Lovelier than Daylight Page 25

  A loud clap of thunder made her jump. In its wake came a rap on the door. Who was out in this weather? Aunt Ann would not knock—unless her arms were full. Susanna rushed over and flipped the lock, pulling the door open to a shower of raindrops on her face.

  A couple stood on the stoop.

  No, not a couple—it was Johann and a veiled woman. He held an umbrella over her, but it was little use against the blowing rain. Rain dripped off his hat and his face was wet, his clothing hanging with sodden heaviness. The woman was not as drenched as he, but her veil hung limp and the hem of her dark dress was covered with light-brown mud.

  “Please, come in,” Susanna said.

  “I have business to do in town, but I’ve brought you a visitor,” Johann said. “I’ll return in half an hour.”

  Susanna stepped aside to allow the woman to enter as Johann strode off, his umbrella buffeted by the wind. Why did he leave so abruptly? This was hardly the weather in which to do business— he should have come in to wait out the storm. And he did not even introduce her to the stranger, who had now come in and was standing in the parlor. But the open door was letting in the gale, so she shut it firmly against the wind and turned to the woman.

  “Please come into the kitchen and dry off, ma’am,” she said. “The stove is warm and you are damp—I wouldn’t want you to catch a chill. May I take your hat?”

  The woman removed a hat pin and took off her hat and veil together.

  It couldn’t be real. She raised her hands to her face, gasped for breath, rooted to the floor. When her heart started again, she held out her arms. “Rachel!” The name from her lips released tears that sprang freely from her eyes. She staggered forward, taking her sister in her arms and holding her fiercely, not minding the dampness seeping through her light sleeves. She sobbed, pain and joy pouring out of her together.

  She clung to her just to stand up. When her tears had run their course, she held her sister at arm’s length so she could see her again, to reassure herself that it was true.

  Rachel was also weeping, her brown eyes swimming in tears, her pretty face reddened. “I’m sorry,” she said in a choked voice. “I was afraid George would find me and harm the children. I’m sorry I couldn’t come to you.”

  “It’s all right,” Susanna said, barely able to speak. “Everything’s all right.” And it was—her prayers of the last weeks had been answered and everything would work out just the way it should, without an unwise marriage. So why in her joy did she feel a twinge of regret, still? Just her fallible heart, longing for Johann. And how selfish, when God had been so gracious and her family was restored. The thought brought more tears and she held Rachel close, her love and relief washing away all else.

  After she could breathe again, she led Rachel into the kitchen. “Let me take your wrap.” Her sister wore a loose shawl that had taken the brunt of the weather’s wrath. Its black fringe dripped on the wood floor.

  Rachel shrugged out of it and gingerly handed it to Susanna, who hung it across the back of one of the chairs.

  When she turned back to look at Rachel, she froze. “Oh. Oh.”

  A noticeable bulge rounded the front of her sister’s dress.

  “You are expecting again—is that why you left?” She did not know what to think—it made it even more shocking.

  “Let’s sit down.” Rachel looked reluctant—but then so would Susanna if she had a tale of woe to tell.

  Susanna moved the two kitchen chairs close to the stove and took a seat in one of them. Rachel did the same but remained silent with a pensive shadow on her face.

  “You can tell me, whatever he did,” Susanna said. “I’m your sister. I can bear what you’ve borne.”

  Rachel took a deep breath. “Yes, I left when I realized I was expecting. But the baby is not George’s. He and I had not known the marital relation in months.”

  Susanna blinked. The sentences her sister had just spoken jumbled in her mind. She must not have heard. “What? I don’t understand.”

  Rachel’s voice was faint. “I broke my marriage vows.”

  Susanna’s mouth fell open as order and meaning fell out of the world and she struggled to put it back together. The baby— not George’s.

  Was it all true, what George had said? That Rachel was a loose woman?

  “Then you did leave your children to run away with another man?” Susanna could hardly get it out.

