Five days later, the evening sky painted a yellow line above the black line of the horizon. Addie and Christine sat on the tiny porch in front of the cottage. The men had been super busy with business and crops, giving Christine time to read and rest. She could not write, yet. but she could study and pray. She had also heard from James, via snail mail, that he would be arriving soon to see her and Uncle Jay. He had a secret to share, he wrote. Christine wondered if he had finally decided to get married, but at his age, of forty-seven, she thought that would be difficult.
The yellow sky matched the hue of the golden hills Christine could just make out in the distance. She knew each hill, each little hidden vale and each stream. She loved the gorse bushes Iona had planted almost a half century ago, which also bloomed yellow. In fact, the cottage had been named, "Sunset Cottage" after the golden colors of the farmlands and sky. Also, as both Jay and Iona had known she would die there, the reference to the sunset of her brief life seemed apt.
Christine, as a young girl, wanted to rename it Sunrise Cottage, but Uncle Jay said "No."
Christine's favorite colors were sunrise and sunset colors, especially the pinky orange and duck-egg blue. In fact, she had decorated the inside of the cottage, with permission from Uncle Jay, who did not mind, in those colors. Her tiny rooms looked like old photographs from England of the dawn and dusk of her ancestors from East Anglia. She had been named after an ancestor, Elizabeth Christine Magdalen Thatcham, a lady from Ipswich, who hid priests in recusant times. Christine thought of the strange connection to Uncle Jay's underground chapel, which she still had not seen, and old Lady Elizabeth's vocation of saving priests.
Christine's German ancestors had not been from the same class as the Thatchams. The Brunderbergs and the Grosemans had come from farm-stock in Bavaria. But, American was the old melting pot, wherein those high and those low could fall in love and make new families of sturdy people.
Iona's family had also come from England, from Cornwall, all staunch Methodists, until she converted.
The Brunderbergs had died out, as Jay had no children and James was not married. The line was ending with Christine's generation. The Grosemans had done better and Christine has thirty-one cousins scattered across the Midwest, mostly in Kansas City. but they were not close. .
The Thatchams were also dying out. There was one older man still in England, a second cousin once removed to somebody, but he had never married. Once, as teenagers, after her high school graduation, James and Christine had traveled to England and found old Edward Thatcham in Eye, Suffolk. He showed them old papers and photos of the Thatchams, and gave Christine a beautiful old painting of Lady Elizabeth. It was worth a mint, Old Edward, as they all called him, remarked, but it was in Christine's bedroom, on the duck-egg blue wall. Christine did look like her ancestor. James, from that trip, gave Christine the nickname of "Lady" and it stuck. James even addressed his letters to "Lady" instead of Christine.
Old Edward died the next year and his estate went to a person unknown to the family. Christine rejoiced in having the painting.
Addie, curled up in a crescent at Christine's feet, actually snored. The yellow line of sky changed to turquoise blue. The night would be calm. Uncle Jay came over to the porch. It was now dark.
"Do you want to look inside the cave house tomorrow, Christine? I have time in the morning."
"Sure," she replied eagerly.
And, he walked back to the Big House. Christine nudged Addie and the dog followed her inside. She wanted to think about tomorrow and savor the moment of anticipation.
to be continued....
