The Song Weaver

by BJ Hoff

  “Ken told me about your sister, Maggie. I’m so terribly sorry. I know I can never take her place, but you and I are going to be good friends, don’t you think? Perhaps that will help at least a little.”

  Maggie warmed to the goodness in that kind, sincere face. “It will help a lot, Anna.”

  Their men came bustling into the dining room just then, laughing and talking in a way that squeezed Maggie’s heart. It occurred to her in that moment that this was the way a house ought to sound: filled with the laughter of family and close friends.

  She met Jonathan’s eyes across the room, and not for the first time, she caught the sense that he knew her thoughts and shared them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  An Unwelcome Letter

  Look to the road of unmarked place

  And not the one well-known,

  Leave fear behind, step out in faith–

  You do not walk alone.

  Anonymous

  The euphoria of the weekend turned out to be short-lived.

  On Monday, Jonathan dropped Maggie off at her parents’ house before going on to the company store to pick up the mail and a few groceries. When he returned, he was frowning.

  Maggie took one look at his face and knew something was wrong. Uneasiness clenched her stomach, but when she would have questioned him, the small shake of his head told her that whatever it was would have to wait until they were alone.

  Having just had Sunday dinner all together the day before, they hadn’t planned on staying at Maggie’s parents for supper today, so a few minutes after Jonathan’s return from the store they prepared to leave for home.

  First, though, they waited for Maggie’s mother to read the letter from Nell Frances that Jonathan had brought along with their mail. Maggie’s sister had had her baby, a third little girl, only two weeks after Gracie was born. Today’s letter indicated that the baby was doing well, and they hoped to make a visit home when the winter weather broke.

  Maggie knew a visit from her funny, outgoing sister would do their mother a world of good. Indeed, Nell Frances’s company would be good for the entire family, herself included. But right now she couldn’t concentrate on anything but the ominous expression on Jonathan’s face.

  The moment they pulled away from the house, she quizzed him.

  “Let’s wait until we get home,” he suggested, keeping his eyes on the road.

  Gracie stirred in her arms, and Maggie tucked the outer blanket more snugly about her, covering her face to protect her from the wind.

  “You’re obviously upset, Jonathan. I want to know why.”

  Even then he didn’t reply until she prompted him again. “Jonathan?”

  “There’s a letter from an attorney in Lexington.” He paused. “Richard Barlow’s attorney.”

  The name of Eva Grace’s brutal husband set off an alarm bell in Maggie. “Richard’s attorney? What does he want?”

  She watched Jonathan’s throat work as he swallowed. “Barlow is making plans to come for Gracie. The attorney didn’t say exactly when, just that Barlow intends to claim his daughter.”

  “No!” A wave of anger surged in Maggie. She put a hand to his arm. “He can’t do that! He can’t take Gracie, can he? After everything Richard did to Evie?”

  In reply, he merely shook his head.

  “Jonathan, there wasn’t a word from him after Evie died. Nothing! And he was notified. Your father saw to it, remember? He said that legally Richard had to be told about Eva’s death and Gracie’s birth. Yet he never contacted us, not once.”

  “Still, we knew this could happen.”

  “No! I thought when we didn’t hear from him…I thought we wouldn’t hear. Oh, I can’t believe I was that naive.”

  “I should have prepared you better. I’m sorry, Maggie.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Maggie said. “I should have known he wouldn’t just walk away.”

  “Gracie is his daughter, Maggie.”

  “And Evie was his wife,” Maggie shot back. “But that didn’t stop him from beating her half to death. Jonathan, what are we going to do? We can’t let him take Gracie! You know what he did to Evie. There’s no telling what he’d do to a defenseless baby.”

  “Maggie, listen to me—”

  But Maggie was beyond listening. In truth, Jonathan’s calm was beginning to irritate her. This was no time to be calm, no time to be reasonable. Somehow they had to stop Richard Barlow. They had to!

