Chapter 4

Kate went inside to check on baby Rose, and I went to the little house to call James from the phone out there. By now he would have gotten my voice mail message and he’d be wondering why I’d suddenly decided to make a trip to Missouri. When he got to the hotel late last night, he’d probably tried to call me, but my cell phone went dead before I reached Hindsville, and I hadn’t bothered to recharge it yet. The reception in this part of the world was so spotty, it was practically nonexistent. He was probably on the way from his hotel back to the airport now, but I might be able to catch him before he got there. It was still only seventy thirty a.m.

The living room seemed close and musty so I opened the old wooden windows, then carried the black rotary phone to the porch, stretching the wall cord through the doorway. Sitting in Grandma’s rocking chair, I clasped the phone in my lap, stroking a finger over the dial, trying to think of what to say. How much should I tell James now? I didn’t want to get into the whole story as he rushed off to a flight. . . .

Sighing, I dialed the phone, leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. Why did I feel like this was some sort of secret? Why did it seem natural, easier, to keep it to myself?

I knew the answer, though I didn’t want to face it. I hadn’t told James how bad things really were at Lansing Tech these past months. We’d gone along like we normally did—the two of us crossing paths a few days a week, then separating again for his flights and my business trips. As Lansing slipped further and further into the red, my travel grew more frequent and the hours at the office even longer. Because I wasn’t going to be home, James took on more flights and spent more layovers in Missouri. The net result was that James and I were never together long enough to do more than skim the surface of each other’s lives.

We were drifting, and in a vague way, we both knew it. But we followed our usual pattern of ignoring the problem, letting it work itself out. We’d drifted before—for three months after I insisted we take the job transfer to California and he didn’t like living there, for five months when he started counseling a female friend through a divorce and I was afraid she wanted more than just friendship, for six months after September 11 when I begged him to stop flying and he wouldn’t, for an entire year after the miscarriage and my mother’s death. Like all married couples, we’d gone through our periods of disconnect, but we’d always come back together. We always knew we would.

Why couldn’t I imagine coming back now—running to him like shelter in a storm, a soft place to fall? Why did this separation seem so much larger than all the others?

James’s cell phone rang, then rang again. I found myself hoping he wouldn’t pick up, and was relieved when he didn’t. Putting off the inevitable was as easy as leaving another message on his voice mail.

“Hi, James, just calling to let you know I made it to the farm.” I paused, rubbing my eyes, unsure of what else to say. “I guess you’re probably wondering why I decided to come all of a sudden.” Tears choked my throat and my voice started to tremble. I swallowed hard. Don’t fall apart now. “It was . . . a strange week. Anyway, don’t . . . ummm . . . don’t worry about anything. I’ll tell you about all of it when you get here. Bye.”

Setting down the phone, I bent forward, covered my face with my hands, and sobbed in painful gasps so loud I was afraid Kate would hear me from in the house. I didn’t want her to find me like this. I didn’t want to be like this—a woman somewhere near midlife, suddenly seeing that my existence was a paper tower balanced on one thin card, which had just given way.

I felt someone touch me, smooth my hair back from my face and lay a hand on my shoulder. “Grandma?” I heard myself whisper; then I remembered that it couldn’t be her.

The hand fell away, and I wiped my eyes, knowing it must be Kate. I braced myself for the questions that would come next. But when I looked up, the other rocking chair was empty, moving just slightly in the breeze. Through the kitchen window, I could see Kate and Ben in the main house, Kate feeding the baby and Ben helping Joshua pour cereal.

Staring at the empty rocking chair, I touched the warm place on my shoulder, a shiver passing through me. I was imagining things. Trying to pretend that Grandma was comforting me here like a lingering spirit. But that feeling was only an illusion, wishful thinking, because I couldn’t bring myself to confide in the living. If Grandma had been sitting in the other rocking chair, she would have said I was too proud.

A movement nearby caught my attention, and I knew suddenly that I wasn’t alone. Sitting on the porch railing, legs curled to her chest, was the little dark-haired girl. Resting her chin on her knees, she studied me through wide onyx eyes. She looked curious, her brows drawn together slightly in the center, her head cocked to one side as if she wasn’t sure what I was doing.

Was she the one who had touched my shoulder?

