Mr. Hayes arrived with Mrs. Gregson in tow a little after six a.m. Anora slipped back to Isabell’s room to hide. Isabell slept until nine thirty, a peaceful, healing sleep uninterrupted by coughing and wheezing, but as soon as she woke up, she ran to her mother’s bedside.
Anora, alone, stood at the opened door of Isabell’s room, straining to hear the muted voices coming from the room at the front of the house. At precisely ten forty-five a.m., exactly forty-eight hours after giving birth, Mrs. Gregson’s shrieking cry announced the moment Lydia Reason shed her earthly mantle.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Anora prepared herself to face Mrs. Gregson; the woman would have questions. The second she showed herself in the doorway, Mrs. Gregson pounced on her like a hawk spying a lowly vole. “I understand you were alone with her during the night.”
Arms folded tightly across her ample bosom, Mrs. Gregson dismissively waggled her head. “I doubt you know the difference between the truth and a lie, but I’ll know, I’ll know, young woman. Don’t you try to skirt the truth or make excuses with me. Now, tell me, did you check Mrs. Reason for excessive bleeding as I showed you? Did she show signs of nausea, such as vomiting? Did she ever go out of her head…convulse?”
Unable to meet Mr. Hayes’s eyes, or Mr. Reason’s grief-stricken countenance, Anora squared her shoulders and answered her inquisitor. “I checked for bleeding several times and nothing excessive. No nausea, nothing like that. Not even chills, really, just a slight fever. Mr. Reason and I, we bathed her with cool compresses, kept her warm, gave her your tincture as you instructed. Around one o’clock I thought the fever had come down, she seemed to be resting easier. I tried to give her a little water…she didn’t want it. After that, she went into a deep sleep. I’m sorry…but…she was so quiet, I fell asleep.”
At last, breaking free of Mrs. Gregson’s rapier-sharp glare, Anora sought out Mr. Reason, hoping to find support. Drowning in tears, her voice lost its power. “I didn’t know…God, Mr. Reason…I’m so sorry.”
Mrs. Gregson’s accusing eyes had her pinned like a bug to a corkboard.
Mr. Reason, with Isabell clinging to his leg, stood at the foot of the big bed, staring, tears running down his cheeks, didn’t give her a glance or acknowledge her. Mr. Hayes, sitting in the big chair, said nothing, his head in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” Anora said, her feet moving, backing her out of the room.
Out in the hall, she heard Mrs. Gregson say behind her back, “I warned you, Mr. Reason. I warned you of the risks you were taking having that young woman under your roof. And now look what’s happened. She brought bad luck with her. I don’t say she did anything, but Mrs. Reason was a strong young woman. Her life shouldn’t have ended this way. It’s not supposed to be this way.”
It rained all day and into the night. Anora prepared soup, but no one ate. Isabell curled up in her bed, inconsolable, cried herself to sleep early in the afternoon, but awakened an hour later, picking up where she left off, screaming for her mama. Mr. Reason tried to reason with her. Becoming frustrated and angry, throwing up his hands, he took himself out of the room, waving off Anora’s offer of food.
Mr. Hayes proved of little use. He’d barricaded himself in his room and wouldn’t answer his door.
Setting her tray of soup and biscuits down on the side table beside Isabell’s bed, Anora tried to get through to the little girl. “Sweetheart, please stop, you’ll make yourself sick. I need your help. Your papa won’t eat, and he won’t speak to anyone but you. There are things we need to do. I need your help to choose a dress for your mama. Did she have a special dress? Which one did you like the best?”
Isabell actually stopped screaming to consider the question. “I…like,” hic…sniff, “the blue one with the satin around the neck. My mama looked like a fairy princess when she wore the cream dress with the red roses on it. She showed it to me once after we comed here, it’s in her cedar chest. She said she was saving it for a summer dance. She told me we’d go to lots of dances, and Papa would dance wiff us.”
Anora put her arm around her, and the little girl cuddled up within her embrace. “Well, now, I think that sounds lovely. Close your eyes, try to see your mama in her pretty dress, dancing on the clouds. Maybe baby Carter will be there too. Do you see them? Do you see her? If you listen very closely, she might like to tell you something.”
“She asked me not to be mad at her for going away. Wait, she’s dancing around to me again.”
Anora waited, keeping very still, while the little girl listened with her whole heart. After a few moments, Isabell opened her eyes, a wistful smile on her face.
“Mommy says anytime I need her, she’ll come to me. Papa told me that too. He said Mama will come to me in my dreams. She’ll never, ever scold or be angry at me again. We can dance together anytime I want to, anywhere. She looks so happy and pretty. Not sad like yesterday.”
The little girl slumped down and put her head on Anora’s chest and wept. “But she won’t ever be back…she can’t hold me. She can’t rock me to sleep anymore.”
“I can do that,” Mr. Reason said, coming into the room. “It got so quiet up here, I had to see if you two were all right.”
Isabell scrambled off the bed, arms out, she rushed into her father’s embrace.
Anora rose to her feet. “Isabell’s been telling me about a favorite dress of Lydia’s. With your permission, I’d like to find the dress, if that’s all right with you?”
“Please, God yes, Anora. Do what you can to make her look her best. I’ve been putting if off for the last hour. I’ll help if you need me. Isabell and I are going to sit and talk a while, maybe have some of your soup.”
In the front bedroom, Anora set to work to style Lydia’s hair. Memories of her mother and father, dead, lying in their makeshift coffins, rose to the surface. Stopped in mid-brush stroke the vision of two shallow graves side by side beneath a grove of cottonwoods reached out and tossed her into another time and another place.
She and Aunt Carrie had bathed them and dressed them in their best clothes. Papa didn’t have any shoes. Ruben had kept them.
