by Jillian Hart
“A good hot cup of Irish tea is just the thing on a night like this.” Selma returned the kettle to the stove with her easy efficiency. “Why Mac didn’t stay around, I can’t imagine. Where else has he got to be but alone in that little house he lives in?”
“Where else would Mac be? I wonder.” Fred adjusted the damper and closed the fuel door. “I imagine some work may have just come up.” With a wink, he added, “He is the sheriff.”
“Oh, I know that.” Selma rolled her eyes, laughing so carefree. “I just mean this time of year, it’s not good for him to be alone. A man needs a home and a wife to love him.”
“That surely makes a happy man.” Fred rose and caught his wife in a hug. With a smacking kiss to her cheek, he released her. “I’m off in search of sweetener for my tea.”
“Whiskey, you mean!” Selma waved him away as if she’d had enough of him in her kitchen, although her eyes were bright and merry. Ebea was right, Carrie realized, she did look like Mrs. Claus as she reached small plates down from the sideboard. “Mercy me! You’ve done the morning dishes. And not just that—why, the entire kitchen is clean.”
“No, I heard that Christmas elves had stopped by while you were away at the shop.” Carrie took the plates from Selma and gave her a little nudge in the direction of the table. “You’ve been on your feet all day. Let me do the work.”
“You’ve done enough already! This is my kitchen, and I’m the boss of it.”
“Not tonight.” The parlor clock knelled eight times as Carrie grabbed the canister lid Selma was reaching for and then the entire jar before the older woman could do a thing about it. The sweet scent of macaroons made her mouth water. “Ebea, come to the table, baby.”
“I get more cookies?” Wonder shone in her words, and she skipped to the nearest chair like a little girl should, not weighed down by uncertainty.
Shame lodged like a rotten apple in Carrie’s throat and she couldn’t speak, couldn’t even swallow as she filled two plates with various treats from the different canisters and carried them to the table. Selma was busy pouring china cups of tea.
“Like a real tea party! Again!” Ebea squeezed Molly tight, her happiness contagious, as she offered Selma her most dimpled grin.
Selma set a cup, breakable and fine, on the table in front of Ebea. “We’ll have a tea party, you, your mother and I. We’ll leave Fred out of it. He’s better off reading the paper.”
Carrie feared for the teacup, for it looked very costly, but before she could pluck a pretty but less delicate mug from the sideboard, she felt the air change, the way it did before thunder struck.
Before he moved out of the shadowed hallway, she knew Mac was there. She was already reaching him down a cup before he strode into the light.
The instant their eyes met, she felt lightning flash a spark from her heart to his. The cup slipped from her hand and clinked to a stop on the work counter. Deep winter thunder rolled through her and in the reverberation of that sensation, she felt a complete and wonderful silence.
Selma’s chair scraped against the floor as she hopped to her feet. “Mac! I didn’t hear you come in. That storm just rested up a bit to give us a harder blow. You must be chilled to the bone. Come up to the stove.”
Every step he took toward the stove was nearer to her. Carrie felt the edge of the counter jabbing into the small of her back. The silence pealed in her ears and in her very core. It swelled in a crescendo, fading out every other detail until there was only Mac. Her soul ached with longing.
So, she was gazing at him again, but Mac McKaslin was the most exceptional man she’d ever met. He was strong. True. Noble. And how did she know? She had taken a deeper look. She could see the real man inside, down to the shadows that swirled like a blizzard in the darkest of nights.
“Mac, you’re half-frozen. Look at your hands, they’re as white as could be. And your face!” Selma’s loving concern lapped at the edge of Carrie’s senses, and she shook her head, rousting herself, and turned to fill more plates.
She felt Selma’s probing interest and thought, I’m not the right woman for your son. I wish I was.
“Would anyone like a touch of the Irish?” Fred appeared in the archway with a fancy squat bottle of whiskey in hand.