  “No! I only left them because I knew they would be in danger with me. George had sworn to kill them in front of me, the morning I ran away. I had to get them somewhere quickly. It was only afterward that I went with Richard. I had nowhere else to go, and he promised to care for me.”

  Rachel had a lover—she had brought all this suffering and grief on all of them with sin. Susanna started to her feet. “Who is this Richard?” Her shock bleached the words dry.

  Rachel looked down, shame falling over her face. “He’s a traveling vendor. He came by the house once in a blue moon . . . and then more often.”

  “And so George discovered the two of you?” Susanna’s voice shook. All this mess, the children placed at risk, Daniel’s worsened lungs, a family broken. What would happen now? The lawyer would say they could not reclaim the children, no doubt. After Susanna would have staked her own honor on her faith in her sister’s virtue.

  “George suspected.” There was a pleading note in Rachel’s voice. “That’s when he threatened to kill all of us. And knowing I was with child, I had to leave before he found out. I’m sorry for what I’ve done. . .” Her voice trailed off into silence.

  “So why did you come back?” It was an accusation. Why hadn’t she just stayed with her lover?

  “Richard decided not to leave his wife. I saw George was dead. I knew it was safe. And”—her eyes welled up again—“I love my children.”

  “Not enough, apparently, to keep them.” She felt as if Rachel had thrown her under a streetcar, for how much it hurt. Like her bones were snapping, one by one, under the heavy wheels of this new, unwanted knowledge. “I can’t speak to you right now.”

  Rachel’s face crumpled.

  It maddened her—what right did Rachel have to expect anything from her? If she did not leave, right now, she might scream or slap her. Something was shaking loose in her and about to get out.

  Susanna whirled, threw herself against the door, and splashed out into rain that whipped against her face. She did not care, the sting in her heart goading her one. Buffeted by the wind, slipping and sliding across the street, she could hardly see for the rain streaming down in her eyes, mixing with her tears. She ran on behind the shops, across the quadrangle, stumbling, holding up an arm to shield herself from the gale. At last she reached Towers Hall. She sought the shelter of its arches and let herself in. Her drenched clothing stuck to her skin, her bustle felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds as she staggered down the hallway, raining droplets on the wood floor. She was sobbing and did not even care who heard. She would have given anything for Rachel and the children, but Rachel had walked away from virtue for her own gratification and cast them all into chaos.

  When she reached the literary society library, she sat on the floor with her back to the wall, then slumped over on her side, the tears still running out her eyes, over the bridge of her nose, down into her soaked hair. What could she say? Should she tell Rachel the full consequences of what she had done, that she had cost Susanna her tuition, and more importantly, cost her children their chance at a family by abandoning what was right?

  And then, unbelievably, the door opened. She felt a flash of desolate rage—could she not even be alone at this time, in this storm? Was it Abel Wilson?

  The head that peered around the door frame was blond, and as wet as hers. She sat up—he could not see her like this. But his presence was like cool cream on a burn, easing the hurt even if nothing could fully heal it. He had come to look for her, and that mattered.

  “How did you know I was here?” Her voice was thick with tear
s. She must look awful, with her hair plastered down around her brow and ears. Not that it mattered anymore.

  “Your sister told me you ran toward the college.” He came in, dripping, and sat down next to her.

  “I went to a lawyer yesterday. He told me the only way we could get the children back was if Rachel’s conduct was unquestionable. I swore it would be.”

  He put an arm around her, warming her shoulders in the chill of the draft. “It’s hard when people disappoint us.”

  “Why?” she burst out. “Why can’t they just do what’s right? Why is everyone so determined to do what they wish at the expense of children?” Her question was ragged, full of all the pain of the previous months. “How can we ever help all the children they’re hurting with their selfishness?” She let it pour out while he sat there absorbing it, as if he would willingly take her sorrow, share its ache.

  “You’ve done your best, my sweet.” He cradled her close.

