Erika rolled her eyes in one of those “Oh, mother” looks.
Ragni almost laughed out loud. “Whatever.” Discussions had been raging about Erika not wanting to go back to Chicago. Why couldn’t she stay here with Paul and Ragni? Susan shocked them all when she mentioned she might like to stay in the cabin for a while too. Ragni picked up a roll and took a bite straight in.
Erika set her roll down on a plate and dug into the first box. “We waited for you guys before we really went through these boxes, you know.”
“I know.” Susan nudged her daughter with her hip. “That was very good of you. Why don’t you lay things out on the table, and then we can all see them?”
Erika sneezed. “Sure, you just don’t want the dust.”
“You saw through her.” Ragni pulled out a chair. “You sit here, Mom.” She looks better this morning—she’s aged ten years over the summer. She patted her mother’s shoulder, then leaned over to hug her. “I’m so glad you came.”
Clinging to her daughter’s hands, she nodded. “I just wish your father could have come for this.”
“I know, Mom. Me too.”
After untying the cord around it, Erika handed Ragni a photograph that opened with two flaps. “Aunt Ragni, look at this.”
“Oh.” Ragni’s voice squeaked on the word. It might have been her standing in her wedding dress, but she knew it was Ragnilda, with Joseph Peterson rigid at her left shoulder. “But I—I never saw this picture before.”
Susan looked over her shoulder. “Oh, my word, look at that.” She handed the picture to her mother. “They could be twins in both looks and dress.”
Ragni took the picture back and stared at it, searching for differences. “I used satin instead of lawn, the waist is dropped, and I don’t wear my hair that way.”
“She was beautiful.” Erika studied the photo, then her aunt. “And you are too, when you let yourself be.”
“Uh-oh, fashion police.”
“No, think about it, especially since you fell in love.”
Ragni could feel the heat creeping up her face. “Was it that obvious?”
“Sorta.” Erika dug more things out of the box and laid them on the table. “Awesome.”
Ragni looked up to see Erika flipping through the pages of a bound book. “What?”
“Wait until you see this.” Erika brought the book and stood between Ragni and Susan. “Look.” She held a page open. Faded ink words on the left, a faded drawing of local flowers on the right. On the next page, the drawing was of a little girl sniffing a flower.
Ragni read the entry on the left. “Eloise loves flowers as much as I do, and delights in watching the garden come up in the spring. She has grown so since we came to Medora. I cannot believe she is the same sickly child I brought west on the train. I thank my God every day for the miracles He has given us here.”
Erika carefully turned a page. “Oh, look, a sketch of her wedding dress.” She read the entry aloud. “Joseph wanted to get married immediately but when I asked if I could have time to sew a new dress, he agreed, but he said it made him sad, but for only a little while. I made Eloise a lovely dress from the leftovers. I wish she could have been in our wedding picture too, but Joseph insisted we go to Dickinson alone. I never dreamed I would have a wedding, let alone a honeymoon.”
Ragni turned the page. “Joseph calls these my scribbles, but always with a smile now. He did not smile at first, but we taught him how. He laughs at my painting on the cupboards since he plans to put doors on them someday. I just love the decorations. They bring much needed color into this house.” She looked up to see tears in her mother’s eyes.
“I should have made more effort to keep in close touch.” Judy used her napkin to dab her eyes. “Letters are good, but visits would have been better.”
“When did your mother die?” Erika asked.
“When I was thirty-five. Your poppa and I were living in Chicago with our two little girls. It was such a shock. She had been ill, and Einer never told me. After the funeral, I never came back.”
“But why?
Judy wove her fingers together. “It was your father’s decision. Einer had been drinking pretty heavily and said…something to your father. He never told me what it was.”
“And Dad refused to come back?” Susan said.
And you couldn’t come back. The thought made Ragni sad. “Did you know what an artist Nilda was?”
“I knew she painted. I remember some of the paintings on the walls. When I asked for one, Einer refused so I let it drop. I wish I had come back, but…”
But I did. I came here, and look what all has happened. There it was again. Paul leaped into her thoughts and took right over. And every time he did, she could feel her inner temperature rise and suffuse her neck and face. At the rate she was going, she’d look like a red beet in her wedding pictures.
“Anybody home?” Paul knocked on the door.
“You don’t need to knock, cowboy. Come on in.”
“Just wanted to make sure everyone was decent.” He nodded. “Morning, all.”
“We’re going through Great-grandmother’s boxes.” Ragni handed him the wedding picture. “What do you think?”
He studied it, looked up at Ragni, and back at the picture. “I think we should get this blown up and framed. I have one of my grandparents too.” He studied the picture again. “You sure bear a strong resemblance to her.”
“I’ve seen her here. Several times.” Ragni swallowed. “You know what an active imagination I have,” she added.
Silence fell, broken only by the sound of wood settling in the stove. She could feel them all staring at her.
“Tell me,” Erika whispered.
“She was out in the south flower bed, wearing one of those aprons that cross in the back, weeding her rosebush and bending over. I could see the backs of her legs. She wore stockings rolled just below her knees.” Ragni closed her eyes to remember better. “Another time she was standing at the counter, rolling out dough. I could see the top of her head. She wore her hair braided and in a coronet. I wanted her to look at me so I could see her face.”
“But she didn’t?” Paul stared at her across the table.
“No.” He probably thinks I’m nuts and wants to run for the hills.
“But now you can see her face.”
