Or he had.
All that was gone.
Clifford barely heard what Loren said about the new tunnel where three men were clearing up, making sure they left the work area safe overnight. He nodded thoughtfully and squinted his eyes where Loren pointed, aiming his candle as if to be able to see what made Loren so optimistic and enthusiastic.
Then they climbed the ladder to the surface, feeling the air warm and dry out. The other men emptied buckets into cars that could be moved to the rail tracks when the time came.
Clifford doubted he would go to the expense of moving them anytime soon.
In the waning sunlight outside the mine’s entrance, the men splashed water on their faces and propped themselves up on the largest boulders. Clifford pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped perspiration from his brow.
A pall of shock fell over them with his news.
No more shifts. Not even tomorrow.
What pained him most was that he couldn’t pay their salaries for the last thirty days. The loss of his own salary and the precipitous drop in silver prices meant he probably should have closed his mines before this. He spared the men the details of how much silver sat idle in Denver, not worth the expense of preparing it for collapsing markets.
“What are we supposed to do?” one of the men asked.
Clifford exhaled. “I wish I could tell you. If you come to Denver, and you want to ride this out until we know if anyone can ever mine again, I’ll do what I can to find you work. I would hire all of you again in a heartbeat. But I must ask you not to take that as a promise. This is not a time for promises. I can’t guarantee I have any influence. Things are grim. I’m being honest. My own liquidity is limited, and I have two other teams who will be in the same position. Every man has to make his own decision. You might decide it’s best to leave Colorado.”
He spread his fingers across his face to pinch his eyes closed and inward for a moment before opening them again to meet each man’s gaze. Loren, whose thoughts would be of Missouri. Wesley, who had promised to send for his sweetheart in Kansas as soon as he had enough saved. Clyde, who was sending money home to his parents in Ohio. Jasper, who dreamed of prospecting his own mine someday—sooner rather than later. “I’m so sorry. I wish there was something more I could do, but under the present circumstances, I just can’t think what it would be.”
Sullen, wordless faces bore back at him.
“I’ve done a poor job of thanking you for your faithful service,” Clifford said. “I wish I’d said that first. Please forgive me. Please forgive me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
O melets and hash browns?” Jillian took her favorite mug from the cupboard, the large taupe one with the maroon swirl around the bottom, and in the movement saw her mother reaching for the same mug for so many years. Jillian had only started using it a few months ago, but she made sure it was clean every night and available every morning. “And you turned on my fancy coffee machine that you make such a hobby of mocking?”
“I thought you might require fortification this morning.”
Nolan chopped a row of green pepper slices with speed and precision Jillian would never aspire to. She pressed ground hazelnut coffee into the machine and selected her buttons before going to the refrigerator for half-and-half to steam.
“Fortification for Tisha, you mean.” Jillian spoke over the noise of her morning beverage preparation.
“She’s a child, Silly Jilly. We have to remember that.”
“I’m not sure she does.”
“That’s not her job.” Nolan whisked eggs and poured the mixture into the heated pan.
From its corner of the kitchen, the barista-quality coffee machine whirred and spun and dispensed Jillian’s coffee. She stirred in her desired quota of sugar and topped it with the steamed milk.
Nolan dropped cheese into the omelet before flipping it without compromising its shape and turned the potatoes at the instant of perfect browning.
“What am I supposed to do with her, Dad?” Jillian carried her coffee to the breakfast bar and slouched into her favorite stool.
“I know you’re self-employed and a solo practitioner used to doing everything yourself, but think of this as an opportunity to grow your supervisory skills. You can enhance your résumé.”
“Ha ha.”
“There must be some simple tasks that a bright teenager can handle to lighten your load.”
“I already know how I want everything organized.”
“Then let her help you organize faster.” Nolan slid a loaded plate in front of Jillian and filled one for himself.
“Honestly, Dad, she doesn’t seem that interested.”
“That’s because she doesn’t understand what you do yet. She’ll get there.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Last night was weird for you.” Nolan took his seat beside Jillian. “Think about how weird it was for Tisha.”
“I suppose.” Jillian moved some potatoes around on her plate. “Should we hide the valuables or something?”
“Jillian!”
“Sorry. I guess I just feel nervous about this whole thing.”
“I know. It wasn’t your idea. But it’s only a few weeks, and it could really make a difference for Tisha.”
Jillian set down her fork and turned up both palms. “Okay. I’ll try. I really will.”
“Be open to surprises.”
“That’s certainly your modus operandi.”
“Life’s too short to be bored.”
“Says the man who drinks boring black coffee.” Jillian picked up her much more imaginative concoction.
“Touché.” Nolan sipped his plain green mug of plain black coffee.
“You’re working at home today, right?”
