Emma's Gift Read online

  © 2003 by Leisha Kelly

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-58558-623-3

  Scripture is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS

  by Thomas O. Chisholm

  © 1923, Ren. 1951 Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL 60188.

  All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  In memory of

  Juanita Lane,

  with special thanks to Mom and Jan for all your help.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One: Julia

  Two: Samuel

  Three: Julia

  Four: Samuel

  Five: Julia

  Six: Samuel

  Seven: Julia

  Eight: Samuel

  Nine: Julia

  Ten: Samuel

  Eleven: Julia

  Twelve: Samuel

  Thirteen: Julia

  Fourteen: Samuel

  Fifteen: Julia

  Sixteen: Samuel

  Seventeen: Julia

  Eighteen: Samuel

  Nineteen: Julia

  Twenty: Samuel

  Twenty-One: Julia

  Twenty-Two: Samuel

  Twenty-Three: Julia

  Twenty-Four: Samuel

  Twenty-Five: Julia

  Twenty-Six: Samuel

  Twenty-Seven: Julia

  Twenty-Eight: Samuel

  Twenty-Nine: Julia

  About the Author

  Also By Leisha Kelly

  ONE

  Julia

  DECEMBER 19, 1931.

  Joe Hammond came racing up our lane in his father’s wagon. I’d never seen their team move so fast, and it set my heart to pumping. Something was wrong. Before the horses half stopped, Joe jumped down and came flying toward our front door like he’d seen a ghost. Samuel opened the door for the boy, and Joe sucked in a giant breath of air before he could manage to say what had brought him here in such an awful hurry.

  “Mama’s sick again,” he said, looking nearly as pale as the white winter sky. “I come to fetch Emma. And you too, Mrs. Wortham, if you’ll come.”

  I dried my hands and pulled off the bib apron. Of course, we’d go, though my stomach was already wrenching sideways. Emma would never refuse to help the neighbors. Not ever. No matter how sick she was feeling.

  Emma set her teacup on the table. “Don’t you be worryin’, Joey. Sit down and catch your breath while I get ready.”

  That was it. Calm as a May breeze. Emma Graham never refused to answer a call.

  She shoved her clunky wheelchair away from the table and waved my husband back when he offered to help her. “Go get m’ coat an’ boot, if you don’t mind,” she told him. “You’d be quicker’n me about it. Not every day Wilametta asks for help.” She sounded awfully hoarse. “What is it she’s complainin’ of?”

  “Mama didn’t ask,” Joe said, twisting his dingy blue stocking cap around in his hands. “Pa sent me.”

  Emma didn’t answer him right away. George Hammond asking for help was surely worse, and she knew it as well as I did.

  “I’ll get my coat,” I told them. “What else do we need to bring along?”

  “Lap robe for the wagon,” Emma answered. “An’ your doctorin’ herbs, ’case they ain’t got what we need over there. Do you know what it is ailin’ her, Joey?”

  The wiry thirteen-year-old glanced at the door and then down the hall where Samuel had gone. “Pa said nerves, but it was never this bad before.”

  “She been outta bed today?”

  “No, ma’am. She don’t look just right for color, neither, I don’t think.” He hadn’t sat down. Wasn’t about to. I turned to the kitchen cupboard and started pulling down jars.

  Samuel came rushing back with Emma’s coat and mine. God bless him, he knew how to rise to an occasion better than I did sometimes. Robert and Sarah followed him and stood there looking at me. “Don’t worry,” Samuel said as he gave me my coat. “We’ll be fine till you get back.”

  I stood for a minute, at a loss for what to say.

  “No tellin’ how long it’ll be,” Emma told us. “’Specially if the snow keeps up. If you wanna stay, Juli, I’d sure understand.”

  “I’m coming.” I hadn’t even noticed that it had started to snow, and I barely gave it a thought. I just looked at Samuel’s deep gray eyes and started pulling on the coat.

