Mary Connealy (58 page)

“What’s a carpet mill?”

“It’s a big, noisy factory where they make rugs.” Grace cringed when she thought of the deafening weaving machines, clacking hour after hour. “It’s too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. We worked long hours at hard labor and didn’t get much to eat. Then we’d go home to our father, who took all our money and fed us…well…not much.”

“And when you were doing that, you were brave?”

“Oh yes. I took care of all my little sisters. I had to be tougher than all of them, and some of them were really tough because they’d been orphaned and lived on their own. And I had to be tougher than the other kids at the mill who picked on us. And I was. I could face down anyone.” Honesty forced her to add, “Except my father.” She’d always been scared of Parrish. For good reason. But she’d stepped in many times to draw Parrish’s beatings onto herself to protect a little sister. “Sometimes I was even brave with him.

“And I was a teacher to my little sisters. I didn’t learn to cook, but I knew how to read before my own mother died, and I taught my adopted sisters how, late at night when our light was supposed to be off.”

“Boring,” John groused.

Grace ignored his all-too-common opinion. “Then when I was old enough, I got to leave my father’s house and be a teacher for a real job. For you and your brothers.”

“Till Dad got you fired,” John reminded her.

She shrugged. “What’s done is done.”

In Chicago, she’d left Parrish by running away. But unlike her older sisters, she couldn’t just go off and leave all those little ones in his brutal hands. No one would have cared if she’d told the police, “My father adopts children to force them to work like slaves.”

But they’d listened when she said, “My father is stealing from the carpet mill.”

With grim satisfaction at the memory, Grace said to John, “Oh yes, I used to be brave, but I forgot how…until just this minute.”

Grace and Hannah had come up with the plan of making a home for the six younger children. Grace had lived with Hannah for nearly ten years. They knew each other too well. Grace had the nerve to run and lead Parrish on a wild-goose chase. Hannah had the natural mother’s heart and would do best with the children. Besides, Grace was old enough to be a teacher. She could find work and send money.

“And now you’ve remembered?” John asked.

“Yes, I have.” When the police came, thanks to Grace’s anonymous information, she and her sisters had been ready. The minute the police took Parrish away, Grace and her little family of girls had run.

Grace had no intention of putting the children in danger by returning them to the orphanage where they might again be adopted by some parent as cruel as Parrish, so they’d vanished into the streets of Chicago. Grace had seen to it that Hannah was settled then set out to find work. Always in the back of her mind, she knew Parrish would come after her.

Grace had heard that mother birds sometimes pretended to be wounded, letting a wing hang awkwardly, when a predator came too near. The hungry coyote would come after the wounded mother, leaving the nest of babies safely behind. She had no wing to dangle, only herself, but Parrish was a coyote. If he got free, he’d come.

She’d stowed away on a train that took her to Kansas City. At first she’d cleaned houses and served in diners, sending money home to Hannah. Then, after only a few months, she’d caught sight of Parrish walking down the Missouri street. He’d either escaped from jail or used his connections to escape justice.

She hopped another train, weaving her way across the country, changing names and jobs as she went, trying to lose herself in the western lands….

John nudged her out of her thoughts. “What made you remember?”

At last she’d seen the ad for a teacher in Mosqueros. Teaching—it was what she’d always wanted to do. By that time, she hadn’t sighted Parrish in months and she was tired of running. She had no schooling, but she didn’t mention that when she asked to be tested. She’d educated herself thoroughly while she studied with her little sisters, so she fortunately passed with ease and was hired by Mosqueros to teach at their school.

One bright spot Grace thought of—if Parrish was still hunting her, he wasn’t adopting more children. She didn’t tell John any of this. Instead, her eyes fell on a Bible, tucked into a corner of the room, on the floor like everything else. “I just had the strangest thought come to me, probably because we’re trapped in here.”

“What thought?” One of her sons was actually listening to her.

Grace had been blessed by having children listen to her all her life, with the exception of her brand-new sons. She hoped she had something worth hearing. “I remembered that God is faithful.”

John’s brow furrowed with concentration. “What’s ’at mean?”