“Correct. I have a meeting here in town later this morning with a potential client. Otherwise I’ll have my nose to the grindstone upstairs.”
“Good. I might need you.”
“No, you won’t. But if you do, I’ll be around until you’re well underway with Tisha.”
Jillian cleaned up the kitchen, answered some emails, and stared at the piles of folders in the dining room, trying to imagine Tisha Crowder bringing order to them.
Movement outside the front windows caught her eye, a flash of pink above spinning green. The neon-haired girl had arrived on her neon bike.
Jillian paced to the foot of the stairs. “Dad! She’s here.”
“Be right down.”
Tisha rode her bike up the sidewalk, not hopping off until she was at the base of the steps of the porch that wrapped around the side of the house. She leaned it against the railing. Not especially tall, at fifteen she likely wouldn’t gain much more height, yet the bicycle looked like it was a couple of inches smaller than ideal. With several gears, it would get the job done, but it was hardly a fancy flyer of a bike and certainly not a mountain bike to take off paved roads. The flashy color was consistent with Tisha’s propensities. Instead of coming straight up to the doorbell, however, she paused to pull out her phone.
“Of course,” Jillian murmured.
“What did you say?” Nolan stood beside her.
“She’s on her phone.”
“Is she late?”
Jillian glanced at her own phone. “Technically she has two minutes.”
“Then leave it be.”
Tisha walked slowly up the steps, still on her phone, and rang the bell.
“I’ll get it!” Nolan called out.
“I’m right here,” Jillian grumbled, raising a hand to cover her ear.
“That was for external effect.”
Jillian glanced out the window. “She doesn’t seem to notice.”
Tisha pushed her oversized phone into a pocket. At least today her shorts had hems and covered a reasonable portion of her thighs. Her T-shirt even covered her belly button. Barely.
Was it possible she’d made an effort to dress appropriately for the first day on the job?
C
learly the pink hair was there to stay. Youthful experimentation with bold color had never seemed like an option for Jillian with her thick, wavy dark hair, inherited from her Italian mother—not that she’d been tempted. Tisha’s blond base color made it much easier.
Nolan opened the door. “Good morning!”
Tisha squinted up at him. “Yeah. Hi.”
“You ready to jump in?”
“I’m here.”
A cagey response, it seemed to Jillian.
“Well, Jillian’s ready for you,” Nolan said. “Aren’t you, Jillian?”
“We have lots of work to do.” Jillian felt cagey herself.
“Jillian makes some amazing fancy coffee drinks,” Nolan said. “Just tell her what you want, and she’ll fix you right up.”
“That’s right,” Jillian said. “Latte, espresso, cappuccino—whatever you like.”
Tisha made a face. “I’m only fifteen. I haven’t developed a taste for that disgusting poison yet. I hope I never will.”
Wow. Three sentences. Rude and unnecessary but complete sentences. Plenty of teenagers drank coffee.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll make myself another cup,” Jillian said. Without coffee, she didn’t have any other icebreaker tricks up her sleeve. “Then let’s get to work.”
“I’m confident you’ll make spectacular progress.” Nolan winked.
“We’ll do our best.” Jillian rounded up what she hoped was a convincing smile. “Right, Tisha?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Be sure to track your hours,” Nolan said. “I’ll be up in my office making some calls before I go out for a meeting.”
“Come on in the kitchen with me.” Jillian led the way. “We have some orange juice, or I can make you some cucumber water.”
Tisha looked at Jillian with an expression that screamed, Lame.
Jillian tried again. “What do you like to drink?” Please don’t say Jack Daniels.
“Italian cream soda.”
“Really?
“Yeah.”
“I like Italian cream soda too. My mom used to let me have it for a treat when I was little. It’s sort of an American Italian drink, but she liked it.” Jillian readied the coffee machine for her second cup of the morning.
“Does she still like it?” Tisha scanned the kitchen.
“I’m sure she would, but she passed away a long time ago.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want a glass of plain water?”
“No. I’ll just bring my own drink from now on.”
“Um, okay. I’m happy to buy something you like to keep it around.”
“Nope.”
Jillian pushed buttons and waited for the machine’s sounds.
“What’s that?” Tisha pointed at a small picture hanging on a short wall at one end of the counter.
“Something else my mother liked. She found it at a garage sale when I was little.”
“No, I mean what is it? Like where?”
“Nothing in particular. Just a painting of the hills around Canyon Mines in the silver mining heyday, I think. She liked the colors. It’s only a print. There are a few others floating around town. I have no idea where the original is.”
“Huh.”
“Are you interested in history?”
Tisha side-eyed Jillian. “You asked me that last night.”
“Right. Not really your thing.”
“I just feel like I’ve seen it before—that’s all.”
