“I reckon she could learn, Papa,” Mrs. Clark said. “And I’d be right pleased to have the company as well as the help.”
Her husband looked thoughtful. “You do be getting on in years, Mama,” he admitted, “and shouldn’t have to work so hard.”
As though you aren’t just as old, Cynthia thought with amusement. It was funny how husbands saw aging in their wives before they realized it in themselves. Still he seemed genuinely concerned for Mrs. Clark’s welfare.
Then he looked past his wife to her. He shook his shaggy head. “You don’t need a job like this. Doc Stephens and his family will see to you and your girl.”
Since she’d lived on family money her whole life, Cynthia supposed she had no right to the indignation that flooded her. “I’ll see to us myself,” she snapped.
Eddie’s eyes widened over her glass of buttermilk, but Betsy didn’t seem surprised. “Mom ‘s always taken care of us,” she said and Cynthia guessed that she was thinking of the struggle between her and Michael on the sidewalk in Cheyenne. She couldn’t help being pleased that her daughter thought of her as a source of strength. Betsy felt that her mother had brought her to a safe place, she realized thankfully.
She looked pleadingly at Mr. Clark. “I really want the job.”
His eyes met those of his wife. She gave the slightest of nods.
“You start tomorrow,” he gruffly, getting to his feet. “Anybody want more buttermilk.”
She allowed him to top off her nearly full glass and managed to drink the stuff down without a single grimace.
Everybody was in bed when Evan got home that night. He’d managed to pull his patient through what was her third heart attack and even though he knew the next one might be fatal, he congratulated himself that he’d at least bought the family’s grandmother a little more time. The practice of medicine was so often like that, a compromise rather than a victory over death and he was particularly weary with the long hours of battle he’d fought this night.
Moving as quietly as he could though he felt heavy-footed with exhaustion, he got a candle from the basket in the front hall, lit it and went into the kitchen for a small glass of the blackberry wine that they received from a farm in the eastern edge of the territory. The people of Lavender managed to do without many luxuries they’d once obtained from traffic with the larger world, but potent drinks were not among them. They made their own, varying from wine and beer to white lightning, and though the quality was nothing to remark on, one or two vintners with traditions going back to old Europe, were beginning to produce some acceptable drinks.
Wearily he climbed the stairs, hesitating on the second floor landing when he saw that Cynthia’s door still showed a rim of light. He wondered what was keeping her up at this time of night, but didn’t dare knock on her door and ask. Mrs. Myers slept just across the hall and she would be up in a second at any sound that hinted of what she regarded as impropriety.
Instead he trudged on up the final flight of stairs and stepped into the tower room which was his private refuge. It was a large rounded room with a high, peaked ceiling and huge windows all around. He’d had heavy draperies installed for privacy, but rarely drew them. Now he stood, snuffing the candle light so that he was surrounded with the starlight that flooded in through the glass.
Some of the stress began to evaporate as he stripped off his jacket and shirt, pulled off his boots, then removed his pants. Nobody, not even little Eddie, ever invaded this space other than the one hour a day Mrs. Myers paid an announced visit for cleaning and the placement of freshly ironed clothing, so he didn’t bother even to put on one of the nightshirts he usually wore. Instead he collapsed against his pillows, sipped the too sweet wine and thought about Cynthia.
Chapter Fifteen
Usually they met outside on the rolling acres of the pastures, but tonight his dreams took him inside the farm house where Maud had a pot of homemade vegetable soup simmering on her cook stove and was mixing up a batch of cornbread in a big blue bowl.
As she poured hot coffee into his cup, she commented, “Haven’t seen you in a while. Things going okay?”
He nodded morosely. “Considering that she moved out of my house to work at a job milking cows and making butter at a farm in the country. For all the attention she gives me, she might as well be back here with her brother and his wife.”
The elderly woman’s thin face turned to his with open amazement. “Cynthia’s in Lavender?”
“Don’t look at me.” He held up a defensive hand, than sipped the rich black coffee for courage. “I didn’t intend it to happen. She and Betsy just came strolling into town one afternoon . . .well, actually Seth Rogers brought them in his buggy.”
“Little Cynthia managed to get across the barriers your grandpa put up.”
“Figure it was my fault. I guess I was willing her there at the same time I was saying she couldn’t come.” He took a big gulp of the hot coffee. “Even though I’d never actually met her, I was lonely for her at the same time.”
“And they’re not sick? Her and Betsy?”
