by Lucy Evanson
“So what are you saying?”
“Nothing much,” he said. “It’s just that if you’re going to be coming into some money, you might find out that it’s worth spending a little time thinking about what you want to do. Otherwise your life could be very boring. Rich, but boring.”
She snorted. “I think you’re the first person I’ve ever met who thinks that ‘rich and boring’ sounds like a bad thing,” she said. “If the other choice is poor and exciting, then I’ll take rich and boring.”
He shrugged and fell quiet again until they had arrived in Dodgeville and he had to ask where to go. Cora directed him through the streets until they pulled up in front of the now-familiar brick building that housed Mr. Clark’s office.
As they entered, Clark had been talking with his secretary. When he lifted his gaze and saw Cora come in, a startled look appeared on his face, as if he’d been hoping that she wouldn’t arrive. He recovered quickly, however, and came forward to shake hands with both of them. “It’s good to see you again, Miss Rice,” he said. “Or rather, Mrs. Booker, I should say.”
“Mr. Clark, this is my husband Paul,” Cora said.
“Good to meet you, Paul,” Clark said. “Why don’t we go in and talk in my office?”
Clark closed the door after they entered, then took a seat behind his desk. A strained look had again appeared, and the smile he forced looked more like a grimace of pain.
“You brought your marriage certificate?”
“Yes, I have it right here,” Cora said, pulling the envelope out of her purse and handing it to Clark. He nodded as he reviewed it, then set it aside.
“Well, first of all, congratulations,” he said. “I wish you both the very best.” He took a deep breath and then let it all out in a rush. “Look, there’s no way for me to say this except to come right out with it. I made a slight error when I described things to you the other day.”
Cora felt a chill suddenly, as if an icy vine had sprung up around her heart. “What are you saying? I’m not getting anything?”
“Oh, no, no, no,” he said. “You’ll be getting exactly what I said before. The house and the money. I just can’t release it to you yet.”
The cold started to ebb within her. “Okay, so how long do we have to wait?”
“Four months.”
“Four months?!” Nathan blurted, shooting to his feet.
“Nath—er, uh, Paul, sit down,” Cora said. “Let the man speak.”
“I’m terribly sorry about the whole thing,” Clark said. “After speaking to your cousin I was nearly certain that you’d be impossible to find, and that you were unmarried regardless. It seemed like it was going to be an open-and-shut case, with everything going to your cousin.”
“I’m sure she would have preferred that,” Cora said.
“Doubtless,” Clark agreed. “Nevertheless, I was remiss for not reviewing the contract’s provisions closely enough.”
“So why do we have to wait so long?” Nathan asked.
“Fraud, Mr. Booker.”
The room grew quiet, although Cora was certain that she could hear her own heart beating. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Your uncle was apparently afraid that you or your cousin would try to commit fraud if it came to it, in order to collect the inheritance. Remember, he was most concerned with extending the family line, so he wanted to make sure that you were in honest, real relationships.”
“Well, we’re in a real marriage,” Cora muttered.
“I’m sure,” Clark said. “So you’ll definitely be getting your inheritance. In four months.”
Cora rubbed her eyes. She had barely slept overnight, and she could feel a headache growing.
“Would you like to go see the house?”
She opened her eyes and saw a key in Clark’s hand, dangling from a string.
“I thought you said we couldn’t have it yet.”
“I can’t transfer the deed to you,” he said. “But you can go take a look if you like. Just make sure you bring the key back today.”
Cora took the key and examined it as it lay in her palm. “Yeah, I guess we can at least go take a look.”
“Terrific! Let me write down the directions,” he said, taking a sheet of paper from his desk drawer.
While Mr. Clark and Nathan discussed how to get to the house, Cora turned the key over and over in her hand. It felt heavy for its size, and it wasn’t until that moment that Cora really realized what a big change—and responsibility—was coming her way. She dropped the key into her purse and stood up as the men were shaking hands.
“Mrs. Booker, again, my apologies for this delay,” Clark said as he shook her hand. “Take my card. I guess the next time we’ll need to see each other will be in…February,” he said, after quickly counting the months on his fingers. “Until then, keep me up to date on where you’re living and so on, so I don’t have such a hard time finding you next time.”
“Okay, I’ll do that,” Cora said. She said goodbye and walked out with Nathan, who remained silent until they had seated themselves in the carriage and were pulling away from the office building.
“Four months?! This is going to be impossible!” He snapped the reins and sent the horse ahead at a trot.
“I know, this isn’t going to be easy,” Cora said.
“Easy? It’s not even going to be close. It can’t be done!”
“Nathan, just calm down and let’s think things through,” she said.
“There’s nothing to think through,” he said. “I can’t wait that long. You said we’d have everything finished in a couple of days.”
“Well, obviously I didn’t know this was going to happen,” she said. Cora could feel the heat rising in her cheeks in spite of the cold breeze that was flowing around them. “You can’t blame me for this—you heard him, he didn’t read the will close enough.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Nathan said. “I don’t even have enough money for the full week at my rooming house; I can’t wait four months. You’re going to have to find yourself another husband.”
