Train Station Bride (14 page)

“You’ve been waiting for months for word from them. I just kind of thought you’d have told me,” Jake said.

“Bad news is no fun to share. But this letter is good news,” Flossie said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“Is it a letter from the sister at school, Aunt Julia?” Millie asked.

Julia shook her head and turned the letter over in her hand. The writing was clearly Jane Crawford’s. Jake slipped his arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head.

“Maybe you want to read your letter alone. Up in our bedroom. Then you can tell us all the news,” Jake said.

Julia climbed the steps without a word or glance to anyone standing in the kitchen. She closed her bedroom door, opened the curtains and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders. She pulled the old rocker near the window and sat down. Julia turned the envelope over and over in her hand. Desperate for news. Unwilling to submit herself to her mother’s censure. She would have no happy news to share with Flossie and Jake she was sure. Julia lifted the edge of envelope with her nail and saw her mother’s cream-colored stationary inside. Julia opened the letter with shaking hands.

Dear Julia,

Your behavior and appearance during our visit was shocking to your father and me to say the least. How you could have deemed life on a farm preferable to your home and family in Boston is hard to imagine. And a farmer of all things, Julia. Although he seems attentive enough. Remember, though, it will not last. Whatever you have done or are doing to gain this man’s attentions will fade soon enough. I am telling you this with your best interest at heart.

Jennifer sends her greeting. Jolene as well. Although your older sister bears the brunt of the embarrassing questions regarding your absence.

I received a letter from Jillian of late. She sends her regards as well. And wished me to pass on to you some message concerning a Mrs. Beechly. The woman is alive and well. Hopefully this is not more of Jillian’s make-believe nonsense. Her time at school would be best spent studying and making friends with girls of similar families. Remember Jolene met Turner’s sister at that school not so many years ago.

Perhaps Jillian needs to understand the great gift your father and I give her by sending her to Ramsey. A girl in her position will need every connection necessary for a rewarding future. A dose of reality may be what Jillian needs to hear to understand her position in this family and her good fortune. Undowered girls, even beautiful ones struggle on occasion.

I must close this letter for there is much left for me to do regarding the party your father and I are hosting this weekend. Eustace’s mother died and many of the details have fallen to me.

Mother

The letter shook wildly in Julia’s hands. Tears smudged the loops of her mother’s writing. Eustace’s mother had died. And Jillian’s only message to Julia was about Mrs. Beechly. How miserable and desperate was the girl? Did Julia’s mother intended to mold Jillian to her specifications by shaking the very foundation of the girl’s existence. Was the implied threat her intention? Or the final gesture to make Julia come home? Could Julia risk it by calling her mother’s bluff? And possibly leave Jillian alone to face and understand all that was said? Could she leave Flossie and Millie and return to Boston? Leave Will and Harry and Gloria. Never see Danny or little Joshua again? Could she leave Jake?

Julia dropped to her knees in front of the smoldering fireplace. She poked the ashes to life viciously. Her shoulders shook with hysteria and she feared she would vomit. Julia rolled each page of her mother’s stationary into balls and threw them each into the ashes. She curled up on her side, her back to the fire as fresh tears surfaced.

* * *

Jake, Flossie and Millie ate dinner in silence. Julia had not come down stairs. Flossie kissed her brother goodbye and left. Jake sat at the kitchen table, drumming his fingers, wondering what to do. The silence was more unnerving, more overwhelming than any shouting could have been. Jake didn’t want to intrude on Julia. He knew from experience that sometimes the only hope of a solution was found in silence. Whether prayer or contemplation, he didn’t really know what to call what he did, but he knew when life’s trials threatened, a good long look at a sunset or even a blank wall seemed to point his mind in the direction he needed to take. Maybe Julia was deciding to ask him for help or advice. He’d surely give it. Whatever that family of hers were feuding about caused his sweet wife a lot of pain.

Jake glanced at his pocket watch. Six o’clock. Flossie and the kids were long gone and Julia had been upstairs nearly three hours. He knocked softly at their bedroom door and got no response. Jake turned the knob and peaked in the room. She was not in their bed. Julia was not in the rocker he had heard squeaks from earlier in the day. Jake stopped with a start, stunned at what he saw.

