Read Online Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel by Jannifer Chiaverini - Free Book Online

mocking Lars and the misfortunes of his past when he had struggled so hard to overcome them, for giving Lars the poison he could have used to destroy himself again. She had hoped that Lars would leave the bottle in the dirt before he drove away, but when she went out later to check, it was nowhere to be found. She assumed that he had taken it with him, awaiting the moment when he could slip off to some secluded corner of the Jorgensen ranch and drink it dry, but the next time she saw him, he had been as clear-eyed and levelheaded as ever, and had evidently not started back down the path that had once taken him away from her. She was so relieved that he had not fallen into his old ways that she never spared a thought for the bottle itself, and how John had come to have it. Liquor was not that difficult to come by, despite Prohibition, for a man who wanted a drink badly enough.
    “That was a fairly pricey import, not some bathtub gin,” said Lars. “Then, when I considered that flashy Chrysler John’s been tearing around in, I put two and two together and it added up to trouble.”
    “Why didn’t you warn me?”
    He kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead. “What would you have done?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You wouldn’t leave him when he beat you. You wouldn’tleave him when we had another child together. I didn’t think you’d leave him over a few tenuous links to organized crime.”
    The implicit criticism stung. “You know why I couldn’t leave.”
    “I know why you
said
you couldn’t leave.” When she made no reply, his voice lost its sharp edge. “Anyway, I didn’t have much proof, just a bottle and my suspicions. So I turned the liquor over to the feds.”
    “You didn’t drink it?”
    She regretted her words the moment they left her lips. “No, Rosa,” he replied evenly. “I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been much good as evidence if I had.”
    “Does John know that you reported him?”
    “I don’t believe he does, but it might not matter now anyway. When I went looking for you at your place, county deputies were already there, searching the entire farm for clues. By now they’ve surely found John’s stash in the hayloft. He could be brought up on charges of racketeering as well as murder.”
    “Attempted murder,” Rosa corrected him. She had to believe that Henry might somehow pull through.
    “For his sake and Elizabeth’s, I hope you’re right.” Lars fell silent for a moment. “I’m sure you know that I didn’t report John to the Prohibition agents out of any deep and abiding admiration for the law. I did it hoping they would seize John and lock him up somewhere far away from you and the children. I understand that you don’t want me for a husband, but for the love of God, Rosa, you shouldn’t be with him.”
    Rosa stroked Miguel’s soft, curly hair as he slept in her arms. “I know.”
    But she had wanted Lars for a husband. If he had been then the man he was now—sober, diligent, steadier—she would have married him despite her parents’ objections.
    They drove in silence the rest of the way to Oxnard. It was nearly midnight when Lars finally parked the car near the corner of Fifth and A Streets. “I’ll be right back,” he promised, and hurried off. In the backseat, the girls stirred sleepily, awakened by the sudden stillness. The storefronts closest to the car were dark, but light spilled from the windows of a few restaurants scattered down the street, and whenever a door opened, bursts of laughter and music punctuated the night as couples or groups of young men spilled out onto the sidewalk, holding umbrellas high if they had them, pulling up the collars of their coats if they did not. The men were loud and grinning and flushed, young and old and in between; the women were young, with short skirts and bobbed hair and high, teasing voices that rose into laughter or shrieks of dismay if they unwittingly stepped in a puddle. Rosa slouched in her seat and combed her