“Come here, little one,” Papa said to Delphia.
She trudged over to him. He pulled her into his lap. “Tell me what happened.”
She looked up at him with angelic eyes. “It’s what Fiona said. I was going fast, pretending that a monster was chasing me, and then I ran into him.”
“Did you say you were sorry?” Mama asked.
“Yes, that’s not the problem,” Cymbeline said as she grabbed a cookie from the plate. “She said she was sorry and then she planted a kiss on him. On his cheek.”
I had to cover my mouth with my hand to hide my smile.
“His cheeks looked like an apple,” Delphia said. “I just had to kiss one.”
I caught Mama’s eye. She seemed to be trying not to laugh but kept it together enough to say, “Delphia, you mustn’t ever kiss a boy.”
“But why?” Delphia blinked her big blue eyes.
“Because it’s not proper,” Mama said.
I noticed Addie was shivering. “Come here, doll. I’ll warm you up.” I tucked her into the chair next to me and rubbed her cold hands between mine. Addie was quiet and serious like me. I adored her.
“Mama and Papa kiss all the time,” Delphia said.
“They’re married.” Cymbeline plopped into an armchair next to me. “You don’t understand anything about how the world works.”
“Cym, don’t say it like that. She’s just a little girl.” Fiona went to stand in front of the fire with her hands behind her back.
“I’m your baby,” Delphia said as she gazed up at our father. “Right, Papa?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to kiss boys.” Papa put his chin on her head and looked over at me with eyes that danced with humor. Mama always says it was his dancing eyes that drew her to him. I knew exactly what she meant. “You’re my baby, which means you can’t love any boy but me.”
“I won’t do it again.” Delphia let out a long-suffering sigh, as if all the fun in the world was taken from her.
“Besides the unfortunate incident with the apple cheek,” Mama said, “what else happened?”
“That ridiculous Viktor Olofsson was skating with all the girls, one after another.” Cymbeline shook her dark curls. “He had the nerve to ask me.”
“What did you say?” I asked, knowing the answer, but teasing her anyway.
“Jo, don’t be daft,” Cymbeline said. “I would never let that big oaf touch my hand.”
He was a large man but most certainly not an oaf. Although his shoulders were thick and wide like a Colorado mountain, he was a gentle, intelligent soul who I suspected had a deep and long-lasting crush on Cymbeline. “I think he’s like a hero in a storybook. Brave and strong.” I’d once seen him pick up a wagon off a man’s leg when the horse had bucked and broken free, leaving his owner under a wheel. With almost white hair and light green eyes, he looked like the Vikings in one of the history books I had in the library.
Cymbeline’s eyes flashed as she stuck out her plump bottom lip and scowled. Strangely, her sour expression did nothing to disguise her beauty. “He’s such a show-off, doing tricks on the ice.”
“You do tricks on the ice,” Fiona said, not unkindly but more as a fact. “All the same ones Viktor does.”
Her observation was correct. If Viktor learned a trick on the ice, Cymbeline practiced until she’d conquered it.
Mama had confided in me more than once that she was afraid Cymbeline would never be satisfied living in a man’s world as we do. If she’d been old enough, I had no doubt she would have volunteered to be a nurse in the war effort overseas.
“Well, be that as it may,” Mama said, “we have exciting news. Jo’s acquaintance, Phillip Baker, is coming to stay with us for the holidays.”
“The one who wrote to you about Walter?” Fiona asked.
“The same,” I said. “How did you remember?”
Fiona shrugged. “I remember everything about my family. Anyway, it wasn’t like I could ever forget that day.” Her eyes glistened. “I shouldn’t like to ever see you that way again, Jo.”
I held out my hand to her. “Come here, sweet sister.” She sat on the arm of my chair and I patted her knee. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll never give my heart to anyone else. I’m the spinster of the family.”
Phillip
The train chugged up a slope so steep I was certain we would not stay on the tracks. Across from me, a baby in her mother’s arms cried. To distract myself from my fears of falling into the abyss below me, I pulled out the letter from Josephine. I breathed in the faint smell of her perfume that lingered on the paper. My imagination? Perhaps. Regardless, this one was to me, unlike the stack I’d read too many times to remember. Letters that were not written to me. By a girl who didn’t belong to me.
It’s a terrible thing to hate a dead man.
Yet I knew him for who he truly was. When I’d known him as a child in the orphanage, I’d recognized immediately how he used his charm to get what he wanted. Even the nuns fell for his act. When he ran away at age twelve, I genuinely think their hearts were broken. Women, even ones sworn to love Jesus, couldn’t help but fall for Walter Green.
Hope lurked inside me, goading me into this fool’s errand. After cheating death a second time by recovering from the Spanish flu, I would not rest easy until I came west and told Josephine the truth about the man to whom she’d pledged her eternal love. If not for me, I knew she would love a ghost, possibly forever. Josephine Barnes was a loyal woman. Nothing would deter her unless she understood what kind of man he really was under all that golden-haired, blue-eyed charm. I couldn’t bear the thought of a woman like her spending the rest of her life remembering a man who never really existed. Walter Green was not the man she thought he was. I was the only one left alive to tell her the truth.
He hadn’t loved her. There were other women who wrote to him. All who believed he would marry them when he returned from the war. All targeted for their wealth. Playing the odds, he’d said to me one time. The more he had waiting, the more likely he would marry into money. Those were to secure his future. Countless dalliances with nurses were just for fun.
Yes, I wanted her to know the truth. But it wasn’t for purely altruistic reasons. I wanted her for myself. As I’d convalesced after the flu, I’d read the letters she’d sent to Walter hundreds of times. I’d stared at her photograph until I memorized every detail of her pretty face. The stories of her close family and the beautiful mountains where she lived had moved me more than they should have. In truth, I’d fallen in love with her. Was I lonely? Yes. I’d been lonely all my life. This was something else entirely. In addition to my yearning for a family and my romantic nature, I had this odd sensation of a deep connection between the two of us. The idea of fate, even soul mates, had crossed my mind. Was there a reason beyond mortal comprehension that I’d been the one who ended up with the box of her correspondence?
Could I pinpoint the exact moment I decided to write to her and ask if I might come to visit? Not really. It was more of a gradual thing, an expansion in my mind of what might be possible. Even though I knew her affection toward me was unlikely, I had to try. A man like me didn’t win a rich, beautiful girl like her. I was poor and uneducated. My only skills were those of a cabinetmaker. Yet I had hope. I’d escaped the war and then the flu. I had to take a chance.