Speak Through the Wind (8 page)

Any plans Kassandra had for confessing her behavior with Ben in the kitchen that afternoon stopped cold with this tragic turn of events. She was whisked up to her room to be spared the sight of the young men commissioned to carry Clara’s body out to the coroner’s wagon parked in front of Reverend Joseph’s home, though she parted her curtains just enough to witness the scene from her window. The rest of the morning was a steady flow of visitors—wailing women who worked in neighboring houses, wringing their handkerchiefs while tears flowed unchecked down their dark faces; a long-estranged sister who came to claim Clara’s best Sunday hat and coat, just as Clara would have wanted; and the husband, quiet and meek, who wanted, if it wasn’t too much trouble, whatever salary was owed to her.

Each of these was received in the parlor, treated with the same respect and tea as any of the reverend’s friends. The wailing women were given clean, crisp handkerchiefs, which Kassandra found in Clara’s top drawer, each embroidered with a different floral border in perfect tiny stitches that Kassandra would have never thought the woman’s thick fingers capable of producing. The hat and coat were brought from the small cedar-lined pine wardrobe after Kassandra—following Reverend Joseph’s careful instructions—tucked a few “forgotten” coins into the pocket.

She was, however, hustled out of the kitchen and up the stairs when the husband arrived, knocking at the back door as all the others had. But unlike the others, there had been no discernible sign of grief on his haggard face. In the brief moments Kassandra had spent with him, she decided he looked positively hungry, turning his hat over and over in his hopeful hands. Poised at the top of the landing, unable to resist her curiosity about this never-mentioned husband, Kassandra listened as Reverend Joseph counted bill after bill into what she imagined was an outstretched, shaking hand, until he had counted up an amount nearly twice what Kassandra imagined Clara’s salary to be. Then there was a loud admonishment not to spend the money on liquor, and a whispered promise, “No, sir,” before the door shut on the final visitor of the morning.

“Kassandra?” Reverend Joseph’s voice called up the staircase. “Kassandra, darling, I know you are up there. Come down here, please.”

Kassandra gingerly took the steps down into the kitchen where Reverend Joseph stood, his arms outstretched.

“Come here,” he said, and his voice was full of such kindness that Kassandra felt pulled into his embrace, falling against him, her face buried in the dark wool of his vest. She hadn’t yet cried at Clara’s death, and even now tears wouldn’t come. Instead she wrapped her arms around the reverend’s thin body, felt his long arms fold themselves over her shoulders. This was the second time she’d stood in this kitchen, wrapped in the arms of a man, only this time instead of an insidious shameful panic lurking at the edges of her spirit, she felt only comfort and love and strength. She wanted to lift her head, look up into Reverend Joseph’s face, and tell him that she’d killed Clara—as much as if she’d gone into the room and ripped the failing heart right out of the woman’s breast.

The silence was punctuated only by Reverend Joseph’s soothing murmurs until Kassandra, her face smashed against him, not fully aware that she was speaking aloud, said, “You are a good man, aren’t you?”

“What did you say, darling?” Reverend Joseph said, pulling himself away to look down at Kassandra’s face.

She looked up into those kind brown eyes, not nearly as far away as they used to be, and spoke with strength and conviction. “I said, you are a kind man. A good man.”

Reverend Joseph chuckled a bit. “I try to be a good man, yes.”

“You gave those people all of her things. And that man money …”

“Well, now, Sparrow,” Reverend Joseph eased himself away and pulled out a chair, indicating that Kassandra should do the same. “I’m not sure if that was exactly the right thing to do, the money. Sometimes we take actions and hope that God will make something good come out of them. He can do that, you know, take any horrible event and turn it into a blessing.”

“What if,” Kassandra said, studying the fabric of her skirt, “what if we do something bad? Can God make something good come of that?”

“The Scriptures tell us that all things work together for good for those that love God. Now, my dear,” she felt his finger on her chin, lifting her face to look at him, “is there something you want to talk about?”

“I—”
killed her
, she wanted desperately to say, but her courage failed her. “I am not always good.”

“Of course you’re not.” He smiled that warm smile, and the sight of it brought such a load of guilt to her heart that she had to look away. Not down, but just past him, to the small wooden cross hanging on the wall.

“None of us are good all of the time,” he continued. “God knows that. That’s why His forgiveness is part of His divine plan, so when we do sin—whether it is something big or small—we need not carry the weight of it on ourselves. Now, what do you need to tell me?”

Kassandra didn’t answer right away, but pondered what Reverend Joseph had just said—
big or small
.

“It isn’t your fault, you know.”

His words jarred her out of her reverie, brought her eyes directly back to his own.

“My fault?”

“I know you and Clara were quarreling yesterday afternoon.”

“How did you—”

“You and Clara often quarreled. I know right now when you remember her, you are thinking of all the warm and loving times you shared. It’s natural and good to remember those things.”

“She was very angry with me.”

“But her anger didn’t stop her heart, Sparrow. She had a hard life before she came to live here. And she worked very hard taking care of me. And us.”

“I should not have—” she searched for the words. “I think I made her work too hard.”

Reverend Joseph laughed softly “Nonsense. She was happy. Oh, she may have grumbled a bit, but I know the woman she was when she showed up on my doorstep looking for work, and I know the woman she became over the years. She felt safe and protected here. We gave her a good home, Kassandra. A kind family. That’s all any woman really wants.”

