Redeeming Lies

by Samantha St. Claire

  Dr. Reynolds, his shirt sleeves rolled up, turned as she entered. "Miss Alexander, what a pleasant surprise!"

  "Dr. Reynolds, will you please come to the house and look in on Jessie? She's really uncomfortable, doubled up in pain. I think something is very wrong." Maddie was already turning for the door, not waiting to see if he was following.

  Maddie and the doctor arrived at the house at the same time as Bart.

  The four of them stood downstairs in the entry hall waiting while Dr. Reynolds examined Jessie. Bart paced from the front door to the bottom of the stairs. A perfect rhythm rose from the wood floor as one loose floorboard cracked with each pass. Evan stood with one arm wrapped tightly about Lena’s shoulders. Faces pinched with worry, no one spoke. Maddie hugged her arms close to her sides. Taking her cues from the others, she remained quiet.

  All heads looked up when the door to the bedroom opened.

  Dr. Reynolds said softly, "Bart, Jessie would like to see you."

  Bart sprang up the stairs two at a time, squeezing by Reynolds. Maddie had met a few doctors in her life and found them particularly difficult to read from mere facial clues. Watching the doctor descend the stairs, she decided David Reynolds ranked high among them.

  Lena lay a hand on the doctor's arm and asked the question. "Is the baby all right? Is Jessie. . ."

  Before he had a chance to respond, the bedroom door burst open. Bart, face flushed nearly matching the flaming color of his hair, looked down at the four of them with a stunned expression that pulled itself into a broad toothful smile. "Twins! We're gonna have twins!"

  Chapter 18

  "I'd recommend bed rest as much as possible. She's a strong young woman, but I'd like to take the precaution given this recent episode." Dr. Reynolds sat at the dining room table, a cup of coffee cradled in his hands. His fingers tapping at the cup as she’d seen him do before, his habit as he weighed his words before speaking. "I believe she and the babies will be fine if we can keep your wife off her feet."

  Bart, still wearing a wide grin, sat across the table from Lena and the doctor, while Evan lounged against the sink. Maddie wondered how much of what the doctor said Bart comprehended in his delirious state.

  Maddie stood apart watching their faces process the doctor's advice. At the first mention of the need to keep Jessie in bed they all reacted with similar skepticism, the eye-rolling kind of response.

  Evan asked, "Can you manage, Lena, without Jessie's help?"

  "She doesn't have to." All eyes turned to Maddie.

  "I'm not working more than four hours a day. I could help."

  Lena's anxious brow smoothed. She smiled her gratitude at Maddie. "That would be wonderful if you could."

  "Of course."

  Dr. Reynolds gave her a warm smile that brought a dimple to his cheek, just one on the left. "That's a good solution to one problem."

  Lena rested her hands on the table before her, twisting her wedding ring in slow rotations as she asked, "And you're quite sure she'll be all right?"

  "With my experience, bed rest has proven a benefit in these circumstances. I’m not saying she’ll have to remain in bed for the full term, just for a few weeks right now."

  Bart shook his head. "But I know my Jessie. She'll be a hard one to keep down."

  Lena nudged his arm and smiled. "That's why it will take all of us. Isn't that right, Dr. Reynolds?"

  Bart lifted a skeptical eyebrow. "She'll be needing company. Girl can't live without conversation. You all know that. Knitting and mending won't keep her down for long. Don’t know who will go crazy first, her or us!"

  Maddie said, "That's what Lena and I can take turns doing. Whoever isn't tending to chores can spend time with her."

  "Looks like you all have it under control then," Dr. Reynolds said.

  Lena stretched her hand across the table to touch the doctor’s arm. "One more thing, doctor. If we're going to work together to keep those three precious lives healthy, then I'd like to suggest that we drop the formalities between us. I think you should call me Lena."

  Dr. Reynolds nodded. "I'd be pleased to have you call me David."

  "Maddie. You can call me, Maddie." Maddie said and swallowed hard as the others turned to her. David smiled at her. Was she opening the door too far, letting these people into the part of her life that needed to disappear? Her father had warned her that information was power. For his purposes, it was a power that enabled him to determine people's vulnerabilities. The more she moved into their world, the more she risked exposing her falsehoods. The more she accepted their friendship, the more likely she was to relax and let her guarded walls slip.

