The Keeper of Her Heart Page 12

  “Minnie cut it. From right here.” Rosemary indicated a shorter strand near her face as she leaned against Ada’s knee. “I didn’t use the scissors, honest, Mummy. Do you like it?” Her gaze met Ada’s, full of childlike expectation.

  “I love it, Rosie.” She pulled her daughter onto her knees again and kissed her forehead.

  “If you keep it in your pocket,” Rosemary said, twisting a button on Ada’s nightgown, “then I’ll always be with you. Even when you go to the warehouse.”

  “Then that’s what I shall do.”

  Holding her daughter close, she shut her eyes and let the tears slip out. Tears of joy for this sweet little girl and those who cared about both of them, and tears of heartache at Ned’s absence.

  “Don’t cry, Mummy.” Rosemary’s fingers brushed at Ada’s cheeks.

  She sniffed and opened her eyes. “Sometimes we cry when we are happy, pet. And sometimes we cry when we are sad.”

  Rosemary studied her. “Which one are you?”

  “Today I feel both,” she said, fingering one of her daughter’s curls.

  “Happy because it’s Christmas but sad because Daddy’s gone.”

  “Yes, Rosie. You are exactly right.”

  Her daughter gave her a smile, though it soon drooped. “I miss Daddy too. Is he off fighting like William’s daddy?”

  More tears dropped onto Ada’s nightgown as she shook her head. Rosemary had asked this question before, and each time Ada cringed before answering. But she wouldn’t lie to her daughter. “No, pet. Remember, your daddy is in Heaven now.”

  “Then he’s safe,” Rosemary declared with wisdom well beyond her five years.

  Ada hugged her again. “Yes, Rosie, he’s safe and watching over us. Just like God is.”

  “Is it all right if that makes me happy, Mummy?”

  She rested her cheek on her daughter’s head. “It’s quite all right. I feel happy knowing that too.”

  After a few minutes, Ada set Rosemary on her feet. “Shall we get dressed now? Then we can take Gran’s gifts over to William and his family.”

  Rosemary grinned. “Oh, yes. Can I wear my necklace?”

  “Of course.”

  The doll in one hand, the locket in the other, she skipped into the bedroom to change. Ada stood, clasping Rosemary’s gift to her chest.

  Her gaze went to the mantel, where she’d placed their family photograph beside the clock. “Happy Christmas, Ned,” she whispered. “I believe it might actually be a happy one after all.”

  Chapter 13

  June 1917

  Ada had barely finished eating her lunch when a distant boom rattled the windows of the paper warehouse. Instinctively she dropped to the floor. It couldn’t be the German zeppelins. They only dropped their deadly presents at night, not during the day.

  “What was that?” Lillie asked from where she’d crouched beside Ada. The rest of their coworkers were hunched down as well, regarding each other with puzzled or frightened expressions.

  Ada shook her head. “Hopefully it wasn’t a factory explosion.”

  The booming repeated itself again, then again. Ada flinched each time. The noise sounded too much like bombs to her liking. Whatever its source, the consequences weren’t likely to be good.

  A worm of fear slithered through her at not knowing what was going on or who was being affected. Was Rosemary all right? Ada had always been with her during the night air raids. If only she could be with her daughter now, to offer comfort.

  As she waited for the bombing to end, she prayed Rosemary would be safe, along with Minnie and her children. Both Janey and William were sick today, so they hadn’t joined Rosemary at school.

  Surely they would all be fine, she tried to reassure herself. If these were airships dropping bombs on London, they would be targeting warehouses and factories, not schools or civilian housing. If anything, Ada and her fellow workers were in greater danger than her daughter and their friends. Besides, if something should happen to her, she had plenty of people in her life who would step in to care for Rosemary.

  Her mother-in-law would have been one of the first to do so, but Maud had passed away in the spring. Ada had wished she’d been able to attend the funeral—Hugh had offered to pay the train fare for her and Rosemary—but she couldn’t take time away from her job and still hope to have one when she returned. So she’d stayed in London, her heart aching for weeks afterward at not being able to formally honor Maud.