  It ought to be Emma staying home. She’d been so weak lately that it scared me, her going out at all. Surely I could handle whatever was ailing Wilametta. But there’d be no talking Emma out of going. She’d known Mrs. Hammond for twenty years, and she’d sooner die than not come when there was a need.

  It was snowing thick by the time we got outside, making it hard to see down to the road. We bundled Emma up in her fur-lined coat, and Samuel lifted her into the wagon seat. She looked so small sitting up there. Like a child, but for the thin gray hairs showing under her woolly hat and the deep lines defining every inch of her face. I spread one quilt on her lap and another around her shoulders.

  “Don’t fuss on me, now,” she scolded us. “We gotta be going.”

  Samuel set my bag in the back of the wagon, and I turned to the porch long enough to tell Sarah and Robert to stay in while I was gone.

  “Don’t worry,” Samuel told me again. “We’ll be all right here.”

  Tears filled my eyes as soon as he said it. Of course, they would be. There wasn’t any reason to doubt it. But I was scared pitiful nonetheless and not about to say so.

  Snowflakes were circling down and falling on my gray wool skirt. I climbed up beside Emma and pulled the edge of the old quilt over my lap too. Joe Hammond hardly waited till I got sat down—we were off down the lane as quick as he could make those old horses go, and I held onto Emma with one hand, the seat with the other.

  George Hammond was out to meet us. He didn’t say anything at all, just reached Emma down off the seat and started for the house with her.

  I jumped from the back of the wagon, my mind whirling and trying to pray. Lord, heal Wilametta. Keep Emma strong.

  George hadn’t waited for me and neither had Joe, who ran ahead of his father to open the door. They both went busting in without slowing down. I hurried behind them with my bag.

  Inside that house was a wilder scene than I could ever have dreamed up. Three-year-old Bert was standing by the door, bare from the waist down in the draft and hollering at the top of his lungs. His brother Harry was sitting on the floor in a puddle of something, twisting up a dishtowel he was probably supposed to be cleaning up with. Two boys sat at the table, managing to slurp down some gray mush and argue with each other at the same time. They only hushed when one elbowed the other and pointed at Emma.

  Lizbeth stood at the stove, wrestling a steaming pot away from the heat with one hand and holding her fussy baby sister with the other. The poor girl looked like she could cut loose and cry too. Or maybe she had been, not long ago, I thought. And there was one other boy, sitting on the loft ladder in a shirt twice his size, watching everything. He had puffy, hollow-looking eyes and the dirtiest cheeks you ever saw. Little Rorey was nowhere in sight, nor was the oldest boy, Sam, who was considerabl
y taller than me.

  George didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to the kids. He took Emma straight back to Wilametta’s bedroom without taking the time to help her off with her coat. I followed after them, scarcely able to breathe. The whole house smelled like camphor and waste, stale food, dirty diapers, and a hundred other things. The Hammonds had always been a crazy household, wild and disorganized and loud. But today something different hung over the place. An angry kind of hopelessness.

  Wila lay on the bed, sleeping or unconscious—it was impossible to tell. Six-year-old Rorey was beside her, stubbornly clinging to her mother’s hand. As George set Emma down on the edge of the bed, most of the kids came clustering in, waiting to hear whatever she would say.

  Emma pulled off her big winter hat and leaned real close, listening to Wila’s breathing. She felt her forehead, then turned around to pull the blanket back and look at the woman’s swollen feet.

  “Juli,” she said, “take your coat off. We’re gonna be here a while.”

  Franky, the boy who’d been sitting on the ladder, pushed his way to Emma’s elbow. “Whatcha gonna do?” he asked with his fingernail in his mouth. “Can I help?”

  Joe looked at his brother in disgust. “Shut up! Nobody asked you to get in the middle of ever’thin’!”

  Emma glanced at them as Lizbeth squeezed in behind me. “She was feverin’ yesterday, an’ I been bathin’ her head,” the girl offered. “She was awake a little bit, early this morning, but she ain’t took in nothin’ at all.” In her arms, the baby, Emma Grace, squirmed and let out a cry.