  “As soon as we get Gracie home,” Jonathan said, “I’ll go back to the company store and call my father. We have to make certain this is handled in exactly the right way—legally. He’ll know what to do, Maggie. Try not to worry. He’ll take care of it.”

  “But your father—he’s not well, Jonathan.”

  “Don’t forget that I talked to him when we were in Lexington. He promised that his senior partner, Jeff Prescott, would investigate Barlow. We’ll be in good hands with Jeff. Don’t worry.”

  How could she not worry? “We can’t let Richard near Gracie. I wouldn’t put it past him to take her from us for sheer spite. You can’t imagine what he’s like. He’s an awful man!”

  He turned to her again. “Maggie, no one is going to take Gracie away from us. No one! I trust my father, and if he trusts Jeff Prescott, so do I. Besides, there’s nothing you and I can do. We have to let Jeff and my father handle this.” He paused and then added, “And they will handle it.”

  Maggie wished she felt as convinced as he sounded.

  “One other thing, sweetheart—”

  Maggie’s mind was racing, her thoughts so scrambled she didn’t answer him.

  “Maggie?”

  She looked at him.

  “I don’t think we should tell your parents about this. Your mother’s not strong as it is, and Matthew—well, you know how he’ll be.”

  At first Maggie agreed with him. But then a new thought set off another wave of panic. “How can we not tell them? Gracie is alone with Mum through the day while we’re at school. Oh, Jonathan, what are we going to do? We don’t dare leave them by themselves with no one else at the house!”

  He turned toward her, and Maggie saw her own fear reflected in his eyes.

  After he called Lexington and started home, Jonathan tried to think if there was anything more he could do. Had it not been for the obvious need to provide Maggie and the baby with some sort of around-the-clock protection, he might have felt a little less troubled after talking with his father. Jeff Prescott had unearthed some decidedly unsavory information about Barlow. Those findings, combined with the evidence of the beatings he’d inflicted on Eva Grace—documented by not only Maggie and her mother, but by Dr. Sally Gordon as well—should be enough to make any court refuse the man custody of Gracie.

  His father had assured him that Jeff would seek a restraining order against Barlow right away to keep him away from Gracie, and they would proceed from there to build a case against his gaining custody.

  But Jonathan wasn’t totally ignorant of how fickle the law could be. With Eva Grace deceased, there were only three people who had witnessed the evidence of Barlow’s mistreatment: three women, of whom two were family members and could only be expected to support Eva Grace’s account of Barlow’s beatings. Just how seriously a judge would consider the evidence against Gracie’s natural father was anyone’s guess.

  For the first time since he’d settled in Skingle Creek years before, Jonathan felt the remoteness and isolation of their small community. In Lexington he would have been able to work closely with his father and Jeff Prescott in building a case against Richard Barlow. He could have also arranged some manner of protection for Gracie until this entire ugly business was settled. As it was, he could stay in contact only by the occasional telephone call or letter, and there was really no one he could count on to provide an extra measure of security for Gracie.

  He found himself delaying his return home, wanting more than anything to have a solid plan in mind before facing Maggie.
He understood her fear. Understood it and shared it. Even though he’d never met Barlow, Maggie’s depiction of what had been done to her sister and her account of the day Barlow showed up and tried to take Eva Grace back to Lexington with him had been enough to convince him that they were dealing with a vicious, perhaps mentally disturbed or at least conscienceless man. Indeed the information that Jeff had uncovered made it clear that Barlow was not only abusive, but corrupt as well.

  How in the world did such a man convince his business associates—including his pastor and local congregation—that he was an upstanding Christian and an exemplary husband? For that matter, how had he managed to win over a young woman as astute as Eva Grace and convince her he was worthy of her love?

  It was growing dark, and the temperature had dropped considerably over the past couple of hours. But the chill that gripped Jonathan had nothing to do with the cold of the winter’s night. He couldn’t shake his memories of Maggie’s tragic sister. From child to young woman, Eva Grace had been lovely, bright, and full of promise, yet she had ended up destroyed by the very one who had once vowed to honor and cherish her.

