Read Online No Eye Can See by Jane Kirkpatrick - Free Book Online Page B

is.
    They walked without talking, the silence broken by the wagon chains clattering and chatter of birds and the shouts of the children pushing Jessie in the little wheeled barrel they'd made for her, her leg sticking out in front.
    “Do you suppose Sister Esther spoke with Zilah about…you know, what's beyond?” Mazy said.
    “What made you think ofthat?”
    “Oh, just all this splendor. It's like the Garden of Eden, I imagine. And I wonder if we're given places like this to remind us of what will yet come. I don't know. Just thinking.”
    “Don't know that Sister Esther's the only one assigned to talk of spiritual things,” Elizabeth said.
    “It seems like not just anyone should talk about heaven and hell. I'm not trying to avoid it. I just don't know how to say things right. I wish I'd known how to talk about…you know, when Jeremy died.” She shook her head, remembering. “It couldn't have helped him to have me talking about cows and calving times and not the state of his soul.”
    “Comforted him, I'll ponder.” Her mother put her arm around her daughter's waist, pulled her to her as they walked. “He'd made his own peace, from what you said, about his saying he was going on home, alone.”
    Mazy nodded, giving her mother's words some ofthat “pondering” she always advised. “But why wouldn't he have told me about his first wife? And that he had a child? Or that the cows might not even be ours?Why wouldn't he at that moment of his life so close to the end, why wouldn't he have brushed the nap to lay everything right?”
    Elizabeth bent to pick up a white rock. She pulled her arm back and threw it as far as she could. “Still throw one as good as the boys,” she said. They walked in silence. “Don't guess we get the answers here,” she said then. “Remember that old song? ‘Farther along, we'll understand why’ We only get the wonder of the questions here.”
    “So I shouldn't seek answers?”
    “Just meant your husband must have had his reasons. Might not be good ones, mind you. Not ones we'd understand if he'd said ‘em out before he died. Maybe he was saving you, child.”
    “From what?”
    “Your memory of him clouded with unhappy things. He didn't expect you'd read that letter. And if he'd lived, he probably would have tucked that thing away faster than a dog burying the first Christmas bone. Probably someday he would have told the story of this child, the other wife.” Mazy looked at her mother and frowned. “He might have. Fact is, he didn't know he needed to leave explanations after him. He never knew that you'd be pondering the life he had before he met you— at least without him being around to provide the sorting of it.”
    “It does make me wonder. How old she is. Funny how I think it's a girl. And in Oregon. How did she get there? Don't you wonder? Maybe I should have gone north.”
    “We were wanting to be all together this first winter, and I think that was wise.”
    “I'd have to go to Sacramento this fall yet,” Mazy said. “Before the snow flies. I don't think I'm ready for that. Too much to do, getting settled.”
    Elizabeth patted her daughter's hand, held it in her own. “Don't deprive yourself too long of something that might please you, just because you're afraid it won't.”
    “Maybe next spring we should go see what we can find out.”
    “Go where?” Adora asked as she caught up with them.
    “Mazy's just thinking about the far future,” Elizabeth told her.
    “I'll just be pleased to arrive in Shasta City,” Adora said. “Seth says they have bookstores there. Imagine that, in a little mining town.”
    “That was one of the worst things to leave behind, all of Papas medical books and the others he loved,” Mazy said.
    “And your own,” her mother answered.
    “And my books. Yes.” Mazy held her skirts out to the dusky breeze. She watched as Pig led Suzanne across the hard ground, followed by Sister Esther and Naomi carrying the baby, Sason.
    “Maybe