by Lynn Austin
‘‘What am I going to do without him?’’ I wept.
Aunt Batty took me in her arms. ‘‘You’ve been depending on Gabe’s help,’’ she said gently, ‘‘instead of on God’s. But He knows all about how you feel. Jesus suffered the pain of being abandoned when He hung on the cross for us. He cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ He made that sacrifice so that He could say to His children, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ When everyone else is gone, Eliza, God is still here.’’
She led me back to a chair and sat me down, then took over cooking the eggs. ‘‘God knew when it was time for Gabe to leave,’’ she continued, ‘‘just like He knew when it was time for Walter to go. God did it so that you and I would both turn to Him for strength and discover the strength He’s been trying to build inside us all this time. Look back on your life, Toots, and think about all the experiences God gave you—the good ones and the bad ones—and you’ll see how they’ve shaped you into the woman you are today. Accept those experiences as His daily bread. Thank Him for them. Then be the person He created you to be. Growing up without a home has given you the will and the determination you’ll need to run this place....And your juggling skills will come in handy, too.’’
Aunt Batty smiled as she tried to juggle the broken eggshells, and I had to laugh as they all fell to the tabletop. She giggled along with me.
‘‘Will you teach me how to do that sometime, Toots?’’ she asked.
‘‘Sure, Aunt Batty.’’
She gave the eggs in the frying pan a quick stir, then took a loaf of bread out of the bread box and began slicing it for toast. ‘‘Listen,’’ she said, ‘‘all these troubles you’ve been having aren’t a punishment from God. He wants to use them to draw you closer to himself—just like your mama’s illness, which was a terrible tragedy, forced you to draw closer to your daddy.’’
I dried my eyes and stood up to help her. ‘‘I guess I haven’t thought much about God these past few years,’’ I said. ‘‘The way my father-in-law talked about God made Him seem like somebody I didn’t really want to know.’’
‘‘That’s because Frank read the Bible and went to church, but he didn’t know God. He just had religion. Eliza, it’s good that you know about the Bible and that your daddy took you to church, but you need to get to know God.’’
‘‘How do I do that?’’
‘‘Ask Him for help when you need it. Talk things over with Him the same way you used to talk with your Aunt Peanut or with Gabe. You have to learn to trust God to catch you when you feel like you’re going to fall, just like those acrobats trusted each other. God may be big and strong, but He’ll never crush you. Everything God does in our lives is perfect, even if doesn’t always look that way on the outside. Your friends in the sideshow taught you that.’’
‘‘I miss them all so much,’’ I said. ‘‘They were my family, and I haven’t been able to talk about any of them for ten years.’’
‘‘You’ll miss Gabe, too,’’ she said, laying her hand on my shoulder. ‘‘We all will. But even if Gabe was still here, he couldn’t meet all of your needs. Only God can do that. Gabe could help you work in the orchard, but only God can make the apples grow.’’
Later that morning I took a walk out in the orchard. I knew it was high time I talked to God. I told Him all the things I was sorry for, all the things I was afraid of, and I asked Him to help me keep this orchard going. When I opened my eyes and looked around, I saw that Aunt Batty was right—God was right there beside me. The tree branches were His hands, reaching out to me—and He held the gift of an apple in every single one of them.
One cool, fall morning the apple pickers began to arrive. At first I felt nervous about trying to manage the harvest all by myself, but then I started thinking about how smoothly the Bennett Brothers’ Circus had run. I realized that no one person had tried to run that huge operation all alone, but everyone had worked together like a team, each person doing the job he did best. Some of my apple pickers had been coming to Wyatt Orchards for years and years and probably knew a lot more about it than I did, so I divvied up the work and paid the experienced ones a little bit extra to be my foremen. They thought of things I would have forgotten all about and kept me from making a lot of mistakes.
When it came time to take the apples to the open-air market, I thought about the fast-talking ballyhoo of the sideshow hawker with his ‘‘Hurry, hurry...don’t miss your chance,’’and when I realized that those fast-talking apple buyers were putting on an act just like that hawker, I wasn’t afraid of them anymore. Aunt Peanut and Gloria the fat lady and Albert the albino had faced all those gawking people with strength and dignity, knowing they were just as good as the next fellow, so I stood tall and proud, too, when those buyers started gawking at me, a woman selling apples. I got the price I wanted and made enough money to pay my workers and buy the coal and other supplies my family would need for the winter. We didn’t have any extras, but thank God we had enough.