“‘It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.’ It’s from Lamentations. I used to read that one to my sisters.”

“What does it mean that God is faithful?”

“Don’t you ever feel like God is far away?”

John shrugged. “He
is
far away. He’s up in heaven with my first ma. Pa says so.”

Grace smiled. “Yes, God is up in heaven, but He’s right here, too,”—she tapped John on his chest—“inside your heart.”

“How can an old man be inside your heart?”

Grace controlled the urge to laugh. “Your picture of God as an old man is a common one, but that’s not the picture I have of God. I think God looks like the wind.”

“The wind doesn’t look like anything,” John protested.

“You can’t see it, but no one doubts it’s there. He has power like wind has power. You’ve seen the trees blowing in the wind, right?”

“Right.”

“So you believe in the wind because of what it does. No one sees God, but everyone sees what He does. And the wind is air and the air is inside our chests when we breathe, just like our hearts. God is everywhere. And God never leaves us. God is faithful to us, even when we aren’t so faithful to Him.”

“Even if we’re bad, God is still with us?” John asked with fearful eyes.

Grace knew her son. He had indeed, in his short life, been very bad. “Everyone is bad sometimes. ‘For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.’ That’s why Jesus came and died. God sent Him to die in our places. Jesus sacrificed His life to save us.”

John nodded with a serious face. “That’s what Pa says.”

“And what can be more faithful than that?”

“So God loves us and is faithful to us, even when we don’t deserve it?”

Grace hugged him until he squeaked. The pain in her back and shoulder didn’t seem important anymore. She pulled back and, in the dim light, saw a little boy who desperately wanted a mother.

Grace fell in love. She knew a fraction of how God felt because she knew she’d die for John. “God loves us
especially
when we don’t deserve it, honey.”

She gave him a noisy kiss on the cheek, which he wiped off with a growl of disgust, but he leaned closer to her. The disgust was all for show.

She didn’t want to give him an excuse to climb down off her lap. She badly needed to hold on to someone she loved right now, when she might not be on the earth much longer. Every minute the stove dimmed.

“Let’s read.” The meager light from the stove would be enough. There was only one book in the house. John hopped off her lap and was back instantly with the family Bible.

She and John sat together, and she helped him sound out words. Slowly they worked their way through a sentence. She chose the book of John because her son liked knowing his name was from the Bible.

“‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’”

John had taken to schooling. He’d picked up his letters and numbers right from the first. Now he read all but the hardest words. “‘The same was in the beginning with God.’”

And he kept improving. “‘In him was life; and the life…” His reading slowed; his head nodded. “‘Was the light of men.’”

Grace knew they didn’t have much longer.

She jerked awake when the Bible hit the floor. She realized it wasn’t light in the cave anymore. John had fallen asleep in her arms.

With a nervous glance at the stove, she saw that the grating had become so dark that only the faintest glow of red still showed. The water hissed against the hot coals. She tried to stir herself to stay awake, but her muscles were heavy, her head cloudy and confused. She wanted sleep.

“This is it,” she murmured. “The air is running out.” She looked down at the sweet, sleeping boy in her arms.
God, forgive me for the coward I’ve been. Once I started running, I turned into a scared rabbit instead of the fighter I used to be. I thought…I guess I thought proper manners and the loneliness I’ve been living with were how respectable people behaved. Now I see I just held people away out of fear. I’m sorry
.

She used her waning strength to lift the Bible onto the tabletop. A loud splatter of snow dimmed the red glow until it was barely visible. With one hand holding her son and another resting on the Good Book, she prayed into the dark room,
Now that I remember how to be brave, if I had more time, I’d make You proud, Lord. Forgive me. Take John and me to be with You
. Her head fell forward.

A loud thud from the stovepipe startled her awake. Her heavy head lifted, and John stirred. A puff of white steam exploded from the grating.

“The snow must have put it out.” John’s voice quavered.

His fear was too much for her to bear. Yes, she’d been brave, and she was still brave. And she was married and the mother of five sons, even if just for another few moments. She refused to sit here and die without a fight.

