Mariah Stewart: Hard Truth

“Mellie fell in the field, we have to get her dress cleaned before she goes home. She wasn’t supposed to wear it, but today’s her birthday and…” Lorna gasped.

“Slow down,” her mother demanded. “Mellie, let me take a look at that dress.”

Mary Beth knelt down in front of Melinda and studied the muddy mess. She looked up at the crying child and said, “I think I can get it all out, but if it’s going to be dry in time for you to take it home with you, we have to hurry. Your mother didn’t want you to wear this today?”

Melinda nodded tearfully.

“Go on into the laundry room and take it off. Lori, run upstairs and get Mel something to put on.”

“I have stuff.” Melinda held up the bag.

“Then go change and give me the dress. Let me see what I can do. And in the meantime, I want you to stop crying, wash your face and hands, and get ready to blow out the candles on that birthday cake, okay?”

Melinda had nodded gratefully, the tears beginning to dry.

“Lorna, go find the matches so we can light the candles. The cake is in the dining room,” Mary Beth whispered after Melinda disappeared into the laundry room.

“Mom,” Lorna whispered back, “do you think you can get the dress cleaned up in time?”

“I’m pretty sure I can. Why was she wearing it, if getting it dirty was going to be such a big deal?”

“I think it’s because it’s her birthday dress and today is her birthday. You can do it, can’t you, Mom?”

“I’ll give it my best. Now go get the ice cream out of the freezer. I’ll be in to light the candles in a few minutes.”

Melinda had blown out all ten candles-nine for her years, and one to grow on-with one big breath.

“My wish will come true now.” She smiled at Lorna. “Everything is going to be all right.”

Mary Beth cut the cake and served the girls ice cream-cherry vanilla, Melinda’s favorite-then disappeared back into the laundry room. When five o’clock came and Melinda had to leave, Mary Beth handed her the dress, all clean and pressed, looking as good as new.

“Mrs. Stiles, you did it. You did it!” Melinda squealed and jumped up and down, clapping her hands, her smile lighting the room. “Thank you, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, the next time your mother says not to wear the dress, do us all a favor and don’t wear the dress,” Mary Beth said as she handed her a bag holding leftover cake. “This is for your mother and brother. And there’s a little extra for you, for a snack.”

“Mrs. Stiles, you’re the best.” Melinda hesitated, then threw her arms around Mary Beth’s neck, and shared a whispered secret. “My wish came true. Thank you.”

A rudely loud knock on the back door startled them all.

Lorna opened it to find Jason’s dark eyes staring at her.

“My mom wants Mel to come home now.”

“I’ll drive her, Jason, and you, too,” Mary Beth offered, looking for her keys. “It’s starting to get dark.”

“My mom said for me to walk her.” Jason looked beyond Mary Beth to where Melinda stood. “Come on, Mel. Now.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Stiles, for everything.” Melinda’s voice held a solemnity beyond her years. The smiles were gone, the happy glow had disappeared. She ran out the back door, a bag in each hand, calling over her shoulder to Lorna, “Thank you, Lorna. That was the best birthday ever.”

Lorna waved good-bye from the back porch.

It was the last time she ever saw Melinda.

Callen, Pennsylvania

August 2005

The two-lane road meandered languidly through a countryside alive with the colors of late summer. The sun was still uncomfortably hot at four in the afternoon, hot enough that the jacket Lorna Stiles had worn when she set out that morning from Woodboro-forty miles south of Pittsburgh -had long since been removed and tossed into the backseat. At some point while traveling the Pennsylvania Turnpike, it had slid onto the floor behind the driver’s seat, but Lorna had failed to notice. There’d been plenty to think about during the drive east across the state, to her hometown of Callen. A soiled jacket was the least of her worries.

Change had been slow to come in this southernmost tip of eastern Pennsylvania, where Amish and Mennonite farms were interspersed with pricey new housing developments. The one gas station in town was now pump-your-own and was attached to a convenience store, but the stores in the little strip mall on the corner still remained closed on Sundays. While the facades remained the same, the once ramshackle old house on the opposite corner-boarded up as little as three years ago-now housed a day spa and a boutique, while its counterpart across the street had been spiffed up and turned into apartments, with the first floor converted into a bakery and coffee shop. And most noticeably, a housing development was growing in a field where corn once grew a half mile from the intersection that served as the center of town.

A sign of the times. Lorna sighed, and wondered how many other farmers had been approached by developers who wielded huge sums of cash, much more than the farms were pulling in from crops these days. Hadn’t her own mother sold off thirty acres of their land sixteen months ago to pay her medical bills?

A horn sounded behind her, urging her to make up her mind. Turn or go straight.

Lorna went straight, then pulled to the side of the road, waving the impatient driver behind her to go on his merry way. She sat for a moment and read the names on the mailboxes: Hammond, Taylor, Keeler. All names she knew well.

Veronica Hammond had been best friends with Lorna’s grandmother, Alice Palmer, and would be in her eighties now. Corrie Taylor had been one of Lorna’s field hockey teammates, and Mike Keeler had been her first love. His brother, Fritz, had taught her how to drive a pickup. Over the past month, she’d received a card or letter from each of the families, following the death of her mother.

Mrs. Hammond, in particular, had written a touching note, remembering Lorna’s mother as a young girl. “She was a lovely child, your mother was. I can still see her chasing the baby rabbits in your grandmother’s garden, holding out lettuce leaves, hoping to entice them closer. How disappointed Mary Beth would be when they ran from her-she’d only wanted to play. She was certainly Alice ’s pride and joy…”

Making a mental note to pay a visit to the Hammond home before she left Callen for good, Lorna checked her mirrors for traffic before pulling out onto the road again. She drove another three-quarters of a mile, then slowed, her turn signal clicking away as she made a right into the wide drive.

The red brick house she’d grown up in never changed, for all of its one hundred fifty-plus years. The door was painted dark green, the shutters black. The magnolia tree she’d climbed as a child still stood in the backyard, though a lightning strike two years ago had resulted in an ugly split down the middle. Her mother would have had the tree taken down had her focus not been on other things. Like putting up a fierce fight against the disease that, in the end, took her in spite of her bravado and her most valiant efforts.

Lorna parked under the magnolia and looked through the open windows to the fields beyond the barn, which long ago had been painted white but now was weathered to a pale gray. The parcel of land her mother had sold to the developer sat at the far end of the property, so the new homes would not be visible from the farmhouse, except from the second or third floors. She wondered how many homes were being built on the land where several generations of Palmer farmers had planted every spring and harvested every fall. Maybe tomorrow she’d take a walk across the back field and see just what was what.