by BJ Hoff
Jonathan nodded, immeasurably grateful for this loyal friend who was always there when needed. He heard Figaro barking in back of the house, but he would have to wait. Later he would go to him, but not now.
Maggie’s father met them on the porch, sweeping Maggie into his arms and then shaking Jonathan’s hand. Inside, he pulled Maggie close again, his eyes meeting Jonathan’s over the top of her head. The devastation on the older man’s craggy face wrenched Jonathan’s heart and set off a warning bell.
Maggie’s brother, Ray, was standing in front of the window, his eyes red, his youthful expression one of pain and bewilderment.
Jonathan nodded to him, and the boy, clearly awkward with this newly changed relationship with his schoolteacher mumbled something too low to catch.
“’Tis good you’ve come,” Matthew said, his voice hoarse.
“Eva Grace—how is she?” Maggie asked. “Has she had the baby yet?”
Her father turned ashen. He made a sound like he was about to choke but no words came.
Just then Maggie’s mother appeared in the doorway, holding a small bundle swaddled in blankets.
A soft “oh” escaped Maggie, and she went to her mother.
Jonathan had never seen Kate MacAuley in such a state. She looked positively…destroyed. Haggard. Her eyes were dark caverns, her face ashen, the skin so tight over her features it might crack. Her fair hair, usually neatly secured at the nape of her neck, had come loose and fell in limp strands.
Tears slowly tracked down her face as she stood watching them.
“Mum?”
Jonathan heard the tremor in Maggie’s voice and quickly went to stand behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder, felt her trembling, and strengthened his grip.
“Eva Grace has a baby girl,” announced Kate MacAuley in a voice that sounded as if she couldn’t quite get her breath. “Such a tiny thing…but the doctor says she’s healthy.”
She smoothed the blanket away from the baby’s face for Maggie to see.
Maggie touched the baby’s face with one finger. “Oh, she’s so small!”
Kate held the sleeping infant up for Jonathan to see.
“But so pretty. And Evie? How is she?” Maggie asked.
Her mother brought the baby back to her chest, wrapping it as close as she could against her heart, burying her face in the small bundle.
Behind him Jonathan heard Matthew groan.
“Maggie…your sister is gone,” he said.
Stunned, Jonathan turned to look at him.
“Just a few minutes after the baby was delivered,” Matthew added, his words thick and slurred. “Eva Grace…she’s gone.”
Jonathan stared at him and then whipped around to catch Maggie as she cried out and swayed against him.
The next few hours were a nightmare unlike anything Maggie had ever imagined. The room wheeled as she stood beside her sister’s lifeless form on the bed where she’d given birth. The same bed she’d slept in as a child.
Guilt thundered in on Maggie. A suffocating guilt, that she hadn’t been here when her sister died. Guilt that she had worried about the baby more than she had Eva Grace. Fear that the blows Evie had suffered at the punishing hands of Richard Barlow might have damaged her unborn child had dogged her all throughout her sister’s pregnancy. But she had focused most of her concern on the baby rather than Evie, in spite of Dr. Gordon’s concern about toxemia.
Maggie stood very still, yet the room seemed to rock beneath her. She reached for something to hold on to and felt Jonathan’s arm go around her waist, holding her steady. She was aware of her mother’s ragged keening on the other side of the bed, her hands covering her face…her father’s struggle to maintain his self-control as his features crumbled with the effort…her younger brother’s absence from the room…her own thoughts, the memories that had drifted in and out of her mind throughout the train ride home.
How could it be that the still, waxen form on the bed was her sister? Only days before, at the wedding, Evie had teased her, laughed with her, squeezed her hands, and wished her happiness.
Eva Grace was only twenty-seven years old. Three years older than Maggie. It hadn’t been that long ago that Evie had been the belle of Skingle Creek, the loveliest girl in town, the brightest light of the family, the darling of most everyone who knew her. Vivacious and pretty and clever with an uncompromising sense of fairness and a precocious sense of humor. Eva Grace MacAuley had sparkled. She had been impossible to resist. Everyone loved her.
