Free Return to Harmony by Janette Oke Page A

footsteps echoed behind her as she stalked down the hall.

    “Bethan!” She wheeled about at the sound of her mother’s voice. “Child, you have been staring out that window for nigh on ten minutes. What on earth has gotten into you?”
    “Nothing, Momma.” Hastily Bethan returned to setting the table.
    “I declare, sometimes I think you lack the sense God gave a baby bird.” Moira shook her head as she slid the biscuit tray into the big cast-iron oven. She straightened, raised the edge of her apron, and wiped at the perspiration on her forehead. “I do wish a bit more of Jodie’s common sense would rub off on you, considering how much time you spend together.”
    Bethan put down the last of the cutlery, turned, and said quietly, “I heard them quarreling, Momma.”
    “Quarreling? Who, daughter, who? I need me a noun.”
    “The teachers. After school. They were arguing about her.”
    “About Jodie?” Moira dropped her apron. “As if the child didn’t have enough to worry about already, living in that house with a shadow for a father and a memory for a mother.” She inspected her daughter’s face. “It was bad, was it?”
    Bethan nodded worriedly. “I think so.”
    Moira sighed and walked over, reaching out to embrace her daughter. “Bethan, Bethan, child, you are too precious for this earth, and that is the plain and simple truth. You have a heart of pure gold, and more love in you than I ever thought possible for one sparrow of a child to hold.” She stroked her daughter’s hair, murmuring, “How ever will you find your way in this world?”
    Bethan returned the embrace, her head filled with the fragrances of her mother and the meal she was preparing. “I’ll be all right, Momma. The Lord will take care of me.”
    “I do so hope and pray you are right.” Her mother eased herself down into a chair and smiled sadly. “Soon after you were born, I had the strangest thought come to me. I was looking down at your little face, and already you had the most winning way about you. Eyes so clear you could see heaven in them, and a smile that would break your heart. I thought then that perhaps you were one of the Lord’s precious angels who had wandered down and been born by mistake.”
    Bethan looked at her mother, saw the sadness mingled with the love. “Why do you worry about me so much?”
    “Perhaps I shouldn’t,” Moira agreed quietly. “But I can’t help myself. I see the love shining in your little face, and I remember…”
    “Remember what?”
    It was a while before Moira answered. Her voice was low when she finally said, “I recollect just how hard life can be.” A shadow passed over her features as she said the words. “My dad, your grandfather, may the blessed Jesus watch over him, was a miner. As were my three elder brothers.”
    Bethan nodded. This much she had heard, but little else. She only knew her mother’s parents from the gilt frame on Moira’s dressing table. The couple stood in front of a white slat house badly in need of fresh paint. The man wore a dark suit and string tie in the manner of one unaccustomed to such finery; the sleeves hung crooked, his coat was open to reveal suspenders, and his collar rode up his neck where one collar stud was missing. He wore a narrow-brim hat from the last century, a walrus moustache, and an expression which suggested he rarely if ever smiled. His wife stood beside him, dressed in a simple neck-to-ankle black frock. Her hair was fastened back tightly, her mouth finished in deep downwardsloping lines, and her eyes looked very, very tired. Bethan’s mother always referred to them as the hardest-working folks who ever lived, but had said little else of her life before coming to America. Until now.
    “We lived a miner’s life,” Moira went on quietly, “in a village climbing the side of a Welsh mountain, one road in and one road out, all the houses on our little lane owned by the same pit that employed the four men of my family. I was