“Maybe you know someone else who has one of the other copies.” Jillian grabbed her mug of coffee. “Let’s get to work.”
In the dining room, she set her coffee safely away from the files on the table and picked up a label maker.
“Here’s what I’m thinking. The original folders are crumbling, literally, and the names on them are handwritten. Some of them are hard to read or might not be spelled the way you would expect. I’d like you to open the folders, check the spelling of the name on the outside of the folder against names you see on documents inside. If there are any discrepancies, carefully spell the name in the way that seems the most consistent. Print out a label on the label maker, put it on a new blue folder, and transfer the contents from the original folder to the new folder. Any questions so far?”
“Uh, no.”
“Good. Then over here on the table you’ll find some stacks of documents. These are records I believe may be related to the child or children listed in the documents in the blue folder. I’ve put large sticky notes with the same names and cross-stacked the piles. Not every name has papers on the table, but many do. Some of the names have only a sheet or two, and others have quite a few, so you have to be careful that you get them separated by the sticky notes. It’s important not to confuse them because it could seriously derail the research efforts going forward. Do you understand?”
“I speak English.”
“Sorry. It’s just very important.”
“Yeah. You’ve made your point.”
This was going every bit as well as Jillian anticipated. “Anyway,” she said, “what I need you to do is make a second label with the same name that you put on a blue folder and put it on a red folder. Then put the papers under the corresponding sticky note in the red folder. The last step is to stack the matching blue and red folders together. Can you do that?”
“Like in the fourth grade.” Tisha took the label maker from Jillian’s hand.
“Once we get everything in folders, it will cut down on the general sense of disorganization—which is not really disorganization, because I know where everything is—and then we can get down to more serious work.”
“Okay. Sure. Read. Spell. Paste. Match. Paste again.”
“Accuracy is paramount.”
“So you said.”
“We can work together. I brought my coffee in, after all.” Jillian raised her mug.
“But we only have one label maker.”
Jillian gulped coffee. “We’ll figure out a system.”
“Don’t most people print labels with a computer these days?”
“Maybe. Personally I don’t think that works all that well for this kind of project. You have to have an entire sheet of labels ready to put through the printer. This way we can smack the labels on the folders and be done with it.”
“I guess.”
“Let’s get started, then.”
“You don’t have to hover.” Tisha picked up a folder. “I know what I’m doing. See. This one says Reigland. R-e-i-g-l-a-n-d.”
“I want to be sure you don’t have any questions.”
“It can’t be that hard.”
“Oh, I forgot to mention. Please use all caps.”
“Got it.”
“Okay. All caps. Blue folder.”
“Remember to check the spelling inside, please. On a name like that, it could be R-i-e.”
Tisha sighed. “You don’t have to keep explaining.”
Jillian gulped more coffee. “Thanks. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and we’ll see if we can get in a groove.”
“Whatever.”
Jillian backed out of the dining room with a smile pasted on her face. In the hall she pivoted and scurried to her office, closed the door, set down her mug, and pulled out her phone.
She punched in a speed dial contact. “Nia?”
“What’s up?”
“You were a kid once,” Jillian said.
“Um, yes.”
“Even a teenager.”
“Also correct.”
“You babysat me when I was a kid while you were a teenager.”
“Additional true information.”
“Then you became a school guidance counselor.”
“Yep, I did.”
“For how many years?”
“I guess it was about eight years. You know that.”
“Until you married Leo and you two decided to move back to Canyon Mines and open the Inn at Hidden Run.”
“Jillian, you’re bei
ng very strange.”
“And you were a good enough counselor that the Canyon Mines School District would hire you in an instant if only you would accept one of their constant offers.”
“Jillian,” Nia said, “why are you telling me my life’s story?”
“Because I can’t take any chances that you’re going to deny that you know a lot more about kids than I do. Teenagers in particular.”
“Technically you weren’t a teenager when I was your babysitter,” Nia said, “but maybe you’d like to cut to the chase and tell me what has you so worked up.”
“My dad got me into something, and I’m in over my head, and you’re an expert, so you have to help me.”
“I run a bed-and-breakfast now.”
“You’re not listening. You have to help me.”
“Maybe you need to give me more context.”
“Maybe you need to come over here and meet the context for yourself.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Nolan hummed while he walked down Main Street, though neither the name of the aria nor any of the words took distinct form in his mind. Bellini? Donizetti? It would come to him the next time he was in the kitchen finessing fine cuisine. His meeting had gone well. Practicing law for more than thirty years primarily happened in Denver, with a couple of days each week working for his firm from his home office, but occasionally someone in Canyon Mines prevailed upon him for his services. Perhaps someday he’d hang out a shingle in town, when he was ready to startle Jillian with the concept of semiretirement.
What You Said to Me Page 3