Wiping my eyes, I cleared my throat and quietly said, “Hi, there. Are you Dell?” even though I knew who she was. I recognized her from two years before. She’d changed some, her body starting to mature with the first hints of puberty, her eyes set in an oval-shaped face with cinnamon-colored skin and full lips that curved down into a natural pout. She looked like the little Indian doll I’d bought in a souvenir shop at the Grand Canyon when I was ten.

“Hi,” she said, seeming noncommittal, perhaps still a little leery at having found me sobbing on the porch. “You’re Karen. James talks about you.”

“That’s right.” I don’t know why it pleased me that James had mentioned me. I guess it made his secret life here seem a little less secret. “I hear you two go catfishing together sometimes.”

She nodded, perfectly impassive, and we fell into silence. I didn’t have much experience at making small talk with kids. When James’s nieces and nephews came to visit, I never knew what to say to them. Kids didn’t want to hear about LAN networks and microprocessors. They were always more interested in James. Flying jet airplanes was something that captured their imaginations.

But for some reason, Kate’s little neighbor was sitting there regarding me with obvious interest. I shifted uncomfortably, gazing out at the lawn. “Grandma’s rosebushes sure look good this spring. The yellow ones on the trellis are my favorite. I remember when she planted those. I bet I was only about your age. Those bushes were sitting out in front of Shorty’s Grocery, marked down on clearance, and they were just about dead. Grandma haggled with poor Shorty until he gave them to her free, just to get her to leave.” I chuckled at the memory, forgetting Dell was there. “Kate and I were so embarrassed, we wouldn’t even help her load the pots in the car.”

I glanced at Dell. She might have been interested. I couldn’t tell. We sat silently for a few more minutes, and finally she said, “Grandma Rose let me have one of the yellow ones. She dug some up and I brung the pot home to plant at my granny’s house. Uncle Bobby poured out some motor oil and it got killed a while back.”

“That’s too bad.” Hard to say whether losing the rosebush really bothered her or not. She spoke of everything in the emotionless tones of a kid who wasn’t used to having her feelings considered. “Well, maybe we can dig up another one for you. Those old-fashioned roses are pretty easy to transplant. You know, women used to carry those on the wagon trains back in the pioneer days, so that they could plant them when they made a new home somewhere.” I wasn’t sure why I suddenly remembered that story, or where I’d first heard it.

Dell straightened, surprised. “Grandma Rose told me that.”

“She did? I guess she probably told me, too. That must be where I learned it. She liked the fact that all of those old-fashioned plants were easy to share around. She had a name for it. I can’t remember what she called them.”

“Friendship flowers,” Dell finished, and I nodded, pointing a finger at her.

“That’s right,” I said, pleased with our sudden meeting of the minds over Grandma and her flowers. “That is what she called them. Friendship flowers and pass-along plants.”

Dell nodded, and we ran out of conversation starters again.

She turned toward the swaying fields of spring wheat below, her eyes fixed on something in the distance. “She tells me about you sometimes.”

“She does?” I asked, surprised that Kate would be talking about me to the little girl from across the river. Why would Dell be interested in me?

“Mm-hmm. She said you wouldn’t come back for a while.” Turning away from the field, she studied her feet, dark against the white railing. I pictured those bare feet dashing up the river path.

“Hmm,” I muttered, slightly offended by the idea of Kate and Dell talking about my avoidance of the farm. A prickle of big-sister indignation crept up my spine. “Well, I guess she was right. It has been a while.”

Dell brushed a few blades of dried grass from her toes, then watched a ladybug crawl along the porch post, seeming to concentrate more on it than on me. “She said you were comin’ because you were sad.” She raised her gaze with an intensity that sat me back in my chair. “Are you sad?”

Are you sad? Such a simple question with such a long and complicated answer. “I’m not sure,” I whispered, lost in the measureless depths of her dark eyes, surrounded by a tenderness I couldn’t explain. “But you know what, it’s not something you should worry about, all right?” I couldn’t imagine what Kate was thinking, involving this little eleven-, maybe twelve-year-old girl in family business. “Kate shouldn’t talk to you about that kind of thing.”

Her eyes held mine a moment longer, confused. I had a feeling it was normal for her to be involved in adult business. She had the look of a kid who knew things far beyond her years.