  When silence finally descended over the warehouse once more, her supervisor ordered everyone back to work. Ada climbed to her feet and followed Lillie and Belinda to one of the mounds of paper. A strained quiet filled the warehouse instead of the usual murmur of muted conversation as they returned to their tasks.

  Sometime later Lillie nudged Ada before motioning to the door. “’Spose she’s lookin’ for a job?”

  Ada glanced at the warehouse entrance to find Minnie standing there. “That’s my friend and neighbor,” she said with surprise.

  What was Minnie doing here? Ada lifted her hand in greeting, but Minnie didn’t return the gesture. Instead she turned her back to the room. Something was definitely amiss.

  After making certain the supervisor wasn’t nearby, Ada hurried over to Minnie. “Is everything all right? Are the children feeling worse?”

  Minnie turned around, but at the sight of her white face and haunted gaze, Ada stepped back in alarm. “Has something happened to Thomas?” she whispered. Don’t let it be another telegram, Lord. Please.

  “It’s not Thomas, but . . .” Minnie pressed her lips together and began wringing her hands.

  The dread inside Ada grew, clawing at her throat. Glancing back at her fellow workers, she steered Minnie outside. “What’s going on, Minnie? What’s wrong?”

  “I only just ’eard.” Her voice hitched as she stared at the ground. “There’s been a terrible accident . . .”

  “An accident? Where?”

  Minnie lifted her chin, her gaze tortured. “It’s at the school, Ada.” She seemed to force the next words from her mouth. “A . . . a bomb ’it the building. More than a dozen children were . . . were killed. They’re still pullin’ out the survivors.”

  The breath left Ada’s lungs and her knees sagged. Minnie quickly reached out her hand to support her. “Wh-what about Rosie?” She fingered the lock of her daughter’s hair that she always kept inside one of her pockets. Rosemary was fine—she had to be.

  Tears slid down Minnie’s cheeks. “I knew you’d want to know, so I left the children at ’ome and went to see. I tried to slip past the constable, but ’e weren’t letting anyone near. I tried, Ada, I did.”

  “Is my daughter all right?” She didn’t care that she now sounded hysterical. “She’s all right, Minnie, isn’t she?”

  Her friend’s expression of empathy and hesitation was nearly too painful to see. “I-I don’t know, Ada.”

  “I’m going over there.” She squared her shoulders and started marching in the direction of the school. If she lost her job for walking out without permission, so be it. She would break in two if she didn’t learn the fate of her daughter this instant.

  “I’ll go with you.” Minnie fell into step beside her.

  Though she didn’t say it, Ada was grateful for her company.

  She kept putting one foot in front of the other, surrounded by a familiar cloud of shock, oblivious to the familiar sights and sounds around her. As Minnie had explained, they were stopped well before they reached the school. But Ada would not be deterred. She demanded the constable allow them to pass. “Our children attend that school,” she told him. “Please, let us by.”

  The man fiddled with the brim of his cap, his long mustache twitching, then he finally gave them a look of pity and waved them forward. Ada automatically thanked him—the product of a lifetime of politeness and good breeding, something so ingrained it functioned without conscious thought, even in the midst of such mind-numbing uncertainty.

  The
sound of sobbing hit her like a tidal wave before the actual destruction and chaos came into view. Children, teachers, and families huddled together some distance from the school. Except the familiar, solid building Ada had seen that morning was now a mound of rubble and brick. The horrifying sight made her pause, but only for a moment.

  “Rosemary Henley?” she said to the first woman she saw. “Have you seen Rosemary Henley?”

  The woman shook her head, her expression one of distress and empathy. Panic burned cold inside Ada as she and Minnie moved on, both of them questioning everyone they came across. She had to find her daughter.

  “Mrs. Henley?” One of the teachers approached her and Minnie. The woman’s face was streaked with grime, her dress dirty and tattered. It was the dazed look in her red eyes, though, that speared Ada to the core. “I’m so very sorry, ma’am.” The words, even said sincerely, sounded as if repeated by rote. How many times had those at the school been forced to say them today?

