CHAPTER 125

"OKAY, AMANDA," IDA finally said. "Now it’s your turn." She settled back in her chair and rubbed her forehead.

Amanda picked up the bundle of papers from her lap and touched the rough string that bound them. "We already know they’re letters," she said in that soft voice of hers, so well-suited to her job as a massage therapist. We had no trouble hearing her, though, probably because we were all holding our breaths.

We waited while Amanda untied the string again and unfolded the first letter. I was astonished at the absolute stillness she displayed. If I’d been holding them I would have wanted to tear into them right away. "Tuesday, 18 October 1768," she read. "I already read you the first paragraph or so when I found these back on the first day we were up here, but if it’s okay with you, I’d like to repeat it."

Mister Silas Martin gave me a dozen precious pieces of paper last April, but I have been loath to use any of them until now. I have decided to write to you once a year for the next twelve years, or perhaps I can limit myself to one side of each page for a letter, in which case these cherished sheets will last me twenty-four years. As I am already forty-four years of age, that means I must live to be sixty-eight, a goal that may be beyond my capacity to attain.

At forty-four, I am now more than twice the age you were when you died. I must admit in these private pages that I am in some ways glad that your marriage to Homer Martin was never continued, although I rue the fact that it was your death that prevented it. I could not have stood by and watched you going though what I had to endure for so many years. How I wish you could have held my son, though, and dandled him on your knees. How we would have smiled to see him grow so sweetly. And held our breath as he began to roam farther and farther afield, learning his strengths and his limitations.

He is a man grown now, my dear friend, with a wife, although I have yet to become a grandmother.

"I wonder if this was the same woman he was courting back"—Dee made a motion over her shoulder—"back when Mary Frances mentioned it originally."

MARY FRANCES SIMPLY could not bring herself to say or to write her daughter-in-law’s name. She had been hard-pressed not to try to discourage John when he had first shown an interest in Geonette Black’s niece, Augusta, son of Geonette’s brother, Sergeant.

From that moment in 1742 when Augusta Hastings Garner forced Mary Frances into her unlawful marriage to Homer Martin, Mary Frances had found it nigh on impossible to bring up any feelings of love for her mother. Then, when young John was born and his grandmother had refused even to look at him, much less to hold him, had refused as well to write the day of his birth in the family Bible, Mary Frances had ceased to try to smooth over the enmity than seemed to grow with each passing year.

No. That was wrong. The enmity had leveled off to something less active. A feeling less portentous. Indifference. That was what Mary Frances now felt for her mother. Complete indifference. It could be, she thought with a wry smile to herself, that she felt indifferent now only because her mother had finally died. Was that unnatural? Was a woman not meant to love her parents? A daughter to love her mother?

She paused and looked across the room at her son, sitting there so intent on watching his young wife at her spinning. He loved her so much.

How could this sweet young woman’s name be the same as that of a woman who had scorned her own daughter and ignored her own grandson? A woman who had feigned illness in order not to attend her grandson’s marriage ceremony.

But the girl herself? John’s wife? What a dear she was. Always so ready to help Mary Frances. Always so thoughtful. Always so joyful, as if every task before her was a delight. She had merged into this family as readily as a daisy soaking up sunshine.

Mary Frances upbraided herself. Her analogy was a poor one, too contrived to be of any value. Still, the girl did remind her of a bright flower. She was fortunate that John had chosen so wisely, so well.

"I’M SURE SHE’LL GIVE us her daughter-in-law’s name at some point," Carol said. "We just have to keep going."

You would not, of course, know of Parley and Louise, the so-called barn babies who were born shortly after we came here. Not unless you had traveled with us. This past June the entire town celebrated the marriage of Parley, Constance’s daughter, with Brand Tarkington, the son of Louetta Tarkington Martin, of whom I have spoken so often to you in my thoughts. On the same day Louise, daughter of Louetta and Silas and therefore Brand’s half-sister, married Frederick Breeton, the son of Pioneer and Bridget Hastings Breeton.

