Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel

by Jannifer Chiaverini

  “Mamá?”

  Rosa turned to find Marta padding into the front room, blinking and yawning. “Oh, Marta. Did Pedro wake you?” When Marta nodded, Rosa sighed and said, “He’s quieting down now. Go back to bed, mija.”

  Practical Marta promptly realized something Rosa had forgotten. “I’ll hold him while you change his sheets,” she said, crossing the room and reaching for her baby brother.

  “You need your sleep,” Rosa protested, but she let Marta take him.

  “So do you, Mamá.” Marta cradled her baby brother and murmured soft baby talk to him in a sweet falsetto. “I’d rather hold you than clean up your crib, you know that, baby brother? You know why? Because you are a sweetie pie, but throw up is yucky.”

  Rosa managed a wan smile before hurrying off to strip Pedro’s mattress, wipe down the bars of his crib, and put on fresh sheets. When she returned to the front room, Marta was sitting in her father’s favorite chair, Pedro asleep in her arms. “Don’t tell Papa,” she implored as she carefully passed the baby to her mother.

  “Never,” promised Rosa solemnly. “Now, off to bed. Thank you, mija. I don’t know how I’d manage without you.”

  Marta offered her a proud, drowsy smile and went to her room.

  Rosa put Pedro down in his crib with a kiss and a whispered prayer, and then returned to her own bed, where John slept or pretended to. Listening and alert, she had trouble falling back asleep and doubted that she would be able to or even that she should. Hours later, she woke with a start to find the sun hidden behind gray storm clouds, John gone, and the aroma of brewing coffee in the air. Pedro must have slept the rest of the night through, she realized as she threw off the covers and hurried to him. She found Ana kneeling on the floor beside the crib, one arm extended through the bars so she could entertain her brother by dancing his teddy bear around. “He needs his diaper changed really, really badly,” Ana reported when she heard her mother enter.

  “I could tell from the hallway,” Rosa replied, forcing a wry tone to disguise her worry. More diarrhea. She had seen this before and she knew what the rest of the day would hold, what the next months and years would bring, if God granted her baby so much time. She muffled a sob, asked Ana to go and set the table for breakfast, and changed Pedro’s soiled diaper, silent tears of anguish slipping down her cheeks.

  She carried him into the kitchen and set him in his high chair while she prepared breakfast. “Pedro was sick last night,” she told John when he came in from the barn and pulled up a chair to the table.

  He frowned, resigned, as she set his plate of bacon and eggs before him. “I guess we knew that was coming. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” Rosa felt an iron hand constrict her throat. Without a word, she went to the icebox for butter for John’s toast, and as the girls came to the table, she busied herself pouring them glasses of milk so she would not lash out at him.

  Gray sheets of winter rain began to fall soon after Marta left for school and John for the barn, muttering about the broken tractor he had been unable to repair. Ana and Maria were listless and tired, despite her attempts to coax them into cheerfulness, so she told them stories and taught Ana how to make paper snowflakes out of old newspapers while Maria played with her doll. All the while Rosa struggled to feed Pedro, or at least get some milk or water into him, but everything came back up, and he went through two diapers an hour until he was utterly empty. He had a fever, which was unusual, but it did not seem dangerously high. She felt herself straining from the effort of maintaining a calm, reassuring demeanor for the children’s sake while inside she felt as if she were gasping for breath and screaming for help in a silent void.

  When John came in for lunch, she beseeched him to stop by Dr. Goodwin’s house on his way to the train station to fetch the mail. “There’s no sense in asking him to come by,” John replied. “He’ll only say it’s the same thing the older kids get and he won’t have anything for it.”

  He left for the station. Rosa put the children down for their afternoon naps, tidied the kitchen, and tried to calm her frantic thoughts with the familiar routine of household tasks, but nothing worked. A knock on the door startled her so much that she jumped, and when she answered it, she was surprised to see Lars standing there, rain dripping off the brim of his hat. In all her worry, she had forgotten that he might come.

  “Rosa,” he said, his brows drawing together in concern. “What’s wrong?”

  Everything was wrong, everything. “Pedro’s sick,” she said before words failed her. If she let out one drop of her anguish, she knew it would all come pouring out of her, and she could not risk unburdening herself with the children in the house where they might overhear. She tugged on her boots, which she had left by the front door after going out to feed the chickens. Stepping out into the rain, she shut the door, seized Lars’s hand, and dashed through the mud to the barn. Once inside, she dropped his hand, sank heavily upon a bale of hay, and fought back tears, oblivious to her rain-soaked clothes and hair and the cold seeping into her bones.

  “What is going on?” Lars demanded. He shrugged out of his coat, shook the rain off of it, and draped it over her shoulders. “Good lord, what happened to your face?” Before she could try to conceal her bruises with her long hair, he sat down beside her and cupped her chin in his hand, turning her face toward him. Steadily his anger rose as he took in the cut on her cheekbone, her bruised jaw, the black eye. “Christ almighty, I’ll beat the hell out of him for this.”

