Her Daughter's Dream

  Dawn relished the closeness. This was a first—the three of them sitting and talking, like three buddies at a sleepover. “I’m glad the roads are closed and the power is off.”

  Granny shook her head. “Being cut off from the world is the last thing a lady in your condition should want.”

  “This is fun, don’t you think? The three of us sitting around the fire, enjoying one another’s company.” Deeper conversations could happen under these circumstances. She wouldn’t push yet. God, You do it. Strip away their resistance. Open their hearts. Get them talking.

  Granny tucked her hands inside Papa’s old sweatshirt. “It’s why Papa and I moved out here. We hoped this would become a gathering place for the whole family. Maybe I should keep the place, for you and Jason and your children to enjoy.”

  Mom looked at her with dismay. She set her empty bowl aside and pulled her legs up against her chest, gazing into the fire. Dawn didn’t have to guess what she was thinking, and she decided it was time to make a few things clear. “Jason intends to stay in the military, Granny. He could be transferred anywhere anytime.”

  “Just a thought.” Granny sighed. “Things don’t always turn out the way we hope.”

  “I noticed you were reading Oma’s journal again. Did she ever come up here, Granny?”

  “She drove up once to see the place, stayed for two days, and went back to Merced. We invited her to live with us, but Mama said there wasn’t anything in Jenner that mattered to her.” She pinched lint off the sweatpants.

  Dawn felt her hurt, but saw no reason for it. “I doubt she meant you and Papa didn’t matter, Granny.”

  “Well, what else could she mean?”

  Mom glanced at her. “Oma liked meeting people.”

  “There are people here.”

  “She liked exploring in her car.”

  “She had to give it up soon after that.”

  “And she wasn’t happy about it. She started taking walks around the neighborhood, then started riding the city bus. She said it took a while to feel comfortable riding around town with strangers, but she got to know the drivers and some of the regular passengers. She rode the bus to the community college and took classes there. She was enrolled in another American history course when she passed away.”

  Granny leaned back, taking in that news. “I didn’t know that.” She sat quietly, contemplating what Mom had told her. “Oma always valued education. College for Bernie, trade school for Chloe, art classes for Rikka. She was disappointed when I chose nurses’ training.”

  “Why?” Dawn curled her legs into the chair and pulled Papa’s sweatshirt over her knees.

  “She thought I was training to be a servant. Oma wanted me to go to the University of California.”

  Mom glanced up. “Her father made her quit school. Oma told me she would have loved to have gone to a university and I should take advantage of the opportunity.”

  Granny gave a soft laugh. “She said she’d pay my way if I’d go to the school she had picked out for me. I enrolled in nurses’ training anyway. It was the first time I bucked her about anything.” Her smile turned sardonic. “It makes sense she set up that fund for girls wanting to go to college. And it never occurred to me that might be the reason Mama didn’t want to live up here.”

  “Did Oma ever earn a degree?”

  Granny shrugged. “I don’t know. She would’ve told you, Carolyn.”

  Mom smiled. “Dawn gave her the only diploma she ever received. I think Oma just liked learning new things. She took art history once so she and Aunt Rikki would have things to talk about.”

  “Did she ever take biology?” Granny asked.

  “She took anatomy, physiology, and biology by correspondence course while living at the cottage. When she moved to Merced, she took chemistry. She said she could’ve used your help with that one.”

  Granny frowned. “Why didn’t she ever tell me?”

  “She tried. She invited you over for tea every day. You always had other things to do.”

  Granny sat with her lips parted, a deep frown furrowing her brow. Dawn remembered that when Oma died, Granny had grieved deeply. Was it because things had been left unsettled between them?

  Granny crossed her arms, hugging herself. “I’ve been reading her journal. I’d hoped it might share some of her feelings. But it’s just recipes, housekeeping information, boardinghouse rules, farm schedules—”

  “You haven’t read all of it yet, Granny.”

  “I’m sure it’s unrealistic to think she’d have written anything about me, when she could never be bothered to talk to me. Or to say she loved me. She never said that to me, not once in my entire life.”