  How can one human being do this to another, Lord? What kind of darkness twists the heart of a man like Richard Barlow to the extent that he would wreak such betrayal, such savagery, on his own wife?

  Maggie was right. If Barlow was capable of doing what he’d done to Eva Grace, there was no telling what he might do to a defenseless infant…to Gracie.

  Shaken and now possessed by an urgency to get home, Jonathan snapped the reins. He hated feeling helpless, being powerless to provide Maggie and his child—yes, his child, for Gracie had become just that—protection from the malevolence of the likes of Richard Barlow. For now, however, the reality was that all he could do was stay as close to his family as possible while leaving any real solution to their dilemma up to his father and Jeff.

  Please, God, let them find that solution soon.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Blast from the Mine Whistle

  Wherever man oppresses man

  Beneath the liberal sun,

  O Lord, be there, Thine arm made bare,

  Thy righteous will be done!

  John Hay

  Maggie’s mother always said that troubles seldom travel alone but usually arrive in the company of others.

  These days Maggie was finding Mum’s wisdom bitterly true. Only three days after they received the letter from Richard Barlow’s attorney, her brother, Ray, learned that soon he would be without the weekend job he prized so highly at the Taggart farm. Their cousin, Jeff, had decided to sell out and move to Indiana.

  Ray’s disappointment and discouragement were palpable. As bad as Maggie felt for her brother, though, what came next, on the following Monday, was a harder blow still.

  As was always the case when the mine whistle sounded in the middle of the day, most of the town came to a halt. Maggie and Jonathan were in their respective classrooms when they heard the blast early that afternoon. Maggie froze for a moment and then went to the open door of her room and looked out. Jonathan was already crossing the hall on his way to her.

  He took one quick look at her face and said, “I’ll have Carolyn take your students. Go ahead.”

  Maggie ran the entire way. Her da was in that mine. Da and their friends and neighbors. Indeed, most of the men from town were below ground, at the mercy of the mountain from which they dug out a living. With the whistle piercing her heart like jagged glass, she ran as fast and as hard as she could until she reached the pithead, where a crowd made up almost entirely of women, except for a few retired miners and town businessmen, were already gathered, clamoring for news.

  She looked around for her mother, half expecting to see her standing there with Gracie bundled in her arms, but as yet there was no sign of her.

  At any other time Kate MacAuley would have been one of the first women at the pithead. But with Gracie down for her afternoon nap and the day so cold and raw, she steeled herself to wait at home for any news. Oh, how she hated the dread sound of that whistle when it went off without warning. In all their years in Skingle Creek, she had been through too many explosions, had seen her husband carried out under a blanket, or watched him stumble from a cage, his eyes burning and his body hunched with pain.

  Outside, Figaro alternated between howling at the mine whistle and barking at the folks who pounded down the road, headed for the mine. Kate called the big dog inside, as much for his company as to quiet him. With wee Gracie asleep, the house was too still entirely. She needed some normal noise about her, something other than the sound of the whistle and the shouts of those running by the house.

  With the dog bounding ahead of her, she went upstairs where she could stand at the window of their bedroom and look toward the mountain. She couldn’t see the mine itself from there, but perhaps she could pray with a clearer head if she were looking in the direction of the trouble.

  The February wind was raw with heavy, gun-metal clouds that hinted of evening rather than early afternoon. Maggie stood waiting, her heart banging against her chest, her mind frozen in this instant, in this place.

  Nearly every face in the crowd was known to her, and the low voices murmuring, along with an occasional choked cry, were familiar as well. All at once she caught a whiff of smoke and went rigid. Nothing sparked terror in a miner’s heart or that of a family member faster than the word coming down that there was “fire in the hole.” What with the constant presence of “black damp”—the deadly, invisible gas that was only one of the dangers in a coal mine—and the kegs of dynamite stored behind wooden doors, a fire might trigger explosions and deadly infernos that could rage out of control in a matter of minutes.