This couldn’t be her sister. This swollen body with the bruised eyes that would never again meet her gaze with the glint of a shared secret or a private joke. Those still hands that had held her baby daughter for only a few moments and never would again.
Maggie shook as she stared down at the bed where death had stolen a daughter, a sister, and a young mother…where one life had ended and another had begun…where dreams had died and hope had departed. There was nothing left here except cold emptiness and terrible grief that mocked the echoes of a young girl’s laughter and the memory of her bright dreams.
“She’s with God now, Maggie.”
She looked at Jonathan. “But I don’t want her with God. She should be here…with us…with her baby.”
She saw that her words caused him pain, but she could do nothing but shake her head and hug her arms to herself.
Across the room the baby whimpered.
Maggie looked to see Dr. Gordon standing at the window, cradling the infant in her arms, touching a small, nippled bottle to the baby’s mouth in an effort to feed her.
She watched them for a moment and then eased away from Jonathan to bend and kiss her sister’s forehead.
She was cold.
Evie hated being cold.
She straightened then, went into her husband’s arms, and allowed herself to weep against him, but only for a moment. Finally she turned, her gaze at first resting on her mother, hunched and still weeping at Evie’s bedside. She looked at her father, his hand on his wife’s shoulder, his usually strong features slack with bewilderment and grief.
She turned back to Jonathan, gripped his forearms for a moment, met his eyes, and nodded to assure him she wouldn’t fly apart.
“Go to Ray,” she murmured. “He doesn’t know how to be…what to do.”
She saw the hesitation in his eyes, his reluctance to leave her. “Please, Jonathan,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”
As soon as he turned to go, Maggie went to her parents, gathered them into her embrace, and held them while they wept.
She didn’t allow herself to look at her lifeless sister again. Not even once.
Chapter Four
The Long Goodbye
The pains of death are past,
Labour and sorrow cease,
And Life’s long warfare closed at last,
Thy soul is found in peace.
James Montgomery
The evening of the wake for Eva Grace the wind was still up, driving the snow in wild gusts. It was a bitter, raw night, but the weather didn’t stop the people of Skingle Creek from showing up at the MacAuleys to pay their respects. Until well after midnight a steady stream of the town’s residents moved in and out.
There was no pretense at Irish merriment at this wake, only lighted candles and the prayers and shared tears of those who visited. Jonathan stood with the family for the duration, and he felt certain that almost everyone in town had stopped in at one time or another. Even the few newcomers who might not have known Eva Grace had come out of respect for Matthew and Kate.
Finally the house was quiet, the visitors gone, the family abed for a few brief hours. In the deeply shadowed living room, lit now by a few flickering candles, Jonathan stood with Maggie beside the coffin. He had not seen her weep even once throughout the evening, although he knew that only the slenderest of threads was holding her together.
Maggie’s other sister, Nell Frances, was unable to make the trip from Indiana because of the impendi
ng birth of her baby, due any day now. Earlier Maggie had admitted to him how keenly she felt the absence of her other sister. She had confided something else to him as well: that not having the chance to say goodbye to Eva Grace before she passed on was a regret she feared she would always live with.
She leaned against his shoulder, and he felt her tremble as she repeated what she’d told him earlier. “Oh, Jonathan, if only I could have been here at the end,” she murmured in the darkness. “I’ll always wish I’d been with her.”
She broke down then, and in a way Jonathan was relieved. Even as a child Maggie had been able to steel herself in the worst of situations, had managed to keep her emotions under control in order to be strong for everyone else. But her self-control hadn’t always worked for her good. More than once he’d feared she might eventually shatter, so taut was she drawn against the weight of her own sorrow.