  Mom turned to her. “Maybe we have something in common.”

  “Don’t you dare sit there and say Oma never told you she loved you. I heard her say it to you all the time! Every day when I was sick in bed, I’d hear her say it. ‘I love you, Carolyn. I love you. I love you.’” Granny’s voice broke.

  “I didn’t mean Oma.” Mom turned her face toward the warmth of the fire.

  Granny looked as though Mom had slapped her. Her eyes shone with tears as she stared at Mom.

  Dawn wanted to weep for both of them. “Oma loved you, Granny.”

  Granny hadn’t taken her eyes off Mom. “I’d like to believe she did, but she never said it. Not to me.”

  “Not everyone knows how to say it, Granny. They show it. Did Oma tell anyone she loved them? Uncle Bernie? Aunt Chloe?”

  “She never said it to anyone, not even my father.”

  Mom frowned. “She loved him, didn’t she?”

  “So much so, I worried she’d grieve herself to death after he died. She’d go out into the orchard and scream and pound the earth. . . .” Her eyes filled. “I never understood her.”

  “Oma wrote about love in her journal, Granny.” Dawn got up and retrieved the worn leather book from the side table. She turned pages. “Here. From 1 Corinthians 13. ‘Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant. . . .’”

  She turned more pages until she found what she was looking for near the end. “‘We try to do a little better than the previous generation and find out in the end we’ve made the same mistakes without intending. Instead of striving to love as God first loved us, we let past hurts and grievances rule. Ignorance is no excuse.’” She looked up. “It’s right here in her handwriting.”

  Dawn sat down. “Oma told me she only wrote important thoughts in her journal, things that helped her in life.” She turned more pages. “Here’s more about love. ‘I know how Abraham felt when he placed Isaac on the altar. I know that pain. But what did Isaac feel lying there, bound, his father holding the knife? afraid? abandoned? expendable? Or did he, too, understand God would rescue him? God tested Abraham, and He showed Isaac what it meant to trust God. Will my Isaac ever understand that what I do, I do for love?’”

  Dawn looked pointedly at Granny. “Who do you suppose Oma’s Isaac was?”

  “Bernie or Papa. Perhaps. How would I know?”

  Mom’s face filled with compassion. She met Dawn’s eyes, but spoke to Granny. “I think it was you, Mom.”

  Granny closed her eyes and shook her head, as though the idea was too painful to consider. “We’ll never really know, will we?”

  56

  Carolyn lay awake on the couch after Mom and Dawn went to bed. She imagined them curled up together, sharing warmth under the covers. Why couldn’t she get warm? She got up and dragged the blankets with her as she sat closer to the fire. She kept thinking about what Oma had written about Abraham and Isaac. That kind of love seemed a mystery. She understood Jacob better. Like Jacob, she had worked to earn the one she loved—May Flower Dawn—and felt cheated in the end. She also identified with Leah, the least loved, always second best.

  God caused all things to work together for the good for those who love Him, and she did. Would she have learned to center her life on Jesus if she’d g
otten everything she wanted? She might have poured all of her love and hope onto her daughter. God had seen that that wouldn’t happen. Even Mitch, the love of her life, came in second to Jesus.

  Why this sudden, deep, inexplicable desire to understand her mother, and have her understand as well? After all these years . . . Carolyn had learned, slowly, to let other people in. She opened the door of her heart to Mitch first, then allowed him free access to all her rooms. Christopher had never had to struggle with that.

  She wondered if her mother had been knocking all these years, and she’d been too afraid to look through the peephole, let alone open the door. Oma once told her not to waste time on regrets, but to grasp opportunities. She remembered something else Oma had said, something that had made no sense to her at the time. “Your mother will take good care of May Flower Dawn. She never really had the chance to take care of you.”

  Carolyn looked up when she saw a movement in the shadows. Mom came out in her thick bathrobe and fuzzy pink slippers. “Are you cold?”