  Lena passed her a warm smile then looked to each of them gathered in the room, including Ely who'd just entered behind Maddie. "Then we are agreed?"

  A soft chorus of voices followed, speaking the affirmative to the question.

  Ely, looking more than a little baffled, asked, "That's a nice suggestion, but why'd it take a meeting to decide it?"

  Tension broken, the laughter so familiar to the house returned.

  That evening Bart took his meal up to their bedroom and stayed with Jessie, leaving Lena, Evan, David and Maddie to have dinner without him. Ely stayed at Lena's insistence. As a result, the conversation did not lag.

  Ely asked, "How is your negotiation for the ranch going with Mrs. Wagner?"

  Maddie stiffened. The topic of the ranch had all been all but forgotten in the crisis. She watched as Lena's countenance fell, disappointment written in the lines about her mouth and eyes.

  Evan pushed his plate forward, resting his arms before him on the table. "Not so good. We met with her brother today and they appear to have an offer from someone that beats ours to heck."

  Ely shook his head sympathetically. "That is a shame, ja. I know how much you had your heart set on that pretty piece of land."

  Again, Maddie tried to imagine how she could convince the two of her convictions about Mr. Toliver's lie. Without revealing her father's misuse of her skill, how could she get them to believe her? What good was a gift that could only be used to take advantage of people?

  Lena placed her hand on Evan's. "We'll find another location, maybe we need to look a little farther south, closer to Hailey."

  Evan shook his head. "I've ridden that land and nothing suits us like the ranch with its access to the river and flat grazing land. Still it's close enough to the rail line to bring in touring folks bound for the Sawtooth Range and the lakes there."

  David leaned back in his chair, loosening his tie, an elegant gesture that seemed to invite familiarity, "What are your plans for the ranch? Cattle?"

  "We've had plans that took sharp turns." Evan lay his own hand over Lena's, passing to her a look that conveyed the pain of those turns. "Looks like this road might be heading for another one, but we were thinking of horses and possibly cattle or sheep."

  Ely pulled a pipe from his pocket and waved it at Evan. "Ja, and tell him the rest, won't you?"

  Lena said, "What Ely is alluding to are our plans to open the ranch to touring folks. We wouldn't be the first to try it, but we would be the first here."

  Here was a story that piqued her interest. Maddie put aside her assumptions of Mr. Toliver to focus on Lena and Evan's shared dream.

  David seemed equally intrigued. "Really?"

  Lena nodded. "I learned of a family near the Yellowstone that opened their ranch to people from back east who wanted to have an authentic frontier experience for a short time. They wanted to hunt and fish as well."

  Maddie asked, "Why would anyone want to do that? Why would anyone come here that didn't have to?" Maddie saw three pairs of eyes turn to her. She realized her slip in the next moment and tried to correct it. "Well, of course, I wanted to see the western lands, but do other people really travel here to simply experience this for a few days?"

  Evan shrugged and nodded to Lena. "Apparently they do. It does sound a bit far-fetched, but we've already had some folks come through l
ooking for hunting guides to take them into the mountains. We've got plenty of wild creatures up there that could excite a man with a hankering for matching his wits against a beast. Can be dangerous without a savvy guide."

  Ely pulled his pipe from his teeth. "And that would definitely be you."

  Evan chuckled. "Most can't ride and only know about horses from the back end, leaving the care of the animals to a liveryman or groom. Makes for some humorous situations. But for the most part, they're game for it. I think many have a strange notion of the frontier, probably from reading all the wrong books."

  Lena sighed, wrapping her arm through Evan’s, entwining her fingers in his. "So, we have some big dreams, but first Evan and I have some figuring to do to see if we can match Mr. Toliver's price."

  Evan sat back and eyed the pie in the center of the table. "Is that for admiring or eating?"

  After Lena had served the pie, Evan lifted his fork, waving it vaguely in Maddie's direction. "I've been thinking some about your lady detective—the Pinkerton agent. Lena suggested that I might have shown my ignorance last night. It's something I never considered before."

