Free Skylark by Patricia MacLachlan Page A

inside as much as we could. Even Nick and Lottie stayed inside, stretched out on the wood floor to keep cool. Papa walked the fields, measuring the level of the water in the well over and over, waiting for rain. He came in bringing the dirt with him.
    “Papa!” I poked at his feet with my broom. “Your boots!”
    I was sweeping, trying to keep the dust out. Sarah was scrubbing the kitchen floor
on her hands and knees.
    Papa was hot and tired.
    “That may be the last washing for the floor,” he said to Sarah. “We have to save water.”
    “That’s a mixed blessing,” Sarah said, brushing the hair off her face. She watched Caleb feed Seal.
    “Don’t feed her too much, Caleb,” said Sarah. “She’s getting fat with your food.”
    Papa looked closely at Seal. “I think she’s more than fat, Sarah.”
    Sarah looked up. “What?”
    “What does he mean?” asked Caleb.
    I smiled.
    “Kittens. He means kittens, Caleb,” I said.
    Caleb and I spoke at the same time.
    “Can we keep them all?” I asked.
    “When will she have them, Papa?” asked Caleb, excited.
    “Don’t know, Caleb,” said Papa, drinking water from the tin cup.
    Sarah sat back.
    “Has she ever had kittens before, Sarah?” asked Papa.
    Sarah shook her head.
    “No, never.”
    Papa smiled at Sarah’s look. She stared at Seal for a long time.
    “Kittens,” she said, her face suddenly breaking into a smile. “Kittens!”
     
    Late light fell across the bedroom, the windows closed to the prairie wind.
    I held Sarah’s wedding dress up to me and looked in the mirror.
    “Anna?”
    I jumped, startled, and Sarah smiled at me.
    “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she said.
    I looked in the mirror again.
    “Someday I’ll marry and move to my husband’s land. That’s what Papa says.”
    “Oh he does, does he?” said Sarah.
    “That’s what you did, Sarah. You came from Maine to marry Papa,” I told her.
    Sarah was silent for a moment. She sat on the bed.
    “Yes,” she said slowly. “I guess I did.”
    “You fell in love with us,” said Caleb in the doorway.
    “I did that,” she said. “First your letters. Then you.”
    “Did you fall in love with Papa’s letters, too? Before you knew him?” asked Caleb.
    I sat on the bed and watched Sarah’s face as she remembered.
    “Yes, I loved your Papa’s letters,” said Sarah softly. “I loved what was between the lines most.”
    “What was between the lines?” Caleb asked.
    Sarah looked at me when she answered.
    “His life,” she said simply. “That was what was between the lines.”
    “Papa’s not always good with words,” I said.
    “Sometimes, yes,” said Sarah, laughing. “But when I read your Papa’s letters, I could see this farm, and the animals and the sky. And you. Sometimes, what people choose to write down on paper is more important than what they say.”
    Caleb didn’t know what Sarah meant. But I knew. I wrote in my journal every night. And when I read what I had written, I could see myself there, clearer than when I looked in the mirror. I could see all of us: Papa, who couldn’t always say the things he felt; Caleb, who said everything; and Sarah, who didn’t know that she had changed us all.

     
     
     
     
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    Sarah loved the snow.
    “We don’t have drifts of snow in Maine,” she said.
    She waited and watched for it so she could paint the prairie snow with morning sun on it. She taught me to paint with watercolors, too. We painted the barn and tree by the cow pond, and we painted the sky just after sunset, Sarah’s favorite time.
    “When you can’t tell where the color comes from,” Sarah said.
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3
    O n Sunday the air was still, the way it is before a storm. We dressed up and rode the wagon to church. Inside the church it was cool, like a prairie spring, and Caleb fell asleep. Matthew, Maggie, Rose, and Violet, our closest neighbors, sat in front of us. Tom, their baby, turned around and reached out to Sarah. She smiled and took his hand.