  Carolyn forced a smile. “I shouldn’t be. You should go back to bed. Keep warm.”

  “Maybe you caught cold working out in the garage. I can get you another blanket out of the closet.”

  “I’m fine, Mom. Really.”

  Her mother eased herself into the yellow swivel chair. “I’ve been thinking . . .” She folded her hands in her lap. “It’s easier to talk about lesser sorrows, but we’re silent about the ones that break our hearts and change everything.”

  Carolyn wanted to apologize. “Charlie.” Maybe she should’ve left that box of pictures in the garage. She should’ve left the yearbooks under the house.

  “I wasn’t thinking about Charlie. I’ve been thinking about you, Carolyn.” She looked uncertain. “It was hard for me to turn you over to Oma. I don’t think you have any idea how much I love you. I do, you know. I always have.”

  Carolyn couldn’t catch her breath. When she did, she put her head against her knees and cried.

  * * *

  Dawn awakened when Granny got out of bed. She didn’t move or speak as Granny quietly left the room. Dawn heard Granny speaking softly. Then Mom started to cry. Easing out from under the covers, Dawn wrapped Papa’s old robe around herself and approached the door.

  Finally, Lord.

  She pressed her fingers against her trembling lips.

  Mom didn’t say anything.

  God, please, help her speak. I don’t mean to be selfish, but I need them to work things out.

  “Carolyn?” Granny spoke softly, tentatively. “Why are you crying?”

  Dawn covered her face and prayed.

  * * *

  Carolyn turned her head and gave her mother a watery smile. “I didn’t think you even liked me.”

  “Can you tell me why you thought that?”

  Her mother looked so bleak, so concerned, Carolyn decided it was time to unlock the door and open it a little. “A lot of reasons.”

  “You said I yelled at you to get out of my bedroom. Is that why?”

  “Yes, but I understand that now.” It wasn’t what her mother had done as much as what she hadn’t. “You never allowed me to sit close to you. You never held me on your lap or kissed me.”

  “I couldn’t, Carolyn. The TB.”

  “You couldn’t wait to get your hands on May Flower Dawn, Mom. You held and kissed her all the time.”

  “I wasn’t sick anymore then.”

  Carolyn smiled sadly. “You weren’t sick when we moved to the property.”

  Mom bowed her head. “Maybe it became a habit with us.” She raised her head. “I wanted to hold you, Carolyn, but by then you didn’t want anyone but Oma to hold you. I sent her home so I could win you back, but instead, you withdrew. You didn’t seem to want me; you didn’t seem to want friends. You never showed interest until you met Rachel Altman.”

  Carolyn’s heart started to pound the way it did in AA meetings when she knew God was nudging her to share. She looked into the fire. She could remain silent and let Mom believe what she did, or she could risk everything and tell the truth. The tension inside her built until she thought her heart would explode if she didn’t say something. “I had one friend.”

  “Who?”

  She could say Suzie, the girl who moved away. Mom might remember her. “Dock.” His name came out before she thought better of it.

  “Dock?”

  Her mother didn’t even remember him. It seemed so strange she wouldn’t when Dock had dominated so much of Carolyn’s childhood. “Hickory, dickory, dock.” He didn’t chase mice up a clock. He offered cheese and crackers to a little girl, then drew her slowly into his lair.

  * * *

  It was a moment before Hildie remembered him, but when she did, she went cold. “You don’t mean Lee Dockery, do you?” She could picture the beekeeper next door, his disturbing smile, the way he never looked her in the eye. He’d been polite, but something about him had made Hildie’s skin crawl. They’d told the children to steer clear of him.

  She studied her daughter. Carolyn sat hunched, arms locked around her knees, face turned away. Was she trembling? “How did you meet him?”

  “Charlie took me over to his house. Before you and Dad told us to stay away.”

  Hildie pressed a hand against her stomach, trying to ignore the uneasy feelings stirring inside her. The man had mysteriously vanished around the same time Carolyn started having nightmares. Hildie had worried that there might be a connection, but Trip had assured her there couldn’t be. No. Please, God, no. “Did you go back to see him?

