by Carla Kelly
“Owen, I can’t stay here.”
“No, you can’t. You and Angharad are going to Provo.”
She struggled to sit up, but he held her there. “You don’t want me anymore?” she asked, her heart breaking again. Was it possible for a heart to break so much in one night?
“Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“You’re sending me away. You just said so.”
“For your own good. For Angharad’s good. I want you to return to Provo, get a job, enroll Angharad in the Maeser School, and do some calm thinking.”
“But …”
He put his fingers to her lips. “Having trouble breathing?” he teased and got off her.
She sat up and he held her close. “There’s one thing you need to do. No, two things. One at a time. You need to grieve for your father.”
Della nodded. He was right. “The other?”
“You need to talk to your Uncle Karl and …”
“Never.”
“Think about that one.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“Never. Angharad is going with you. Would I send my precious child with you if I planned to abandon you? You know I would not.”
She couldn’t deny that. “And you’ll be here in this mining camp, a place I hate like no other?” There, she admitted it. “No more mines for me.”
“I have a job to finish right here. When it’s done, we’ll have to talk.”
She saw the tears on his face. It was her turn to kiss his cheek, like it, and kiss him again.
She felt a welcome flash of understanding. Maybe she finally understood what he had been saying, almost ever since the disaster at Winter Quarters. “You’re grieving for your friends by making the Banner Mine safe. And I am grieving too, but differently. Neither way is wrong, is it?”
“No, miss,” he said. She heard all the sorrow. “We both need a little time and space. We’re going to Provo tomorrow.”
Chapter 34
L
To Owen’s great relief, it was surprisingly easy to leave Knightville for a few days. They were on the afternoon train to Spanish Fork and then Provo with time to spare.
After he and Della walked from the Banner Mine’s headframe, arms around each other’s waists—not sure who was holding up whom—they made it off the mountain by moving slowly enough for Angharad and Mr. Weisman.
After bidding Mr. Weisman goodnight (or good morning because the sun was up), they took the train to Knightville. They stumbled into bed, clothes and dirt in all.
Della needed no encouragement to pack. After a short visit to the hospital in Eureka, where Aaron, his injured crewmember, was dopey but doing well, Owen gathered the rest of his men in the carpenter’s building, shut down the equipment, and said he would be back on Monday to begin again.
Comrades now, where they had been boss and crew before, they sat together, comparing notes on what they had seen. Even the Lithuanian, silent mostly because of language challenges, drew a diagram of possibilities, giving Owen more ideas of how to make a successful timbering even better.
Mr. Weisman’s sorrowful expression as he lamented the loss of his secretary meant more diplomacy in the assayer’s office. Once Owen told him all that Della had been harboring up in her mind for years, Saul give him his blessing and a mild threat.
“She needs this time, no doubt,” he said, and then he shook his finger at Owen. “You had better do some thinking of your own, or someone else will take your place.”
“She already has her champions,” Owen said, thinking of Dr. Isgreen. “I’m a tenacious man and she chose me, remember.” He patted Saladin and put Della’s pay envelope in his pocket. It felt suspiciously heavy, but he knew better than to object and trade on Mr. Weisman’s dignity and kind heart.
He did borrow a few dollars from the envelope in Silver City’s Western Union office to send a lengthy telegram to the Knights and hope for the best from that quarter. When he arrived in Knightville, his women were packed and ready to go. He overpaid the Tates’ two boys to carry their luggage to the tracks. Owen carried Angharad’s dollhouse, with its small door locked and board slid in place in the back to keep the little inhabitants and their furniture inside.
When Della and Angharad waited on the platform, Owen went back to snatch up some clothing for himself. He looked around. Except for Angharad’s absent dollhouse, everything was still in place. He walked to the bedroom he shared with his wife and sighed to think how much he was going to miss the simple warmth of her in bed. One more look confirmed his worst fear—when a woman leaves a home, it might as well be a castle sacked by Norsemen and abandoned.
