew, a blessing, and I moved my lips in silent agreement. Though our languages were different, our faith was the same, and somehow we came to say amen in unison.

I opened my eyes.

“I will not see you again, Mrs. Fox. Not in this lifetime.”

“I know,” I said, though it ached to say it.

“But one day I will go to sleep, and I will wake up in the presence of the Creator, where your little one is waiting. I will hold him and sing him the songs of my people, and we will watch for you.”

“Thank you for loving my children, Kimana.”

“And now I have others that I will love.” She winked. “That I will teach.”

I wrapped my arms around her and for the last time took in her nurturing scent. When I turned around, Lottie and Melissa were already in the wagon, peeking over the side, and the team was beginning to prance impatiently. I paused long enough to give Sister Amanda a kiss on her powdery-white cheek, as well as one atop little Nate’s jet-black hair. Faced with Evangeline, however, I found no such compulsion. Baby Sophie, forever squalling and red, squirmed against her bunting, and Evangeline held her like a shield between us.

“Good-bye, Sister Evangeline,” I said with a simple touch to her sleeve.

“You’re no sister of mine,” she said. “Not in any way.”

I grinned as widely as the Lord would allow. “I hope that changes someday.”

I walked to the wagon, where Nathan waited to help me up to my seat, and I’m not ashamed to say I still remember that final touch. I turned back to the girls to see that they were ready.

“Yes, Mama,” Lottie said, but Melissa merely stared at the tailgate.

Apparently satisfied, Mr. Bostwick gave the horses a gentle slap with the reins and was turning them around when I called out, “Wait!”

“Camilla, my dear,” he said, his patience wearing thin, “we really must—”

“Just wait.”

Without giving much thought to the spectacle I must be creating, I swung my leg over the wagon seat and our luggage, finding a clear spot on the floor of the bed. Immediately, Lottie scooted into my lap, and the first lurching movement of the wagon knocked Melissa off her knees.