She didn’t like the idea of staying still and doing nothing while they both suffocated in this dark pit. Her words sounded thick and stupid. “Let’s throw some kindling on the fire. Maybe we can keep it going.”

She and John tried to stand. She had to force her body to obey. John swayed and would have fallen if she hadn’t steadied him. They both stumbled to the stove. Grace opened the grating door in the stove’s belly. The wet wood in the stove mocked them.

Grace grabbed the fork and poked at the sodden black mess. She uncovered glowing embers. They tossed in kindling. Grace leaned down and blew gently on the smallest pieces of wood. And the stove blew back.

Grace jerked upright. “I felt wind.”

She also realized her thoughts had cleared. “John, let’s get some more wood on the fire. I think we’ve melted our way out through the stovepipe.”

A little coaxing and patience and the first bit of dry wood caught. A curl of white smoke, full of steam, rose straight for the stovepipe, and then the shredded kindling burst into flames. Sizzling in protest, the wet wood even grudgingly dried and burned. The flame danced higher.

A draft from the stovepipe blew cold and fresh.

Shut in as tightly as they were, the cave was very warm, and working on the stove had made their fingers nimble. That gave Grace the energy to turn to the door again. She stared at the solid wall of white. “I wish we had a shovel.”

“Wishin’s a pure waste of time, Ma,” John said.

Grace thought John sounded a little too old, but in this instance he was absolutely right. She held the ladle up in front of her and studied it against the heavy snow. Setting it aside, she said, “Let’s get back to work with our hands.”

Grace and John scooped at the snow. With a steady supply of fresh air, they had the strength to work steadily, pausing to warm themselves as the fire leaped up and burned with a white flame.

John talked about his family and school and ranch life.

Grace was surprised at how much advice the little boy had for her about cooking. “Your pa taught you all how to cook?”

John shoved snow to the side. The pile grew until it reached the tabletop. It melted on the side nearest the stove, and the floor of the little cave became muddy. “I don’t know about teachin’ us, Ma. He just makes us do it an’ we’ve had to learn or we starve, simple as that. We all started out cookin’ kinda like you.”

“Um, you eat it,” she reminded him again. She’d eaten it, too.

“Like I said, eat it or starve.”

“So how do you make the biscuits stay separate, like your pa does? Mine all run together.”

“First you take the flour and—”

Grace noticed the stove had stopped sizzling and the fire burned brightly. “Look at the pipe, John.”

John turned away from the hole he’d been digging so diligently. “There’s light coming in from around the edges.”

“Grace, are you down there?” Daniel’s voice echoed through the stovepipe.

She felt tears of relief burn behind her eyes as she ran to the stove and shouted to the ceiling, “Yes, John and I are trapped in here.”

There was absolute silence. For a second she began to think she’d imagined hearing Daniel.

In a strangled voice, Daniel finally said, “John is in there with you?”

“Yes, we were in here when the whole world seemed to explode. We’ve been trying to dig our way out.”

An explosion of another kind came from above the pipe. Daniel shouted, “John’s in there, boys. He’s okay.”

Shrieks and hollers of glee rattled the pipe.

“Where’d you think I was, Pa?” John yelled.

Daniel’s shouting turned to laughter. “I was worried about you, boy. I didn’t know where you’d gotten to. There was an avalanche, and…” Daniel’s voice broke.

Grace heard everything. He’d thought his son might be buried in the snow, just as she and John had worried about the rest of the family. Her heart turned over, and the tears spilled as she imagined what Daniel had gone through. “Are all of you all right?” Grace yelled.

“Yeah, sure. We were above it. I was afraid. I’ve been praying and working full steam ever since it happened, trying to get to you. Hoping John…” He fell silent.

“Are you going to stand up there and talk all day, or are you going to get us out of here?” John demanded.

Daniel spoke again, steady now. “We’ll have you out in two shakes, son. I’ve been digging out front. When I saw smoke coming out of the stovepipe, I ran up here to see if you could hear me. We were dragging windfalls down, and they got away from us on the steep slope. I didn’t think…I mean…an avalanche never occurred to me.”