  Little Bert climbed up on the bed next to Rorey, and Emma looked them all over with a sigh.

  “George,” she said in a quiet voice, “Wila’s gonna need some good solid rest. And quiet. I think you might oughta take the young’uns over to Samuel. Won’t hurt ’em to be a while at my house again.”

  George didn’t answer for a minute. He looked at Emma and his wife, then bowed his head and looked at the floor.

  “We can be quiet,” Rorey protested in a whisper. “Honest! I been real quiet.”

  But George shook his head. “Go get your coats. All a’ you.”

  Lizbeth was horrified. “I need to stay, Pa. At least me an’ the baby. And what about the snow?”

  “The little one been drinking your goat’s milk?” Emma asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lizbeth had tears in her eyes. She hardly ever left home; she was always so busy helping her mother. And she sure didn’t want to leave now.

  “The little one’ll be fine if you wrap her up good,” Emma maintained. “If you got milk left from this morning, take it along.”

  “We got milk left,” George said.

  “But Pa—”

  “You can’t do no more right here,” George told his eldest daughter. “You’ll have to keep your brothers in line over there. Do whatever you can.”

  Lizbeth just stood for a minute, her lips quivering like she was all set to argue. But she took one more look at her mother, then one at me, and turned and fled the room.

  Nobody else moved.

  “Don’t you worry,” Emma told the rest of the kids. “I’ll get your mama all fixed up. We just need some good, quiet space. Go on! You can play with Sarey an’ Robert over there. They’ll like that.”

  “Get your coats,” George ordered again and then noticed his half-naked youngest son. “Willy, climb up and get your little brother’s pants. And shoes. Get on, now. All a’ you.”

  As the room slowly cleared of children, I wondered what Samuel would think of them showing up at our doorstep. I thought maybe Lizbeth should stay here after all, and I should be the one to go back home.

  But no, I knew I needed to be here for Emma. We’d taken her canes, but she’d have considerable trouble getting around without the wheelchair Samuel had made. I had the feeling, anyway, that she wanted all the kids gone for their sakes as much as ours, so they wouldn’t be here watching and worrying.

  “Where’s that big boy a’ yours?” Emma asked George.

  “Gettin’ the stock in.”

  “I’m thinking maybe you oughta send him to take the younger ones for you and then go on into Belle Rive after the doctor.” She said it real slow and quiet.

  George looked at Wilametta. “She ain’t good then, is she?”

  I could see one muscle sprung tight and quivering in his lower jaw. He glanced out the bedroom door to see if any of the youngsters were close enough to hear.

  “No, she ain’t,” Emma told him. “I’m thinking it’s the dropsy, and I sure could use Doc Howell out here if you’ll let ’im.”

  George had never hired a doctor before, not ever. And to my knowledge, Emma hadn’t pushed for one. But he must’ve known this time was different.

  “All right,” he said. “But it’ll take a while, goin’ more’n ten mile with the snow out there. It’s gonna get worse. The doc might not come.”

  Emma nodded. “He’ll come if he can. But we’ll pull her through, one way or the other. You tell your boy that, so he won’t be in no reckless hurry.”

  George didn’t answer but turned slowly and left the room. Emma started stripping off her coat. She kicked off her solitary boot and stood with one foot on the floor and the stump of her other leg balanced against the bed.

  “I’ll need you to steep me some red raspberry and some dandelion root too,” she told me. “An’ bring me a towel and cloth and a bowl of warm water.” She leaned down close, steadying herself with her hand against the head of the bed. “Now, Wila,” she said. “It sure would be a comfort to your family if you’d wake up and tell ’em bye.”

  She didn’t wake up. I went to the kitchen and helped little Bert squirm into his pants and shoes, then wiped his nose and put on his too-thin jacket. It looked like there was a good three inches of snow on the ground already, and it was coming down so thick I could hardly see out to the barn. I began to pray that George’s son would be able to make it through to the doctor.

