One Step Enough
Page 8
He could wait. He wanted to expand the moment, without thinking about the canyon. Absolutely no one in Manti needed them for anything.
She had wonderful, full lips that he was already well acquainted with. The Almighty may have given the Welsh amazing gifts, but He had skimped on full lips. He admired Della’s, thinking that some day they might be fortunate to have children who looked more like her than him, especially any future daughters.
And those eyelashes. They seemed to brush her cheek. He looked closer, but the room really wasn’t light enough to confirm his suspicion that she seemed to have a double row of them. Was that even possible?
He touched her cheek, which made her put up her hand and cover his.
“I thought you would never wake up,” he teased.
She burst out laughing. “Twelve hours.” She sobered immediately. “And you needed every single minute, my love.”
“I did,” he agreed, his hand on her head now, enjoying those curls and well aware that he could do this whenever he wanted, and he wanted to now, in the quiet and comfort of the Manti House. How kind of the Knights to give them this loving time.
Chapter 11
L
All dividends of tender, wifely affection aside—and what man could ever blithely dismiss those?—Owen spent a goodly portion of the next day reveling in the joy of what he always thought of as bed chat, or pillow conversation, as she preferred to call it. He had explained the matter while examining and then kissing Della’s kneecaps with their charming dimples.
“It’s this way, m cara,” he told her after he lay back down beside her. “We can be as silly as we wish, and not have to make an accounting to anyone except ourselves. This is where I tell you what I like and don’t like, discuss national politics, and oh, I don’t know, quiz you on the state of our pantry. And tit for tat, naturally.”
She settled more comfortably into his loose embrace. “Welshmen and words,” she commented to no one in particular, but perhaps to him, because there he was. She stretched her arm across his middle and tickled the opposite ribs, which made him forget words and substitute deeds until she was profoundly satisfied.
“As you were saying?” he began later.
“I like you,” she said suddenly, and then she amended that with a laugh. “I love you, and you have ample proof of that already.”
Indeed he did, and it was making his eyelids droop. “Explain yourself.”
She raised up on one elbow and stared at him until he laughed. “Owen, you have a certain rascally charm I really hadn’t anticipated. I like that. I like you.”
She said it so simply. “And as for national politics, I will remind you that women have the vote in Utah. We might argue about issues because I tend to prefer the Democrats and there isn’t much you can do about it.” She peered closely again. “Heavens, are you even a U.S. citizen?”
“No, actually,” he admitted. “What with one thing and another, I am still a citizen of Great Britain. I haven’t sung ‘God Save the Queen’ in ages, though. Give us a kiss, my pretty one.”
And so it went until they were famished and realized it was imperative to find food or die.
Even food tasted better. For lunch and dinner, Owen polished off Manti House’s roast beef and apple pie with whipped cream, pleased to see that Della did the same thing. Gwyna used to pick at her food. He had married a healthy woman this time, and it relieved his heart.
Another night with no one but Della on his mind fortified him for the two-hour ride north to Provo. He knew he didn’t imagine her sigh when they left the hotel.
“Let’s return here someday,” she said.
“Either that or never leave,” he teased, which made her laugh.
“You say Uncle Jesse is in Canada?” he asked when they were settled on the train for the return to reality, Provo, and hopefully employment.
“Amanda said he wants to buy land in the District of Alberta,” Della said, making herself comfortable against him. “Ranching, I think. Owen?”
He couldn’t stay awake, but his dreams were pleasant, consisting mainly of Della, and a far cry from the desperate images that robbed sleep all last week.
So he thought. He woke up after the conductor walked through the car and said everyone was changing trains at Thistle. He knew there would be more widows and children from Scofield leaving the canyon and coal for good. Della’s hand was tight on his arm, so he wondered how peaceful his sleep had been.
He steeled himself for more widows, but it was the late train. He did see Samuel and Ada Fergusson, staunch Presbyterians who looked disapprovingly on all the Mormons in Winter Quarters Canyon. Still, he knew them, a childless couple, and he trusted Sam, who worked in the fan house and kept air flowing faithfully over Mormons, Baptists, Catholics, and Lutherans alike.
As the train picked up speed on the descent into Spanish Fork Canyon, he walked through the swaying car and squatted in the aisle beside Sam, who greeted him with a smile and a nod.
“Out of the mines too?” Owen asked.
“Ada insisted. Even aboveground wasn’t enough for t’ woman,” he said in his spare way. “I could argue, but why? And you, lad?”
“I made a promise too,” Owen said, with a glance back at Della, who slept. “Off to find something to do in Provo.”
“Ya will. You’re a clever mon with wood.”
Fergusson patted his shoulder, and Owen returned to his seat, cheered somehow. He sidled in next to Della, touched how she turned toward his warmth and burrowed closer, depending on him to keep her warm, apparently. Two women depended on him now. He had less than forty dollars to his name.