Shrugging, she hopped down from the porch rail, crossed the porch, and started down the steps, her bare feet moving silently over the timeworn wood. “It wasn’t Kate that said it. It was Grandma Rose.”

“Wh-what?” Breath caught in my throat and the whirling in my mind stilled. I remembered the last moments before Grandma Rose died, when Dell came into the room and lay on the bed, her face only inches from Grandma’s. They looked into one another’s eyes, and somehow Dell knew that Grandma wanted her flowers brought inside so that she could see them one last time. There wasn’t a word spoken between them, but somehow Dell knew.

Shaking off the eerie feeling, I sought a logical explanation. “You mean she talked to you about me those months before she passed away?”

Stopping at the bottom of the steps, Dell frowned over her shoulder. “Maybe,” she said simply. “But sometimes I dream about her, too. I think she told me then. She said she heard it in the sycamores.” Turning away, she stepped into the early-morning sunshine and skipped to the house with the careless abandon of a twelve-year-old tomboy.

Rubbing the goose bumps on my arms, I watched her go, then sat very still, moving just my eyes as I looked around the porch. “I don’t believe in messages from beyond,” I whispered, feeling silly. “I don’t. I don’t. I don’t.” But suddenly, I wished I’d planned to stay in the main house. If there was anyone, anywhere, stubborn enough to run other people’s lives from beyond the grave, it would be Grandma Rose.

Kate called from the main house to tell me that breakfast was ready. Popping up like I’d been shot out of my chair, I hurried down the path, more than ready to return to the company of the living. When I walked in, Kate and Ben were at the table with the kids. Dell was handing Cheerios to Rose, playing peek-a-boo, and acting like a perfectly normal little girl rather than a pint-sized psychic medium.

I began to think I’d imagined our strange conversation.

Ben stood up and pulled an extra chair to the table for me, his usual friendly smile broad beneath his dark hair, which was sporting a bad case of bed head. “I like the do,” I joked. “You look like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon.”

Ben puffed out his chest, grinning. “Yeah, people say that a lot. Me and Mel, we’re like this.” He held up two intertwined fingers as he sat back down.

Kate handed him a bowl of fruit cocktail. “Here you go, Mel. See if you can get your daughter to eat some fruit.”

Ben offered Rose the fruit, then set it on the table when she refused. “She doesn’t want any. Karen, glad you could make it to our little meeting of the long-lost relatives.” I wondered if, like me, he was a little worried about Kate’s plan to bring us together with Jenilee for the weekend.

Kate reintroduced me to Dell as I poured a cup of coffee. “We met outside,” I rushed out, hoping that Dell wouldn’t say anything about finding me sobbing hysterically on the porch.

“At Grandma’s house.” Dell emphasized the word, almost as if I shouldn’t be staying there.

If there was any hidden meaning, Kate didn’t catch it. “That’s good,” she remarked, busy trying to get baby Rose to stop playing patty-cake in her cereal. Irritated, Rose flung her hands into the air and squealed, letting out a very unladylike belch and some suspicious noises on the other end.

Joshua put a hand over his mouth and pointed, hollering, “Rose faw-ted.”

“Joshua!” Kate gasped.

Ben chuckled, then boasted in a false baritone, “That’s my boy.”

Kate slanted a critical glance at him, pulling the cereal bowl away from Rose. “For heaven’s sake, Ben, don’t encourage him. The other day he told the Sunday school teacher that Kaylee Smith was a p-o-o-p.” She spelled out the word and Joshua squinted, trying to decipher his parents’ secret code. Kate glanced at me apologetically. “I think all of this has something to do with potty training.” She shook a finger at Joshua in a way that was remarkably reminiscent of Grandma Rose. “And you, young man, are not to use that word. Remember what we talked about last Sunday, about the word you said about Kaylee Smith in Sunday school? Those are not nice words to say. Do you understand?”

Joshua gave her a confused look, as if he didn’t understand why some perfectly good words were not available for everyday use. “Yesh.”

Kate tilted her head and gave him the look. I recognized it from my mother. “Yes, what?”

He thought for a minute, then added, “Yesh, ma’am.” Kate smiled and nodded, and Joshua sat a little straighter in his chair. Grinning proudly back at her, he added, “I’m not supposed to say faw-ted and poop.”

“Joshua!” Kate gasped.