“A touch of the devil is more like it, imbibing in spirits.” Selma marched over to her husband and snatched the bottle from him, schooling her face so she actually looked almost stern. “Selfishness is a deadly sin, Fred. I’ll save you from yourself by making you share this with me.”
Fred landed a sweet kiss on his wife’s cheek. “I’m lucky to be saddled with you, honey.”
“Don’t you know it.” She added a generous dollop to her cup.
“C’mon, son, let’s leave the women to their talk.” Fred led the way through the archway and out of sight.
Carrie felt frozen as Mac’s broad back and granite shoulders disappeared around the corner. The low rumbling of men’s voices could be heard above the snap and crackle of the fire and the low-noted whistling of the kettle. The McKaslins’ rare affection for one another lingered in the room in the cookie-scented air.
“A little of the Irish for you too, Carrie, and you’ll sleep well and deep.”
Since Selma tipped the bottle over the extra cup on the table, and rich liquid sparkled out of it, Carrie didn’t protest. It was too late, and it wasn’t the few drops of whiskey that troubled her.
Selma went on as she pulled out a chair and patted the seat. “Come, sit. I know exactly how hard it is to get a good night’s sleep when you’re traveling. It’s a different room, a different bed, and the sounds and shadows are all wrong. That’s always been my experience. Mac said you were stranded when the train came through the blizzard. It’s a good thing you got off when you did—you would be stuck on that train between here and the summit.”
Carrie slid into the chair. Stuck? She’d never considered that a train would be stopped for a blizzard. What would have become of her and Ebea if they hadn’t been removed from that train? She shivered in horror thinking about it.
“Now, I knew right off that you were something special, you and your girl. Why else would my son bring you here?”
It wasn’t right to let Selma continue to believe in what could never be true. “Mac wasn’t exactly honest with you, Selma.”
“Then it’s what I suspected! The train didn’t close down, did it?”
“No—”
“He brought you here to stay on purpose instead of by accident.”
“No.” Carrie laid her hand on the older woman’s, hating that she was going to take away Selma’s hope. “You have been as kind to me as my own mother, and it’s not right for you to believe that Mac and I are involved. Mac never met me before. I was a stowaway. Ebea and I were stealing a ride in an empty freight car.”
“You were stowaways? No, why, that can’t be.” Selma’s face wreathed with confusion. “That doesn’t sound right at all. I don’t believe it.”
“It’s the truth. I’ve never stolen anything before in my life, and I’d never do anything to you and Fred.” The wind batted at the window and scoured at the eaves, and she well remembered how bitterly cold it had been outside. What if she were tossed out? But there was dignity and integrity. What was a person without that? “If you want us to leave, I would understand.”
Selma stood, her hand trembling. “I’m sorry, Carrie, I just don’t like this. Not one little bit.”
Chapter Seven
Mac froze in the doorway, not meaning to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t seem to move forward or back or to turn off his hearing. He couldn’t believe what his ma had said. His generous, loving mother sounded about as upset as he’d ever heard her.
A sinking feeling pulled him down, and he swallowed hard.
Carrie’s soft words came next, quiet, and with nobility. “Then please give me just a moment. I’ll go upstairs and gather our things. If you’ll watch Ebea?”
Mac couldn’t believe it. Where wou
ld she go?
“I noticed there was an inn not far from your shop.” Carrie sounded sad, but there was no mistaking her strength. She cared about his mother; even when she was facing being cast out in the cold, she remained kind.
I’ve never met anyone like her. Admiration beat within him, slow like warm molasses. And it wasn’t helping dim the physical attraction he felt to her.
Then his mother spoke. “Goodness, sit down. If you leave, that will only get more of my temper up. What kind of world is this, where women and their children have to stowaway on freight trains? And in this cold.”
Mac leaned his forehead against the door, his pulse hammering through his skull. And he knew now why he had wanted to help Carrie and her child. Because he could not save another woman with a gentle manner and a kind heart.