Once I’d sold the apples, I swallowed my pride and went over to talk to Alvin Greer and some of my other neighbors about working together to slaughter the pigs and pick the corn. I let my neighbors borrow some of Frank’s fancy equipment, and asked them for their advice about running things in return. Frank Wyatt had lived alone, worked alone, and died alone, and I made up my mind I would never be like him.
All through the harvest, Aunt Batty worked like a trooper right alongside me. The kids and I had all grown to love her, and since she’d retired from writing books, I begged her to stay with us and live with us and be our adopted grandmother. My daddy had never been very good at telling me he loved me, but I remembered how I’d longed to hear him say it, and I started telling my kids I loved them—all the time. I told Aunt Batty, too.
Gradually, the pain I felt over losing Gabe began to heal—just as my grief had healed after Sam died. I still got an empty feeling whenever I went into the workshop where Gabe used to sleep, or whenever I saw Myrtle and her calf, or when I watched the boys push Becky on her swing. But I only thought about Gabe once or twice a day now, instead of once or twice every hour, so I knew that my grief was slowly easing. Maybe one of these days I wouldn’t think about him at all.
Around Thanksgiving time, the strangest letter came in the mail one day from the United States Army in Washington, D.C. It was addressed to Frank Wyatt, but I tore it open and quickly scanned it to get the gist of it.
It said the government was very sorry to inform Frank, but his son Matthew Wyatt had died in the war after all, in the Battle of St. Mihiel. Some new information had come to light after all this time, which revealed that a mistake had been made. The army now had evidence to prove that Matthew Wyatt’s remains had been erroneously identified as another man’s and were laid to rest in a cemetery in France under the wrong name. The army regretted the mistake and any unnecessary grief this news might cause.
I said a little prayer before I showed the letter to Aunt Batty, knowing how much she had loved Matthew, and knowing she might take this news kind of hard. She looked up at me with tears in her eyes after she’d read it and said, ‘‘I think you’d better show this to John Wakefield right away, Toots. I think this is the answer to your prayers.’’
As I drove into town, I couldn’t help but wonder if Gabe had something to do with this strange turn of events. I quickly pushed the thought from my mind, though. I’d learned over the past few months to push all thoughts of Gabe aside as quickly as they came. The less I thought about him, the better off I was.
I found Mr. Wakefield working behind his desk in his cluttered office. ‘‘You look happier than I’ve seen you looking in a long time, Mrs. Wyatt,’’ he said as he welcomed me in. ‘‘Are you bringing good news?’’
‘‘Well, I think so...In a way.’’ I handed him the letter, then sat down to wait while he read it. He removed his spectacles when he finished and shook his head.
‘‘What a pity. So often in my line of work I
find that good news comes all wrapped up in the same package with tragic news...and that’s true in this case, too, isn’t it? Poor Matthew.’’
‘‘I know. Aunt Batty told me so much about him that I almost feel as if I knew him...even though I never met him.’’
‘‘Your husband’s family has seen a great deal of tragedy, Mrs. Wyatt. Let’s hope that it’s all behind you now.’’ His mournful, hound-dog face brightened a bit. ‘‘Because now that we have this letter, I’ll finally be able to settle Frank’s estate. The orchard is all yours, Eliza. Free and clear.’’
I jumped out of my chair and gave John Wakefield a big old hug.
‘‘I’ve found our Christmas tree,’’ Aunt Batty announced a few days before Christmas. She’d been out tramping around in the snow-covered woods near Walter’s Pond for the past couple of days, searching for one. ‘‘It’s going to take all five of us to haul it home, though,’’ she said, ‘‘so everybody dress warm. And Luke, we’ll need to borrow your sled.’’
‘‘Maybe Winky could pull it for us,’’ Becky said, ‘‘like a reindeer!’’ Everyone laughed—except Winky.
