Light changes everything, p.28
Light Changes Everything, page 28
“Then we can stay in here a little longer, I believe.”
* * *
By that afternoon there were six of us heading north. Pa, Ezra, Zack in one wagon, Merle, Remmy, and I in the other. A few hours ahead of the sheriff and my sister and her polecat husband. It took five days to get north through the mountains, and though we watched behind, there was never any sign we were followed. I hung my painting of Ma’s daffodils in my little kitchen on the wall over our bed. Remmy’s little bunk was a shipping crate with padding I made, and it sat at the foot. A month later I sold half of my Wainbridge land to Clove for a dollar, and the rest I sold to the railroad for many more dollars, although they’ve done nothing with it. Brody and I used the cash to build up the herd.
We left Clover at the pecan farm, happy enough, I suppose, working away his years as boss of the place. Six months after that day, Rachel came to visit Clover, driving the buggy that had once been Clove’s, loaded with trunks and valises full of her fine clothes and a single china teapot. She put the matched set of palomino mares in Pa’s barn, walked into the house and took off her bonnet, made herself a pot of coffee, and never left. Acting as housekeeper and cook, she stayed even after Clover married a girl named Bess McAdams from Pomerene.
Rachel wrote me a couple of times, asking forgiveness for Aubrey’s actions. She said that Dorothy and the other two maids she’d hired left her house abruptly, and she was at a loss to know why. I suspected that was her way of telling me between the lines that Aubrey was after those ladies as well, and no woman had been safe in her house. I wrote back and told her all was well between her and me, but I did think at the time she should have asked forgiveness for her own actions, even if her reason was that they were swayed by a slick talker like Aubrey Hanna. Still, I sent her a photograph of Ma’s daffodils in bloom. She sent me a scarf she knitted.
EPILOGUE
Seven, nearly eight years have passed.
Our little line shack now has five rooms, a porch, and two more rooms upstairs. One of them is my art and portrait studio.
Merle and I have four boys, with another baby on the way. This one feels different. Lighter. I’d sure like to have a girl this time. I’d like to sew a pinafore and curl her hair instead of patching knees and making fishing poles. I hope it is a girl. We have a spread outside of Eagar, Arizona, where I can see a wide valley from the road to my house. Pa lives on our place in his own house as foreman.
Ezra lives pretty well, does chores and grooms horses, sometimes when they’ve just been groomed, but the horses don’t mind. He’ll never be able to live on his own. Sometimes he gets dreadful headaches and can’t breathe, and I fear he’s lived his last every time he catches a cold. Zachary has gone through the university in Tucson. He studied agriculture and is planning to farm cotton in the Phoenix area, but said he’d visit us up here in the cool country come June.
Meanwhile, my studio hangs with photographs of people from Springerville and Holbrook, dead children and loved ones, and a number of wandering elk, bears, horses, dogs—especially Checkers, who is quite the photographed dog—and other critters, plus plenty of my family and my children. We’ll have the most photographed children in Apache County in what is now the state of Arizona as of February 1912. The best part of that is that when people come from town to have a portrait done, everyone who sees my photographs of all my boys lined up like stair steps always remarks on how like their father they all look. While I am thinking that they probably just look like me, I smile and say, “It’s more important they act like him.”
I have a good income making plates of people and their children, even their dogs and other animals, too. I am known for always setting up a big mirror next to my flash pan to add extra light. When I take images of people’s dead loved ones, sometimes I set up a nice mirror not just to bounce the flash, but to catch a loving mother or father in the image, so there is a portrait of two people, the child and the grieving parent. It’s a unique photograph and most people buy the one parlor card but also a small print of the one that includes their own face as they look down at the baby in the coffin. It’s all about the light and the way it paints halos around the faces in that moment in time, almost like that lovely painting in the Wheaton library.
Aunt Sarah and Udell Hanna still live outside of Tucson, and the new people running Maldonado’s place are good neighbors again. Charlie wanted to go back to West Point, but after all that happened that year, he decided to learn to fly an aero plane instead. He’s barnstorming the whole country now, and takes a little box camera along. He wrote to say he’s thinking about taking a job as a deputy sheriff up on the Mogollon Rim and selling that aero plane. He won’t be far away, just a day or two on horseback.
* * *
Prairie and I write often, although I have not seen her since the day she visited. Last time I got a letter from her it came with a photograph of her along with her husband and three children all in fancy clothes and kid leather shoes with thirteen buttons apiece. I’m glad she has that life. Gladder still that I have mine. Rawhide boots are better protection from a rattler than high-button shoes. She said she heard Calvert went to bed one night in the Wheaton library and didn’t wake up in the morning. He was found wearing my old roping hat and holding two apples. That library won’t be the same without its being haunted, I suspect.