She remembered trying to put some color back into her mama’s cheeks by using the juice from some raspberry jam. Shaking her head, she thought that a silly thing to do, but at the time that little touch had helped her to let go. She remembered feeling deserted and angry.
Coming back to Lydia, heavy and stiff, Anora struggled to get the cream-colored taffeta dress with the red roses on it over Lydia’s cold body. She didn’t bother to button it all the way down the back; she simply tucked it in and around. Lydia would have to be moved downstairs soon, she’d do up the buttons then.
Mr. Gregson had promised to have a coffin ready this evening. Mr. Reason had begged Mrs. Gregson to set the word about that they would not be accepting or expecting callers tomorrow.
Mrs. Gregson, Anora could see by the set of the woman’s lips, wanted to argue. Mr. Hayes had agreed with Mr. Reason, which left the little woman no choice but to comply with their wishes.
Whit came by with more milk after sundown. Anora hadn’t gotten around to taking care of yesterday’s milk. While talking on the back porch, she heard the hall clock strike half-past the hour of seven.
“You sure they ain’t got some sickness?” he asked. “You take care. I don’t like it when folks start dropping off one right after the other.”
“Whit, for heaven’s sake, the baby was stillborn, and Lydia…Lydia contracted a fever because of the birthing, which sometimes happens. Everyone else is very healthy.”
“That little girl…she wasn’t so in the pink just a day or so ago, if I recall.”
“She’s very well today, not even much of a cough. She’s very, very, sad, which is understandable.”
“Yeah, well, you best come home. You can’t be staying on here.”
“No, no, I don’t suppose I should. I’ll have to wait and see, but I think tomorrow would be too soon, maybe the day after. I don’t want to leave too soon because of Isabell.”
“Well, when you’re ready. I’ll come around tomorrow evening, unless I see you before.”
“Yes.” Whit started to leave; she put out her hand to stop him. “Thanks for worrying about me.” He grinned at her, flicked her nose with his finger, and left.
Inside the quiet house, afraid to sit down for fear she’d fall asleep, she decided to go to work on the milk. She had to stay awake, make herself available to Mr. Reason when Mr. Gregson arrived.
A little before nine o’clock, she heard a knock on the front door and answered the summons. Standing aside, she gave way to the two burly men who entered carrying a full-sized, alder wood coffin and maneuvered it through the parlor door.
The front parlor stood open. Mr. Reason had moved the dining room table there. Anora had found a white, damask tablecloth to drape over it to protect the wood and to give the coffin a stately place to sit. The men gawked at her as they left, stumbling over themselves, filing out of the house without closing the door. Mr. Gregson offered her a nod, following the men outside. Anora closed the door behind him.
For a moment, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know if Mr. Reason had heard the wagon. And she hesitated to knock on Mr. Hayes’s door, it didn’t seem wise under the circumstances.
In a thoughtful frame of mind, she returned to her butter and cheese making. The hours slipped by, and before she knew it the clock struck the midnight hour. Having tidied up the kitchen, she wiped her hands on her apron and heard a creak on the stairs. Going to the hall, Mr. Reason, his presence nearly lost in the shadows, cradled his wife Lydia, her long dark hair falling over his arm, her beautiful gown fanned out toward the floor.
Anora started to follow him into the parlor. “Go to your bed, Anora,” he said, his tone unusually sharp. “I’ll do this.”
Wordlessly, she backed out of the room. Upstairs, in the dark, she slipped out of her lavender dress and then climbed in under her covers. Isabell’s door stood open. The child wouldn’t go to sleep with a closed door these days. Anora lay listening to the child’s easy breathing and from below, she listened to Mr. Reason’s wrenching sobs.
»»•««
Guilty, because he felt nothing but anger, Hank paced around and around the parlor, stopping before the big bay window to look out through the lace curtains into the dark night, seeing nothing but black. He’d wept so much these last few days, he had a ripping headache that would not go away.
Lydia had left him, as sure as if she’d run off with a peddler. She’d decided the dead needed her more than the living, and for that he could not forgive her.
Worse, he couldn’t forgive himself for whatever it was that he’d not done, for whatever lacked in the love he’d tried to show her—whatever it was that had led her to believe she’d not be needed or missed.
He wanted to scream, swear, break something—then he turned around and there she lay, looking ghostly serene, a beautiful phantom, and the tears, the ache, tore at his insides.
Thoughts of Anora crept into his grieving mind now and then.
She’d hold me, she’d give me comfort. I can see it in her eyes. Did Lydia see it too? Maybe that’s why she thought she wouldn’t be missed.
Paxton, looking bleary-eyed and rumpled, appeared in the doorway. With a half-empty bottle of brandy in his hand, he staggered to the big Morris chair before the fire and flopped down into it.
Wearing nothing but his long underwear, he stared into the flames in the hearth. “I blame myself,” he said. “I lured you and my sister out here with wild promises of a prosperous life. I hadn’t taken into account the remoteness of this place, the lack of modern conveniences, even food. No, I emphasized the beauty, the opportunities, the adventure of the Oregon Territory.” He shook his head and took a long draw on the bottle. “All very well for a man, but not for a woman. Not for a woman like Lydia—beautiful, pampered, bright as a shiny twenty-dollar gold piece, my sister, Lydia.
“For damned sure I’m going to see to it Isabell’s life, and Anora’s life, if she’ll let me, are made easy. We live in a new wilderness, that’s true, but I can afford to keep them in comfort. I vow to see to it they have the best of everything. I let Lydia down. It cost her, her son, and her life. I’ll do better by her daughter, and by Anora Claire,” he said before his head fell to his chest and he passed out.