“Didn’t you hear him? If you back out now then he’ll be sure that we didn’t even have a real marriage in the first place. I won’t get anything and neither will you.” She took a deep breath. “Look, I need some time to think about things. In the meantime, let’s at least go out to see the place. We can’t do anything about this right now anyway.”
Nathan grumbled a bit, but pulled the paper out of his pocket and glanced down at the directions that Clark had written for him. Cora leaned back and pulled her shawl more tightly around her. Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Things never work out quite like I imagine. Nathan may have been overreacting a bit, but not by much. It was going to be a long time to pretend to be married, and regardless of the money, she had no idea whether he’d even stick around that long. In her experience, men tended to get an itch to move along well before the four-month mark.
“Nathan, let me ask you a question,” she said. “You said you can’t wait so long.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, why not? You told me that you were about to head back home anyway. What have you got waiting for you there?”
“Lots of things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, there’s the farm, for one,” he said. “My folks need help.” He checked his directions again and turned the carriage at the corner.
“If they needed so much help, you wouldn’t have left home in the first place,” Cora said. “What else?”
He was silent for a moment. “The neighbors also need help sometimes,” he said. “They only had girls, so there’s always work available over there.”
“Nope, that’s no good either,” Cora said. “You wouldn’t have come down here if you had wanted that job either. And I already know you don’t have a girl waiting for you.”
Nathan was quiet.
“In fact, I don’t think you have anything waiting for you back home, a
nd if you had the chance, you’d stay in Mineral Point,” Cora said.
He stared at the paper, as if he needed to check the directions again, then stuffed it back in his pocket. “Maybe I would stay,” he said. “But I can’t afford it.”
“Well, now we’re getting somewhere,” she said. “So if you had money to live on, you would stick it out for a few months?”
He let out a long sigh. “Maybe so. But I was all over that town looking for work, and I couldn’t find a thing. I don’t have any other choice. I’m going home.”
“If you leave now, then we’re both ruined,” she said quietly. “But if you stay, then you can go home a rich man.”
He was quiet for a long while, keeping his eyes on the road ahead of them. They had hit the outskirts of Dodgeville and most of the homes were already behind them. Ahead, the hills rose and fell, but there were only a few houses in sight.
“I’ll pay you double,” Cora said.
His head jerked back, as if he’d been startled, and he turned to her. “What?”
“You heard me,” she said. “Ten thousand dollars.”
He looked at her a long moment, his eyes narrowing as if he weren’t sure if she were serious. “Just how much money are you getting?”
“That’s none of your business,” she said. “But if you hang around, it’s going to be worth it. Do we have a deal?”
He fell quiet again and turned his gaze forward, but she could see that he wasn’t thinking about the road. His eyes had drifted off to the side, and his brow furrowed, as if he were doing calculations in his head. Suddenly he snapped his head up and whipped the reins smartly, sending the horse sharply ahead.
“Yeah, you got a deal.”
Cora settled back again and felt herself calm down a bit. In spite of the brisk wind that was rushing down from the hills, she felt warm and let her shawl slide off her shoulders. If this was how the next few months were going to go, lurching from problem to solution and back again over and over, she was going to be a nervous wreck by the time she got her inheritance. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to flush out the anxiety that she felt inside. Even if things turn out to be harder than I was expecting, I can still do this, she thought. A few months from now, I’ll be riding this same road, but on the way home.
She opened her eyes and looked out at the hills. It was the time of year when the fields looked their worst: they had shed their greenery weeks ago and were now covered with only dormant brown prairie grass, neat rows of crisp dead cornstalks and leafless trees. A farmhouse on the right belched black smoke from its chimney, and a small herd of cows walked listlessly in a muddy enclosure. In between the lush growth of the summer and the pure blanket of winter snow that was no doubt soon arriving, the late autumn display was not particularly attractive. She turned and looked behind at Dodgeville already small in the distance.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“I’m just following your lawyer’s directions,” Nathan said. “He said it was out a ways, and as a matter of fact he mentioned this crossroads.” He pointed at a large egg-shaped boulder sitting by the side of the road, just before a smaller road broke off to the left. “I’m supposed to turn here, then it’s the next house on the left.” Nathan steered the carriage onto the side road and soon the town behind them was lost from sight. A stone fence sprang up out of the ground, and the further they went, the more trees began to appear alongside the road.
“I bet this is a pretty drive in the summer,” Cora said as they rolled along.
“Probably so,” he said. “Guess you’ll find out.” The trees grew thicker and thicker as they continued, and after only a few minutes they reached a break in the stone fence.
“Is this supposed to be it?” Cora glanced around. The gravel path that led from the road trailed off behind more trees, but there was no house to be found.
“Maybe it’s set back from the road.” Nathan urged the horse down onto the gravel drive and they continued. The farther they went, the thicker the trees got, and though Cora thought that she spied a roofline on a rise up ahead of them, it disappeared from view in only a moment. The path curved along through the trees until finally they burst out and found a grassy wide expanse in front of them.
“Wow.”
