not replying to his question.
Birdie with Charlotte hurried away from the head of one of the horses toward her. “Miss Emma!” Birdie greeted her.
“Hello.” Emma bent to talk to them. “Girls, I would like to have a few words in private with Mr. Chandler. Could you go play? I’ll talk to you before I leave.”
Birdie looked thoughtful but drew Charlotte outside, signing to her.
Mason didn’t have to think about why this lady had come. Colton had repeatedly told him that Miss Jones wanted the girls in school. He gritted his teeth. Evidently Emma was a woman to be reckoned with. His irritation over this vied with his unwelcome pleasure at seeing her here, so fine and determined. “I can guess why you’ve come. But I wasn’t ready to send them to school yet.” He focused on working free the horses’ harness buckles.
“Your girls are ready. Do you think you are helping them, keeping them out?”
“I’m keeping them from being hurt. Children can be cruel,” he said, just short of snapping at her.
“And adults can be. Do you think keeping them out protects them from hurt? Don’t you realize that keeping them home is hurting them, too?”
“I can teach them their letters and numbers.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She moved closer and paused, resting a hand on the rump of the nearest chestnut horse. “Isolating them is telling them that you don’t think they can handle school. That they are lesser than the other children.”
Her words cut through him like a serrated knife, a dull one that rasped painfully. He stepped back, releasing the last buckle, and led one horse toward a stall. Her accusation bounced around in his head.
From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed her standing backlit by the sunshine. She brought to mind a picture he’d seen as a child in a book. It had been the image of an avenging angel protecting the innocent. Miss Emma Jones did not take matters having to do with children lightly.
“Are you ashamed of Birdie and Charlotte?” she snapped.
“No,” he snapped back. “They are wonderful little girls.”
“Then bring them to school Monday.” She turned as if to leave. “Have some trust in me, trust in the children of this town.”
She left him without a word to say.
He moved to the open barn door but remained out of sight. He wanted to hear what she said to the girls.
“Birdie! Charlotte!” she called in a friendly voice.
The girls ran to her, Birdie beaming and Charlotte cautious, holding Birdie’s hand. “Can you play with us?”
“Just a bit. How about ‘Ring around the Rosy’?” Emma joined hands with the girls and they moved in a circle, singing and, at the right moment, all falling or, rather, stooping down.
“I must go now. I’m sure I’ll see you Sunday at church.” And without a glance toward the barn, she called out, “See you Monday at school. Nine o’clock! Don’t be late!”
He watched her go, unable to look away until she disappeared around the thickly forested bend.
The girls ran to him. “Did the lady teacher say we could come to school?” Birdie asked.
He looked down into Birdie’s eager face. So many thoughts and emotions swirled in his mind and heart. “Do you want to go to school?”
“Yes!” Birdie signed to Charlotte. “She says yes too. We can see Lily and Colton. And meet other children.”
He wondered if Birdie was capable of grasping the concept of prejudice.
“Some children will like us and some won’t,” Birdie said, answering his unspoken question. “But we want to go to school.”
He drew in a deep breath. So be it. He turned to go unharness the other horse. He hoped Miss Emma Jones knew what she was doing. He wanted everything good for his children. But he knew how cruel people could be. This moved him to snap at God, You’d better keep them safe.
He then remembered more of Emma’s words and realized that he would have to face the whole town the day after next at church. His hurt ankle had given him an excuse to bypass last week’s service. But that excuse had lapsed. Miss Emma Jones was right. He must publicly face the community with his girls, starting Sunday.
He was feeling the same dread and anticipation, a heavy weight in his middle, that he’d faced many times in the war. The mornings just before a battle, everyone—except for those who thought they needed to lighten the somber mood—had been silent, barely speaking, girding themselves for the imminent crucible of cannon, gunfire, black smoke and perhaps death.
He tried to shake off the feeling. No one would be firing at him on Sunday. But he worried for Birdie and Charlotte and any negative reactions to them. He didn’t want them to be hurt. His only hope was from the friends who’d stood by him. One was Noah Whitmore, the preacher, who’d written the orphan home’s director that he was fit to adopt his girls. Would people remember where they were—in God’s house? At least no one knew the dark secret he must—above all else—keep hidden.
Mason thought he’d prepared himself for meeting Emma on Sunday morning, but he hadn’t expected them to enter the combined schoolroom-church at almost the same moment from opposite ends of the room, he from the school entrance and she from the teacher’s quarters. He halted in midstep.
And so did she. She wore a flattering rose-pink dress with ivory lace at the neck. Her beauty took his breath. But instantly he shook himself inwardly and moved forward. In the past days her kindness to Birdie and Charlotte had drawn his gratitude, making him more vulnerable to her. He steeled himself against regret. I have to get over missing my chance with her.
He’d been gone for half the year, but he hoped no one had taken his pew. He forced himself to nod to a few people he knew even though they were gawking. Then he focused on getting the girls settled beside him. Thanks to Asa’s wife, the girls’ dresses were clean and pressed as well as his own white Sunday shirt.
He tried not to track Emma from the corner of his eye, but he glimpsed her full skirts swish past them as she joined her sister and family in the pew to his right, forward a row. Bitter thoughts of his father and how once again he had ruined something for Mason rushed into his mind. He bowed his head, willing the thoughts away. What was done was done and could not be changed. He still had his land, his crops and now, his girls.
Hoping that no one would hurt them with unthinking or unkind remarks, he gathered them close to him and kissed their foreheads. “Now, you girls be good,” he murmured.
“We always be good in church,” Birdie murmured and signed to Charlotte, who looked up at him and smiled timidly.
His poor little sister. She so rarely looked happy. Had what Mrs. Hawkins, the lady who ran the orphans’ home in Illinois, said been true? Was hysterical deafness even real? Was there a chance Charlotte might hear again someday?
