Lilac Year Read online

  Copyright

  ISBN 978-1-62029-123-8

  Copyright © 2012 by Janet Spaeth. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the permission of Heartsong Presents, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., PO Box 721, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683.

  All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.

  prologue

  January 17, 1887

  The Dakota Territory

  The little boy stood in front of the platform at the Grange Hall. The air was close and stale, and faces swam in front of him until he felt dizzy.

  Mrs. Soames had told him that he had a very special home waiting for him in the West. When he’d asked if his mother would be there, the kind woman had shaken her head sadly and explained it all over again: that his mother had a new home, too, but hers was in heaven.

  Heaven. He’d heard of it, so many times, as Mama told him stories from the big book with the black leather cover. Wonderful stories they were, too—tales of a man named Noah and a fellow called Jonah and that sweet woman Ruth.

  But best of all were the stories of Jesus. Once Mama told him that Jesus had said He went to heaven to make a home for everyone. One day they would be there, and Jesus would be there, and there would be nothing but happiness.

  A tear caught in his eyelashes, and he tried to will it away. He did not want anyone to see it. Crying was for babies, and he was not a baby.

  He held his breath and thought about Jonah and what the inside of a whale’s belly must look like, or even worse, smell like.

  The inside of the Grange Hall wasn’t nearly as bad as that. It didn’t smell great—stuffy with scents like pipes and men and smoke from the black-crusted stove that heated the building in the winter—but he was sure it smelled better than a whale’s stomach.

  “Joshua Carleton Brighton!”

  At the sound of his name, the boy stepped forward and stared at the back of the auditorium. He didn’t want to look too eager, like Zena and Tommie. They were on their third trip west.

  Those two were at the difficult age, the other children had told him on the train. Too old to be cute and too young to be much help on a farm.

  When Joshua’d asked what that meant, the older ones had patted him on the head and told him not to worry: he was still as sweet as a little yellow buttercup. Joshua didn’t believe them. He knew his teeth were too big for his face, and Mrs. Soames hadn’t gotten his hair cut quite evenly.

  But he’d be brave. He straightened his shoulders and gritted back the pain in his stomach.

  Gradually the faces came into focus, and Joshua could see their eyes on him. A couple in the front row looked him over speculatively from their chairs. Joshua thought he saw the woman’s eyes soften, but the man beside her leaned over and whispered something in her ear. Joshua knew what he’d said: “Too little.”

  He looked farther into the audience. He saw a woman with a flat, firm mouth, not at all gentle and smiling like his mother’s, and he quickly looked away.

  To her left another man and woman stared at him. The woman chewed on her lip a moment before shaking her head no.

  Everywhere he looked, he saw rejection, and he knew he was going to be like Zena and Tommie. No one would want him—ever.

  And then what would happen to him? What happened to the children who were not chosen? It was a question he didn’t dare ask.

  “You’ve seen them,” Mr. Soames said to the crowd. He and Mrs. Soames had taken the group all the way out here, and pretty soon, he’d heard the man say to his wife, they’d reach the end of the line for this trip. “Look at their eyes. Right now, they’re clear and pure. But give them a month on the streets, and they’ll be hawking papers and smoking cigarettes. These tender little hands will soon be raw and chapped. The worst part of those who live this sad life on the streets of New York City is the haunted and lost look in their eyes. Each child, every single one of them, sees the same future, the same bleakness.”

  Mr. Soames paused and slowly wheeled around, pointing to each person gathered there. “You can save them. Can you open your heart? Your home? Your life? Can you save one of these precious ones?”

  Joshua’s eyes grew hot and itchy, and he wanted to rub them, but he didn’t dare. Someone might think he was crying, and he was too old for that. Nobody would want a boy who cried.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he told himself. In the storybooks his mother had read to him, everything turned out happily ever after. He didn’t see any chance of that here.

  He felt a touch on his sleeve, and he turned. The eyes he looked into were caring and friendly, and the smile he received was encouraging. Maybe he had found a home at last. Maybe there was a happily ever after.

  “How old are you, son?”

  one

  June 16, 1887

  New York City

  “My nephew,” Mariah explained again to the man at the desk. “Joshua Brighton.”

  The man shook his head, and his tiny wire-rimmed glasses bobbled on his nose. “I’m sorry, miss. We can’t give you that information. Let me assure you, the boy has been placed in a fine home.”

  “But he has a home, with me.” Mariah drew a deep breath. “Look, I’ve come all the way from Massachusetts to see my sister and her son, only to find out that she’s dead and he’s disappeared into your hands. He’s only five years old! This day has been excruciatingly difficult already. Please, just tell me this one thing. Tell me where he is!”

  “Again, my apologies for your distress. But the young man has been adopted into a good household.”

  “He’s my nephew.” Mariah’s temper flared as red as her hair. “Doesn’t that count for anything with you? Why won’t you tell me where he is?”

  None of this day seemed real. Any moment, she’d wake up and discover it had all been a horrible, horrible dream.

  Lorna. Dead. It was unimaginable.

  As if that weren’t bad enough, she’d also discovered that her nephew, Lorna’s son, had been taken by this organization, Orphans and Foundlings. She had walked for miles and asked countless passersby how to get to the agency in the hope of finding Joshua. Now this man—this pompous toad of a clerk—seemed determined to block her way.

  He lifted his shoulders and dropped them helplessly. “As I said before, once a placement is made, those records are sealed. Perhaps I could interest you in taking another child?”

  “I don’t want another child! I want my nephew!” Anger and frustration rose in her throat like hot bile. She leaned over the counter and swept the papers off the man’s desk, grabbing one and crumpling it in his face. “Why won’t you listen to me?”

  “Is there a problem?” A large man emerged from the back of the room, where he had been bent over a heavy wooden desk littered with files, and walked around the counter to Mariah. “I’m Jack Stone,” he said, extending a fleshy hand toward her.

  Mariah ignored it with a steely glance. “I’m here to find out what you’ve done with my nephew, and this man”—she turned and gave the unfortunate clerk a biting glare—“says I’m not to be told.”

  The clerk tried unsuccessfully to fade into the carpet.

  “What’s the boy’s name?”

  “Joshua Brighton.”

  Mr
. Stone’s face lit up. “Oh, Joshua! What a splendid young man!”

  Mariah sagged in relief. “Thank God. Now where can I find him?”

  “That’s a problem. He was on the orphan train—”

  “Orphan train?” Mariah exploded.

  “We take some children west to be adopted by farm families. It’s good for them; nice clean air, honest work, and they’re wanted out there.”

  “For slave labor!”

  Mr. Stone swung his head slowly. “Oh no, miss. There you’re wrong. These children are wanted and loved.”

  “Where is Joshua? I’ll go out there and get him back.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you that.”

  “Can’t tell me that, or won’t tell me that?” She glared contemptuously at the clerk cowering behind the counter. “I’ll go get him and bring him back to civilization. I won’t have him living in the middle of nowhere.”

  Mr. Stone leaned one elbow on the counter. “If an adoption has already taken place, we don’t intervene unless there’s some sort of difficulty within the family.”

  “There’s difficulty within this family!”

  “I mean the child and his adoptive family.” He led her to the window. “Look out there.”

  Along the rain-splattered street, bits of paper littered the gutters and walkways. Mr. Stone pointed to a group of boys, no older than twelve, huddled with false braggadocio in a doorway, sharing a single cigarette.

  “Chances are those boys are home right now.”

  “Home?”

  “For many children, the street is the only home they know. We’re trying to rectify that by sending as many of them as we can to good, solid farm families in the Midwest where they can grow up in a healthy environment.”

  Mariah watched one boy pull his collar up in a futile attempt to keep the rain off his neck. “I understand that, and I think it’s commendable, but don’t you see? Joshua doesn’t need one of those homes. He already has one—with me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “We have our rules.”

  “Rules? I’ll tell you what your rules are worth.” She snapped her fingers. “This.”

  Angrily, Mariah spun on her heel and marched out of the room and onto the narrow walk that bordered the street. She paused outside the agency’s door, oblivious to the droplets of rain that splattered her dress. Part of her wanted to burst into tears of defeat and disappointment, and the other part wanted to put her fist through the lettered window.

  Fighting back the sobs that tightened her throat, she realized she still gripped the piece of paper in her hand that she had seized from the desk in Orphans and Foundlings.

  It was torn, but enough remained to make her stop midstride. “Joshu—” The name sprang out at her. Below it were parts of letters that made no sense to her.

  Except for a single word that stood alone at the bottom corner of the paper: Fargo.

  Fargo? She’d heard the word before. Her breath caught as she remembered. Fargo was a place in the Dakota Territory, one of those towns that had sprung up during the Homestead Act years.

  Her knees nearly buckled beneath her as she took in the implications. She had just discovered where to find Joshua, and it was the middle of nowhere.

  Mariah had heard about the Dakota Territory. It was wild and untamed, precisely not the environment she wanted Joshua to grow up in. How could there be good homes out there in the absolute wilderness? Joshua was undoubtedly in danger.

  Mariah didn’t give it a second thought.

  She turned in the direction of the train station. Wherever Joshua was out there in the Dakota Territory, she was going to go get him and bring him home from the nightmare called Fargo.

  ❧

  The choo-ka-choo-ka-choo-ka of the train wheels was hypnotic, but Mariah was too tense to fall under its spell. She pulled her bag closer to her feet and looked out the window as the fields sped by in a blur.

  She was bound for the Dakota Territory. Her hand strayed to her skirt pocket and felt the reassuring outline of the crinkled paper with the cryptic clue. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had.

  It had been a long two days, the longest of her life.

  Everything had started out so brightly. She’d appeared at her sister’s boardinghouse, ready to surprise her. Her purse contained a bank book showing enough deposits to finally rescue Lorna and her son from the tenements of New York. It had taken almost three years of working eighteen- hour shifts in the mill at Lowell and doing stints at the sample shop next door, but she’d finally made it.