His wife was curled tight as a ball on the cold stone hearth. What could her mother have said in the letter for his wife to lie down there, with their bed feet away? Jake knelt and swept the hair from her face. Julia’s shoulders shrugged in her sleep, and she grimaced. Dried tear tracks marred Julia’s face that was tense and painful even in slumber. Jake picked her up, kissed her forehead and lay her down on the bed. He stared at her, his gut clenching. His own problems in the past had been difficult. But none of them caused the pain he was feeling now. Watching Julia suffer harkened back to how he felt when Flossie got cut. He picked up the now empty envelope from Jane Crawford. Poison mailed the whole way from Boston. Touching the hands and mind of the woman he loved. Jake turned to the fireplace. He picked up Julia’s shawl from where it lay in a heap. And then he saw them.

Tightly curled wads of paper amongst the ashes. Cold ashes. Julia had meant to burn the letter he was sure. He stared at the stationary and then knelt to retrieve it. Jake turned the balls of paper over and over in his hand. Curiosity killed the cat was what folks said. But were those folks watching someone they cared about, loved being torn apart inside? Jake flattened the paper out on the dresser and read.

Chapter Twelve

Julia awoke as the sky turned from a brilliant blue to an orange glow. She stared out the window, her eyes gritty from tears. Hysteria had not solved her problem. The solace of sleep held escape only as long as her eyes were closed and her mind unconscious. Julia looked over the blankets when she realized she was not alone in her room. Jake stood, leaning against the wall, watching her. Studying her.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come back downstairs. Mother’s letter was … disturbing.”

“Why would your parents leave your youngest sister without a dowry?” he asked.

Julia’s eyes widened. She looked at the crumpled papers in his hand. “You had no right.”

Jake nodded. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. But then it’s not everyday a man finds his wife curled in a ball on a stone hearth. The only news she receives from home in months, meant for ashes.”

Julia sat up. “There was nothing extraordinary in the letter. Nothing I couldn’t relay to you or Flossie from memory.”

Jake stalked the bed. “You flattened the dandelion Millie gave you in a book, Julia. And a letter from home is crushed and thrown in the fire?” Jake shook his head. “Give me a little more credit than that. What kind of position is your sister in that she needs to make ‘connections’? And who is Mrs. Beechley?”

Julia’s lip trembled. She should have told Jake the story when she didn’t love him. It would have been easier. Yet she couldn’t remember a time here she didn’t love him.

“Mrs. Beechley was my make-believe friend when I was a child.” Julia dropped her eyes. “One night when Jillian couldn’t fall asleep I told her. Jillian sort of adopted her. I often saw her talking to thin air. As she got older, Jillian and I got closer, and she didn’t mention Mrs. Beechley very often.”

Jake shook his head. “Why would that make you so upset? So Jillian has a vivid imagination? That’s what made you cry yourself to sleep?”

Julia shook her head. “No. As Jillian got older she only mentioned Mrs. Beechley when she was horribly upset. She must be devastated to risk passing that message through my mother.” Julia looked up at Jake, misery in her eyes, on her face and in her heart. “Jillian’s telling me she’s very unhappy. Wretched, in fact.”

“And you’re far away. Too far to do anything for her.”

Julia nodded and looked out the window. “She’s alone at a school. Away from home. Probably suffering like I did when I was there. It was horrible.”

“Why did your parents make her go there if you had such a horrible time of it?”

“Ramsey Academy for Young Ladies is the school where all the best families send their daughters. Everyone there is from a wealthy, influential family. Where the connections are made for the best marriages between those families. Where young girls are educated in all the necessary social skills to control those around them. Where they learn to be cruel.”

“Why would you parents leave their youngest child undowered?”

Reckoning time had arrived, as Eustace would have said. Jake had married a woman he didn’t know and wouldn’t have wanted to if he’d been privy to the Crawford skeletons.

“Jillian is not my parents’ daughter.”

“But they’ve raised her as one.” Jake said. “She obviously doesn’t know she’s not their daughter.” He stared at her. “Your mother is threatening to tell her.”