  “No.” She turned her head to free her chin from his grasp. “You’ll just make everything worse.”

  “Is this the first time he’s hit you or does this happen a lot?”

  “Lars, listen to me. That’s not important now—”

  “Like hell it isn’t. Rosa, you shouldn’t live this way. It’s not good for you or the children.”

  He would never understand that she had no choice. “Pedro’s sick,” she blurted. “He’s had diarrhea for half a day, and he throws up everything I try to feed him. It’s too soon—it’s not supposed to happen so soon! He’s only six months old. I don’t understand how this can be. Each of the other children thrived for at least a year before they fell ill, and it didn’t strike Ana until she was five. He’s still just a baby. Why is this happening now?”

  “Rosa.” Lars put his arms around her and she fell against his chest, sobbing. “Rosa, it’s okay. It’s going to be all right.”

  She shook her head, clutching his wool sweater with both hands. It was never going to be all right. She could not lose another child. Her heart couldn’t withstand it.

  “Rosa.” His voice was calm in her ear. “Listen to me. Pedro has diarrhea and he’s throwing up. Does he have a fever too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, so does my niece.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “What?”

  “Annalise had to stay home from school today sick with the same stomach bug it sounds like Pedro has. A few of her friends had it last week. It’s been working its way through the school all month.”

  Rosa took a deep, shuddering breath. Could it be as simple as that, a common illness spread from child to child? She desperately wanted to believe it, but fate was never kind to her children and spared them nothing. “Pedro doesn’t go to school, and Marta isn’t sick, so she didn’t give him anything.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Marta had a mild case, so mild that neither of you realized she was even sick. Maybe someone brought it here when he came to pick up his mail. Maybe I’m that someone, in which case, I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Do you really think that’s all that’s troubling him?” she asked, sitting up and blinking away her tears.

  He nodded, his hands lingering on her shoulders. “Rosa, sometimes children just get sick. I’m sure he’ll be fine in a few days. Don’t be afraid and don’t lose hope.” Gingerly he brushed a lock of long dark hair away from her face, tucked it behind her ear, and traced the line of her cheekbone and jaw with a fing
ertip just above her skin so that she felt the warmth of his hand although he did not touch her cuts and bruises. “Pedro will be fine, but you, Rosa, you need to do something about this. This can’t go on.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her gently on her cut cheek, and then near the tender bruise around her eye, and then he stroked her hair again and pulled her close to him so that her cheek rested on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat through his sweater, and as she closed her eyes, his arms slipped beneath the borrowed coat so that he could embrace her. She clung to him for a long moment, listening to the pounding of his heart, and then, still dizzy from relief and overwhelmed by a sudden rush of memories—the touch of his hands, the scent of his skin—she raised her face to his and he met her with a kiss.

  As the rain crashed upon the barn roof, the years fell away and Lars was holding her once more and loving her as he had so many nights so long ago when they had stolen away to the abandoned ranch cabin near the apricot orchard, when the promise of lifelong love seemed within reach, and grief and heartbreak were only indistinct shadows on the horizon.

  Afterward, Rosa lay quietly within the circle of Lars’s arms, his coat drawn over them for warmth. She could not believe what she had done.

  “You should leave,” she said softly, sitting up and brushing loose hay from her hair and dress. “I need to go inside too, to check on the children.” They were probably still asleep, but she didn’t want them to be afraid if they woke and called for her and she didn’t answer.

  He caught her by the arm as she rose and straightened her dress. “You aren’t still worried about Pedro?”

  “Oh, I’m worried about him. He’s a sick little boy. But I’m not as terrified as I was before you came.” She managed a tremulous smile and clasped his hand. “Thank you.”

  He stood, brushed hay from his clothes and hair, and gave his coat a good shake. “But you’re still upset. What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” she echoed, feeling tears gathering. “I’m married, Lars, and not to you.”

  “Not for lack of trying on my part.”

  “You didn’t try hard enough when it counted,” she reminded him. She felt flushed and dizzy. She pressed her icy hands to her burning cheeks and sat down heavily on the hay bale. “We can’t ever tell John. He can’t ever know.”

  Lars stared at her in disbelief. “You mean you’re going to stay with him?”

  “Of course,” she said numbly. “We’re married. He’s my husband. What are you suggesting—divorce? You know I could never—”

  “Rosa, you’re miserable with him. He hits you.”

  “Only when he’s upset.” All the more reason for Lars to leave immediately. She stood too quickly, waited for the room to stop spinning, and started for the barn door. “I can’t talk about this now. You have to go. Please.”

  Grimly he drew in a deep breath and nodded. Snatching up his hat from the floor, he wrapped his other arm around her waist and pulled her closer for a deep, soft, lingering kiss. Despite her apprehensions, she melted into him all over again. Then she pulled herself together and pushed him away. “You have to go.”

  “I’m coming back, you know.”

  “Next Monday.” She squeezed his hand in farewell and then tore herself away. Perhaps by Monday she would know what to do. She couldn’t think now, with Lars’s smell on her skin and Pedro sick in the adobe and John on his way home. She couldn’t believe what she had done. Already the past hour seemed like a dream, vivid in slumber only to fade upon waking.