Ben lowered his face into his hand and started laughing. Dell twisted around in her chair and hid her grin in her elbow.

“Ben!” Kate scolded, like a mother desperately trying to rein in a situation that was spiraling out of control. She gave me a mortified glance, a woman-to-woman look, and I couldn’t help it; I started laughing with the rest of them.

Kate sat there trying to decide between laughing along and taking the hard line.

Ben laughed harder, and Dell bent over like she was picking up something off the floor, all but disappearing under the table.

I snorted coffee up my nose while trying to wash down toast, choked, then tried to get Kate to lighten up on her perfect-mommy-perfect-kid bit. “My gosh, Kate, he’s just a little guy.”

She delivered a quick blink, the kind of blink that said, You don’t even have kids, so what would you know about it?

I felt myself bristle instantly, then start to shut down. Why did it always happen like this with us? Why was it always a competition of who had what and who could be the most perfect? “Sorry,” I muttered, halfheartedly. “Just my opinion.”

Joshua gave me a sudden look of admiration, one that said Aunt Karen was pretty cool. Kate caught it, and for a minute I thought she was going to pop a cork. Suddenly, I wished I hadn’t come to the farm at all. I should have stayed home and out of Kate’s life. She was only uptight because I was here. She wanted everything to look perfect in front of me, so she could win this year’s unspoken contest of Kate versus Karen.

She didn’t have any idea how poorly armed the competition was this time. If you told her, it might actually help things, a voice said in my head. Karen’s life is falling apart. End of competition . . .

I bristled again. Old defense mechanisms die hard. For as long as I could remember, every report card, every test grade, every school project had been compared. Kate got straight A’s without even trying, moved up a grade, never forgot a homework assignment or made below a ninety on a test, while I worked my tail off to stay on the all-important A-B honor roll. In the back of my mind, there was always that sentence that lay just below the spoken words in our family—Why can’t you be perfect like Kate? Perfectly smart. Perfectly sweet. Perfectly kind. Perfectly married with children. One boy, one girl. Perfectly Kate.

No matter what we did, there would always be that one problem between us. Kate was exceptional. I was average.

Everything came easily to Kate. I worked hard for what I achieved.

How pathetic was it to still be carrying that around at forty-one years old?

There are, I told myself, worse problems to have than a little sister who’s perfect when you’re not.

And it wasn’t like there weren’t areas where, growing up, I had excelled above Kate. Music, for one. Music was my one exceptional talent, my solace when it was obvious that I wasn’t as academically gifted as my parents thought I should be. I hadn’t felt the need for music in years.

“I played the piano last night,” I heard myself say. I wasn’t sure why I said it—maybe just to break the silence or change the subject.

It took a moment, but Kate softened and we averted the beginning of a new cold war. “That’s great. You said something about it on the phone.” She paused a minute, meditating on her coffee as she stirred in a spoonful of sugar. “You always had such an amazing talent for music.”

On the other side of the table, Dell popped up and appeared interested. Kate turned to her, assuming she was looking for something to eat. “How about toast and some of your blackberry jelly this morning?” Dell gave a noncommittal shrug, and Kate served up the toast platter, butter and jelly, commenting, “Dell and I made blackberry jelly last fall from the berries in the freezer.”

I raised a brow. “From scratch?” I couldn’t imagine Kate or me figuring out the intricacies of canning jelly, even though we’d both watched Grandma Rose dozens of times.

Kate grinned and elbowed Dell. “From scratch, huh, Dell? We boiled the jars and sealed them in Grandma’s old white canning kettle and everything.”

“Wow,” I said and watched Dell cover her toast with something that did, indeed, look like blackberry jelly. “I’m impressed. Where did you learn to do that?”

Dell piped up. “The Martha Stewart show reruns.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “But somehow when Martha did it, she didn’t end up with blackberry juice splattered all over the kitchen.”

The three of us chuckled together, then baby Rose started to fuss and Kate paused to take off the bib and offer some bits of toast. “You know, while you’re here, you ought to try the old piano in the little house—see if it’s any good or if we need to just junk it.” She gave Rose a few pieces of cereal. “Why did you quit playing the piano? I can’t remember.”

