They set a chair for Isaac by the stove and provided him with a cup of coffee and as much food as a plate could hold, then settled back into their places once more.
“Do you have a favorite Christmas carol, Mr. McTavish?” Lark asked.
“Always been partial to ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful.’ And please, it’s time you call me Isaac. You folks are the closest I have around here to a real home.”
With a strum and a nod, Forsythia led off.
“O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant!
O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem;
Come and behold Him
Born the King of angels;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him . . .”
Home, Lark thought, her heart echoing Isaac’s words as she sang. The Nielsen sisters had come home at last.
Epilogue
SALTON, NEBRASKA
JUNE 1866
Lilac popped her head through the church doorway. “Sythia? They’re ready for you.”
Standing on the steps outside, Forsythia drew a quick breath as Del put the final touch on the sprigs of Queen Anne’s lace tucked in her hair. This was really happening.
Lark handed her the nosegay of Ma’s roses, brought from Ohio and now blooming again. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Forsythia gazed at her sisters for a moment, imprinting their smiling faces on this day deep in her heart. They all wore new springtime dresses, their hair wreathed with flowers from their garden—Ma’s garden.
Mr. Caldwell stepped near and held out his arm with a fatherly quirk of his brow.
Forsythia tucked her hand through the crook of his arm. “I’m ready.”
Her sisters slipped through the door ahead of her. In a moment, soft chords sounded from the piano—not from her fingers today. It turned out Mrs. Caldwell had a fair musical background as well.
Grateful for the attorney’s steady arm, Forsythia stepped inside the church, her knees unexpectedly wobbly. Lord, I know this is what you have for me. But it will be such a change for all of us. Be thou with us in this new season.
Then she looked up and saw Adam standing in his dark coattails near the simple wooden altar.
And she forgot everything else.
A few moments later, she stood before a beaming Rev. Pritchard, her hands clasped in her doctor’s, his grip so loving and sure that all the tumbling in her heart settled back into its rightful place. She gazed into his brown eyes, saying those words that echoed across centuries with sacred weight.
“. . . to have and to hold, from this day forward . . . for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part . . . according to God’s holy ordinance . . . and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
“By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife.” Rev. Pritchard’s grin seemed about to split his face. He’d confided this would be his first wedding conducted in Salton, since he’d only started his circuit the year before.
Adam enveloped Forsythia in his arms with a kiss that swept her boots off the plank floor.
A flurry of embracing and congratulating, then everyone proceeded to their wagons and made their way to the doctor’s new house just outside of town. Forsythia and Adam drove ahead in his buggy.
“I can hardly believe we are really—that I am really Mrs. Doctor Adam Brownsville.” Forsythia smoothed the skirt of her blue-sprigged lawn dress, sewed specially for the wedding. “Can you?”
“I’ve waited long enough.” Adam covered her hand with his and smiled into her eyes, letting the horse find its own way on the familiar path.
They pulled up at the house, and Adam lifted her from the buggy. She slipped her hand through his elbow as they walked up to the broad front porch of the two-story white frame house that still smelled of paint and freshly sawed beams.
“Oh, Adam, it’s lovely.” Tears stung her eyes. “A real homeplace.”
“For us and for the children.” He put his arm around her and hugged her close. “And any more God chooses to add to our family.”
“And Jesse.” She looked up at him.
“Always Jesse.”
The rattle of wagons announced their reception guests’ arrival.
“I nearly forgot.” Adam quirked a teasing grin, then scooped Forsythia up in his arms.
She squealed. “What are you—?”
He hurried up the porch steps and flung open the front door. “Carrying you over the threshold, of course. I did promise.”
Soon beloved family and friends filled their new home, bearing food and gifts of dishes, pots and pans, and linens. Jesse presented a beautiful rocking chair for the sitting room with his characteristic shy grin, and her sisters laid a large bundle wrapped in a sheet in Forsythia’s arms.
“What is it?” She stared at it, feeling the soft weight.
“Open it.”
She unwrapped a large quilt, patterns of flowers stitched all over it in loving hands, each block bearing a different flower in an appropriate color.
“It’s Ma’s garden, see?” Lilac touched a square of primroses. “We embroidered the names of each flower and herb next to it.”
“So you did.” Forsythia caressed the block for rosemary. “It’s beautiful. How did you ever manage to keep it a surprise?”
Lark rolled her eyes. “Let’s just say we were glad for every hour you spent working at the store. Or that we could get Adam to spirit you away.”
They all laughed.
Soon the guests drifted away with well wishes and tired children. But with Adam’s blessing, Forsythia had one more journey to make before bidding her sisters good-bye and truly beginning her new life.
Adam drove her in the buggy, following the Nielsen wagon back to the sisters’ homestead, only a little over a mile from the Brownsville residence. The fields waved green, and the shoots in the cornfield near the house were just beginning to sprout above the dark earth. Ma’s rosebushes bloomed against the soddy, soon to be replaced by a frame house also, hopefully. But sweetest of all was the flower garden on the other side of the house, still small, but already blooming lavender, pink, and yellow. A foretaste of what would someday be, Lord willing.
“You don’t need to drive all the way up, Adam.” She touched his arm. “I’ll only be a minute.”
Lark stopped at the end of the lane, and Adam halted their horse too. Her sisters piled out of the wagon with the children, who would be staying here for a few days, until Adam and Forsythia got settled.
Holding her husband’s hand, Forsythia climbed down from the buggy and joined her sisters at the turning from the road to the Nielsen lane.
Lark lifted the engraved wooden sign from the back of the wagon bed, and Lilac pounded the iron signpost into the dirt.
“I hereby christen our homestead”—Lark held up the plaque for them all to see— “Leah’s Garden.” She hung the sign on the iron hooks.
It swayed gently in the late spring breeze, the curling letters and carved flowers around the words seeming to evoke Ma’s gentle presence.
“I love it.” Lilac threw her arms around Del. “It feels like we’ve truly come home at last.”
Adam stepped up beside Forsythia, and she leaned her head on his shoulder with a full heart. Truly this had been such a season of change. Yet here in this new land, surrounded by those she loved, in many ways she knew her journey was just beginning.
Lauraine Snelling is the award-winning author of more than ninety books, fiction and nonfiction, for adults and young adults. Her books have sold more than five million copies. Besides writing books and articles, she teaches at writers’ conferences across the country. She and her husband make their home in Tehachapi, California. Learn more at www.laurainesnelling.com.
Kiersti Giron grew up loving Lauraine’s books and had the blessing of being mentored by her as a young writer. Now it is her joy and honor to collaborate with Lauraine on this new serie
s. Kiersti holds a lifelong passion for history and storytelling, seen in her award-winning novel manuscripts, and loves writing about reconciliation, healing, and God’s story weaving into ours. She lives in California with her husband, their lively young son, and two cats.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Books by Lauraine Snelling
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Epigraph
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Epilogue
About the Authors
Back Ads
Cover Flaps
Back Cover
List of Pages
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