Chapter 21 – Rosalie – Seeing More Clearly

I had wondered how on earth I was going to be able to sleep, with so many other people in the room, but that was no problem. After a long, hard day in the car driving across the state I was exhausted, and as soon as I lay down in the bed, warm with residual body heat from the two girls who had just been tossed out of it, I closed my eyes and slept like the dead.

I woke in the morning to an empty room. The threadbare curtain did little to block out the light, and I could see that I was under a patchwork quilt on an old iron bed. The floor was littered with a scatter of narrow mats and blankets that the children must have been sleeping on, and on the wall by the door there was a heavy old armoire.

A pair of blue eyes under a mop of curly hair came peering cautiously around the door; it was Elizabeth, apparently much shyer without the comforting back up of Emmett's strong arms.

Not that I could blame her. Waking in this strange place had left me feeling frightened and alone, and I longed for a glimpse of Emmett's bright, steady smile.

"Hello," I said to her, as encouragingly as I knew how. She took a step closer, and I smiled to realise that she carried the doll I had sent her in one arm. "I like your doll."

"Are you Miss Rosalie that sent it to me?"

I nodded. "Can I see her dress? Emmett said you made a new dress for her."

Smiling tentatively, Elizabeth came over to the bed and held out the doll. "Mama knitted it. I call her Rosie."

"She looks very pretty." I realised that Elizabeth was staring at me in fascination and I felt a little embarrassed. All my things were still out in the car so I'd slept in my slip, a rather extravagant item of satin trimmed with Irish crocheted lace. With my battered face I also looked like I'd been in a boxing match. An odd combination to say the least.

"You talk kind of funny," Elizabeth observed.

I laughed. "I'm from New York…everyone talks like this there."

Elizabeth giggled. "Mama said if you're awake I should tell you to come and have some breakfast."

I dressed in the clothes I'd worn the previous day, feeling dirty and unkempt. Elizabeth noticed nothing though, and happily skipped ahead of me into the kitchen. Emmett's mother was standing over the stove, and one of the other girls was kneading bread on the kitchen table, and both of them looked up as I entered.

"Rosalie, good morning. I've got some breakfast ready for you, if you'd like to go outside and then come and eat."

Obediently I went outside and gingerly crossed the bare dirt yard to the outhouse. That was going to take some getting used to, and unfortunately with an ever growing baby pressing down on my bladder I was going to have all too many opportunities to become familiar with the dark, smelly little shed.

Oh my god, that's the biggest spider I've ever seen!

I hurriedly finished up and almost ran from the outhouse to the back porch, where one end was covered in and had a sink and tap. The water was cold, but there was a bar of surprisingly sweet-smelling soap there and a clean looking washcloth, so I scrubbed my hands and arms and face as best I could with my splinted arm, and felt better for it.

"Come in and sit down," Emmett's mother invited. "You're not sick in the mornings?"

I touched my belly self-consciously. "No."

"Good, then eat up," she ordered, placing a bowl of porridge, a glass of milk and an egg in front of me.

"Thank you Mrs McCarty," I said, picking up the spoon.

"If you're going to be staying, then perhaps you'd best be calling me Miss Adeline," she said. "And that's Hannah there doing the bread."

I nodded, my mouth full of porridge. I hadn't eaten much over the drive, and I was suddenly starving. I cracked the egg and took a bite, and then took a swallow of milk and nearly choked.

"Fresh milk," Emmett said, suddenly appearing from outside with a big grin and cheeks red from exertion. "Straight from the cow this morning, not like that pasteurised rubbish you had in the city." He kissed his mother on the cheek. "Even the milk wasn't as good as home, Ma."

"There must have been somegood things!" The other girl came stomping into the kitchen between Emmett, scowling at him. Unlike the other children her hair was straight, her dress was ironed and she looked as immaculate as was possible for a child living in hand-me-down clothes on a farm. "You just complain all the time!" She looked at me and blushed scarlet. "I'm Maggie, ma'am."

"Oh, just Rosalie is fine!" I said, a little bemused.

