Mail Order Annie
Copyright© 2025 by DFL Runner
Chapter 4
Dawn seemed to come earlier than usual on November 16, 1870, less than two weeks before Harry’s and Ella’s first anniversary, though it seemed they had been together much longer. Ella was clearly uncomfortable, but not exceedingly so, so she shooed Harry off to work.
Around mid-day, the town doctor’s wife breezed into the shop, spoke very quietly to Martin, then hurried out. Harry was engrossed in his labors and didn’t notice her, nor did he notice when Martin quietly slipped out after her.
Harry was closing down the shop for the evening when he heard the front door open, and a somber-faced Martin came through it, Parson Sterling right behind him.
“Harry, my boy,” he said tiredly, and gestured toward a chair. “You ... you should sit.”
Harry sat quietly, starting to become a bit unnerved.
After an uncomfortable silence, Martin approached him and laid a hand on his shoulder. His voice trembling, he began, “Harry ... your son...”
Harry’s eyes grew wide and his heart began pounding. “My ... son? Ella had the baby?” A smile started to grow on his face ... and then he saw the faces of the two men.
His stomach suddenly felt as if someone had placed a ball of ice inside it.
Harry felt as if he was standing outside his body, watching Martin come over to place both hands squarely on his shoulders and look at him without exactly making eye contact with him.
“Harry, the ... I don’t know all the medical things. I wish I did. I wish I could make it easier to hear this...” Martin’s voice trailed off.
Steeling himself, he gripped Harry’s shoulders tighter. “Doc did everything he could, but Miss Ella just bled so badly. She ... she didn’t make it, son.”
A voice Harry faintly recognized as his own asked, “My ... son? Joshua?”
Martin’s eyes closed and his voice trembled. “He didn’t make it either.” His voice broke at this last word, and he desperately embraced Harry, trying to shelter him from this awfulness, but weeping as Harry’s sobs echoed through the shop.
The parson could do nothing but watch them both, praying for God to bring both men a peace he knew they might never find this side of Heaven.
Two days later, Harry’s small family was committed to the earth. Joshua was dressed in a small gown Martin had quickly, but painstakingly, made for him. Ella was buried in a hastily-altered dress. A royal-blue one Harry and Martin had made for her less than two years before.
Though he felt the love and support of Kenneth, Victoria, and Martin as they stood across from him at the cemetery, Harry felt alone and lost, adrift in his grief as he watched the coffins being lowered into the earth.
After the prayers were finished and the mourners drifted away, Harry stood silently, stricken, as he stared at the cold, freshly-disturbed earth at his feet, twisting the wedding ring on his finger, as though she who had placed it there would return to the living if he touched it long enough.
When he finally looked up, Harry saw that he was not alone. Martin was standing at a respectful distance, allowing him this moment. When Harry made eye contact with him, he approached and laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder.
Quietly, Martin said, “The undertaker bade me give you this. It is a lock of your boy’s hair.” He slipped an envelope containing the hair into Harry’s pocket before silently withdrawing.
Martin forbade him to come to work for several days after the funerals, and so Harry barely left his home. He slept on a chair in the front room, unable to bear the thought of sleeping in the bed he and Ella had shared.
He emerged near dusk one afternoon, making his way toward the place where his wife and son had been laid to rest. He saw a marker that Kenneth had commissioned for the site:
HERE LIES
ELSPETH RUTH CRANE
BELOVED WIFE, DAUGHTER, AND MOTHER
1850-1870
HER SON
JOSHUA KENNETH CRANE
NOVEMBER 16, 1870
The cemetery caretaker arrived the next morning and found Harry asleep, his face streaked with tears, his hand pressed against the stone. He quickly went into town and found Martin, who awakened Harry and ushered him home, where Harry slept for two days, and would not have minded if he never woke at all.
Nonetheless, as was becoming of the man he was and the man he was expected to be, Harry awoke after those two days and silently dressed for his return to Martin’s tailor shop. Martin, though happy to see him, could see his apprentice’s wounds were deep and still fresh, and he generally let Harry be.
Fate, however, declined to let Harry be.
The winter air stung Harry’s face on the morning of January 8, 1871, as he made his way toward Martin’s shop. There was even the slightest spring to his step after his first night of uninterrupted sleep in nearly two months ... until he approached the front door of the shop, where he found the parson waiting for him, a somber expression on his face.
A new, yet thoroughly familiar, feeling of dread came over Harry. He looked at the parson and quietly, resignedly said, “In God’s name, say what you must.”
Asher Sterling met his gaze briefly before looking downward. “Martin is gone. He was found lying on the ground outside his home early this morning.”
Harry would forever remember the small graveside funeral service, sparsely attended because of the clouds and the frigid weather the day brought. The parson, grieving the only true friend he had in town, could only choke out one sentence before commending Martin to the ground: “We need not grieve for this man, for we know that God cares for him and has welcomed him Home.”
Two days later, the parson knocked on Harry’s door. When Harry opened it, the man silently handed Harry an envelope and walked away.
Mystified, Harry opened the envelope and read the letter, written in Martin’s neat, compact handwriting: