Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel Read Online Free PDF

consequences of her mistakes. The children were all that mattered anymore.
    She snatched up a towel from the counter and carefully patted her face dry, then hurried back to the children. “Better?” she asked Ana, who managed a small smile and nodded. Lupita had set the sewing basket next to the satchel; Rosa dug through it and found four cotton feed sacks, and she filled each with a pile of clothing. Distributing the bundles to the girls, she told them to get in the wagon as fast as they could and keep an eye on Miguel. As they darted away, Rosa glanced around for anything essential that they could not leave behind, listening for the roadster over the patter of rain. When John came home, he would be incensed, outraged—and once he climbed into thehayloft and discovered what Rosa had done, what she had found—
    It would have been better, far better, if he had mortgaged the farm to pay for the roadster, but since he had not, she must make sure he couldn’t. Clutching her side, she stepped around the baskets and hurried to John’s desk, where she opened three drawers before she found John’s strongbox containing their most important papers. It was locked, and John carried the key, but Rosa didn’t need to open it. She only needed to keep them out of his hands so he could not sell or mortgage the farm in her absence.
    As she loaded the strongbox into the food basket, Rosa’s gaze fell upon the folded quilts, her mother’s last gifts and a wordless promise of forgiveness. Rosa could not leave them behind. Her heart ached as she stacked up the two baskets and draped the quilts over them, and then, at the last moment, she remembered her precious family photo albums and tucked them within the folds of the quilts. For years she had believed her mother had died from a terrible accident, and she had censured all who whispered that it had been suicide. To discover, or even to suspect, that her husband had killed her—a day ago she wouldn’t have believed it, but nothing seemed beyond him anymore, now that she knew what he had hidden in the hayloft.
    She hefted the baskets and quilts, staggering back from the weight, and joined her children in the barn. She loaded her burdens into the back, fastened down a tarpaulin to keep the children and their belongings dry, shoved open the double doors, and climbed onto the wagon seat. A moment later they were on their way through a steady gray rain. From the corner of her eye Rosa saw the tarpaulin move, and she knew one of the children, probably Lupita, had come out from beneath the improvisedtent to watch the small adobe as they drove away. Rosa did not turn around for one last glimpse of home, even though she had no idea when they might return.
    She urged the horses into a trot, expecting at any minute to hear the roadster roaring after them. The main road wound south past the Barclay farm through rolling hills, and just beyond them, they came upon acres of land as flat as a tabletop, covered in brittle gold-brown grasses and dusty green scrub. The mesa plummeted abruptly at the canyon’s edge, a descent so sharp it looked as if a blade had sliced into the earth. Rosa turned the horses off the road and drove them across the mesa. Even if John overlooked their tracks in the rainstorm, he could not fail to miss the wagon itself, standing out starkly against the light grasses of the mesa, visible from miles away. The wagon was no safe hiding place, but she had never intended to remain with it.
    She pulled the horses to a halt a few yards away from the canyon’s edge, in a spot with ample tender grass should they need to graze. “We need to be quick, but please, be careful on the rocks,” she said, peering under the tarpaulin. The children blinked back at her, cold and miserable and scared. “The cave will be warm and dry. You’ll see.”
    Marta was the first to move, crawling out from beneath the tarp and handing Miguel to Rosa. While the girls gathered their belongings and climbed