Kassandra looked around the cozy kitchen. Spotless as always, the only dishes piled on the counter were the stacks of teacups and saucers from the morning’s parade of visitors. Hidden in the bread box was half of Clara’s last loaf of bread, and in the center of the table where they sat was a little tray holding three jars of her good jam.

“She always said this was her kitchen.”

“And so it was. But now she is in the most beautiful house imaginable. Safe with God, and happier than she has ever been in her life. We can be sad at her passing, but she spent a lifetime here waiting to be with God. She’s probably sweeping the streets of gold right now, grumbling that the angels track in too much heavenly mud.”

Now it was Kassandra’s turn to laugh, softly, and Reverend Joseph seemed to take her laughter as a great reward. She couldn’t rob that joy from him now. She didn’t want to drag his thoughts away from this celestial vision to the mire of what she and Ben had done in this very room—Clara’s kitchen. Instead, she brightened her smile and said, “Thank you, Reverend Joseph,” and stood to place a sweet kiss on the top of his head, where his thinning blond hair revealed a pink scalp.

Before she could walk away, he grabbed her hand, stopping her by his side.

“Can I ask one thing of you, Kassandra?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, turning.

“There’s an empty crate just outside on the back porch. Would you please take it into Clara’s room and pack up her things? I’ll take them to the funeral service and give them to her minister. I’m sure there are many needy people in his congregation who could make good use of them.”

As it turned out, there wasn’t much for, Kassandra to pack. Two skirts, four blouses, half a dozen aprons, all laundered crisp and clean, even those she’d worn the day before. She’d taken the time to wash out her shirt and socks before lying down to die. One pair of shoes showed all the signs of her heavy step; a wooden-handled brush played host to springs of gray hair.

There was a well-worn Bible on the small table beside the bed. Kassandra opened it, flipped through the pages now soft with years of touching, turning, but not reading. Clara had many tricks to hide her illiteracy, often making excuses for Kassandra to read aloud. What did she do with this book? Hold it? Look at the words scattered across the page? It seemed unfair, somehow, that Clara would have this book while Kassandra still didn’t have one of her own, reading from Reverend Joseph’s huge leather-bound volume in his library when it was time to have her daily Scripture lesson.

She folded each item one by one and placed it carefully in the crate, thinking about all the trinkets that had already been given to Clara’s loved ones and hoping that these few items would be put to good use. That’s what Clara would have wanted; she was a generous soul in her own way. The Bible was laid on the top of the pile, surrounded by a nest of starched, clean aprons.

An entire life packed in one small crate.

She took the crate into the kitchen and set it on the table—Clara’s table—and was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. It was just after two in the afternoon, and the sleepless night and busy morning finally had the best of her. She was hungry, too, having only had the smallest nibble of toast sometime earlier that morning. But fixing a snack seemed like far too much work, and she hoped to be upstairs and in bed before Reverend Joseph returned from his visit with the funeral director and Clara’s minister with yet another chore for her to do. She started toward the stairs, but paused to run her fingers over the pile of worldly goods Clara left behind.

“I loved you, Clara,” she spoke into the empty kitchen, and almost heard Clara’s impatient
hmph
at such frivolous speech. Her hand rested now on Clara’s Bible—gripped it, really—and without much thought she lifted the book, clutched it to her breast, and fairly ran for the stairs.

Clara never would have allowed much weeping in her kitchen.

lara’s funeral would not be the first one for Kassandra. As a member of the minister’s household, she was often expected to attend the services and burial of his parishioners. It would, however, be the first time for her to face a corpse of her own creation, and the thought of doing so churned her stomach so that she used the illness as her first excuse to stay home.

“Nonsense, Sparrow,” Reverend Joseph said as she stood at his elbow, clutching her stomach, hoping the slight squint to her eyes would enhance her greenish complexion. “It’s just nerves. And a little sorrow. You’ll feel better on Monday.”

Then she pointed out that she didn’t have a black dress; Clara always said it wasn’t proper for such a young girl to wear black.

“It won’t be the first time you wore your good dark blue to a funeral,” Reverend Joseph told her, surprising Kassandra that he could catalog her wardrobe. “You’ll look just fine.”

In the end it was the Misses Austine who provided Kassandra sanctuary from her final confrontation with Clara. As she and Reverend Joseph were walking out of their front gate on the way to the funeral that Monday afternoon, the sister spinsters were just arriving with a pot of baked beans.

“We assumed that with your Clara dead, you may need some help in the kitchen,” one of them—the taller one actually holding the pot—said.

“Well, that is very kind of you indeed,” Reverend Joseph said, putting an awkwardly protective arm around Kassandra. “Isn’t it, Kassandra?”

Kassandra nodded.

“Are you on your way to the funeral?” asked the other sister who had a dish towel-covered pan of what Kassandra really hoped was some sort of cake.

“Yes, we are,” Reverend Joseph said, turning back toward the gate. “But we can spare a few moments to walk into the kitchen with you to leave the food.”

The Misses Austine exchanged a glance between the two of them, making no attempt to hide their disapproval.

“Now, really, Reverend Joseph,” said beans Austine, “do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“Yes,” chimed her sister. “To take this young girl to where those people—”