There were six inches of snow on the ground, so the kids piled onto Luke’s sled and rode it to the bottom of the hill, whooping and squealing all the way down. They waited beside the frozen pond for Aunt Batty and me to catch up with them.
‘‘Oh, aren’t the woods beautiful?’’ I said as we followed her into the grove of trees. The snow looked fresh and clean and white, and it sparkled in the sunlight like sequins on a circus costume. Winky picked up a trail of some kind and wandered into the bushes with his nose to the ground.
‘‘I hope he’s not going to rouse another skunk,’’ Aunt Batty said. Against my will, I thought of Gabe and felt a wave of sadness.
‘‘Hey, look! What kind of animal tracks are these?’’ Luke asked as he crouched beside the path.
‘‘I have a book at home with pictures of all kinds of animal prints,’’ Aunt Batty told him. ‘‘You boys study those carefully and remember what they look like so you can look them up when we get home.’’
‘‘You sound just like a schoolmarm,’’ I teased. ‘‘And you thought you’d never be one.’’
‘‘Well, who would have ever thought!’’ She laughed, shaking her head.
We had walked a little further when Jimmy suddenly stopped. ‘‘Whoa, these are man-size footprints!’’ he said. We all huddled around to see. Jimmy was right—the trail of prints that led off into the bushes where Winky had disappeared were much too large to have been made by Aunt Batty’s feet. I heard Winky barking in the distance.
‘‘Probably another hobo,’’ I said, ‘‘looking for firewood and a warm place to camp.’’ Then I quickly changed the subject before someone mentioned Gabe. ‘‘This is a pretty little clearing, isn’t it?’’ I asked. ‘‘We should come down here for a picnic next summer. So how much farther to this tree of yours, Aunt Batty?’’ The path was growing narrower, making it hard for Luke to pull his sled.
‘‘That’s our Christmas tree right there,’’ she said, pointing. ‘‘Think you boys can chop it down for us?’’
She let Jimmy and Luke take turns chopping, and by the time we’d all heaved and shoved that snow-covered pine tree onto the sled and up the hill to the house, we were all sticky with pitch and soaking wet from the snow that coated the branches. Aunt Batty made hot apple cider to warm us up. We set up the tree in the parlor and decorated it that night after supper using a box of ornaments I’d found in the attic.
‘‘These decorations belonged to Lydia—your grandmother,’’ Aunt Batty explained to the kids as they unwrapped the shining glass balls from their tissue paper wrappings. ‘‘Your grandma was a beautiful woman and she loved beautiful things.’’ Aunt Batty sat on the sofa, stringing popcorn. Every time she dropped a piece, Winky gobbled it up.
‘‘Oh, look, an angel,’’ I said, pulling it from the carton. ‘‘This should go on the very top, don’t you think? Come here, Becky, and I’ll boost you up.’’
‘‘We had a real angel come and stay with us and help us once, didn’t we?’’ she said as I lifted her in my arms. I thought about the night she’d poked Gabe in the hand with her fork to see if he was real and I smiled, even though my eyes filled with tears.
‘‘Yes, we sure did. Like Aunt Batty said, God sends us His messengers to let us know that He cares about us.’’
When we’d finished decorating the tree, the kids gathered around Aunt Batty as she read the Christmas story from the Bible. I sat in my rocking chair with fat old Queen Esther purring away on my lap and looked at my beautiful, crazy family. I’d had the idea that a family should be perfect, with a pretty mama and a handsome daddy and kids that were all sugary-sweet and dressed up real nice. A family couldn’t possibly have a chain-smoking chimpanzee, a clown for a daddy, and a midget for a mama. But as I looked at my three ragamuffin kids in their hand-me-downs, at funny old Aunt Batty with her nutty ways, at our one-eyed hunting dog and two overweight cats with mittens for kittens, I was sure of two things—what I had with Daddy and Aunt Peanut was a family, and so was this. I loved every one of them. Wyatt Orchards wasn’t my home, this house wasn’t even my home. Home is where your family is—the people you love and who love you. And even if I lost everything I owned tomorrow, I’d still have riches beyond measure.