Ragni nodded. “But I want to see her smiling. She says in here that she and Eloise taught Joseph Peterson to smile.” Ragni tapped the ragged little book.
A voice so strong everyone must have been able to hear it spoke inside her: Go look in a mirror.
The next morning as her mother placed the bead-trimmed circlet and full veil on her head, Ragni did look in the mirror. In spite of the trembling that had set on her since sunrise, she smiled. And was sure she saw an answering smile from a faint form behind her mother—five generations of women, including Erika, linked by this cabin. Her great-grandmother’s “sacred scribbles,” as she had called them later in the journal, coming to life these generations later, blessing yet another union in this simple cabin. Erika handed her Nilda’s journal along with a single yellow rose from the bush by the cabin.
“I wish Daddy was here to give me away. He hasn’t met Paul.” Ragni fought the tears that threatened to overflow.
“I know, but I’ll do my best to be a good substitute.” Judy sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. “We’re both going to look like raccoons.” She used her handkerchief to blot out any dark spots below her daughter’s eyes, then her own. “There…all right?”
“Yes, thank you.” Ragni hugged her mother one more time, listened for the change in the guitar chords, and taking her mother’s arm, stepped through the door after Susan and Erika, the Clauson women together. Paul waited for her. Her new life was about to begin. “Thank you, Grandma Nilda. I’ll do my best.”
The more books I write, the more I realize how many people play a part in the creation and the production of the story to get it into the hands of readers. Ther
e is no way I can say thank you to all of them, because I don’t know all the production people. What I do know is that we are all striving to make each book the very best it can be. Therefore, I thank you all.
Those I do know include all who helped with the thinking, planning, and writing. Brainstorming is my first step. That started the first time I saw the cabin on the banks of the Little Missouri River near Medora, North Dakota. The story seemed to flow out of that cabin, and I wrote down as much of it as I could. Books don’t always start this way.
Dudley Delffs of WaterBrook really encouraged me to write this story and explore the need for artists of all kinds to do our art—as our calling and regarding what happens to us when we don’t do it. Thanks, Dudley.
Betty Slade and Sherri Lou Casey, watercolor teachers with true servant hearts, thank you for expanding my world.
To Kathleen Wright, Woodeene Koenig Bricker, Chelley Kitz-miller, my Round Robin friends, and all idea people and encouragers: I’d be lost without you.
Thanks to Rae Lynn Schafer, researcher, and to Beth Clyde of the Cowboy Cafe, reader. Beth and Kevin even opened the Cowboy to feed us when we got snowed in in Medora in October. And thanks to Mary and Doug of the Western Edge Bookstore who are always founts of information and who were our hosts during the blizzard. I am not accustomed to blizzards but got reminded of what they are like.
To Cecile, my assistant who does far more than her job description ever said; to my agent, Deidre Knight; to those helpful folks at WaterBrook, especially my editor, Shannon Hill, and Laura Wright, who makes sure every word is right: thanks is never enough to say. But I sure do mean it.
I have the greatest readers in the entire world. Thanks for letting me know what you think and then telling others about my books. You’re the best.
To God be the glory.
Lauraine
Lauraine Snelling is a member of the more-than-two-million-books-in-print club, but once she was a mother of three teenagers with a dream to write “horse books for kids.” Her Norwegian heritage spurred her to craft An Untamed Land, volume one of the Red River of the North family saga, which, due to reader demand, spun off Return to Red River, a trilogy following more of the Bjorklund family Daughters of Blessing continues the saga. Three more historical series came next, one set during the Civil War that traces the journey of a young woman leading Thoroughbreds across the country to safety and a new series called Dakotah Treasures that follows the birth of the town of Medora, North Dakota.
Writing about real issues within a compelling story is a hallmark of Lauraine’s style, shown in her contemporary romances and women’s fiction, which has probed the issues of forgiveness, loss, domestic violence, and cancer. The Healing Quilt explores the relationship of four diverse women who come together to supply their community with a much needed mammogram machine. In The Way of Women, three families cope with the aftermath of a volcanic eruption.
All told, she has had over fifty books published—she thinks. She’s not sure. She’d rather write them than count them. Lauraine’s work has been translated into Norwegian, Danish, and German, and produced as books on tape.
Awards have followed Lauraine’s dedication to telling a good story: the Silver Angel Award for An Untamed Land and a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart for Song of Laughter.
Helping others reach their writing dream is the reason Lauraine teaches both at writer’s conferences across the country and at her home in the Tehachapi Mountains of California. She mentors others through book doctoring and with her humorous and playful Writing Great Fiction tape set. Lauraine also produces material on query letters and other aspects of the writing process.
Her readers clamor for more books more often, and Lauraine would like to comply, if only her ever-growing flower gardens didn’t call quite so loudly over the soothing rush of the water fountains in her backyard, or if the hummingbirds weren’t quite so entertaining. Lauraine and her husband, Wayne, have two grown sons, a daughter already gone home, a cockatiel named Bidley, a basset hound named Chewey, and a possible Rummikub addiction.
THE BRUSHSTROKE LEGACY
PUBLISHED BY WATERBROOK PRESS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921
A division of Random House Inc.
Scripture quotations and paraphrases are taken from the King James Version and the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Lauraine Snelling
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Snelling, Lauraine.
The brushstroke legacy : a novel / Lauraine Snelling. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-55053-8
1. Advertising executives—Fiction. 2. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction. 3. Painting—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3569.N39B78 2006
813′.54—dc22
2006013463
v3.0
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