0800722329 by Jane Kirkpatrick Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t?”
    We sat in that main room of our log home pondering that question that seemed as tangled in my mind as the knitting yarn could get. I noted a hole in the chinking between the logs and told myself to remember to tell Father. Or likely attend to it myself. He took any mention by me of a household need as a criticism of himself.
    “Did you want to go to the trial?” Nancy posed the question. My answer was interrupted by my sister needing her knee looked at. Millie bounded to me, trusting I would do my best to make her feel better.
    “I fell.”
    “So I see.” I dabbed at the wound with my apron edge. “What were you doing exactly?”
    “A . . . a rabbit came by and Yaka chased it and I ran after it through the garden and stumbled at the rocks you put there to mark it. I’m sorry. Rabbits don’t notice fences.”
    “Apparently you don’t either.”
    “Are you mad at me, ’Liza?”
    “No, of course not.” I sounded cross but it wasn’t at my sister: it was at myself, that I’d failed to imagine that anyone might stumble on the rocks I’d carefully lined up to mark the perimeter of the garden, hoping to keep the grasses from encroaching. Lacking a spiderweb to put across the wound, I poured a splotch of my father’s elixirs to clean and stop the bleeding.
    “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” She danced from foot to foot.
    “I’m sorry it has to hurt to feel better.” I kissed her knee above the cleaned wound and she was off on another adventure.
    I fixed tea for Nancy, watched her center my mother’s ironstone cup on the saucer, didn’t answer her question about the trial, didn’t comment on her orderly ways. Changing the subject always proved a good way to avoid uncomfortable things. I did that instead.
    “Did you notice? I didn’t get upset over Amelia’s bloody wound.”
    “Now that you say that, I do. Maybe one day we’ll be normal again.”
    It was a hope, though without my mother to model wisdom in uncertain times, I wasn’t sure I’d recognize what healing really was.

    Later that day, feeling braver after Nancy left, I went in search of my mother’s wisdom inside those missing diaries. I thoughtshe might speak to me from beyond the grave, bring me comfort if I saw some similarity in how we faced our days. So like a mouse sneaking beside a sleeping cat, I secreted my way scratching through my father’s things—their things in a trunk stowed in the barn loft. An old leather pouch he once carried gave up nothing but its scent. I moved aside a stack of clothing of my mother’s with her lavender scent still wisping in the folds. A tattered wool jacket rolled against the side. Cedar bark chips fell out when I lifted it up. My father might have worn it when they wed. No, at her funeral. I heard the horse stomp below me in its stall. Listened for my father’s or siblings’ footsteps. All was quiet. But still, no diaries. Were they left behind in Lapwai? I found books, lots of books, including one I remembered my mother reading to me. Fables for My ABC Book. Then my hand touched a velvet bag and I thought at first it was a neck collar with a gold clasp on it. I reached inside and there it was: my mother’s wedding ring. I fingered it, imagined her wearing it. I couldn’t hold back the tears.
    Time drifted and I knew I must put things back before my father returned. I wiped my face with my apron, slipped the ring on a leather twine, and tucked it around my neck like a hidden necklace beneath the blouse I wore. He would never see it and he wouldn’t marry without it, I was certain. I stepped over the small shame I carried with it as I put things back into the trunk.
    Nancy had wondered aloud one day why she often did things she later felt so sorry for, things she couldn’t seem to keep herself from doing. I pressed the ring beneath my chemise and changed the subject.

5
Sacrifices
    My father was a bear the next evening just before I put potatoes, venison jerky, and spring greens on the