Nation Hollingsworth went to China three years back and hasn’t been heard of since. I’m sad, but I believe he was doing what he loved to do. The Chicago Tribune published a book of his photographs, and his aunt sent me a copy of it. Inside the back cover was the print he’d made of me that had got me so riled up back then. I considered keeping it, but I have the other uncolored version of it, and so I relegated that tainted-looking image to the fireplace. As Brody said once long ago, “Paper burns,” and he meant that it flamed with satisfaction.
I planted Mama’s daffodils by my front porch. This place grows them fine, and there are no javelina. The bulbs have multiplied from five to eighteen last I saw them in full bloom. Every day when they are blooming I walk out there and just listen, quietlike, for Mama’s whisper. Merle is outside right at this moment building a swing for the children. He took extra care that they can run to it and not trample their grandma’s flowers, even though most of them never had laid eyes on her, for it is all they have of her and she was a good woman, he tells them. Pa nods and tears fill his eyes.
I keep my Granny’s memoirs safely hidden, but she’s given permission for all of us to read them. Merle has built a secret second room in our cellar, just like she told me.
Rebeccah and her doctor husband, along with their two little girls, are visiting at our house. I’m leaving all my children, other than the one I’m carrying, that is, with them and Pa and Ezra for six days, and Merle has bought us tickets for the train from here across Flagstaff to Williams, Arizona. From there we will take the spur north.
My reticule holds a receipt for reservation of two nights at the brand-new El Tovar Hotel (with convenient indoor plumbing) on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Room has been given to extra luggage for my camera and plates. I’m so excited I could bust. This trip is going to be something I’ll remember all my days. I’m going to write about every minute of it to Granny. She’s gone blind, so someone really will have to read it to her, the rascal.
Standing breathless at the edge, on our last day at the canyon, arm linked with Brody’s, I held Pride and Prejudice in my free hand, ready to pitch it into the Colorado River. Some people believe that nice girls don’t read novels. I don’t think it made me turn bad, but I do think it gave me ideas about what was important in life. Even my mama was of a different mind after she read one. A girl needs to have her wits founded on the real things around her, not some made-up world. There is a much better recipe for life than what was in Jane Austen’s book. She was wrong writing that happiness came with a man with money. At least, none of that held water out here in Arizona. In the end, I left the book on a table in the lobby, as if forgotten.
Before this little girl—I hope—is born and could possibly be swayed by a novel into loving the wrong man, or thinking that looks and money are reasons enough to devote herself to someone, I want to teach her that love is not handsomeness or promises of adventure; it is not wealth or fine clothes or sashaying around society parties eating petit fours. Someone who loves you doesn’t ask you to be something you aren’t already, nor make you believe you’d never amount to a thing without him. Love is building a little cart for our boys to pull. Digging a hole for another apple tree. Fixing my stirrup at dawn. Putting up a shelf for my photographic plates.
A day later, Brody clicked his tongue to the team pulling our buggy and as we turned toward home, I shielded my eyes from the sun. He saw me do it and pulled the shade a little lower for me. I smiled at him and fingered my gold wedding band. Love isn’t about looks or money or even accomplishments. Love is a million little promises kept.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Warm thanks to my editors, Sam Zukergood and April Osborn.
ALSO BY NANCY E. TURNER
These Is My Words
The Water and the Blood
Sarah’s Quilt
The Star Garden
My Name Is Resolute
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NANCY E. TURNER was born in Dallas, Texas, and currently resides in Pinetop, Arizona, with her husband, John. She started college when her children were full grown. With a degree in fine arts from the University of Arizona with a triple major in creative writing, music, and studio art, Turner went on to become the bestselling author of many novels, including These Is My Words, Sarah’s Quilt, and The Star Garden. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Nancy E. Turner
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
LIGHT CHANGES EVERYTHING. Copyright © 2019 by Nancy E. Turner. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
Cover design by Danielle Christopher
Cover photographs: woman and horse © Magdalena Russocka / Trevillion Images; landscape © Ryan Closson / Arcangel; background © Marmarto / Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Turner, Nancy E., 1953– author.
Title: Light changes everything: a novel / Nancy E. Turner.
Description: First Edition. | New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019034037 | ISBN 9781250186010 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250186027 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Young women—Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3570.U725 L54 2020 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034037
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First Edition: January 2020
Nancy E. Turner, Light Changes Everything