She needed to grieve. No one was meant to suppress this level of pain indefinitely. So when she tried to pull away and recover herself, he steered her back to him. “No, sweetheart,” he said softly. “You don’t have to be strong. Not now. Not with me.”
Later, as she bent to touch her lips to her sister’s forehead for one final goodbye, he stood behind her, grasping her shoulders, for she was trembling again, harder this time. When had she last had anything to eat? Had she eaten? He’d been so preoccupied for hours that he hadn’t eaten and hadn’t paid attention to whether Maggie had.
She turned back to him and sighed. “Oh Jonathan…she’s so cold…and you know how Evie hated being cold.”
Jonathan felt powerless. From the first, once he realized that he loved Maggie, he’d been seized with a fierce desire to take care of her, to make her happy, to keep her isolated from hurt. And now to see her like this, to see the pain wounding her heart and searing her spirit and know there was nothing he could do to ease her agony was almost unbearable.
But at least he could see to her physical needs. With great effort he coaxed her into the kitchen where he fixed her a plate with some of the food brought in earlier.
“I can’t eat,” she said dully.
“You must eat, sweetheart. We both will. We must.”
With him sitting across from her, watching, she managed a few bites, as did he. They ate without speaking until Maggie broke the silence. “Da wants you to say a few words tomorrow at the cemetery.”
Jonathan nodded. “I know. He asked me tonight.”
“I’d like that too, Jonathan. Evie always held you in such high regard. And she was…so happy for us when I told her you’d asked me to marry you.”
In truth, according to Maggie, Jonathan was actually indebted to her sister for convincing Maggie to face her feelings for him rather than deny them. He wished now he had thanked Eva Grace for the part she’d played in bringing them together.
“If you’d rather not do that, Jonathan, I’d understand—”
He reached across the table and took her hand. “It’s all right, Maggie. Of course I’ll do it.”
They were clearing the table when they heard the baby cry out. A stricken look froze Maggie’s features, and she stopped, her gaze darting to the direction of her parents’ bedroom. A moment later the baby quieted, and they heard the sound of Kate’s voice as she crooned softly.
“Poor wee thing. Everyone’s been too preoccupied, too sad, to give her the attention she needs. This is so hard for Mum. It’s too much for her,” Maggie said.
“Your mother is stronger than you think, sweetheart. She’ll get through this.”
She looked at him.
“She will, Maggie. And so will we. Now why don’t you go see if Kate needs any help? She might need a bottle warmed.”
A few moments later Maggie came back carrying the baby. The infant was still wailing. “I told Mum to go back to bed, that we’d feed—”
She broke off, her eyes brimming with dismay. “Oh, Jonathan! The poor wee babe doesn’t even have a name!”
He went to her. “She will have a name. And soon, I’m sure. You know Eva Grace’s child will never be neglected.” Awkwardly he reached to take the baby. This was strange territory for him. From time to time he’d held an infant sibling of one of his students during home visits, but even that had been awhile ago.
“I’ll hold her while you warm a bottle,” he said, studying the warm, squirming bundle in his arms. To his relief the baby’s cries quieted to soft sobbing. Her eyes were open, her little fists suspended in the air.
“Isn’t she a pretty thing though?” Maggie observed, a sad smile touching her lips.
“She is indeed,” he said, carefully taking a chair at the table. “And you know, I believe I can already see Eva Grace in her. The blue eyes. All that blond hair. And, look, Maggie! She has a dimple beside her mouth just like Eva Grace.”
Maggie bent to look. “Why so she does! Oh, I’m so glad Evie got to see her. And Mum said—” She stopped to wipe the wetness from her eyes before going on. “Mum said she was able to hold her for a few minutes.”
Jonathan balanced the baby in the crook of his arm and touched his free hand to Maggie’s cheek. “Maggie, you have to believe that Eva Grace died in peace. She saw that her child was whole and healthy. She knew she’d be well taken care of by her family. And as for Eva Grace herself, she’s known the Lord from the time she was a child. Try to find comfort in that…and in the baby. That’s what Eva Grace would want.”