"Those weddings," Maddy said. "The drawing Silas did." She retrieved the sketch from the stack to refresh our memory, although I felt like I had those faces seared into my brain, they had looked so vital, so ... so happy.

"Pioneer Breeton and Bridget Hastings," Carol said. "They used to be just a couple of names to me. Now they’re a lot more real."

Do you recall the day so many years ago when Pioneer climbed onto the roof of his father’s dry goods store in Brandtburg? How we laughed at his antics as he cavorted around, singing, dancing, and very nearly falling. Bridget told me she looks forward to becoming a grandmother, although so far there is no indication that either of our young brides is breeding.

I am near the end of this page, my dear friend, so I will close until next October, reminding you only that you were ever a candle lighting my way through the dark valley of my marriage. I remain, your devoted friend, Mary Frances.

"She really did squeeze all this onto one page." Amanda held up the letter so we could see how those last few lines were crammed into the bottom half inch of the paper.

"This is good," Sadie said. "Only one side of the page, so we’ll have twenty-three more letters if she sticks to her one side of one page per year plan."

Ida studied it for a moment. "Her writing in the diaries is more condensed—the letters are smaller and the lines are closer together."

"Maybe because the diary pages were narrower and shorter than these single sheets of paper," Amanda suggested.

"Maybe," Sadie said, "because she had to concentrate more, since she was writing backwards."

But of course, once again, we had no way of knowing the reasons for the difference.

"So now," Rebecca Jo said, "I guess we alternate between the Myra Sue letters and the diary?"

If my Hubbard had lived, today would have marked the twenty-seventh year of our marriage.

My daughter-in-law had another miscarriage, her second one, and lost the child. She still is distraught, and she makes something of a nuisance of herself by picking up every babe in town, as if somehow just holding an infant will cause her womb to conceive more quickly. John’s distress is less obvious, but I have noticed that he brings his wife flowers more and more often, sometimes twice a day.

We learned only recently that British troops landed early last October in the town of Boston. It seems so far away, rather like an overly-hard rainfall might seem to indicate a flood in the offing. We are truly isolated here in our river valley, and the rumors of discontent, of men being tarred and feathered, of newspaper offices being burnt to the ground—all these seem not to affect us directly, yet news of these happenings does add to our worry.

For twenty-four years we have gone about our daily business without much thought of the world outside, but we cannot now escape the news that reaches us, mostly through the travels of Lucius Hastings and Able Garner, who bring us periodic reports of the wider world along with such newspapers as they have been able to obtain. I pray that such horrible doings never invade our town. Each newspaper is passed from family to family and from town to town, so that by the time one reaches here, it is sadly tattered.

"She’s talking about the American Revolution again," Maddy said. "This is like history in the making."

"Only, they didn’t think of it as history at the time," Carol said. "It was just the happenings in what she called a wider world that I’d imagine they seldom saw here."

"Are you accusing us of being backwoods again?" Maddy didn’t sound like she meant it.

"Think about it," Pat said. "In just a few years, her anniversary’s going to fall on the date of Paul Revere’s ride, right?"

"He was somebody that’s kind of famous," Carol told Marmy. "He rode a horse to warn people of an army invading the countryside."

"There were several rides like that," Maddy informed us. "Has anybody here ever heard of Sybil Luddington?"

"She was sixteen. She rode twice as far as Paul Revere, warning the militia of an attack on Danbury."

"Longfellow was a man," Pat said, with a fair amount of venom in her voice. I wondered what had caused it.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April in ’Seventy-Five:,

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

When we wound down, Pat said, "I wonder how long it took before Martinsville even heard about it?"

"And then the men all marched off to war." Sadie rubbed her brown-spotted hands. "Again."

"It’s happened pretty much every twenty to thirty years." Maddy raised one finger at a time as she recited the years and names of a whole raft of wars.

1776 the American Revolution

1812 the War of ... of 1812

1846 the Mexican War

1861 the Civil War

1898 the Spanish-American War

1917 World War One

1941 World War Two

1950 the Korean War

1964 Vietnam

1991 the Persian Gulf War

"But somehow," Sadie put in, "they still manage to stay the same. I lived through the last five of those wars and lost a number of friends and family. I truly pray I’ll never have to live through another one."

I WAS STILL chuckling when I got home after the second meeting of the library board. Naturally, Bob asked me what was up. I waited till I had a cup of spicy ginger tea in hand. "It’s funny how quickly things can change," I said. "Clara Martin is going to spit tacks when she finds out what happened tonight." I was entirely too gleeful about this, but somehow I didn’t care. "If I have to miss tap dance class because of these board meetings, I’m not going to resent it so much after this."

"Y-e-s-s-s?" He drew the question out over about five seconds, his eyes all twinkly in anticipation.

"You know how I told you a while back that I wondered if Anita Foley was going to go along with anything Clara wanted to do."

"Y-e-s-s," I said as Marmalade stirred on my lap. "Anyway, first of all, I got a real surprise when my Petunias showed up and informed me that they’d gotten themselves appointed to the library board."

"Clara’s still taking care of Hubbard day in and day out, so she probably doesn’t know about it yet. They lobbied a couple of the council members and got it done without anybody being the wiser. And then Anita said okay and started the meeting noting that they hadn’t elected a chair at the first meeting." I let my mug warm my hands for a few seconds. "It looked like Anita expected to be elected herself, but Esther popped up and said she nominated Charlotte Ellis. Sadie seconded the motion, and before Anita could regroup her thoughts, Charlotte was elected."

It hadn’t occurred to me before this, but Sadie was missing the tap dance class just like I was. Of course, she knew the steps a lot better than I did, so she could afford to miss.

"I’m surprised Esther didn’t nominate Rebecca Jo," Bob said. "Wouldn’t she have been a more logical choice?"

"Yeah, she would, especially since Charlotte’s only been here a few years, and"—I let some disgust creep into my voice—"she didn’t get a library card until about six weeks ago."

Bob just laughed, this time out loud. "You’re right. Clara’s going to have another one of her hissy fits."

"None of my Petunias would have wanted the job, but they didn’t want Anita in there for sure, so Charlotte was ..."

HOW ON EARTH, SHE WONDERED, did I let myself get elected as the library board chair? Nobody had asked her ahead of time, and she wasn’t even sure what she would have said if they’d bothered to ask. Still, it might not be a bad idea to have one up on Clara Martin, especially since they’d be seeing each other once a month for that other business.

She had to admit she was glad Clara had seen eye to eye with her. It wouldn’t do to let the information in that lovely old packet get out there, now would it? She’d told Clara it was in a safe deposit box at the bank in Garner Creek, even though it wasn’t. It wouldn’t do to have Clara burning this house down to destroy the evidence. And she’d told Clara she’d left instructions for what to do with it if anything happened. She was pretty sure Clara would be extra careful to see that Charlotte Ellis stayed completely safe.

Just in case, though, she double-checked the heavy-duty locks she’d installed on the front and back doors.

She looked around her living room with some satisfaction. It wasn’t her dream home by any means, but since she never had to pay a cent of her own money for it, it would do. Maybe in a couple of years she could upgrade.

"I STILL THINK YOU SHOULD have nominated Rebecca Jo," Sadie told Esther once they got into the car.

"I didn’t want it," Rebecca Jo said. "Not any more than you would have wanted to be chair yourself."

"You can say that again. I love being in my eighties. Nobody expects me to do anything, so I can pick and choose my pet projects."

Sadie sighed with deep satisfaction. "Can’t you just see Clara’s face when she finds out?"

"I don’t think anybody’s ever tried to cross her before," Esther said through her chuckles.

"Oh, they’ve tried," Rebecca Jo said. "But never more than once. Nobody crosses Clara."

On that grim note, Sadie started the car. "I hope Charlotte keeps one eye checking behind her for the next few weeks."

"Or the next few years, more likely." Rebecca Jo adjusted the seat belt where it crossed her shoulder. "Clara never forgets anything, And she never, ever forgives anything."