  “Tell Samuel not to worry,” I said to Lizbeth. “Emma just wants your mother to have some quiet. Try to rest over there too. Looks to me you could use it.”

  She looked at me and shook her head. But I helped her wrap the squalling baby in blankets. “You’re so awful good to your brothers and sisters,” I said. “Your folks must be proud.”

  She didn’t answer. She just grabbed what looked like nothing more than a spring sweater and headed back for her mother’s room. I picked up little Emma Grace and held her till she calmed down. Then Joe took her so I could fish from my bag the “doctorin’” herbs, dried for winter use.

  By the time Lizbeth came back out, the rest of the kids were dressed as warmly as they were able. I told them to bundle under the quilts, and they all headed out the door as I set on a pot of water to boil. There wasn’t much wood in the wood box, but I threw a couple of chunks in the stove to keep it hot.

  Wilametta gave a moan, the first sound I’d heard out of her since getting there, but it was no real comfort. I’d expected to find her fevering maybe, and miserable, but not like this. No wonder Joe had looked so scared.

  In a few minutes, George came back in the house and told me he’d done what Emma had said and sent his oldest boy to drop off the kids and fetch the doctor. Then he went in the bedroom, looking pale and nervous, and I could hear him telling Emma that the kids would be staying the night at our place, even though it wasn’t yet two in the afternoon. I hurried in when I had a bowl of water warmed up.

  “Have you eaten?” I asked George.

  “Don’t want nothin’.” He sat on a chair that looked homemade, his eyes on Wilametta’s plump, pink face. She was sweating, and one of her eyes was half open, but she didn’t seem to be seeing us.

  “Can you help me sponge her down, Juli?” Emma asked, pulling back the covers just a little. Wilametta had always been chubby, but today she looked more swollen than usual. Pink and kind of mottled white—funny colored, just as Joe had said.

  �
��I ain’t never seen her like this,” George told us. “She weren’t this bad yesterday. Got up and cooked herself an onion. She says onion’ll cure anything.”

  “It don’t hurt,” Emma assured him. “She knowed that much.”

  I started bathing Wila’s face and shoulders while Emma rubbed one arm.

  “This morning she was painin’,” George said real slow.

  Emma turned his way. “Where?”

  “To the chest. She told me not to fetch you. Heard you been sick an’ didn’t want to have you over here fussin’ for her again.”

  I thought of the last time Emma had been here, two months ago, when Wila’d been three days in bed. We’d heard it from the kids, and Emma had insisted on coming. I couldn’t blame Wilametta, certainly. Then or now. But George should’ve had the sense to fetch the doctor before this.

  The wind started whistling outside, and Emma asked George to light the oil lamp. It was getting darker, all right. In the middle of the day. I looked at the swirling snow and thought of the kids. They’d have a nasty time of it riding over to our house, though it was just over a mile by the road. I was glad I’d sent our quilts back with them.

  Wilametta gave out another moan and suddenly opened her eyes. “Emma Jean,” she whispered. “You come to see me?”

  “I sure did.” Emma turned to me. “Juli, get some drinkin’ water. Those herbs ready yet?”

  “Not yet.” I got up and ran for the water bucket, nearly tripping over the broom somebody’d left on the floor. It didn’t seem possible that it’d been used lately.

  Wilametta drank a sip and closed her eyes. “Tell Lizbeth to fix you some tea,” she said, all dreamy-like. “Ain’t got a cookie in the house.”

  “You shush,” Emma told her. “We ain’t here to be pampered, now. You hurtin’ anywhere?”

  Wila looked around. “It’s kinda quiet.”

  “Yup. Good’n peaceful. Lay still a minute.” Emma laid her head against Wilametta’s chest, listening, and then raised up and asked her again how she was feeling.

  “Tired. You know. I’ll be all right.”

  “That’s what we’re countin’ on.” Emma lifted the water and got Wila to take another sip.