  “Yes.”

  “Often?”

  “Yes.” Carolyn pulled her knees in tighter to her chest and kept her head down. “At first, I sat by the fence and just watched him take honeycombs from the hives. He’d talk to me. He told me all about his bees. He gave me pieces of honeycomb. It dripped all over me once, and I started crying because I thought Daddy would be mad and he’d give me another spanking. Dock said I could come inside his house and wash off. He let me take a bath while he washed my clothes. He told me how lonely he was all by himself.”

  Hildie closed her eyes tightly. Oh, God, oh, God! Why couldn’t my little girl come to me?

  “I went back the next day and the next. He’d give me crackers and honey . . .”

  Hildie clenched her hands. Her daughter had always loved baths. Hildie remembered being so tired by the end of the day; she’d wash Carolyn quickly, efficiently, like a nurse with a patient. Just get the job done. “Don’t dawdle, Carolyn,” she’d say. “It’s time for bed.” Hildie had been so tired, afraid she would get sick again. She needed to get some rest.

  “Dock put the lid down on the toilet and talked to me while I was in the tub. He’d tell me stories.” She closed her eyes tightly. “Later . . .”

  The fire cracked. The rain drummed on the roof. A pulse beat in Hildie’s head.

  “What happened later?”

  “He washed me.”

  Hildie fought rage and sorrow. What had she been doing that had been so important she hadn’t noticed her daughter missing? Was she tending the vegetable garden? planting walnut trees? hanging up laundry? Busy, always busy with something! There had always been something to do. Charlie had been off on his bike visiting friends. She’d assumed her quiet, timid little girl was close by, picking flowers, making mud pies, watching butterflies. How could she have been so blind?

  “We played games.”

  Hildie bit her lip. She and Trip had moved to the country so their children would be safe, so they’d have plenty of fresh air and sunshine. She felt sick with premonition, but had to know. “What sort of games, Carolyn?”

  “Secret games, he called them. Touching games.” Carolyn spoke so softly.

  Hildie gave a soft sob and pressed her hands over her mouth. Carolyn glanced up sharply, eyes wide. She looked down quickly, putting her arms over her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Her body shook. r />
  When Carolyn tried to get up, Hildie reached out and pulled her back against her legs, pinning her there, arms wrapped around her. Sobbing, she rested her head on Carolyn’s until she could speak. “It’s not your fault, honey. It’s mine.” She felt a shudder go through Carolyn and held on tighter. “It’s my fault, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”

  Carolyn started to cry again, body relaxing, giving in. Hildie didn’t let go of her. She stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. She hadn’t been there when her little girl needed her, and she might never be able to forgive herself for that. But she could try to comfort the woman in her arms now.

  Carolyn wiped her face with her sleeve. “I knew I wasn’t supposed to go there, Mom, but he was nice to me. He held me and kissed me and said he loved me.” She gulped down a sob. “I was stupid. I was so stupid!”

  “You weren’t stupid. You were a child.”

  “He didn’t hurt me until the last time. And then there was blood, a lot of blood, and he cried. I was so scared. And he wouldn’t let me go until I promised . . . He said we’d both be in big trouble if I told anyone what we’d been playing. At first, he told me not to come back. Then he came to my window that night and said he loved me. He wanted me to be his little girl. He said he was going to look for a safe place for us. I’d know when he found it because he’d leave some honey at the front door. I don’t think I dreamed it all. It was so real.”

  Horror filled Hildie. That man would have kidnapped Carolyn. She and Trip never would’ve found her. Oh, God, thank You. She hadn’t been looking out for her daughter. But God had.

  “That’s why you crept into Charlie’s room and slept with him.”

  “Yes, and when you told me to stop, I’d hide in my closet.” She shuddered and moved away slightly so they could face one another. “I heard you and Dad talking about Dock. I was afraid you’d figured out what I’d done and I would be in trouble. But you never did.”