Owen held Angharad all the way to Provo, Della tucked close to his side. He wanted to hold her too, but this was a train with other passengers, and they might think he was taking liberties. Each turn of the wheels made him second-guess the wisdom of letting Della and Angharad out of his sight.
He had no doubt now that a mining camp, any mining camp, was no place for either of his girls. How could he convince Della that he would never leave her? He knew she wanted to believe him, but seriously, when had people who should have cared for her not let her down?
He had let her down too, let her down hard, dragging her right back to a mining camp when he said he was done with them. He wasn’t proud of that, but to his way of thinking, he owed safer mines to the memory of his friends. His late mother would have rolled her eyes and made a stringent comment about that being the question for the ages. He didn’t let himself think what Richard Evans would say.
He let his ladies sleep against him, not proud of the tracks of tears on both faces, and truth to tell, his own. From the wary glances that came his way, other travelers must have wondered why this little trio was so tightly bound together and sorrowful. Let them wonder.
When Della woke up, she started and gasped, as if wondering for a second where she was. “You’re fine, I’m here,” he whispered. He felt his insides curl as he watched the relief on her face turn wary and sad. Maybe this was how she looked on that trip from Colorado to Salt Lake twelve years ago.
After the train pulled into Spanish Fork and they changed trains for Provo, he won a small victory, mainly because he had no intention of losing this round.
“I am giving you forty dollars for the rest of November,” he whispered. “I’ll send more in December. You needn’t find a job.”
“Oh, but I want to work,” she countered.
Aha. He had her. “Very well, if you must, but I’m still giving you forty dollars.” That was the bigger issue in his mind, anyway. “No argument on that, Della Anders Davis,” he said.
“Oh, the dreaded three names,” she teased, just a mild tease, but the only one in days. “Very well. I accept.”
He had kept the extra key to their house in Provo. He opened the door, remembering how he had carried her across the threshold in May.
He carried Angharad’s dollhouse into her old room, pulled out the hooked board, and left her there to rearrange her family and furniture. By then Della had wandered into their bedroom. She took her hat off with a sigh, unbuttoned her traveling suit, took off her shoes, and lay down. He covered her with a blanket, told Angharad he was walking over to the Knights, and left his ladies.
Their faces serious, Uncle Jesse and Amanda sat him down in the parlor and heard the whole story. When he finished, he regarded Amanda’s tears, followed by remorse.
“I can’t help my regret that I did not do more. After all, Caroline is my cousin.”
“Della hid it well because she was told to. She was only twelve and did not understand how to manage her feelings,” he said. Frustrated, he smacked his fist into his other hand. “The Anders could have helped her though this so easily!” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“And we are too,” Jesse said. “Heartily so.” He rested his hand on Owen’s shoulder. “We can take it from here.”
He nodded, grateful for the Knights. “Sir, I’m heading back Sunday
afternoon. I need your permission to order more lumber. That second drift needs the work.”
“You have it,” Jesse said promptly.
“I might be working myself out of a job.”
“Not for long. I have other mines.” Uncle Jesse peered closer. “There’s more involved here than a mine, isn’t there?”
“Considerably, sir, and now I’ll visit my sister-in-law. Over the carriage house?”
He found Mabli Reese in a wonderfully cozy apartment. With no preamble, he told her everything. She took it all in, sighed when he sighed, and reminded him he was still her brother-in-law. “Bring Angharad over here Friday night and Saturday night. You and Della need the house to yourselves.”
He could have blushed, but why? The smart money in dealing with Welsh women was not to appear gormless and without a functioning brain. “Aye, we do need that time, Della and I. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She took his arm before he could leave and held tight to him. “And while you are alone there in Tintic, you need to ask yourself just how much you owe your departed friends,” she said, as serious as he had ever seen her.
He had to admit it was a good question. He also understood the other side of the coin, the side Mabli didn’t mention. “And which is more important: those friends or my wife, eh?”