She glanced over to Nathan and saw that his mouth had dropped open as he stared up the slope. Cora turned her head and her eyes followed the gravel path, which now shot out like an arrow, leading up to a large white house on top of the small hill. This was neither her sod house nor her grandmother’s shack. This was like a castle that had been dropped out here in the middle of the prairie.
“Just what did this uncle of yours do for a living, anyway?”
“He worked up north in the lumber industry,” Cora said. “At least, that’s what Mr. Clark told me. I hadn’t seen him in almost twenty years.”
“I guess you made a good impression,” Nathan said. He urged the horse forward and they started the shallow climb to the top of the hill.
The home was two stories, with a porch that wrapped like a belt all the way around the front and sides of the house. The front door was framed by an enormous trellis that reached from the ground all the way up to a veranda that sprouted off from an upstairs room. She could see that vines had woven themselves thickly through the trellis, though Cora was still too far away to see what kind they were. The house was clad in bright white siding and the roof was draped in gray slate shingles; between the paint gleaming in the sunlight and the reflection from the many windows, the house was almost too bright to look at.
“Are you sure you got the directions right?” she asked. “I don’t think this could possibly be the right house. It’s so…so fancy.”
“The directions were right,” Nathan said. “I followed them to the letter: take Lincoln Street out of town, turn at the crossroads by the boulder, follow the stone fence until the first house on the left. There wasn’t much to misunderstand.”
“Maybe you were supposed to turn the other way back at the crossroads?”
“Cora, the directions were fine,” he said. “Mr. Clark told me it was a big white house, and I don’t see any others around here, do you?”
She glanced around, though she already knew the answer. “No.”
“Look at this place,” Nathan said. “This isn’t a farm house; this place belonged to a man with money. This was your uncle’s house. And now it’s yours.”
She squinted as she counted the turrets—turrets!—that poked up from the roofline. Four, one in each corner, like the points of a compass. As they got closer, she could see that the house was far more finely detailed than most others she had seen, from the smooth, scrolled waves that softened the edges of the eaves, to the thin and graceful crossbars of the porch railing. Even the front door appeared to be a work of art; a tall pine had been etched into the heavy wood, which she assumed to be a sign of respect for the work that had earned her uncle such a fine home.
She turned and looked behind them. The view from the porch—let alone from the second floor—would be terrific. The hill slowly dropped away before the house, and although she saw only the brown and gray fields unfolding behind her today, it took no special insight to imagine what a lovely scene it would be on a clear summer morning, when the prairie had again awoken and the trees had reclaimed their leaves. She could already see herself sitting out on the porch, enjoying a warm breeze as birds chirped and fluffy white clouds scudded across the sky. It would be perfect.
“Now whose could that be?” Nathan asked.
Cora had been so enthralled by the house that she hadn’t noticed that there was a horse and wagon in front, parked as if waiting for somebody inside.
“I have no idea,” she said. “We’ve got the key; I’m sure if somebody else were coming out here, Mr. Clark would’ve told us about it.”
“I don’t like the looks of this,” Nathan said. He pulled back a bit on the reins and the carriage rolled to a stop. “I
don’t see anybody else around. They must be inside. Might be robbers or something.”
“Well, let’s go find out,” Cora said. “If it’s robbers, then we’ll scare them off. Unless you’re too scared, of course.”
He glanced over and snorted at her. “If you think I’m going to fall for that, well…you’re right.” He snapped the reins and they started up the incline again, pulling up into place right behind the wagon. Nathan stood up and peered into the wagon bed. “Still empty,” he said. “Looks like we got here in time to stop them.”
Cora glanced up at the windows on the second story. There, behind a gauze curtain, she saw a figure loom as if looking down at them, and she felt her breath being stripped away. “Up there,” she gasped, pointing, but when Nathan turned his gaze to the window, the figure had melted away.
“What is it?”
“I just saw somebody at the window up there,” she said. “They moved when I pointed. They know we’re here.”
“Then let’s get in there,” Nathan said, jumping down from the carriage. He was up the porch steps in one bound, but turned back to Cora as soon as he reached the door. “It’s locked! Give me the key!” he shouted, running back down to her.
Cora tore open her purse and jumbled the contents around until her fingers closed around the string. She pulled it out in a flash and handed it to Nathan, who raced back up the steps as she got down from the carriage.
He opened the door quickly and swung the door wide. There was nobody to be seen in the foyer or down the hall. “Who the hell is in here?” he shouted. “You’re trespassing!”
Cora climbed the porch steps and stepped inside, just behind Nathan. As she crossed into the foyer, she could hear footsteps upstairs—in fact, it sounded like several people running up there. Somewhere above, a door slammed and then there was only silence.
“I’m warning you, you all better show yourselves right now!” he yelled.
There was the sound of a creaky hinge from down the hall, then the soft flutter as a door swung shut, gently rocking back and forth as it settled into place. A single set of footsteps could now be heard from directly ahead. Heels clicked on the polished hardwood of a room in front of them—the dining room, Cora guessed—and a shadow leaped into the hall as the person approached.