Love's First Bloom (33 page)

Ruth had to wait until early afternoon to find out if the wooden chest contained a miracle of any kind. Although she doubted it contained anything of value to anyone else, she was incredibly curious to find out exactly what her father had sent to her.

After dinner, Elias closed the apothecary again in order to spend the rest of the afternoon with his wife. Lily actually crawled into her bed for her afternoon nap and fell asleep almost as soon as her little head hit the pillow, leaving Ruth the free time, and the privacy, to investigate the contents of the chest.

Ruth sat on the bed next to Lily. While she waited to make absolutely certain the child was asleep before she moved an inch, she repeated the most plaintive words that Phanaby had spoken that morning.
“We’d both come to love the two of you so much,”
she whispered and wrapped one of Lily’s curls around her baby finger.

The truth was that during the course of the past three months, Ruth had come to love the Garners, too. And she could scarcely remember life before she had Lily, and she could not imagine life without her now. “I love you, baby girl,” she whispered. “I love you, and I won’t ever let you go. Never. God will find a way for us to be together, if only I trust in Him.” She leaned down to kiss her sweet cheeks.

While checking to be sure the door to her bedroom was securely closed, Ruth paused to listen. When she heard Elias softly singing a hymn to his wife in the bedroom across the hall, she knew she had more than enough time to read the letters, so she sat on the upper bed and opened the chest. She set Phanaby’s note on top of her pillow and removed the letter below, breaking the sealing wax with the tip of the scissors she had slipped into her apron pocket earlier.

Her eyes opened wide when she saw that beneath the stain of the wax, her name was scrawled on the letter lying on top. Before she opened the letter, she closed her eyes for a moment to pray that her father had either sent her some funds or would tell her if he had made other arrangements for them.

Although she realized the letter itself was extremely long, the sight of so many words he had written with his own hand rekindled the deep grief lying just below the surface of her sorrow. She wept until her vision was clear once again before starting the letter. The date was the very same date as the note he had written to Phanaby, erasing any doubt that he had meant for Ruth, not Rosalie Peale, to receive the wooden chest.

Next, she started reading the entire letter, but with each word she read, her heart began to race a little bit faster. By the time she finished the letter, her head was spinning and her heart was beating erratically. She took a deep breath and began to read the letter again, taking the time to read each paragraph very slowly in order to absorb what her father had written.

My beloved daughter, Ruth,

If you are reading this letter, then you have arrived in Toms River with Lily. I pray that I will be able to send for you both in a matter of days, but I could not risk putting this letter or the wooden chest into your hands before you sailed, for fear that you would not leave my side, as charges against me seem imminent.

She moistened her lips, recalled how hard she had fought against leaving him, and shook her head before she continued:

I have never kept a diary or journal, so I have now written down an account of my life before I married your mother. The rest of the contents of the chest I only discovered myself several hours ago when Rosalie Peale gave it to me some moments before she died. Once you read my account, I pray you will forgive me for what I’ve done and what I’ve failed to do over the course of my life … and that you’ll love me as completely as you always have and as I have always loved you.

Pausing, she found his words confusing and continued again:

I also ask that you keep all that you learn from being used to exploit or destroy an innocent child, and while we are both waiting for God’s plans for each of our lives to unfold, I ask you to trust in Him. Always.

Your loving father,

GL

Blinking back tears, Ruth refolded the letter and laid it alongside the note he had written to Phanaby. Perplexed by the notion that her father could have possibly done anything that would require her forgiveness or that could be used to hurt Lily, she was convinced that her father must have exaggerated some unusual situation to prepare her for some sort of upsetting news.

She spent the next hour reading a detailed account of the time he spent in western Massachusetts as a newly ordained minister, as well as the rest of the letters in the chest, most of which turned out to have been written by her father many years ago to Liza Adams, the young woman who had claimed and broken his heart while he had been living there. All carried the signature she knew so well:
GL

But only by reading a number of other letters, written by Liza herself, did she learn that Liza’s family had objected so strenuously to the match that they had forced Liza into hiding with distant relatives in Connecticut. From her father’s poignant account, Ruth further discovered that he had spent two years searching for his beloved Liza before giving up, moving to New York City and eventually marrying Ruth’s mother. He had been completely unaware that Liza had borne him a daughter, Rosalie, who carried her cousin’s surname, Peale, or that Liza had died nearly eighteen years later, still single and still very much in love with him.

And it was only then that Ruth knew that her father had not exaggerated at all. The painful, even shameful events he had described were indeed difficult to believe of the faithful man she had known her father to be. But she also knew that he would have turned to his Father for forgiveness for the sin that had set the tragedy of his life, as well as Liza’s and Rosalie’s, into motion. She could not deny him her forgiveness as well.

Ruth set all the letters aside, along with any judgment of the star-crossed lovers or their illegitimate daughter. She placed the delicate miniature she had found wrapped in faded cloth at the bottom of the wooden chest into the palm of her hand— the very miniature her father had had made of Liza and given to her so many years ago. The resemblance between Liza and Lily was undeniable, and she also knew that this miniature held sentimental value now to the one person who was far too young to understand the implications it held: precious Lily.

She closed her hand and wrapped her fingers around the miniature. She found it hard to believe that her father’s ministry working with the city’s fallen angels had coincidentally led him to his own daughter, Rosalie Peale. A woman who had run away from home at age seventeen, after her mother’s death, to search for the father she had never known, and then been forced to turn to prostitution to survive.