My thoughts made me so teary-eyed that I decided to take the scuttle full of cinders outside to empty it before someone noticed that I was crying. I needed to fetch one last pail of coal before heading up to bed, anyway.
My mind was a hundred miles away as I walked out onto the back porch, so when the large shape of a man suddenly emerged from the shadows it scared me half to death! I dropped the coal scuttle down the steps as I cried out.
‘‘I’m sorry, Eliza!’’ a soft, familiar voice said. ‘‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’’
‘‘Gabe?’’
It was him! The next moment I was in his arms, kissing him like I had on that frosty spring morning in the orchard more than six months ago. I thought I must be dreaming, but I felt the grip of his strong arms around me, felt the passion and warmth of his kiss, and I knew that Gabe was real. I also knew that my heart hadn’t changed in the months he had been gone. I still loved him, plain and simple.
Gabe pulled away first and looked into my eyes. ‘‘I need to explain why I left, Eliza. I want to tell you everything this time. No more lies. My real name isn’t Gabriel Harper. It’s Matthew—’’
‘‘No!Stop right there!’’
I freed myself from his arms. The joy I’d felt only seconds before turned to anger. I wouldn’t let him deceive me a second time.
‘‘I know very well you’re not Matthew Wyatt,’’ I said, seizing his right hand. ‘‘The real Matthew had part of his finger missing! The real Matthew Wyatt is dead!’’
‘‘I know he’s dead,’’ Gabe said softly. ‘‘He was my best friend...and he died saving my life. My name is Matthew Willis. My father is Edmund Willis, an attorney and political boss in Albany, New York. That’s where I grew up.’’
He sounded sincere, but I was still wary of trusting him. I studied him as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. His hair needed to be trimmed again, and his chin had a day’s growth of beard on it. He looked tired—and worried.
‘‘The sheriff said you tried to steal my brother-in-law’s name and his identity,’’ I said. ‘‘Is that true?’’
‘‘Yes, it’s true. I did ‘steal’ it, as you say. And I’d like to explain to you how and why that happened....But can we go inside first, where it’s warm? I’ve been standing out here for a couple of hours now, trying to get up the courage to knock on your door.’’ Gabe stood with his shoulders all hunched up and I could see him shivering, but I still hesitated.
‘‘No. I don’t want you to come inside yet, Gabe. I don’t want my kids to know you’re here. You hurt them awfully bad when you left us like you did, without a word of apology or explana
tion.’’
‘‘But I want to explain it to them now—’’
‘‘No. You’ll have to explain it to me, first. Go build a fire in the workshop, and I’ll come out and hear your story after they’re in bed.’’
It was hard not to let my excitement—or my fear—show as I went through the nightly routine of tucking my kids into bed. I could still feel Gabe’s lips on mine, his arms holding me tightly, and my heart wanted to soar like the Flying Falangas on their trapezes. But I warned my heart not to even shinny up that rope again until I’d heard Gabe’s story.
I tried to be real quiet as I put on my coat and boots to go back outside, but Winky waddled out to the kitchen and gave me away when he started barking. A moment later, Aunt Batty stuck her fluffy head out of her bedroom door. She looked at me curiously, and before I even had a chance to come up with an excuse for why I was going outside, she broke into a huge grin.
‘‘Gabe’s back, isn’t he!’’ she said. I nodded sheepishly. ‘‘Oh, I just knew it! I could tell by the way Winky was barking this afternoon that those footprints belonged to someone he knew!’’ She gave me a quick hug, then said, ‘‘Well, don’t just stand there—go to him!’’
I brought Winky with me. It wasn’t so much my choice as his. As soon as Winky saw Gabe sitting on the cot in the workshop he jumped into his arms and started licking him all over, his stubby tail whirling in happy circles. Gabe laughed—that deep, rumbling laugh that I loved so much—and at that moment he could have told me he was Al Capone or ‘‘Baby Face’’ Nelson and I wouldn’t have cared. But I had a feeling that I would hear the truth this time. I sat down on the chair across from him.
‘‘I found your notebook in the stove,’’ I told him. ‘‘It didn’t burn up. Was that the true story of why you left home?’’