Truda watched Piper playing the debutante role. That smile didn’t mean anything. Girls were taught to smile and follow the rules. Ignore personal wants and wishes and behave as expected. Keep up the show. Piper was doing that. Truda was surprised when Piper stepped out on the balcony with the young man of favor. Perhaps the smile wasn’t all a pretense. If so, that should make her father happy.
Braxton Crandall had waltzed Piper around the dance floor and was the excellent dancer Wanda Mae had said. Pluses in a ballroom, but one wasn’t in a ballroom often. Looks could be deceiving, as could smiles. But since Truda barely knew him, she couldn’t tell if he was acting his part the same as Piper or if he was truly attracted to the young woman.
Dear Piper. She was entirely too much like Truda herself. Poor girl. Not something Truda would wish on Piper even if, at the same time, it made her smile. She did love her niece. Had a special place for her in her heart ever since she’d been by Wanda Mae’s bedside when Piper was born. Erwin was off on a trip somewhere, hunting tigers or fishing for sharks or, more likely, trying to make his first million with some business finagling. Who knew what? Whatever it was, he should have stayed home with his wife.
To give him fair credit, he had planned to be home before the birth, but Piper made her appearance sooner than expected. The girl’s impulsiveness had started early.
Circumstances conspired to have Truda there. Winter. Snow. Erwin asking her to check on Wanda Mae while he was gone. And so, she happened to be there when Wanda Mae’s labor pains began. What a gift that was to Truda. To be present for the miracle of birth.
When the doctor announced a second daughter, Wanda Mae had said, “Oh dear. We were so hoping for a boy that Erwin and I haven’t considered girl names.”
“Time to consider some now,” the doctor said.
The doctor cut the cord and handed the baby to Truda as she made an angry cry of protest against this bright world she’d entered. A maid stood ready to bathe the baby, but Truda waved her away and bathed the newborn herself with great care before wrapping her in a soft blanket.
“She’s beautiful,” Truda said as she laid the baby in Wanda Mae’s arms.
Wanda Mae had smiled down at her baby and kissed the soft fluff of dark hair sticking up in points from her bath. “She is.” A worried look pushed aside some of the new-mother joy. “I do hope Erwin won’t be too disappointed that I didn’t have a boy.”
“He’ll be ecstatic with such a fine daughter. I do think she has his chin.”
“Or yours.” Wanda Mae looked up at Truda. “What would you name her, Truda?”
“Piper.”
Heaven only knew where Truda came up with that name. She had often wondered about it, amazed that Wanda Mae allowed the baby to keep it. Wanda Mae surprised her by going a step further and adding Jayne, Truda’s middle name, as though she were giving Truda a gift. And she had.
A week passed before Erwin managed to make it through the snow and get home. Truda was still there. With the snow as a feeble excuse, she had not gone home or to her job at the bank since the birth. Instead, she changed Piper, rocked her, walked the floor with her, and did everything except nurse her. Even now, twenty years later, she could remember the feel of Piper’s soft baby hair against her cheek. And each time she had held her, she thanked the Lord for a baby girl named Piper Jayne.
Erwin had looked down at his new daughter, peacefully sleeping in her cradle. “What kind of name is Piper? I’ve never heard you mention that as a family name, Wanda Mae.”
Wanda Mae, still resting in bed from the birth, had smiled over at Truda. “Perhaps it is a name from your side of the family. Your sister named her.”
Erwin turned to Truda with a frown. “My soul, Truda, why would you pick such a name? That’s worse than Mother naming you Truda.”
When Truda admitted having no reason for the name, Erwin said, “Then we’ll change it. Shouldn’t be a problem with her only a week old. I’ll tell Dr. Hastings we’ve picked something more sensible.”
Truda wanted to defend her choice of the name that, odd or not, had felt right for this child. But she kept quiet. The baby was Erwin and Wanda Mae’s, not hers.
That was when Wanda Mae surprised Truda yet again. She had looked up at Erwin. “No. Piper Jayne is her name.”
Whether keeping the name was Wanda Mae’s way of punishing Erwin for not being at her side when the baby was born didn’t really matter. Piper stayed Piper Jayne.
Truda hoped she’d always stay Piper Jayne, an independent thinker in this new age of more opportunities for women. A suitable marriage was not the only path for young women these days. Not that Truda didn’t hope Piper found love. Nothing would give her more joy than to see Piper happily married.
While few might believe it of Truda, she was a true romantic. Wanda Mae was right when she told Piper love would grow. Or might grow. But what Truda had always wanted was for love to explode, leaving a coating of joyful happiness on every surface.
Perhaps that could happen with this man of Erwin’s choosing. After all, Piper had not seemed reluctant to accompany him out on the balcony where romance had a way of blooming in the moonlight. But something about the set to her shoulders when Piper stepped back onto the dance floor with the young man made Truda believe nothing had been decided yet. Truda couldn’t keep from smiling.
Of course she could smile. She was long past those awkward times when a girl had to stand along the wall and hope someone would ask her to dance. Piper didn’t have to worry about being a wallflower. Plenty of young men would line up to whirl her around the dance floor, even if their toes were in danger, as Piper claimed. She was a beautiful girl, with a heart and spirit as lovely as her face. While she did look like Truda, she was a softer, lovelier version. Truda’s jaw was too square, her hazel eyes too intense, and her nose a fraction too large for beauty.