  Lena grinned impishly at her husband. "Never considered being ignorant or that women might be detectives?"

  Although Maddie was not eager to relive last night's embarrassment, Lena's playful mocking of her husband encouraged her to speak. "She wasn't the only female agent Mr. Pinkerton hired. Even after the war, they proved useful in gaining people's trust to attain information that male agents could not."

  Evan seemed genuinely impressed by that. "Really? Hmm. Well, if they're half as clever as Lena, I'm surprised there are any criminals left outside of jails. This woman can’t tolerate dishonesty."

  Maddie felt a chill and looked down at the half-eaten slice of perfect pie, losing all appetite for it.

  Lena asked, "What sort of reading attracts you, David? I rather doubt such novels as Mr. Doyle has written would interest you."

  David seemed to study the glass before him, tapping its side with a finger for a moment before answering. "On the contrary. I've recently finished Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue. I thought the mystery a nice diversion, and I enjoyed the challenge of solving the crime along with Mr. Dupin."

  Maddie couldn't keep herself from commenting. "But, of course, he is a man, someone well-qualified for such clever reasoning."

  David took not the slightest hesitation to respond. "Yes, Dupin asserts that by knowing the criminal mind he can solve most any crime. He purports the need to analyze the facts. . ."

  Maddie interrupted, "Starting with observations he then uses abductive reasoning to make inferences."

  "Yes." David wrapped his fingers around the glass and held it as though thinking it might lift from the table of its own volition.

  Using her own powers of observations, Maddie sensed the debate was firmly within her control. The doctor’s nervous habits made her believe she’d set him off-balance by this line of reasoning. "Are you familiar with Jane Austen's works?"

  His lips stretched thin as he hesitated before forming an answer as though he sensed the trap. "Yes. I have read Pride and Prejudice." He drew his gaze back to the glass for a moment before meeting her eyes. "I found the relationships and cultural stigmas quite engaging and thought-provoking. She writes well."

  Ely made a show of striking a match for his pipe and said, "We read that last summer, didn't we? I seem to recall tea and cookies with the occasion."

  Evan grinned. "Jessie couldn't stop talking about how she wished we could invite folks over for a ball. I think she nearly drove poor Bart crazy with her constant quoting of Mr. Darcy's lines."

  Lena lifted an accusatory eyebrow at Evan. "Didn’t you enjoy it."

  Evan reached over, took the last bite of pie from Lena's plate, and delivered it to his mouth. He chewed it slowly while keeping his eyes on Lena. From where Maddie sat, she could see the slightest uplift of lips as he said in a fair imitation of a Texas drawl. "Well, it's pretty hard when you keep gettin' compared to some fellow in a book who probably never did a real lick of honest work in his life and for certain never came home smellin' like the back end of a cow."

  Lena punched his arm and scowled at him.

  Ely tapped the ball of his pipe, squinting across the table at Evan. "Ja. I seem to remember our Jessie given to a good deal of sighing and crying while you read to us, Lena."

  Lena frowned at Ely. "Shame on you both talking about Jessie when she isn't here to defend herself."

  Maddie tried to regain control of her argument. "My point is this. I believe that if Miss Austen's character, Elizabeth Bennet, had been placed into a position where a crime was committed and it required a clever mind to solve it, Miss Bennet would have been quite up to the task."

  She had their attention again. Feeling more confident, she concluded, "And had the prejudices of her times not been as they were, I daresay Miss Austen could have written detecting novels as well or better than either Mr. Doyle or Mr. Poe." She lifted her chin, daring a challenge, feeling very much like Miss Bennet.

  After a few moments of awkward silence, Lena said in a level tone. "Miss Bennet certainly exploited her talents for reading people."

  Maddie felt as though she'd been poked with a pin, all her own pride misting across the table in a single breath.

  David nodded thoughtfully. "The point is well taken." He hesitated. "But I can't help but observe that in the case of reading Mr. Darcy, Miss Bennet was quite mistaken, assuming the worst instead of the best." A dimpled smile punctuated his next words. “A common problem today as then. Would you agree?"