“I believe that to be true,” she said. “Be wise, little Owen.”
What could he say to that?
“Dinner is at two o’clock,” she told him, her expression more kindly now. “If Angharad would like to help me, send her over by half nine, young Owen.”
Thoughtful, he walked home, pleased to see his house well lit now, and smoke coming from the chimney. Never mind that supper was crackers and geriatric jam found in the back of the pantry, plus some apples and cheese that the neighbors had brought over, seeing the house lit again and wondering why, since Mabli was gone.
This modest meal was followed an hour later by Mabli herself, bearing a loaf of oat bread that made Della cry. Owen walked Mabli back to the Knights’ while Della heated water in the tin tub, brought in from the back porch and readied for Angharad. His daughter was clean and in her nightgown when he returned, ready for a kiss and bed.
“Mam’s washing,” his daughter said. “She told me she needed her back scrubbed. I told her I could, but she wanted you.”
He kissed her, heard her prayers, and tucked her in, listening as she sang “Ar Hyd y Nos,” then took himself into the kitchen in time to scrub his wife’s back.
With wisdom he didn’t know he possessed, Owen did nothing more than hold Della that night, and the night after, content to talk about Wales and his mother and father, and the brothers who died in Abercarn, and his baptism when he was eight. He talked and Della listened, chuckling a little at the funny stories, but more often sleeping a deep and solid sleep, which gave him unfathomable peace.
When he headed for the depot after Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, he left Angharad smiling and ready to start school Monday morning. Della was on the verge of tears, so he took her hand and led her into the kitchen. He flipped the calendar to December and tapped it.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I will be back. Never doubt me, Della.”
She nodded, unable to speak. She held out her hands to him in a pleading gesture that went right to his heart, then lowered them to her sides, her dark eyes deep pools of worry. He took her by the shoulders, running his hands down them, committing to memory the feel of her, as if he could ever forget.
“Go to Winter Quarters and talk to Dr. Isgreen. Tell him everything that happened to you.”
“I won’t. You can’t make me.”
“Then I’ll write him a letter and tell him to come here,” he said, knowing he was riding roughshod over the woman he adored. “Let me give you another unwelcome task. Talk to Uncle Karl. Make him tell you everything about your father. Learn all you can.”
“I will not talk to Uncle Karl,” she said, and her chin went up. The look she gave him told Owen that a few thousand years ago, the Greeks must truly have struck terror in the Medes and Persians.
“Think about it, m cara. Above all, it’s time for you to grieve a good man. And write to me. I’m going to miss you and your lovely bones.”
She laughed at that, which suggested all was not lost, not if he did what he said he would and did not add to his felonies by continuing to like mining.
He kissed her hard on the mouth, and she threw her arms around him and kissed him back. “I still won’t visit my uncle,” she said, but she softened her words with another kiss, and one more for good luck.
She took his hand and pressed it to her heart. “Be careful, and for heaven’s sake, my love, start singing.”
“Only if you do what I ask.” He could bargain with the best of them. He wasn’t Welsh for nothing.
“Ask?” She gave him that flinty glare again. “You are making demands on me. I will remind you that women have the vote in Utah, and I am not entirely powerless.”
Hardly. What she lacked in logic, she made up for with another kiss.
“I will visit Dr. Isgreen, and you will return here singing,” she said.
“And your uncle?” He was enjoying this Della.
“I have my limits. You’re at the outer edge right now, my man.”
He smiled at that. He picked up his valise, put on his hat, doffed it in a grand gesture, and left without a backward glance. He was on his outer edge too, and it would never do to look back.
He did look back at the corner. She still stood on the porch, even though the wind had picked up and blew cold. She raised her hand in farewell. He waved to her. He stood there until she went inside and closed the door.
Chapter 35
L
Take that, Owen Davis, you bully, Della thought as she walked Angharad to Maeser School on Monday morning and enrolled her, to Principal Holyoke’s delight.
