One
August 1878 Chautauqua Lake, New York
“What is amusing you, Clarice?”
Clarice Gordon met her mother’s gaze in the mirror and her smile turned into a grin. “I was remembering the flabbergasted look on the milliner’s face when I refused to have any adornment put on my hat.” She settled the brown felt forward of the thick knot of hair at the back of her head and anchored it in place.
“Some brown-eyed Susans would add a touch of color. A cluster of them at the front would look pretty.”
A wistful note shadowed her mother’s voice. “No doubt. But I’m not interested in looking pretty, Mama.” She adjusted the three tabs of fabric that fell like a flat cravat from the base of her high stand-up collar, then tugged the hem of her bodice down to straighten the row of buttons that marched from beneath the tabs to her narrow waist. Plain and serviceable. Perfect. She smoothed her hands over the front of the long skirt and turned from the mirror. “I’m a career woman. I want the men I encounter in my endeavors to take me seriously, not to court me.” She left the rest unsaid.
“Not all men are like your father and brothers, Clarice.”
The resignation in her mother’s voice plucked at her heart. Yet the mention of her father and brothers chased any commiseration away. “I suppose not, Mama.” It was the best she could do by way of capitulation.
The hardness in her heart would not yield to any appeal for softening. One look at her bedridden mother assured that. It also affirmed her determination to never marry and put herself under the grinding thumb of a man.
She pulled on her half gloves and walked to the bed. “Lean forward and I’ll fluff your pillows before I leave.” She pulled them from behind her mother, pummeled and replaced them. “Let’s see, you have fresh water to drink... And Mrs. Duncan will come in throughout the day with meals and to help you with your private needs...”
“Stop fretting, Clarice. I’ll be fine. I’m not used to being fussed over.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that. But that’s the reason I brought you here to live with me, Mama. So I could take care of you.” She looked down at her mother’s work-worn hands resting against the quilt that covered her legs and tried for her sake to swallow back the bitterness. A wasted effort. The resentment she held against her father for working her mother into a frail, bedridden woman was a part of her. Her brothers were as bad with their selfish demands. But her father’s cruelty was the example they followed.
Her face drew taut, as it always did at the memories. Her father and brothers had treated her mother as their personal slave. And they’d tried to do the same to her.
God bless Miss Hartmore for rescuing her and making her education possible! If her teacher hadn’t whisked her away from her father’s tyrannical grasp, she would still be tending the garden and chickens and pigs and scrubbing piles of their filthy oil-coated work shirts and pants and socks with no hope of escape.
And for Miss Hartmore saving her mother all these years later. When she thought of her mother lying on the grass by a basket of wet laundry and unable to rise...and of her father declaring he had no use for a cripple and wanted no part of the burden of caring for one! His own wife, who had destroyed her health carrying out his demands.
She spun from the bed and walked through the archway to the desk in the small turret that formed the outside wall of her room, trembling from head to toe. She supposed she should be grateful for her father’s callous attitude, as he’d made no objection when Miss Hartmore took her mother into her home. That had made it easy for her to go and bring her mother back here to the boardinghouse where she could care for her. If only she could have done so sooner! But the train fares had taken all she’d been able to set aside for the purpose and a bit more. Her stomach churned. How was she to manage her mother’s care? How was she to pay for the increase in room and board?
She snatched her writing box off the desk and headed for the bedroom door, the short train of her skirt bouncing across the floor with her jerky stride.
“You need to let go of the anger, Clarice. You need to—”
“Please don’t talk to me of forgiveness, Mama!” She whipped around and stepped to the bed. “You’re lying there unable to walk because your husband and sons worked you to the point of crippling you. They are cold, cruel, heartless men. They don’t deserve forgiveness!”
“If they deserved it, they wouldn’t need it.” The hard calluses on her mother’s fingers and palms rasped against the soft skin of her hand. “It’s not for their sake you need to forgive them, Clarice. It’s for yours—and mine. I couldn’t bear it if the anger you hold inside ruins your life.”
“The way my father tried to?” She choked back a torrent of useless words. “The anger won’t hurt me, Mama. It has driven me to succeed, to become a teacher, like Miss Hartmore.” She took a calming breath and curved her lips into a smile. “And I truly enjoy writing articles for newsletters and magazines. I’m hoping that one of my articles will one day favorably impress the editor of a daily newspaper, and he will offer me a job as a journalist.” Her smile faded. “Though that’s not likely. It’s a man’s world—at present.”
“And you believe this suffrage movement you talk about will change that? Women have been trying to gain equal rights for years with little success.” Her mother shook her head. “Only God can change a man’s heart, Clarice.”
There was no point in trying to debate with her mother about God. “Well, perhaps He is using the suffragists to do so. Oh, I almost forgot...” She reached into her pocket, fingered the two coins she had left after paying the extra board for her mother then pulled out one of them. “Here, Mama, you may need something when I’m not here to go to the store. If so, I’m sure Mrs. Duncan will fetch it for you.” She leaned down and kissed her mother’s cheek. “I have to hurry or I’ll miss the steamer for Fair Point. I’ll be back tonight, Mama. Mrs. Duncan will look in on you.” She relaxed her knuckle-aching grip on her writing case and hurried out the door.
* * *
Charles Thornberg buttoned the starched collar and cuffs onto his fresh white shirt then opened the small drawer in the center of his chestnut wardrobe. Light glinted on the silver pocket watch with its attached fob and the pair of silver-framed carnelian cuff links that rested there. The silver initials set into the brownish-red stones of the links gleamed up at him. TJT. Thomas Jefferson Thornberg.
Charles lifted the cuff links out of the drawer and stared down at them resting on his hand—all that he had left of his father, thanks to his mother’s ambition and incompetence. She had lost everything else, including their house and furnishings, when she’d taken over the running of his father’s prosperous investment business on his death and driven it into bankruptcy. Of course, he was already living in the boarding school by then. She’d sent him away the day after they buried his father.
His fingers curled over the cuff links, pressed them against his palm. He’d been so frightened when the strange man came to take him away he’d snuck into his father’s dressing room and grabbed the cuff links to take with him. They were his father’s favorites, and holding them had made him feel better—braver. He’d clutched them in his hand for the entire two-day-long journey to the boarding school.
His face tightened. Five years old and left all alone in a strange new place with no one to ease his fears or comfort him over his father’s