  She leaned into his shoulder and wept, choking out words. “I’ve wanted to be like my uncle and aunt and my cousin Ben my whole life. They’re such good people. I wanted to be like them, the Hanbys who were brave and who stood for righteousness against those who did wrong.”

  “Was that what they did? Is that what you’ve seen in them?” He stroked her shoulder.

  She remembered her aunt with Mrs. Pippen, and her uncle with Mr. Pippen. What had they done? How had they stood for righteousness while she had been here?

  They hadn’t, exactly, not in the way she always thought of them, the heroic Underground Railroaders fighting against injustice and wrongdoers. Instead they had put their arms around the suffering and spoken words of love, words of encouragement and faith.

  “It’s not how I thought it would be.” She sounded to herself like a bewildered child.

  “What will your aunt and uncle say to your sister?”

  It hurt to think of it—they would not behave as Susanna had. They would not reproach Rachel, or run away in fury, hurting her sister more, making her feel rejected and despised.

  “I don’t know if I can forgive as they do,” she admitted. She had stopped sobbing, but tears still leaked from her eyes, a silent confession.

  “You can,” he said. “I’ve seen your love for your family. Forgiveness comes from there. You have an unselfish heart.”

  She could not speak but wiped her eyes. “I suppose we should go back.”

  He helped her to her feet, both of them bedraggled and out of place in the refinement of the library. The wind had slackened, but they were drenched again within a minute of leaving the doorway of Towers Hall. He shrugged off his light jacket and wrapped her in it, his white shirt clinging to his shoulders.

  He thought she had an unselfish heart. But she must have a very stupid brain to have so completely misunderstood all these years.

  The world had not broken from a lack of righteousness.

  It had broken from a lack of love.

  Her aunt and uncle knew this, cousin Ben and his wife had known it, her missionary cousins in Sierra Leone had crossed the sea for it.

  But Susanna had not found that truth in herself, always too busy looking for righteousness.

  Johann took her hand as they passed the ghostly shrouds of the saloon. Its blackened beams and broken walls stood like a silent reproach.

  Why had she never realized that the architecture of a heart could be just as ruined and blasted from a lack of love?

  She held tight to Johann’s hand as the truth rolled over her and threatened to sweep her away.

  Should she continue in her rage at Rachel, in her desire to punish her sister, Susanna would be as culpable as anyone who ever set match to gunpowder.

  Her aunt and uncle had resolved to go into Columbus to the Hannah Neil Mission as soon as dawn broke. Johann stayed overnight at the hotel, where he also engaged a room on another floor for Rachel, as if sensing that the sisters still needed time apart.

  The train journey into Columbus the next morning was tense. At the station Uncle Will and Aunt Ann spoke quietly to one another, sitting a few feet removed from the others on their own bench. Johann read the paper and leaned against the wall as if glad to avoid the awkward curtain of silence between Susanna and her sister on the second bench. Rachel stared at the tracks with the sad eyes of an exile.

  They had waited for five minutes, in silence, when two new arrivals made Susanna look up, startled, and catch Aunt Ann’s eye.

  Abel Wilson and another male student walked through the station with deliberation, shoulders hunched under their coats, muttering to one another out of the sides of their mouths.

  The freckled young man was within ten feet of them by the time he noticed their little party.

  He blanched ghost white and stepped sideways as if he could escape, bumping into his companion. When the other young man saw them, he, too, flinched and stared across the station.

  She would not let it go unchallenged. “Mr. Wilson.”

  He nodded, trapped by their proximity. “Miss Hanby. Mr. and Mrs. Hanby.” When he said their names, he looked as if he would faint.

  “You are headed into Columbus?”

  “Much farther than that,” the other young man interjected with a stiff grin. “To Washington, then abroad.”

  “Really. How exciting,” she said faintly, as her mind worked. “A recent plan, Mr. Wilson?”

  “Yes—John offered to take me to Paris and London for the year. How could I refuse?” He looked like a dead man trying to talk, his jaw hardly moving.