The storm gusted, the howl of the wind wild and eerie like a woman’s scream. Like a ghost from the past haunting him. Carrie was the reason Amelia had risen from the depths of his dreams and had begun troubling him during the waking day. The bundle in his shirt pocket was the only answer. The only way to right this.
He intended to go back and join his dad by the fire, when he heard Carrie’s answer. “Selma, I want you to know that I’m not an irresponsible person. That’s not why I was traveling with my child on a freight train in the middle of winter. I’m widowed. My husband was a teamster and died while doing his job.”
“He was the bread earner and he left you with a small child and not much else, if my guess is right.”
“True. Ebea was three, and there was no one to leave her with. My mother had fallen ill, and so we moved in to help take care of her. Her new husband never took a liking to me. The day after she died, he put us out of the house. I was lucky enough to attend her funeral, but I’d had no warning before we had to leave, and I had no money and nowhere to go.”
Nowhere to go. Mac’s chest squeezed with sympathy. He already knew what happened next, how she’d looked for work, but with a small child to care for and no family to leave her with, her choices were limited. Her wages would be too low to make more than a meager living.
Her troubled sigh said he’d guessed right. “We’ve been managing ever since, but right before I made the decision to stowaway on the train, we were camping in an abandoned yard of old boxcars. We weren’t there long, only a couple of days, but I had to make a decision to find better circumstances. There were no jobs I could have—or would do—left in Minot.”
“Honey, I don’t need a confession. I see the way you take care of your little girl. I watched how hard you worked today, and my kitchen has never been this clean since it was new, thanks to you. No wonder you wound up where you did. Lord knows we can’t get through this life alone. Not one of us.”
“I just want you to know the truth. I don’t want you to find out about my trouble with the railroad from someone else.”
Mac felt the punch all the way to his soul. He ached for Carrie. Well he knew that no one was immune to adversity and tragedy. Life treated everyone the same, it was simply a matter of what and when. But like cream rising to the top, the quality of a person did, too, regardless of hardship. Carrie was one of those people.
He thought about that as he went back to the sofa and took the cast-off section of the territorial paper his pa had set on the cushions. The comforting rattle of the newsprint and the scent of ink settled him a little, but he had a hard time concentrating enough to read. He kept an ear to the kitchen, although he was too far away to hear anything.
He was waiting for her. It wasn’t long before her footsteps padded in the hallway between the kitchen and parlor. He caught a brief glimpse of her through the archway as she carried her sleeping child in her arms, and then she was gone. The creak of the stairs marked her progress.
Then Ma came hurrying after her with warming irons, and her quick knell on the steps drowned out the sound of Carrie’s gait. Mac swore he could feel her move overhead, as if that invisible lasso he’d felt last night was still tight around his chest. Right where his heart used to be.
Pa crinkled his paper, folded it for later and moaned as he straightened his tired back. “I suppose that’s my hint. Time to get upstairs while I’m not too stiff to make it.”
“Want me to bank the fires?”
“That would be a help, son.” Fred McKaslin was no one’s fool, and he could read people well. What he sensed developing between his boy and the young lady Carrie was a true Christmas gift. “You stay as long as you like. That new territorial magazine came in yesterday’s mail, if you wanna take a look at it. Or not.” It was hard to sound offhand. Especially when an old man had hope.
Yes, he thought as he headed from the room. He’d seen that look before, about the time Mac was gettin’ ready to propose to Amelia. Maybe time had healed the wounds in him. Maybe it was time Mac came in from the cold, from his self-banishment, and started living again.
A father always wanted the best for his son.
His wife of forty-two years gave him that smile he loved so well as she came from the extra bedroom. “Ebea’s already out like a lamp. Had a busy day. Isn’t it good to have a little one around again?”
“Sure is.” He knew what she didn’t say because he could feel her dreams. They were his, too. “It’s a cold one tonight. Why don’t you and me snuggle up under the quilts and try to get warm.”
Desire was sweeter as time went by, and so was the feel of his wife’s hand in his.