  As long as she lived, though, she would never forget the numb feeling that overcame her as Lorna’s landlady told her about Lorna’s death from influenza shortly after Christmas and the agency that had taken Joshua away. In one short moment, everything in her life had been stripped from her, everyone she ever cared about, everything she had ever dreamed.

  Mariah’s mind drifted through scenes from Lorna’s life. Lorna had taken being the older sister very seriously, and she told Mariah the best stories, acting out each of the parts.

  She smiled as she recalled Lorna being George Washington, Martha Washington, and Lafayette reliving Valley Forge. When Mariah had mentioned that she didn’t think Martha Washington had been at Valley Forge, Lorna had waved away the objection, explaining that it was a lovely thing called “poetic license.”

  Most of the stories were Bible stories, however, and Lorna once told the story of Jesus and the money changers with such vigor that she’d knocked over an armoire. Her Nativity retelling, complete with an angelic lullaby for the newborn Jesus, would make Mariah weep every time.

  When Mariah had been a rebellious adolescent, insisting that praying was silly because God already knew what she thought, Lorna had simply and sweetly said, as she knelt beside her bed for her evening prayers, “I pray your prayers, too.”

  Then their parents had died, and Lorna had taken care of Mariah, even delaying her own marriage to her childhood sweetheart until Mariah was safely on her own. When Lorna’s husband passed away from an infection in his lungs, she and the child had been forced to live off what sparse earnings she could make selling notions in a department store.

  The world without Lorna in it—it was almost too much to consider. And to think that Joshua, only five years old, was alone in the world. So small, so defenseless. After all that Lorna had done for her, Mariah knew that she had no choice—she had to do what her heart had ordered her to do. She had to find Joshua.

  She leaned back against the hard leather of the train seat and shut her eyes. It was time to talk to God.

  It was time to pray Lorna’s prayers.

  ❧

  Ben stood outside the station. The plow part he needed was supposed to be on this train. If it wasn’t, he’d have to delay even longer finishing up on the far section of cropland. That was only a small part of his acreage, but it bothered him to see it lay fallow for even this short period of time.

  The train usually pulled in about this time each after-noon, but now that more people were coming to the territory, each car was pretty much filled by the time it arrived here in Fargo. And that meant more stops along the way, picking up those who were coming west to try their hand at homesteading.

  He could wait. At least that’s what he told himself as he forced himself to quit pacing the train yard and peering down the tracks. It wouldn’t make any difference if he saw the train or not, and his anxiety wouldn’t hurry the locomotive along. It would come whenever it came. That was the truth, and he might as well enjoy this time.

  The sun was warm on his back, and he sank onto the unfinished wooden bench, slightly shaded by the portico where the loading and unloading from the train took place. He could have gone inside, that was true, into the depot, which was fine enough to make any town proud. No one could look at Fargo, Dakota Territory, and think it was a hick village. Not anymore.

  Lars Olsen, a burly man who farmed near Ben, approached him, mopping at his forehead with a handker
chief. His face was red with a persistent sunburn under his white-blond hair.

  “Warm today,” he commented and with a sigh, lowered himself onto the bench beside Ben.

  “It is that,” Ben agreed. “But I’m not complaining. You know that soon enough we’ll be remembering these summer days while we grouse about the winter weather.”

  “Yup, yup, yup, yup.” Lars grinned. “But you take away our ability to whine and moan about the weather, and we Dakotans aren’t going to have anything to talk about.” Lars had a faint Norwegian accent that came out when he wasn’t careful, and Ben found it amusing to hear “ve Dakotans.”

  Ben chuckled in response. “That’s true. After church, we’d all be standing around, looking at each other and wondering what we might think of to say to each other. Down at Meggin’s shop, there’d be nobody gathered in the corner by the pickle barrel because we’d have nothing to discuss.”

  They both laughed. Meggin Sanders owned the store in Prospect, the little town near both men’s homesteads, and the mercantile was a daily congregation point for the men, who found the large pickle barrel a convenient spot to rally each day. Some men were brave enough to put their feet on the top of the barrel, teasingly inviting Meggin to come over and whap their dusty boots with her ever-present towel.

  “So what are you doing in Fargo?” Lars asked. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have hitched a ride with you. It’s a long ride from Prospect. You got someone coming in on the train?”

  “No, not a someone but a something. The bolt that holds the plow assemblage on just simply sheared off. Had to order a new one.”

  Lars swabbed his forehead again. “Aw, that’ll stop a man dead in his tracks. Did you have to wait long for it?”

  “Two weeks. Could have been longer, but Reverend Timms’s brother was visiting, and he was on his way back to St. Paul, and he got the part for me and had it shipped on.”

  “That’s a piece of luck, indeed. Still, it’s too bad you had to come all this way for that one bit. I could have got it for you. One day, they’ll be able to put something like that in a box and send it so it’ll come to you, not you having to spend almost a full day coming to pick it up and then going back home.”