  She dashed to the adobe without looking back. She heard the roar of the car as Lars started the engine, the sounds muffled by the rainfall and fading as he drove away.

  The week passed. As Lars had predicted, Pedro soon recovered and was restored to his usual sweet, happy self, but Rosa’s relief was tempered by her memory of what she and Lars had done. Guilt stabbed at her at unexpected moments throughout the day. Another woman might have been secretly glad to betray an unkind, unloving husband, and consider the brief, illicit bliss small recompense for the pain and misery he inflicted upon her. She might look forward to another encounter the next time her husband was away, and she might even consider running away to be with her lover. But not Rosa. In Lars’s arms she had remembered what it was like to be loved and cherished, and her heart ached with loss now that the fleeting moment had passed and would not come again. It could not. In one forbidden act she had broken every vow she had made to her husband, to God, and to herself.

  It took all her courage to tell John that she needed him to watch the children while she went to confession, and that it could not wait, but he revered the church enough to accept that whatever was troubling her was between her and God. The young, red-haired priest who had been so kind when her mother had died a suspected suicide was stern and unyielding when it came to adultery. In the past, Rosa had left the confessional feeling freer, lighter, more capable of living a good Christian life, and eager to fulfill the penance assigned to her by the compassionate elderly priest. Now, many years and many failures later, his young successor made her feel disconsolate and alone.

  Monday came. Soon after John left for the train station, Rosa watched through the kitchen window as the Jorgensens’ Model T pulled up to the barn and came to a halt. Lars emerged with the customary paper sack in his hand and called out a greeting to Ana and Maria, who played with their dolls on a quilt beneath the orange trees. Lars tousled Ana’s hair, tickled Maria beneath her chin, gave them the sack of dried apricots, and chatted with them for a bit before heading for the adobe. Rosa quickly left the window so she could meet him at the front door.

  “Rosa,” he greeted her simply, taking off his hat and studying her face as if he were looking for new injuries as well as clues to the workings of her mind.

  “Come in. Please.” She opened the door wider, breathless from anxiety. “I’ll get your mail.”

  “There’s no rush. How’s Pedro?”

  “Much better, thank you. He’s napping at the moment.” Blinking away tears, she retrieved the Jorgensens’ bundle from those lined up against the wall and handed it to him. Instead of taking it from her, he placed his hands over hers so they both held it together.

  “What have you decided?” he asked, his solemn gaze locked on hers.

  “What happened last week can never happen again,” she said in a rush.

  He uttered a short, dry laugh as he took the bundle and tucked it under one arm. “Rosa, if I had known you had no intention of leaving your husband, it wouldn’t have happened last week either.”

  “I can’t leave him.”

  “Do you love him?”

  She couldn’t bear to say the words aloud, the admission that she had failed utterly in everything she had resolved to do when she married John and chose him to be her child’s father. “He’s my husband. The church forbids divorce.”

  “Because it’s better for a woman to stay married to a man who hits her.”

  “I have nowhere to go. No way to provide for the children.”

  “Come live with me,” he urged. “I’ll take care of you and the children. We’ll fix up the cabin and make it a proper home.”

  She laughed, helpless. Lars barely had enough to provide for himself, and he wouldn’t have even that small portion except for the generosity of his brother. “I can’t tear the children away from the only home they’ve ever known, and I can’t live in sin with you.”

  “Then you and the children can have the cabin,” he shot back, exasperated, “and I’ll stay in the farmhouse with my family, same as now. The point is you can’t stay here. Every week that I come by, I see that a little more of the Rosa I fell in love with has died. You’re Catholic but Jesus wouldn’t want you to be a martyr.”

  His tone made her bristle. “You don’t know anything about my faith or what the Lord would or wouldn’t want me to be. He would tell me to go forth and sin no more, and that is what I’m going to do.”

  Lars watched her for a long mo
ment in silence. “I see you’ve made up your mind.”

  “I have, and I ask you to help me. Don’t ever tempt me again. Please.” Not with kisses, not with the promise of compassion and affection, not by offering her an escape from the purgatory she had created for herself. Enduring the life she had chosen, the life she had inflicted upon herself, and Lars, and John, and the children, was the only way she could atone for all the wrong she had done, including what she had done the week before in a moment of weakness that must never come again.

  “I won’t.” The undercurrent of anger and frustration in Lars’s voice was unmistakable. “I’ll never again ask you to do anything you’re not prepared to do, unless I think your life is in immediate danger. And then you’d better believe I’m not going to stand by and let John kill you.”

  “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Lars frowned and shifted the mail bundle to his other arm. “I hope he proves me wrong. I’m going to keep coming here week after week, every Monday like clockwork, to see if you’re okay. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to, but know that I will be here.”

  “Of course I’ll talk to you,” she said, pained. He was her only friend. How could she not?

  “Then I’ll see you next week.” He nodded good-bye and left. As her eyes filled with tears, she heard him call his farewells to the girls, start up the car, and drive away.