“We don’t have the money,” he said glumly.

“Knowing how hard you work, I might even be willing to hold the paper rather than have some banker come out the winner in the deal.” She looked between the two of them. “So?”

“Yes!” Hitch grinned.

“Please,” Donna added, face aglow.

That settled, Marta drove to town to take care of the rest of the details.

Then, on impulse, she drove to Merced and went shopping.


* * *

She wrote to Rosie that night and told her about Hildemara.

I started thinking about Lady Daisy and our afternoons at Kew and tea in the conservatory. I think it’s about time I shared some of these experiences with Hildemara Rose. So I went to Merced and looked through all the stores and couldn’t find anything as fine as what I wanted.

After hours of searching, I was discouraged. Actually, I was annoyed. I ended up in a little shop, but one look around and I was ready to walk out the front door. Fortunately, the proprietor cut me off. Gertrude! Swiss, from Bern! We talked for an hour.

I’d completely forgotten why I’d come to Merced in the first place until we both noticed the time. She needed to close the shop, and I needed to drive home to Murietta. Before leaving, I finally got around to telling her what I’d been looking for and why. G went into her back room and came out with an old, dusty box filled with dishes. She said she’d forgotten all about them until that very moment.

I am now the proud owner of a Royal Albert Lady Carlyle tea service-four plates, four teacups, and saucers! G also sold me some dainty spoons and forks, well worth every dollar she extracted from me. I will make all the wonderful sweets and savories for Hildemara Rose that I once served to Lady Daisy. I will pour India tea and lace it with cream and conversation.

God willing, I will win back my daughter.

A Note from the Author

Dear Reader,

Since I became a Christian, my stories have begun with struggles I’m having in my own faith walk, or issues that I haven’t worked out. That’s how this two-book series started. I wanted to explore what caused the rift between my grandma and my mom during the last years of my grandmother’s life. Was it a simple misunderstanding that they never had time to work out? or something deeper that had grown over the years?

Many of the events of this story were inspired by family history that I researched and events I read about in my mother’s journals or experienced in my own life. For instance, when I was three, my mother had tuberculosis, just like Hildie did. Dad brought her home from the sanatorium and Grandma Wulff came to live with us and help out. It was difficult for everyone. A child doesn’t understand communicable disease. For a long time, I didn’t think my mother loved me. She never held or kissed me. She kept her distance to protect her children, but it took years before I understood what felt like rejection was actually evidence of sacrificial love.

While thinking over the past, my husband, Rick, and I decided to take a trip to Switzerland, my grandmother’s homeland. Several years earlier, we had gone on a heritage trip to Sweden to meet many of Rick’s relatives on his mother’s side. I knew I wouldn’t have the same opportunity in Switzerland, but wanted to see the countryside with which my grandmother would have been familiar. We visited Bern, where my grandmother went to housekeeping school, and Interlaken, where she worked in a hotel restaurant. When I mentioned to the tour guide that my grandmother had come from the small town of Steffisburg near Thun, she and the bus driver decided to surprise us. Taking an alternate route, they drove into Steffisburg and parked across the street from the centuries-old Lutheran church my grandmother’s family must have attended. Rick and I stood in front of the Steffisburg map for a picture before wandering the church grounds and sitting in the sanctuary. We walked up and down the main street, taking lots of pictures. It was a very precious moment for me. On the way out of town, we caught a glimpse of Thun Castle, another place my grandmother mentioned.

Steffisburg, Switzerland