He leaned back, thinking of Mr. Bullock, a friend of Uncle Jesse’s, who had chatted with him last Thanksgiving about installing wainscoting in his dining room. Hopefully, he hadn’t found someone to do it yet. Uncle Jesse had also mentioned something about cabinets and bookshelves needed at Brigham Young Academy. Summer was a good time to build such things, before the start of a school year. With any luck …
Silently he blessed the Knights for their gift of two nights in Manti. Della had hinted at amazing wonders in their new home on Third Second South, not far from the Knight’s house. Part of him preferred to keep his distance from what he never wanted to call charity, while the other part of him, the part now the sole support of three instead of two, welcomed such kindness, for kindness it was.
He glanced down at Della, barely visible in the darkened car, lit only by a lamp at each end. He knew he should never second-guess his decision to marry again. Gwyna had meant the sun, moon, and stars to him, but so did Della. If matters had been different, he would have taken some time on a slow day in the Number Four to sit down in a quiet place with Taliesin Llewellen, whose first wife had died years before and who had married another a few years ago. He wanted to ask Tally if he had felt any guilt at giving his heart to another. Tally could have reassured him, more like, but Tally was dead.
Are you destined to overthink everything? he asked himself. Ah, well. He matched his breathing to Della’s and slept too as the train clacked and swayed through Spanish Fork Canyon.
The depot in Provo was shuttered. They retrieved their luggage and strolled through Provo’s darkened streets, passing the Knight’s home. He noticed that no lights were on there, which meant Angharad could be retrieved the following morning.
“Here it is.” Della stopped in front of a tidy place with a porch, the kind of spot that might be nicer with some seating. He could tip back his chair, put his feet on the railing, and hear nothing but birds twittering in the morning, a far cry from the nearly constant rumble of coal in the tipple.
The reminder of coal made him turn automatically east toward the sheltering mountains, visible in the moonlight. Twists and turns through two canyons and he would be home again in Winter Quarters Canyon. You don’t live there anymore, boyo, he told himself, and looked away, but not before he saw the shadow cross Della’s face. She seemed to know what he was thinking.
“Hang on.”
He picked her up, carried her handily up four steps and bore her over the threshold as she laughed.
“No electricity,” she said as he put her down. “I know where the matches are.”
“First things first.” He kissed her soundly. “Mrs. Davis, we have arrived.”
She had the most tender lips. She evidently also wanted him to see their new house because she didn’t linger in his embrace. He heard some fumbling in the kitchen and the sound of a match striking, and then—illumination. She held the lamp high and returned to the front room.
“Mr. Auerbach has been at work here,” she said. “And look, Amanda found lace curtains while we were in Manti. Guess we’ll have to call it a parlor.”
He looked around the room. “Tell me, m cara, your da was a miner. Did you ever live in a house with lace curtains?”
“The Anderses’ house in Salt Lake,” she replied. “A home with lace curtains? Not until this one.”
Her words touched his heart, the same heart that had been beating in unison for pleasant hours with the marvelous woman now his wife. “It’s already a home?” he asked, curious.
“The moment you carried me over the threshold.”
Chapter 12
L
Owen slept late. Della observed him carefully, wishing he didn’t sleep with his eyes half open because it still unnerved her. She would have to ask him sometime about her little quirks that made him shake his head.
She also wished he slept more peacefully. She doubted he was aware how he twitched and how he spoke in Welsh, sometimes sounding urgent, as if something terrible hung in the balance, which she didn’t doubt for a second was a result of May 1. Maybe time would change that.
And how many years before you didn’t think about the Molly Bee mine and your father dead under tons of rock? she asked herself as she watched her man. She realized it hadn’t been more than a day or two since she had remembered those awful days on the Colorado plateau, waiting and wondering if the three miners underground would come out alive or dead.
When it happened, she had tried to crowd close to the windlass that brought up the cage from below, calling, “Papa! Papa!” at the top of her lungs. Grownups had pushed her back, and she was never allowed to see him.
Della put her hand to her heart, amazed how fast it beat. She reminded herself she did not have the time, the energy, or even the reason to be reminding herself of something that happened twelve years ago. The wounds of the Number Four and Number One were fresh and raw too. Time to tamp down her own memories, force them back to wherever it was such unrest came from. After all, she was not alone, and her husband needed her.
Owen lay stretched on his back, arms out, reminding her of his propensity to take the whole bed. And why not? He had spent many years alone in a bed for two. She had no trouble fitting herself in with him. Her eyes on him, she dressed quietly and closed their bedroom door behind her.
Barefoot, shoes in hand, Della walked through her little house, laughing at herself because what pleased her the most was the lavatory, with its toilet and sink. The tin tub hanging on the wall in the screened porch off the kitchen signaled that bathing was still a kitchen affair, but Aunt Amanda had already warned her.
She sat in one of Mr. Auerbach’s wingback chairs in the parlor, silently blessing his thoughtfulness. She knew stationery lurked in one of the unopened boxes on the back porch. By tomorrow there would be a letter of thanks heading to Salt Lake City, even though her words already seemed inadequate. She leaned back, acutely aware as never before of the many people determined to help the Davis family.
She peeked in on her husband, still asleep, put on her shoes, and quietly left the house, pleased with the neighborhood already. One of her earliest memories was walking with Papa through such a neighborhood, with trees just being trees—not cut down for fuel or to widen a narrow canyon road or timber up a mine until there were no more trees aboveground.