He had time to halt in the open doorway and spot Carrie inside the room, who was turning down the bedside lamp. A father had to matchmake where he could. “The fire’s warm. Why don’t you go down to the parlor and put up your feet. You’ve had a hard day, too.”
It was the night before Christmas Eve, he thought as he escorted his wife to their room. It was the season for miracles to happen and for dreams to come true.
That’s one thing off my chest. Carrie felt enormously lighter as she padded down the stairs, warm inside for the first time in more years than she could count.
She’d cleared her conscience, she’d put in a good day’s work and that always felt right. Ebea was safe and warm and tucked in bed, exhausted by her fun day, as little children should be.
Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Carrie tamped down her excitement. While Ebea had been at Annie’s party, she had managed to sneak in a little shopping with the little bit of tip money Selma had insisted she keep. There were a few small but nice surprises for her girl’s Christmas. And for the McKaslins, as well. She’d slip those under the tree now that no one was watching.
When she was just outside the archway, she heard the fire pop as if a handful of buckshot had been tossed on the flame. Imagining sparks showering out of the grate and onto the beautiful braid carpet, she bounded into the parlor.
She wasn’t alone. Mac knelt before the hearth, broad of shoulder, sure of movement, flicking the fiery embers back into the grate. For the span between breaths, his back tensed. Aware of her.
Maybe I can manage not to gape at him. “Can I get you more tea?”
“Nope. One cup of Pa’s Irish is enough.” He sent the last coal skipping back into the hearth and he kept his back firmly toward her. “We need to talk.”
“We do.” She had things to say to him, too. While he was busy stirring the coals, she eased around the sofa and slipped the small packages beneath the tree. They were easily lost among so many brightly wrapped presents.
She chose a seat on the end of the sofa, waiting while he rose from squatting before the hearth, all six granite feet of him. He should have been a hard man, but he was not. She felt the shadows within him, saw the sorrow. And wondered.
“I got a telegraph from the railroad’s Missoula office.” Mac didn’t sit; he didn’t even come close to her. He remained standing at the hearth. “The agent there said they would rather receive some income instead of nothing. So arresting you wouldn’t get them much of a profit.”
Relief cracked through her like ice in a melti
ng pond. She couldn’t say anything. She eased back into the cushions, covered her face with her hands and let the realization shatter so many of her worries. Mac’s help was one thing; the rail company’s cooperation was unexpected.
“Now, there’s another part to this. They want money.”
“I know. There’s the ring. I’ll sell it at the jeweler’s tomorrow first thing—”
“No, I can’t let you part with your mother’s ring.” Mac’s slow and easy gait padded on the carpet toward her. “They have agreed to let you make payments. And you have passage to Seattle.”
I don’t believe it. Some good luck at last. She’d been alone for so long. When Teddy started drinking heavily, and then her mother’s long illness, she’d had so much work to do and responsibility to bear, it seemed that there had been no break. Only working and worrying without anyone to lean on or anyone to ask for help.
Mac cleared his throat. Her hands slipped from her face and she saw him there, on the other side of the couch, his big hands holding what looked like a train ticket.
A ticket to her new home. To hope. To a good future. She could feel it like the warmth in the air, scent it like the wood smoke from the fire. “This ticket is part of the debt I’ll be paying off, right?”
“Uh, not really.” He laid the envelope on the table between the sofas. “I paid for it. You and Ebea will be leaving when the tracks are cleared. Merry Christmas.”
There were no words. She could think of none. The heart of this man awed her. Her regard for him carried her away like the force and fury of an avalanche roaring down a mountainside. It could not be stopped. It could not be outrun. It knocked her down and left her helpless as he simply walked away.
She had her pride. She had her dignity. She had respect for him. “I wish I could accept this, but I can’t.”
“Why would that be?”
“Because I believe a person pays their way in this world, one way or another. I appreciate the arrangement you made with the rail company. That is miracle enough for me.”