After escorting them to the door of Miss Wilkins’s classroom, where Angharad’s teacher greeted her with a beaming smile, Mr. Holyoke walked Della to the main door and promised to see what he might find in the way of school district employment for her.
She started for her house, then let the realization wash over her that there was no need to hurry anywhere. Owen was back in Knightville and probably eating crackers and old cheese. He was a terrible cook. Unwilling to deprive Mrs. Tate of the weekly two dollars, she had ordered Owen to continue the arrangement, except that this time Mrs. Tate would provide him with supper and a lunch for his tin pail.
She knew he would follow through, because he was Owen, well aware how much the Tates needed the extra money, and he did like to eat. And because he was Owen, she knew he would find a way to increase his weekly tab to three dollars.
Della switched from a walk to an amble. She allowed herself a flash of anger at Owen Davis. Too bad she couldn’t give Mrs. Tate a few dollars more to rail at him regularly for thinking he could bring back dead friends by making a mine safer somewhere far distant from Winter Quarters.
She wanted to stay angry with him, but she couldn’t. She loved the rascal to distraction, and she honestly admitted that he had every right to grieve for his friends in his own way, as she now had the right and duty to grieve for her father, even after all these years.
Her amble took her to the park. The leaves were gone now and the creek dried up, but she sat there anyway, bowed her head, and cried for Frederick Anders.
She began with a silent plea for his forgiveness, something she had done countless times. To her surprise, this time her mind didn’t turn her into a child again and force her to relive the quarrel, flouncing away from her father and shouting angry, unforgettable words, a sorry spectacle never repeated out loud until she shared them with her husband at the Banner Mine. She acknowledged she felt sad and wounded, and perhaps that was all right too.
Hands to her face, she allowed herself the privilege of mourning a good man. She thought of her years in an even harder apprenticeship in Salt La
ke City, sad beyond belief and then filled with anger that Papa would dare die and leave her at the mercy of his relatives. Fearsome remorse for even thinking she could feel such anger against the man she loved always followed. Who understood that? She didn’t then, but she began to understand a little now because she was almost twenty-five and thoughtful, and not twelve and ruled by younger emotions.
All these conflicting feelings bombarded her and left her shaken. Maybe she did need to visit Dr. Isgreen in Winter Quarters. Maybe she needed a medical opinion on her brain, if he could offer one.
Back home, she wrote a letter to Dr. Isgreen, asking when she and Angharad could come to Winter Quarters, because she needed to talk. She found a stamp and walked to the post office, breathing deep of the winter air. She sent the letter on its way and discovered there was mail for her.
“Been saving it, Mrs. Davis,” the man behind the counter said. “I didn’t have a forwarding address.”
She arranged for delivery again and took the mail. One letter for Owen was from Gomer Thomas in Salt Lake City that she forwarded to Knightville. She wanted to toss it because she remembered Mr. Thomas was Utah’s chief mine inspector. What business could he have with her rascal husband?
The other letter was addressed to her, a thick envelope on fine paper, from Mrs. Kristina Aho. She gave a gasp of delight—she knew Auerbach’s sold wonderful stationery for all occasions, including weddings—and opened it on the spot.
“Kristina, you did it,” Della said out loud. She found a bench by a wall of mailboxes and opened the inside envelope, an invitation to a wedding at the First Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake.
She glanced at the date, afraid she had missed it, but no, Kristina Aho, widowed too young by coal, wished the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. Owen Davis and Angharad Davis’s company at a wedding this coming Saturday. Still in the post office, Della bought a penny card and accepted with equal pleasure for her and Angharad. She sent the postcard on its way, pleased that Kristina’s life would be easier and that Pekka and Reet would have a father.
A wedding coming right up meant a trip to Provo Cooperative Mercantile Institution, where her practical nature reigned triumphant with bath towels and washcloths. Gift wrapping only cost a dime, so she indulged.