  The teacher held something in her fist. It caught the weak sunlight as she opened her fingers to reveal the object. “This was found in the rubble.”

  It was Rosemary’s locket.

  Ada felt detached from all emotion. Surely this didn’t mean that her daughter . . . Minnie latched on to her arm and she felt a flicker of gratitude at having something solid to lean on. As if in a dream, she watched herself extend her hand toward the woman and take hold of the locket. She crushed the chain against her palm, desperate to feel something.

  “The bomb fell right through the roof.” The teacher visibly swallowed. “Through the boys’ class and the girls’. And then exploded in the infant class.”

  Rosemary’s class.

  Ada closed her eyes, wishing she could unhear those awful words. Wishing she was back in the flat with Rosemary . . . and Ned. Oh, how she longed to have him here with her now.

  “What do I—”

  Her question was cut off by a high-pitched cry. “I want my mummy! Where’s my mummy?”

  The child’s voice should have been lost among the wailing, the shouts, and the confusion, but somehow Ada heard it. “Rosie?” she whispered, glancing toward a nearby group of students and mothers. Had she only imagined her little girl’s cry?

  “I have to find my mummy!”

  There was no mistaking her daughter’s shout now. “Rosie!” Ada cried as she rushed forward, her heart beating so hard with hope that it hurt. The crowd parted, and there was her daughter, seated on the ground.

  “Oh, pet.” Ada sunk to her knees beside Rosemary and gathered her close in a tight embrace. Never, ever would she let go. “Rosie, it’s all right. It’s all right,” she soothed through her own tears. “Mummy’s here.”

  Her daughter squirmed within her grip. “My head hurts, Mummy.”

  Ada released her to arm’s length, long enough to see the ugly, bloodied gash on the girl’s forehead. In that moment, the fog of shock inside her head disappeared. “We need to get you to hospital right away.”

  Scooping her daughter into her arms, Ada turned to Minnie. “Will you tell them at the warehouse what’s happened? And where I’ll be?”

  “I will,” Minnie said, nodding. She pressed a quick kiss to Rosemary’s cheek. “You and William both need to get well now.” The declaration prompted a tiny smile from Rosemary, as Ada suspected her friend had intended.

  She freed one hand to take hold of Minnie’s and gave it a squeeze. “Thank you.” Minnie had not only accompanied her on her dreadful errand, but she knew her friend had felt all the fear, panic, and relief as keenly as Ada had. “Hopefully we’ll be home by tonight.”

  As Minnie walked away, Ada carried Rosemary toward a waiting ambulance. “We’ll get you stitched up in no time, pet.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  Ada wanted to weep at the simple question, especially in light of all that her daughter and the others at the school had experienced today. Including those whose children hadn’t survived. She tightened her hold around Rosemary. “It may hurt, and I’ll be right there beside you.”

  “Just like God, right, Mummy?”

  Fresh tears leaked from Ada’s eyes as she nodded. “Just like God.”

  “Was He with us when there was that horrible noise and I hit my head?”

  “Yes,” Ada managed to say over the lump in her throat. “He was with each one of you, and He understands your fear and pain.”

  Just as He did mine when Ned died.

  It had been nearly a year, and she’d been growing her faith ever since by reading from Ned’s Bible each night and taking Rosemary to church with the O’Reillys on Sundays. But it wasn’t until this moment that she could see that awful day last summer more clearly than she ever had.

  With perfect empathy, her Father in Heaven had understood the intensity of her pain over losing her husband. He also understood the intense relief she’d felt at finding her daughter alive today. And, Ada suddenly realized, He wasn’t any less present or loving in one experience than the other—He’d been with her during both.

  She recalled something Ned had told her before leaving to be a soldier—about how God knew what a person needed to grow, even if that growth meant experiencing pain. The Lord was present in her pleasant experiences as well as her painful ones and He was willing to help her learn and grow through that pain.