She had accepted her God-given looks years ago. Rarely worried about what others thought about her at all. But those debutante years had been a trial, as every man her father introduced into her life found another more to his liking. It wasn’t all her looks. Her father’s money would have been enough to cover that. Not that she was completely unattractive. Besides, ugly girls got married all the time. Truda’s problem was her romantic insistence on love growing like a magic vine long before a wedding date was set. She lacked confidence in that idea of love growing after the vows were spoken.
She hadn’t been exactly honest when Piper asked about her debutante days. There was one man. Not a candidate for Truda’s hand in her father’s eyes, but Truda had felt an immediate attraction to him when he showed up as an unexpected guest at a friend’s debutante ball. A cousin from out of town, they said. His suit had been a little shiny on the elbows. His hair looked ready to spring away from the lines he’d forced it into with pomade. He was skinny to the point of hunger. But his light blue eyes seemed to see everything and sparkle with ideas. Ideas he was eager to share with her. At the same time, he listened every bit as eagerly to what she had to say.
Truda thought she’d stepped right into heaven as they sat in a corner of the ballroom and ignored the music while everyone else danced. Jackson was a medical student, just passing through Louisville on his way home somewhere in the eastern part of the state.
When he left, she gave him her address. He promised to write. He couldn’t give her an address since he didn’t yet know which hospital he would be assigned to in order to continue his training. When she didn’t hear from him, she decided he must have lost her address. Not one to give up easily, she contacted his cousin, who promised to find a way to send Jackson her address. But more weeks, then months went by. Eventually she had to accept that she would never get that hoped-for letter from Jackson.
Only later, after her father died, did her mother confess that he had intercepted Jackson’s letter to her and ordered him not to write her again.
Truda didn’t dwell on it. Not then or not now. Some things weren’t meant to be. She did sometimes wonder if that chance encounter with Jackson had perhaps ruined her prospects for a good marriage. Not because she fell in love with a man she’d met only once. She was much too sensible to believe in such nonsense as love at first sight. But that night with Jackson raised her expectations. Made her aware there were men who believed a woman had thoughts worth hearing.
A few other suitors came courting at her door. Truda could have made a match, but never with anyone she thought she could learn to love.
Better to take the path she’d taken. A position in her father’s bank, where it turned out she had an aptitude for figures and an instinct about investments. And good she did, or Wanda Mae could have never thrown this lavish party so unappreciated by Piper.
Perhaps Braxton Crandall would be a man such as the long-ago-but-never-quite-forgotten Jackson. Somehow Truda doubted it. Now if that curly headed Russell boy with the smile that could light up a room had been the man of choice, romance might have danced into this party.
It was a shame about Lawrence Russell. She’d known the man was on a path to destruction, but he hadn’t wanted to see the warnings. So many hadn’t wanted to see the warnings. They wanted to believe the good times would continue to roll. But panic had rolled instead, picking up steam with every dire headline in the newspapers until now commerce was practically at a standstill.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Perhaps the new president could convince the people that was true. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s voice on the radio seemed to spread a blanket of comfort over the country, in spite of how banks continued to fail and factories kept shutting down. Her father’s bank wasn’t in danger of failing since her father had used good sense in picking capable men to lead the bank after his death. Men willing to sometimes pay mind to the investing instincts she must have inherited from her father. While she might only fill a bookkeeping role and never be recognized as a vice president or any other officer of the bank, she did know numbers and risks.
Fortunately for all of them, Erwin had gone into law instead of following their father into the banking industry. Else their bank might be one of those shuttering their doors.
She watched Piper dance again with Braxton Crandall and then the two paired off with others. Older couples joined the younger dancers. She could too. Many here would waltz her around the dance floor, but while being a wallflower had once been painful for a young Truda, now it was preferred.
Not that she didn’t still have the physique for dancing. She had stayed slim. Taller than most women, just as Piper was, but graceful on her feet. After all, she was only forty-five. Not exactly ready for the rocking chair. Some of those new opportunities and freedoms had expanded horizons and ways of thinking for a woman her age as well as for younger ones.
Tomorrow she would host a tea for a woman who proved that true. Mary Breckinridge had started a nurse midwifery program for the betterment of mothers and children in the Appalachian Mountains, where poverty was rampant and proper medical care rare.
There would always be those less fortunate. The Bible said so, even as it commanded those with the means to reach a hand out to the needy. But lack of money wasn’t the only way to be poor. Being poor in spirit was surely worse. A person should have the courage to go after what he or she wanted. That was why Jamie Russell not showing up tonight to give Piper the choice of choosing love over money disappointed Truda. She had thought the young man had more spunk. Just as years ago Jackson’s choice to heed her father’s warning and not write her still rankled.
Truda pushed that out of her mind. A person couldn’t control everything. Sometimes one had to turn things over to fate or, better yet, to the Lord. She had heard it said that unanswered prayers could turn out to be a blessing. Then again, who said they were unanswered? No was an answer.
Or not yet.
That was the answer she hoped for when it came to Piper marrying. Not yet. Experience life first. Tomorrow’s tea might be the very thing to open some new doors.