"Maggie wants to live in the city," Hannah told me, a little shyly. "She thinks Emmett didn't say enough about it in his letters."

"He didn't say anything I wanted to know," grouched Maggie making a face at her brother. "But Miss Rosalie, I can help you unpack your things! We can make room in the closet or in the bureau in the front room…"

"Let the girl eat her breakfast!" Miss Adeline ordered. "Hannah, we'll need that bread on to bake for lunch. Maggie, go and tidy up that bedroom. Emmett, I want that car out of the front yard please."

"It won't start," Emmett said mournfully, sitting down at the table and drinking the glass of milk. "I already tried…I guess driving it from New York killed it. Pa will have to have another look at it. I'll push it round into the lean-to." He looked at me and smiled, half reaching over as though to touch me and then stopping and letting his hand drop. "Are you okay? Did you sleep well? Is that enough to eat?"

I nodded yes to all his questions, scraping up the remains of the porridge. As I finished Miss Adeline whisked it away to the sink and then said, "Hannah, I'll finish the bread. You go on now."

Hannah left and I watched as Miss Adeline began deftly shaping the bread loaves. It reminded me of being younger, when Vera and I had loved helping her mother bake.

"When's that baby due to make an appearance?" Miss Adeline asked briskly.

"Late summer, the doctor told me," I answered.

"And have you been keeping well? In one of his letters Emmett said there'd been some trouble, but he didn't say what."

I flushed. They talked about me? But Miss Adeline's frankness was so honest and sincere that I had no option but to respond with equal openness. "I bled," I told her. "Just once, but it was a lot. The doctor could find no reason for it, and told me I simply needed to be careful."

Miss Adeline nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps we'll get Mrs Miller down to have a look at you. She's the local midwife." She slid the bread into the oven.

I looked at Emmett helplessly. "But what about the doctor? And the hospital?"

Emmett bit his lip. "There isn't money for a hospital birth, not if you don't need it. We'll work something out if it comes to that but…well…"

"Chances are very good that you won't need it," Miss Adeline said, more gently than she'd spoken yet. "First babies can be a bit tricky, but you're young and healthy. Mrs Miller has been the midwife in these parts for over thirty years and has a lot of experience. She brought all my lot into the world, including this little runt!" She rumpled Emmett's hair affectionately, as he swatted at her hands in playful offence.

"Runt?! Me?"

Miss Adeline laughed. "Oh, you were …all the others were eight and nine pounds, then along came Emmett, just a mite under six pounds," she told me with a soft smile of remembrance. "I was half afraid to touch him in case I broke him." She shook her head. "Who ever knew he'd grow up into the biggest one of all of them?"

Emmett rolled his eyes. "I'm going to show Rosalie around," he told his mother. "If there's not anything you need us to do?"

There wasn't, and so Emmett waited until I'd drunk a glass of water and the he led the way through the house. "You've seen your bedroom and the kitchen, well that's the front room and Ma and Pa's room."

The living room had a dark, grim look to it, with an itchy looking dark rug and heavy dark furniture; a sofa, a bureau, a china cabinet and an upright piano all crowded into it. The bedroom was more cheerful, with a colourful patchwork quilt on the big, wood-framed bed and a bright knitted blanket on a small army cot in a corner.

"Elizabeth sleeps in there too," Emmett said, leading the way along the hall and out the front door. The porch was deep and shady, keeping the house cool on a day in which the sun shone down fiercely. "During summer us boys always slept out on the porch, so we'll be able to get the summer beds out today and then you'll just be sharing with Maggie and Hannah."

The yard surrounding the house was almost all dirt, but it had a few big, shady trees. Two barefoot boys were swinging on a tyre swing hung from one, and I could see a ladder leaning precariously up to a treehouse in another. Emmett waved at the boys and introduced them as Stephen and Will, and I hoped I'd remember which was which. Apart from Maggie with her straight hair, all Emmett's siblings had the same curly dark hair and sky blue eyes, although Emmett was the only one with the dimples.