  Giving beauty for ashes, she reminded herself as the deep hope she’d been yearning to feel for so long filled her heart to overflowing.

  Chapter 14

  “I must go to London—now.” Hugh threw down his napkin and stood up from the breakfast table.

  Helena frowned. “Whatever for?”

  “It’s . . . it’s Ada.” He lifted the letter in his hand. “Or rather it’s about her daughter Rosemary. Or both of them. I don’t know.”

  “Hugh? Will you please sit down and kindly explain yourself?”

  He ignored the invitation to take his seat again. “Apparently German bombers hit London the other day, and one of the bombs they dropped struck her daughter’s school.” His mother gasped, eliciting another cringe of horror from him as well. Ada had left off the raw details, but she’d shared enough to give him a fair idea of what a horrific scene it had been.

  “Was Ada’s daughter . . .”

  Hugh shook his head. “No, she did hurt her head. But other than that, she is fine.”

  “Oh, thank goodness.” Her hand had risen to rest against her heart, making Hugh wonder if she was feeling the pain again of having lost her own child to this war. “I’m sincerely relieved to hear they are both all right. But if that is the case, then why must you go to London?”

  “Because . . .” He frowned, exasperated by the return of her calm demeanor. “Her daughter was nearly killed, Mama. She also lost her husband last year and her mother-in-law this spring.”

  Helena shot him an arched look, but he couldn’t tell if it was in response to his outburst or his obvious deep concern for Ada.

  Relaxing his chokehold on the letter, he fought to speak evenly. “I think Ada could use some help, that is all.”

  “Did she ask for your help?”

  He thought back through what he’d read. “Well, no, but—”

  “Hugh, dear, there’s something you need to hear.” She paused and he realized she wasn’t going to say anything more until he sat. Fighting a growl, he pulled back his chair and resumed his seat. Helena smiled in approval. “It’s something I am afraid I failed to teach you after your father died.”

  This was a turn in the conversation he hadn’t expected. “And what is that?”

  “You, my wonderful boy, are not responsible for the rest of us.”

  It took all of his willpower not to roll his eyes at the absurd statement. Of course he was responsible for the rest of them. Wasn’t that the charge he’d been given by his father on the man’s deathbed? “You know I don’t wish to contradict you, Mama.”

  “Then don’t,” she said with a spark in her brown eyes as she bent forward.
“What I am saying is the truth, Hugh. You can help, you can assist, you can offer words of comfort . . .” She waved a hand at his letter. “But you must stop trying to take care of everyone, especially when they haven’t asked for it.”

  Her words stung, making him want to dismiss them. Which surely meant there was some truth to what she was saying. “I’m sorry if I have overstepped my position as your older son.”

  “Pish posh.” She swatted away his apology as she sat back. “This is not about position. This is about you allowing others to do and grieve and be as they see fit, my dear.” Her gaze turned wistful. “I know that isn’t what your father asked of you.”

  Hugh raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “You do?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “Your father meant well, Hugh, but that was not a fair burden to place upon you. And I am not just talking about him encouraging your innate sense of responsibility for all of us.”

  He rubbed a hand over his jaw, feeling suddenly tired. “You mean the factory?”

  “The estate too.” She gave him a look that held only love and concern. “I realize now that your father should have asked you if you wanted all of this.”

  “And if I would have said no?” He couldn’t believe he dared voice such a question, but a part of him wished he’d done so years ago.

  Helena smiled. “We would have survived, though I don’t know that the estate or the factory would have been as successful without you.” She folded her hands on top of the tablecloth. “Is this still what you would choose, Hugh?”

  He blew out a breath as he considered it. A long-ago conversation with Ned returned to his mind. Ned had asked him what he would do if he wasn’t managing the estate and the boot factory. He didn’t have an answer to give on that day. Did he have one now?

  Truth be told, there were days he rather liked overseeing the boot factory, and the estate was as dear to him as the people who had and did still occupy it. He’d found contentment in this life, had chosen contentment in it.

  “It is still what I would choose.” The assurance and confidence of his tone matched that inside his heart.