Hardly aware of what she was doing, Della turned and faced approximately south and east toward Scofield and nearby Winter Quarters Canyon, imagining the sadness hunkering down over that narrow canyon road, maybe planning to stay like an unwanted guest. Owen had done this very thing last night, and here she was, remembering too. She looked away from the mountains, focusing on a leafy street in a quiet community, where birds chirped and a cat sunned itself on the neighbor’s porch.
“This is better,” she said. She reminded herself that it was a lovely spring morning, and she was going to see Amanda Knight and retrieve Angharad. She smiled at the mailman as he passed her and tipped his hat. Provo is my town now, she thought as she continued down the street and knocked on the back door of the Knight house. I’m going to like it here.
Wiping her hands on her apron, Mabli Reese opened the screen door and hugged her. “No Owen?” she asked.
“Still asleep,” Della said, hoping her husband’s sister-in-law wouldn’t tease her and make some comment about wearing out the man. “What do you think of the Knights?”
“Mrs. Knight asked me if I could stay through the week until her cook returns from Logan,” Mabli told her. She smiled, the first smile Della had seen on her face since breakfast in the Edwards boardinghouse on May 1, when Mabli whispered that Will Goode, all blushes, said he would see her at the dance that night in the new Odd Fellows Hall, the dance no one attended.
“You realize that Owen will hang about the back door all week, in the hopes of receiving one of your cinnamon buns,” Della said.
“I hope he does,” Mabli said. She gave Della a nudge. “I don’t see Owen hanging about here, not a newly married man. I can always find ways to keep Angharad here helping me, if you’d like.”
This was a new Mabli, one willing to tease a little. Della felt her heart grow lighter, even as she blushed.
Angharad came through the kitchen door then, smiling and holding out her arms for Della, who hugged her.
“Where’s Da?” she asked.
“Still asleep, my dear,” Della told her. “I know, I know. You’ve told me he never sleeps past six.”
“I’m still tired,” Angharad said, sounding seventy instead of seven.
Della held her close. “We won’t always feel tired.”
“So this is where everyone chooses to hang around?”
Della looked up to see Amanda Knight, eyeing them all from the door. She gestured them inside as Mabli sniffed the air and hurried to open the oven door.
She feigned relief and Angharad clapped her hands.
In minutes they were seated around the kitchen table, eating sausage and baked eggs and glancing at the cinnamon buns cooling too slowly for all of them.
“This will never do,” Amanda said at last. “Mrs. Reese, I am out of patience with cinnamon buns that refuse to cool off. Please bring them over. We’ll take our chances.”
Not usually one for theatrics, Mabli presented the buns with a flourish that made Angharad laugh and then look around, surprised, as if she shouldn’t have laughed. Della put her hand on the child’s arm. “Laugh all you want,” she said. “We need to hear it.”
Silence then, as everyone ate. After Angharad’s second bun, she set aside a third “for Da” and then asked Della if she should gather her things.
“Yes, please,” Della said. “Da will be awake and wondering where his little girl is.”
“Girls,” Angharad amended. “I’ll be quick.”
Amanda nodded her approval as the child hurried upstairs. “You seem to have made two conquests, Della.”
“I love them both. You’ve come to know Angharad better now,” she said, “and thank you again for keeping her here so we could have two days together in Manti.”
“I know her better,” Amanda agreed. “I can completely im
agine you taking her to Arizona Territory and starting over if … if things had gone differently in the mine on that awful day.”
“I would have,” Della said simply. “I could never leave her alone. Sometimes I wish …”
She stopped.
“Wish what? Tell me, my dear,” Amanda asked gently.
“It’s nothing,” Della said. Papa, I wish I could tell you everything has turned out better than I ever imagined, she thought. No need to trouble someone else with what was decidedly in the past. Funny to be thinking about it so much lately.
Angharad bounced downstairs then, her few belongings in a little bag. “Sister Knight said every girl needs her own luggage,” she announced, holding out a leather satchel. She dipped a true British Isles curtsy to Amanda. “Diolch yn fawr iawn.”
“What do I say to that?”
“You’re welcome,” Della said.
“You’re welcome, Angharad,” their kind hostess said. “Come to visit me anytime. Oh, take that cinnamon bun for your father.”
“I’m always here to listen,” Amanda said to Della as Angharad skipped on ahead toward the door.
“Maybe later.”
“Don’t wait too long, my dear.”
Chapter 13
L
Amanda walked Della and Angharad out through the front door, her arms linked through theirs. She stopped suddenly. “I forgot something. Don’t move.” She darted back inside and returned with a folded sheet of paper for Della. “Here you are. This could be well worth your consideration.”
Della opened the note and gasped.
“It’s not bad news, is it?” Angharad asked anxiously. “Please no.”
Della knelt beside her stepdaughter. “Heavens no, my dear one. It’s the best news.” She looked at Amanda. “Does this Mr. Holyoke know I’m married? I’m not allowed to teach school now.”
“And more’s the pity,” Amanda replied. “Women may have the vote in Utah, but there is certainly work to be done.” She glanced at Angharad. “Better read it out loud, Della.”