When her father had helped Rosalie reclaim her faith, she had become a Prodigal Daughter, his daughter-in-faith like Phanaby and so many others. But she had died before she was able to share the secret she had kept from him in life for reasons that would never be known. Like Ruth, she was his very own daughter.

To say Ruth was stunned would be entirely fair, because she felt too many emotions all at once to be able to sort through them. To say she was outraged or disappointed by what she had learned would be entirely within reason, but it would not be fair at all. She was simply overwhelmed to learn that despite her father’s passing, she was not alone, without any family in this world.

Rosalie Peale’s child, Lily, was not simply an orphan who needed protection and a home. Lily was Ruth’s blood relative, her niece and her father’s granddaughter, and she had all the proof she needed right at her fingertips.

She doubted anyone would challenge her father’s relationship to Lily, as well as her own, but she was absolutely certain that any number of reporters, including Eldridge Porter, would exploit it for one reason: profit.

Her fingers tightened around the miniature so hard that the edges bit into her palm. She no longer had any personal concerns about protecting her own identity, but she had even more reason now to leave the village as soon as Phanaby was well again. Otherwise she had little hope of protecting the innocent one sleeping so peacefully next to her, a child who was too young to protect herself, a child who was her very own niece.

Sighing, she carefully folded the cloth around the miniature and placed it back into the chest. Her fingers lingered on the gift her father had given to Liza, a woman who had trusted him with her heart and had never given it to another because she loved him so completely.

If Ruth dared to do the same, if she trusted Jake with her heart and loved him as completely, then she knew she would also have to trust him with the truth and take the risk that if he walked away, she would never be able to give her heart to another man.

But she had more to worry about than her own future if he betrayed her trust. She had Lily’s future to consider, too. Lily was far too vulnerable as it was. Ruth would not complicate her life any further by putting her own needs ahead of her niece’s.

Determined to turn to the one person who might be able to help her, she waited until later that night to search out Capt. Grant in hopes of avoiding an encounter with the reporter for the
Transcript
. After Lily was fast asleep and Elias had gone to bed, insisting he would care for Phanaby if she awoke and needed care, Ruth slipped out of the apothecary. There was little moonlight to guide her way, but she knew the back alleys well enough now to be fairly confident she could reach the dock area without getting lost.

To avoid being recognized, she draped her shawl around her head and shoulders and kept her face downcast. She managed to reach Dock Street without passing anyone, but hesitated and remained standing in the shadows when she realized she had no way to reach the ships at anchor in the river. It was also too dark for her to see if Capt. Grant’s ship was even there. Entering the several well-lit taverns that were frequented by the seamen to inquire about Grant, even if she were escorted, would be highly irregular and inevitably lead to gossip she could ill-afford to ignite.

Frustrated that she might have made a mistake by coming here, she was ready to turn around and go home when she spied an elderly man exit one of the taverns and walk in her direction. She waited until he had nearly passed her by before calling out to him. “Sir?”

When he paused and looked about, she stepped far enough out of the shadows that he could see her.

He looked at her, shook his head, and lifted a pint of spirits he was carrying. “If it’s company you’re seekin’, missy, you’d best try one of those younger lads in the taverns. I’ve got all the company I want right here.”

Her cheeks flamed hot. “No, sir. I-I … that is, could you tell me how to get in touch with Capt. Grant? His ship is the
Sheller
.”

“Sailed this afternoon. So did the
Primrose Lady
and the
Annabelle
. If it’s passage you want, you might try—”

“No, I really need to speak to Capt. Grant,” she insisted. “Have you any idea when he will be back?”

He shrugged. “Coupla days, I suspect. Maybe less. Wouldn’t know,” he said and then walked away.

“A couple of days,” she echoed, and started back to the apothecary, praying she and Lily might be safe enough staying with the Garners for a little while longer. She had no one else to turn to who would help her to find another place where she and Lily could hide.

Thirty-Five

Miracle of miracles, Phanaby’s fever finally broke Wednesday night.

By the following afternoon, she was still very weak, but she was feeling well enough to take some broth along with her bark tea and shoo her husband back downstairs with orders to leave her in peace. By Thursday night, after Lily had gone to bed a bit earlier than usual, she was sitting in a chair in her bedroom, wearing a fresh nightdress and robe and talking to her husband, who had brought another chair into the room for himself.

Ruth walked back into the room with a fresh pitcher of water and set it on the bed table before she stooped down and picked up the soiled linens she had set on the floor earlier before she put fresh ones on the bed. “As long as the weather is still fine, I’ll launder these in the morning. Is there anything else you’d like me to do?”

Elias took his wife’s hand. “No, thank you, Ruth. You’ve done so much already.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without you,” Phanaby offered. “You’ve been a blessing. Truly,” she added, glancing over at the dresser where the wooden chest had once been before she met Ruth’s gaze.

“I’m just glad you’re recovering,” Ruth said.

“Almost as quickly as I took ill,” Phanaby replied.

Ruth managed a smile. “Since you’re feeling better, I think I might just go to bed early tonight. I’m a bit tired,” she confessed, though it was really only her heart that was weary.

Jake had left her a note at the apothecary every night this week, along with a flower from her garden. She had not been able to meet him at her garden as he kept asking her to do, for fear of encountering that reporter. Hopefully, he had heard of Phanaby’s illness and assumed Ruth was too busy caring for her and Lily to leave, because he could not possibly know she was a virtual prisoner in this home while Eldridge Porter remained in the village.