To the rear of the house were the outhouse and a couple of outbuildings, as well as a chicken coop and a large barn. Everything was ramshackle and shabby. The doors to the chicken coop were open and chickens were scratching enthusiastically around the yard, squawking and running away when Emmett and I went near them. To the front and barn side of the house was pasture, with forest stretching away from the back and other side. In the pasture beside the barn three cows with calves at foot stood lazily chewing, swishing flies with their tails as I looked at the babies in fascination.

"Come for a walk," Emmett said, a little subdued after showing me everything. "I'll show you the river…as kids we pretty much lived there in the summer."

It was a well worn path that he led me along through the forest. The forest was both too quiet and too noisy for me…it lacked the noises of town that I was familiar with, cars and people, but there were other strange sounds that had me feeling anxious and edgy. What was hiding in the forest around me?

The river was a lovely surprise. Emmett and I were on a stony bank that sloped sharply down to a beautifully cool, clear looking river that was curving its way through the forest. The opposite bank had trees and bushes growing close down to the water, and although the water here looked smooth and still I could hear the sounds of it clattering over rocks further along. A large, gnarled tree spread branches out over the water and a rope hanging from one swung lazily in the breeze. It looked like a picture postcard, and I couldn't stop my small exclamation of pleasure.

"I'm glad you like it." Emmett kicked off his boots and socks and sat on a broad flat rock that rose up out of the shallows, dipping his feet into the water as he rolled up his pants legs. "It's cold…you want to try?"

I gingerly sat down beside Emmett, a little abashed to find myself sitting so close to him. But the rock was better than sitting in the dirt, and after a moment of tension I felt myself begin to relax.

Emmett leaned back on his hands and kicked the water, flinging golden drops into the air and making it ripple outwards. "You should get your feet wet. It's nice." He tipped his face back to the sun and closed his eyes.

I hesitated for a moment and then slipped off my shoes and reached under my dress to unclip my stockings and take them off. Emmett watched me from under sleepy, half-lidded eyes and I had a sudden, uncomfortable flash of memory. Royce, touching me while I changed my stockings before the Banker's Ball, way back before we were ever married…if only I had acknowledged how uncomfortable he made me that night! If only I had been able to tell someone about the way he touched me, the way he had gripped my arms hard enough to leave bruises, the way I had overheard he and his father talking about me!

"Rosalie?" It was Emmett, uncertainty clear in his voice. "What's the matter?"

"Am I really so stupid?" I said tightly. "Why did I not see what he was? How stupid am I that I let things go on in that way?"

"What else could you have done?" Emmett said softly. "He's a sweet-talking, cunning son of a bitch Rosalie, and it wasn't stupidity on your part."

I yanked my stockings off angrily. "I hate him. I never want to see him again."

"You don't have to," Emmett leaned forward and trailed a hand in the water. "You can stay here, if you want to." He looked at me sideways. "If you'd rather not, we can work something else out."

I tipped my toes into the water, wincing at the coldness at first. But it soon changed to a delicious coolness and I swished my feet in it as I thought.

Emmett's home was not what I had expected. I had listened to what he said as we drove, but my life had not given me the experiences that I would have needed to imagine the poverty of Emmett's home. I had been thinking of Vera levels of poverty, of having to scrimp and save…I had not considered four roomed shacks with outhouses, and children with no shoes and threadbare clothes.

But for all that, I was a stranger and his family had been kind. Kinder than I had any right or reason to expect. There had been no hesitation about opening up their home to me and promising to take care of me and my baby, and I had to face the truth that I had no one else. Only Emmett.

Emmett. He was looking out at the river now, his feet dangling in the water, leaning back on his hands. Stretching my legs out a little more I sat the same way, or at least tried, since I only had one arm, and after a slow, peaceful moment I leaned a little more to the side and rested my head against Emmett's shoulder. The sounds of water and birds, the cool water of the river and the warmth of Emmett's shoulder against my cheek…

Why didn't I see this before? Why didn't I see YOU as fully and completely as I am seeing you now?