Maggie nodded and straightened. “I know,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Perhaps after tomorrow…” She turned away and went to the stove to get a warming pan.
Jonathan tucked the baby a little closer. He understood what Maggie meant by “after tomorrow.” Before they could even begin to think about the days ahead, they must say that last goodbye. He glanced down at the infant in his arms and had all he could do not to weep for the motherless, nameless child he was holding. How she would have loved you if she’d only had the chance…
But Eva Grace had had the chance to love her baby. She had loved her enough to flee the violence of an abusive husband for the sake of her child, loved her enough to risk her own life carrying her, enough to sacrifice her life so her tiny daughter could live. She had known the incredible love that only a mother could begin to understand even if only for a brief few months. And at the last, when she’d heard her baby’s first cries, surely that love had overcome any fear she might have experienced, any pain she might have suffered.
Please, God, let it be so.
By the morning of the funeral it was no longer snowing. A silent, severe cold settled over the mountains, turning deep ridges of snow and piles of slush into ice.
Kate MacAuley sat in her bedroom alone, the first time she’d really been alone since Eva Grace’s death. Everyone else was busy readying the house for the service, putting up the food that continued to be carried in, one dish after another. Tidying the kitchen. Sweeping out the cinders and debris tracked in the day before. All the things needing to be done before the service. She had been firmly ordered in here by Matthew and Maggie and told to rest.
Merciful Lord, how could she rest? Indeed, would she ever truly rest again? To rest meant being able to draw a breath without pain seizing her heart, being able to pray without falling to pieces in a spasm of weeping, being able to sleep without seeing her daughter nearly out of her head with pain, giving a tortured birth to a baby daughter she had held only minutes before giving up her own life.
Perhaps her only true rest would be found, eventually, in her own draped wooden casket like the one now on view in the front room.
She was shaking again. Kate was cold all the time now. In truth, she couldn’t think of Eva Grace at all without being gripped with this bone-numbing cold. She reached into the pocket of her best dress and pulled out the letter Eva Grace had left for Maggie, the letter she’d written days before, even before Maggie’s wedding. Kate knew what was in it. Evie had told her at the beginning of her labor pains, told her what she’d written to her sister an
d begging Kate to understand why.
“Just in case,” she’d said, sending an icy coil of fear twisting through Kate.
Looking back, she was convinced her daughter had known or at least had suspected what was ahead for her. Didn’t that account for her resolve to set her thoughts down on paper and her insistence that Kate promise to give the letter to Maggie?
If nothing else, she had feared the worst. And Kate realized now that she had shared that fear. A pall had hung over her own anticipation of the baby almost from the day Dr. Gordon told them about the toxemia. The dreaded blood poisoning wasn’t unknown to Kate. Too many women right here in Skingle Creek, small town though it was, had died of the same vicious illness.
Rubbing the letter between her fingers, Kate was struck by guilt. She should have given it to Maggie by now—before now. But she had thought to wait for the best time. She was still waiting. Such a hard thing Eva Grace had asked her to do. Kate knew she was acting against her daughter’s wishes by withholding the letter, but as yet she couldn’t bring herself to pass it on. It was so…final. But her conscience increasingly tormented her, and she knew she could no longer delay the inevitable. Today, after the burial, she would give Maggie the letter.
Please, God, give me…and Maggie…the strength to do the right thing.
Chapter Five
A Message from Eva Grace
At length the harp is broken;
And the spirit in its strings,
As the last decree is spoken,
To its source exulting springs.
Richard D’Alton Williams
The Protestant cemetery lay at the other end of town from the company houses and halfway up Medders Hill, a difficult, tiring trek even in the best of weather. The snow and ice made it even more arduous and unsafe, but it was obvious that most of the town’s families were accompanying the MacAuleys to the grave site.