I considered the question for a minute. “I don’t know. I kept it up the first two years in college, took some theater and dance, but it just got too hard after a while. I needed to buckle down to keep up with the engineering curriculum, and the music had to go.” That was exactly what my father had said to me when he saw my sophomore-year report card. This music business has to go. “Dad wasn’t too nuts about the arts classes on my transcript, either. Waste of money and time. You know the drill.”

Kate nodded in silent agreement. She did, indeed, know the drill. When she’d changed her major from medicine to environmental science, my parents had refused to pay for one more credit hour. Kate and Ben almost starved to death, both trying to get through college on part-time jobs. Fortunately, Kate was smart enough to work and pass the classes, so she held to her principles and got the degree she really wanted. Another thing I’d always envied, even though I wouldn’t admit that to her. Kate bucked the folks and lived to tell about it. She and Dad apparently had a pretty decent relationship now, these many years later. How she had managed to accomplish that, I couldn’t fathom.

Ben clearly sensed an uncomfortable family discussion brewing. Gathering up some dirty plates, he made a quick exit, saying, “Well, I’m off to get the lawn mowed before the parade of relatives arrive.” Bending over, he kissed Rose and then Joshua.

Joshua held out his arms to be picked up. “I wanna go on the lawn mower.”

Ben ruffled his hair like he was a puppy. “Not right now, buddy. You stay inside and help Mommy until I get the mowing done, and then I’ll hook up the wagon and take you and Rose for a ride.”

Joshua sighed and quirked his lips to one side, trying to think of another plan to get what he wanted. Then he finally shrugged and said, “Okeydokey, Dad.”

As Ben was heading out the door, Joshua stood up in his chair and hollered after him, “I’m sow-wie I said faw-ted and poop!”

Trying not to laugh, Dell scooped him off the chair and said, “How ’bout we go outside, Joshie,” then headed for the door.

Kate slapped a hand over her eyes, shaking her head as she got up and carried her plate to the counter. She had the defeated look of a mom who just wasn’t making headway. “Motherhood,” she sighed. As soon as the word was out of her mouth, she realized who she was talking to, and she darted a guilty look my way.

I tried to pretend I hadn’t noticed it as I carried the remaining dirty dishes to the counter. “Oh, Kate, don’t get so worried. He doesn’t have to be perfect all the time. He’s adorable just the way he is.”

Kate nodded, seeming thankful for the reassurance, maybe a little shocked to be getting it from me. “I know,” she said quietly as we started rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, which was a new addition since the last time I’d been to the farm. “You’re right.”

We glanced at each other, both surprised to hear those words pass between us. Neither of us knew what to say after that, so we finished the dishes and dried our hands. Outside, the lawn mower roared to life.

That reminded me of what Ben had said. “So what does he mean, parade of relatives? Who all is coming?”

“Oh, Ben’s exaggerating.” Kate rested against the counter, gazing thoughtfully toward the door. “I thought Aunt Jeane would be able to be here, but Uncle Robert just had a stent put in—minor surgery, but he’s supposed to rest a few days. Jenilee’s coming, and she’s bringing the box of old letters she found. Her boyfriend, Caleb, is joining her. I had asked Jenilee’s two brothers, Drew and Nate, and Drew’s wife and kids, just because I’d like to meet them, but Nate had a high school baseball tournament this weekend. We’ll get together sometime soon, I’m sure.”

“Wow,” I said. “I didn’t know we had so much family around here. Grandma never talked about any of them.”

“There’s also a cousin of Grandma’s living over in Poetry—Eudora . . . something . . . ummm . . . Jaans. Eudora Jaans. We crossed paths briefly after the Poetry tornado, but never really talked. I think she was Jenilee’s neighbor growing up. She’s a second cousin to Grandma Rose.”

“You’ve really gotten into the family genealogy,” I commented, hoping there wasn’t going to be a pop quiz later. “I never knew the family tree had so many branches.”

Kate took on a mysterious look, her gaze darting around the kitchen as if the walls had ears. “That isn’t all of it. I found an old family Bible in the attic, and Grandma Rose had two sisters—Augustine Hope was quite a few years younger, and then there was a sister two years older than Grandma Rose, named Sadie.” Leaning close to me, Kate whispered with exaggerated drama, “Her name was scratched out of the family Bible. No death record. Just scratched out.”

A tingle of mystery sent goose bumps over my arms. “Wonder what that means.”

Kate’s eyes met mine. “Don’t know.”