  “Of course.”

  Her aunt murmured good wishes to them as they hurried to the far end of the platform and stood there as if they would melt into the brick wall. What could she think, but that Abel Wilson was petrified with guilt or fear? And yet the authorities had questioned Abel and everyone else in Westerville to no avail—there was no evidence, and at least twenty people had been named as suspects by other townsfolk, until the police said they wouldn’t be starting another Salem witch hunt and closed the case.

  She tried not to look at them. At least they would ride in a separate car. She simply could not spare the mental effort when so much lay ahead of her family that day. She was fighting her own giant.

  The train pulled in, and as they mounted into the car and took their seats, Susanna struggled with herself, plumbed deep to remember her love for her sister, their childhood affection, all Rachel had endured that had led to her situation.

  Forgiveness did not come easily, no matter how much Susanna wanted it. The others were reading, Johann still engrossed in his paper—or pretending to be, to avoid the silence. Uncle Will and Aunt Ann shared a Harper’s Monthly. Rachel had her eyes closed, pale, leaning into the corner where the seat met the wall.

  Susanna took her pocket Bible from her bag and opened it in her lap—Uncle Will had recommended Proverbs.

  A fool gives vent to his anger, a wise man holds it quietly in. She stole a glance at Johann. Like her uncle, he had proven himself patient and self-controlled—in sharp contrast to her own behavior.

  A hot-tempered man stirs up strife. She turned pages again. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. She closed the Bible. It was painful to look in this mirror. She hadn’t considered the consequences her speech might carry for the Corbins. Her lack of love led to her support of driving them out of town by any means, which might have encouraged the unknown bombers to violence and injury.

  She could no longer ignore this lack, this missing grace in her heart. Why didn’t she just throw her arms around Rachel as she had on their first reunion? Johann could accept her sister, but she could not?

  She could and she would.

  “Would you like to read this?” Johann folded the newspaper and handed it to her. Always so observant, so considerate. She wanted to be as patient. Maybe after the children were home and this relentless twisting of her nerves was over. And this trip to the Hannah Neil Mission was only half the task—then they must discover if anything c
ould be done to break the indentures of the Hare Home.

  One giant at a time, or she would surely falter. One at a time.

  They sat in the parlor of the Hannah Neil Mission, waiting. No one spoke. The maid had told them that the matron would be with them shortly.

  She walked in a minute later, neat and orderly as usual. Her eyes widened only a fraction when she saw Rachel sitting in one of her chairs, but she disguised it well. Johann and Uncle Will rose to greet her.

  “Good morning,” the matron said. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” She seated herself in the only vacant chair.

  “As you can see, ma’am,” Susanna said, knotting the fabric of her dress in her fingers, “my sister has returned, and is ready to reclaim her children.”

  “You are in mourning, Mrs. Leeds?”

  “My husband passed away.” Rachel’s face was white and stiff. “I see.” The matron took a subtle glance at Rachel’s rounded belly, not disguised by her dress and shawl. “I’m afraid I must speak plainly. Forgive me.” She shifted in her chair. “When living mothers give up their children, we have found that these mothers are usually motivated by their wish to pursue a life of . . . pleasure . . . unrestricted by the little souls they brought into the world.”

  Rachel grew two spots of bright red in her cheeks.

  Susanna crossed and uncrossed her feet beneath her skirt. That was not fair and went beyond “speaking plainly” to be sure. Rachel was not a woman of the streets. Susanna should tell the matron so. But the proverbs she had read on the train circled in her mind and slowed her tongue. She must not lash out and ruin it all—she had done too much of that.

  “Mrs. Leeds has always been a good mother prior to this occasion, and has every intention of being so again,” Uncle Will said. “That is why we came with her, to vouch for her maternal qualities.”

  It must be agonizing for her sister to sit there like a criminal and be discussed. Pity swelled in Susanna’s heart. Clearly Rachel could not defend herself, and someone would have to speak for her.