All Julia could do was nod and swallow.

Jake turned, stared out the window and turned back to Julia quickly. “Who’s daughter is she, Julia?”

“Mine,” Julia whispered.

“Turner Crenshaw,” he said.

“My mother and I took a year long trip shortly after Jolene’s wedding. Jillian was born in South Carolina.”

Jake shook his head. “So you stood at the altar, carrying the groom’s child. But you were not the bride.”

Julia swallowed. “Yes.”

“And after all these years your parents decide to withhold an inheritance from a girl they’ve raised since infancy. This is unbelievable.”

“It was not my parent’s idea. My father, in fact, held out for quite a while.” Julia met Jake’s amazed look grimly. “Jolene did not think our family holdings should be split four ways rather than three. If Jillian was entitled, then her children should be as well.”

“I thought Turner had money? Your parents are as rich as Croesus. How much God damned money does your sister need?”

Julia cringed. Jake was screaming. “There were only three daughters …”

“Don’t defend them. Don’t ever defend them,” Jake shouted. “If the decision was made to raise Jillian as their own then, damn it, she’s their daughter. No matter how much your older sister whines.” Jake dropped into the chair near the window to whisper. “Who are you, Julia?”

“I know. I had a child out of wedlock. Turner was the first man to pay attention to me. It was so stupid. So childish. I am so sorry. I wish I had waited for our wedding night. I wanted that so much. Especially now.” Julia stopped talking and her crying dwindled to hiccoughs as she watched Jake’s face. It had turned from astonishment to disbelief and finally to anger. He had married a woman so beneath him. A woman who allowed her chastity to be stolen for a few moments of attention.

“I am so sorry,” she said.

Jake stood slowly and walked to the door of their room. “I could care less you had a child out of wedlock. You were what, seventeen? Mistakes happen. You left your own child, your own flesh and blood at the mercy of the vipers you call a family. Like as if I’d have ever left Gloria outside on the porch waiting for a wolf to tear her in two.” He met her eyes then. “Thank God you’re not pregnant. I don’t want any child of mine to suffer like Jillian if you get it in your head to leave us someday.”

Julia sat in stunned silence. Jake had long ago left their bedroom. The impact of Jake’s words had left her mind blank and her body still. Julia knew, knew instinctively, that if she allowed herself to consider Jake’s words she would be forced to face the worst of her secrets. She had been successful all these years locking away without consideration what Jake had just said.

In dark moments, when sleep would not come and self-doubt, hysteria and paranoia crept around her thoughts like a fog, she had refused to succumb. Refused to voice or even think about how incredibly weak she had been. If she allowed that self-loathing to surface then Julia was sure she would drown in a vast lake of regrets. The thought of facing those regrets, more terrifying than throwing herself under the wheels of a train. That pain would be fleeting. Death would erase that worldly burden. Life, her life, viewed as an observer, would deliver heartache for an insurmountable number of years.

But the review would not dim, not now, not after Jake’s words. And Julia’s greatest failing had been weakness. Julia had squandered the God given instinct to protect that which was born of her womb. Even dogs guarded their young. But not Julia Crawford, she thought to herself grimly as she stared at a knot on the wall. She had done exactly as Jake had said. Julia had left her own daughter to the manipulations and pain of her mother and Jolene. But what could she have done? Dare she bring Jillian with her to South Dakota? Julia shook her head. It wasn’t this home that Julia had denied her daughter. It was any home. She should have stood up to her mother years ago, even if it meant living in a tenement. Or with her aunt. Or anywhere.

Julia was wholly unworthy of the paper slipped between her the leather casings of her suitcase. Jillian’s birth certificate. She had no right to lay claim to the girl or the creased parchment. Or the words.
Mother: Julia Crawford, Father: Unknown.
What if at this moment Jane Crawford stood before her frightened daughter to bear witness to Julia’s shame? Then her greatest fear would be realized. Jillian would know then her own mother was too cowardly to protect her. Had instead boarded a train to leave her heartache behind. Had instead chosen escape. Julia knew then the pathetic reality she had feared was out of the tightly closed box of her conscience.