The Cemetery Keeper's Wife by Maryann McFadden

Author:Maryann McFadden [McFadden, Maryann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Three Women Press
Published: 2018-05-08T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

March 1886

TILLIE COULDN’T SLEEP. All night she kept seeing Nora’s face and couldn’t stop worrying about what was to happen to the lot of them.

When Matron came to the kitchen yesterday to tell her she had a visitor in the parlors, and then she saw her sister white as a sheet and shivering, her heart about stopped. Someone musta died. But no, Nora had come to say goodbye. She was in her faded Sunday dress and leaving for Newark on the noon train.

“Have you been to tell Ma?” she’d asked.

“Oh, Tillie, I barely had time to come see you. Catherine’s in a state, and I didn’t want to leave her. You must go tell Ma for me. Promise?”

“Of course. I’ve been trying to see her awhile myself. And you did right. You must go. This position is your chance.”

That was when Nora began to cry. “We’re all scatterin’ like seeds in the wind, Tillie. I miss you all the time, and I already miss Catherine, no matter what her moods. She’s so much like Ma.”

“Catherine will be fine. I’ll see to it. And maybe…” She’d sat there, her own insides aquiver by then. “Nora, I’ve got me a beau. And he’s a hard worker. We talk about saving all our money and getting a little place of our own and… I’m hoping that one day soon, perhaps we can all be together again.”

“Oh, Tillie. Are you going to marry him, then?”

“Well, it’s a bit soon for that, but he’s got prospects, and he cares for me.”

“And you care for him, too?”

She giggled. “He’s got some lovely green eyes that just about melt me at times.”

The seminary bells rang the half hour then, and Nora jumped up. “I must go, sister.”

“I’ll write you, Nora. I’ll…” She stopped then. Of course she wouldn’t. Nora couldn’t read.

“Maybe once I get settled, I’ll ask someone to write a letter for me so’s I can send to you, and you can let everyone know I’m doin’ fine.”

She hugged Nora, who was trembling even harder, like a baby bird.

“I don’t know when I’ll see you again, Tillie.”

“Just work hard and save your money, Nora. Perhaps in the spring I’ll take the train and come see you in Newark if I can get a few days off. And remember, the future is lookin’ up for us.”

She was lying now in her warm bed. Tears slid down her cheeks onto the pillow as she thought about how she’d watched Nora through the parlor windows walking through the front gates and across Jefferson Street, hurrying to the train. And the promises she made. Bridget said once that luck was a matter of birth. And she was right. But Tillie was going to change that luck. And with Frank beside her, maybe it would happen even sooner.

* * *

IT SEEMED BUT MINUTES LATER she was down in the kitchen, only to find hardly enough potatoes for the students, much less the workers. There’d been yet another big snow during the night, and nothing was as it should have been that morning

“The new hand for Mr.

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