  Chapter 19

  Mornings, Maddie helped with the demanding task of keeping Jessie occupied. Midday, she assisted in the hardware store. Afternoons, she rushed back to help prepare the evening meal. The routine and Lena’s growing dependence upon her help, produced in her a pleasant feeling of being needed for something other than her skill. As a result, the fear of discovery slipped further to the back of her mind.

  She returned to the store on Monday fully expecting a job assisting Mr. Wilkinson again, but Mrs. Wilkinson awaited her along with a stack of a dozen or more boxes.

  "Look at what arrived this morning!" Mrs. Wilkinson sat primly on one rather large crate, an open book in her hand. She lifted it as though an actress on the stage delivering a soliloquy. "Shakespeare! We are saved! Though we must live in this primitive land, culture will not elude us." She pulled another book from the open box to her side, waving it like a sword above her head. "And the Bronte sisters have come as well! We shall now be able to sit down to a women's tea for a proper literary discussion."

  Maddie pulled out an attractive volume of poetry by a poet whose name she didn’t recognize. Sunlight streamed into the room through new windows and the paneled glass door. The additions transformed the empty space from storeroom to shop. The excitement animating her employer’s face was contagious. It might become just what she’d imagined it could be. The idea of helping to bring a little more refined culture to this frontier town appealed to Maddie. “Why not?”

  "Why not what, my dear?"

  Maddie hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. “Oh . . . Why don’t we get started unpacking these boxes?”

  "Indeed, we shall. Why don’t you start with Mr. Shakespeare? I've hired a wagon to bring over a few items of furniture from our house. We will place them there, near the window to display some of our more enticing titles." She looked about the room, obviously imagining further ways to reshape the space for her intentions. "And a few more lights would be helpful, don't you agree?"

  Maddie opened her mouth to do just that, but Mrs. Wilkinson changed topics before she could voice an opinion.

  "So, if you will begin the lovely task of placing our books in their proper places within Mr. Dewey’s system, I'll see to the furniture." She tapped a slender finger against her chin. "I saw a perfectly charming lamp at the mercantile just last week. I'm off then." She beamed at Maddie and patted a bo
x. "It's going to be just as I imagined." She swept through the new door without Maddie ever having uttered a single word.

  Maddie rolled up her shirt sleeves and folded her arms at her waist while contemplating where to begin. She picked up the book of Shakespeare's sonnets, looked over her shoulder at the empty shelves and declared, "So, William, what brings you to the frontier? Perhaps a bit of hunting? No, surely not. That would bore you, I think." She carried the book before her, continuing her monologue. "Perhaps it is to share a proper cup of tea with Mrs. Wilkinson. She is still an attractive woman." She stopped in her track to the shelf, giving the book a gentle pat. "No. I think you came to research the unique character of a frontier man."

  With ceremonial exaggeration, she placed the book in the middle of the shelf marked in pen, 800. She would need to write a few more labels, 821 would be the precise notation for English poetry. Making a mental note, she stepped back, a smile lifting her spirits and her countenance. "Someday, William, someday mine will be here." She executed an impromptu dance of a fashion to the empty unlabeled shelf. "Right here, 810 for American fiction." Suddenly aware of the sign painter watching her from outside the window, Maddie turned her back and dug into her task.

  She worked through the morning, forgetting even lunch and the ache in her back from moving book-filled boxes. When Mrs. Wilkinson arrived late afternoon she startled Maddie with a little clap of her hands. From the pleased expression, she was delighted with Maddie’s progress.

  "And look here, Madison! We have everything we need to make this a cozy drawing room." Mrs. Wilkinson held open the door as two men carried in a sturdy oak table. She waved her hand to indicate where she wished it placed. The men grunted as they maneuvered it into position, grunting louder at the second move, and even louder at the third.

  Maddie took a break as the men brought in two upholstered chairs, two side tables and three lamps. In a few minutes, the large room had shrunk, but she could not dispute the positive transformation. If Mrs. Wilkinson's vision encompassed a place for people to gather and converse, she was accomplishing that very thing.