  The women’s voices were growing louder now, some of them shrill. The questions circulating among the crowd were the same ones heard over and over again: “What happened? Does anyone know what happened?”

  Maggie whirled in surprise when she saw Ray threading his way through the crowd. Nearly a head taller than most of the women, he came to stand beside her.

  “Ray?”

  “Mr. Stuart—Jonathan—said I could come.” He gave her a long, steady look. “He’s my da too, Mags.”

  Maggie nodded and squeezed his hand. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

  “What about Mum? Have you seen her?”

  “No, but she might not come, not with Gracie.”

  “Have you heard anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing. But there’s smoke.”

  A muscle beside his mouth jerked, and Maggie tried to reassure him. “Not much. It’s scarcely noticeable.”

  He lifted his face. “I smell it too.”

  With an uncharacteristic protectiveness, he put a hand to Maggie’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right. It must not be too bad, or we’d have heard something by now.”

  This small act, so unexpected and yet so indicative of her brother’s new maturity, warmed Maggie’s heart. And how odd it was looking up at her “little brother,” who by now was nearly as tall as their father, if not yet as thickly muscled. Studying him, in that moment she saw something else that hinted of Matthew MacAuley. Nearly obscured by the strong jawline and increasingly handsome features, a watchful calm spoke of the man waiting to be discovered by this youth poised on the precipice between his boyhood and the future.

  Maggie couldn’t shake the image that both intrigued her and saddened her. Ten years his senior, to this day she often thought of Ray as “Baby Ray.” Her “little brother.” Now it seemed that he was almost a man grown, and she had missed so many of those years along the way. Yet how connected they all were as a family. Her mother and father, Ray, Nell Frances, and herself…and Eva Grace, still a special part of the blood and the love that bound them together.

  She couldn’t think about Eva Grace, not now. She turned her attention back to the mine as she waited and prayed for the appearance of her father, the one who risked his life day after day, year after year, in the d
arkness under the mountain, sacrificing his safety and his health in an effort to protect his family’s health and safety.

  Maggie’s blood flamed at the thought of the unsafe working conditions the miners faced…and had faced for as long as she could remember. Although he never said much in front of them when they were children, of late Da was more open about the uncaring mine owners—“the men in their mansions, sitting on their money”—who refused to even consider making the improvements and repairs necessary to keep the miners safe.

  When her mother would point to the increasing drive toward a union and what it could mean to the men, Da was quick to warn that, as much as he was willing to work for a union in Skingle Creek, it would not come without a hard price to pay. “In a number of places, men have had to die before the union ever saw the light of day. There’s no reason to think it will be any different here.”

  Her mother had never made any secret of the fact that she would give almost anything to see their father out of the mine. “Your da pokes fun at me for believing it could happen,” she would say. “But it can happen. I know it can. I’ve prayed for years that the Lord would give him something better—something safe. And I’ll not stop praying until it happens. It’s so hard to see him leave the house every morning and know he’s going to a place where he’s never safe, where he’s always at risk.”

  Sometimes they forgot why he did what he did, why he was willing to work in such treacherous conditions, constantly placing his life in jeopardy.

  God forgive them, they sometimes took him for granted.

  Please, Lord, bring him safely out of that mine again. Bring him back to Mum and all the rest of us. And if You will, please answer my mother’s prayer. Give Da a better place, a safer place to work. For both their sakes, Lord—for those of us who love him more than he’ll ever know—please answer Mum’s prayer.

  Kate stood at the window, the great hound at her side. She was aware of the way he watched her, glancing back and forth from where Gracie lay sleeping in the little bed Matthew had fashioned from some smoothly sanded sideboards and a mattress filled with soft scraps of flannel. Occasionally the big dog whimpered like a pup, as if he sensed the danger in the air.