He shook his head. “They kept away from others at first, but everyone’s right as rain. Like I said she’s out at the Clark’s farm working like a beaver.”
Maud considered as she went back to her cornbread, pouring the batter into a greased iron skillet and putting it into the oven to bake. “Even if I’m an old woman with her own love story long behind her, that’s a romance to warm the heart.”
“Romance! The woman looks at me like I’m her papa or her older brother. She doesn’t have a romantic bone in her body when it comes to me.”
Maud took on a startled look. “But I was almost sure . . .” She poured her own cup of coffee, added sugar and cream, than came to sit down across the table from him. “You’ve been letting her know how you feel? You’ve been courting her?”
He squirmed in the hard-backed kitchen chair. “Not exactly. Surely she must know, considering I brought her to Lavender, or rather my feelings did, though it wasn’t what was in my conscious mind.”
She just looked at him.
“I’d feel a damn fool at my age, setting out like I was nineteen to court a girl!”
She kept on looking, but this time there was amusement in her eyes.
He drained the last of his coffee from the cup. In spite of everything, it tasted almighty good. It had been years since they’d had coffee back in Lavender and none of the substitutes they’d come up with had been satisfactory.
“There’s the other problem, Maud. You know I’ve still got a living wife.”
“There’s a good many years lying between the two of you and it was a choice she made to leave you and Eddie in Lavender. She cast you aside, Evan.”
“In Lavender we have our own court and they gave me a divorce on the grounds that we weren’t in the same world anymore. Wasn’t my choice, but Papa insisted on it.”
Deep lines cut into her forehead as she scowled at him. “Son, you’re not still in love with Jenny?”
He met her eyes with all the honesty that was in him. “Don’t reckon I ever knew what love was until I met Cynthia. But Cynthia, after I told her the story, she figured Jenny was just down in the dumps after the baby came . . .”
“Did you tell my granddaughter what it was like being married to that woman?”
“A man can’t exactly go around bad mouthing his daughter’s mother.”
She nodded. “My two cents on the matter is that you can go out with a clear conscience and start courting Cynthia. It’s not like you’re taking anything away from Jenny. She didn’t want either you or little Edith.”
He wanted to believe she was right, that she had absolved him of all guilt in the matter of his failed marriage. But life was never quite that simple, that black and white. Still she always made him feel like going back to face things again. “How long we been meeting like this, Miss Maud.”
Her smile was unaccustomedly tender. “A few years ago since that first time,
” she said. “You were mourning your grandfather and I suppose you’re the closest I’ve come to having a son.”
“And how are you dealing with thinking about your girl?” he asked gently, knowing that even after all these years she grieved for her daughter as though the loss had happened yesterday.
He listened as she found the words, hard to come by from a woman who only let her feelings out in her writings when she was translating real life into story telling. But he was the one person she could talk to truly and the conversation went on until he slipped back through his dreams to sleep, comforted, until morning.
Cynthia woke early, the panicky feeling still choking at her throat from the nightmare where Michael had caught up with them and was telling her that he’d fix it that she never saw her daughter again.
She sat up quickly, knocking her head against the hang down of the ceiling where it came to his lowest point at the back of the little room. The blow was slight, only enough to make her wince, and she was glad to be brought back to reality.
They were safe, she and Betsy, in the tiny cottage that was one of three the Clarks maintained as living quarters for their hired help. The cottage was made up of four rooms: kitchen, living room and two little bedrooms, this particular one fixed up cute as a doll house by cast-off furniture and Mrs. Clark’s handy sewing skills. She’d made the quilts that both decorated and warmed the beds, the curtains at the windows and all the little decorative pieces of crochet that lay on tables and the arms of chairs.
Unfortunately they were back to using an outdoor toilet and hauling drinking and washing water from the well, but if that was the cost of freedom and independence, than Cynthia was willing to pay it. Most of the time she was willing; she supposed when winter came, she would indulge in a few choice comments as she found her way through the cold outside, but right now it was warm summer and she was managing, while Betsy who loved the farm and the kindly Clark family was in her element, only complaining of missing her other family, the Stephens.
She didn’t always love this life. In her old life, she was an early riser, most mornings getting up between 7:30 to 8 a.m. to eat the breakfast prepared by servants with Betsy before taking her daughter to school.
Now she got up at 4:30, dressing hastily and starting the hand milking of the good sized herd with Mr. Clark and a rather silent young man named Ben who had worked for the farm for years.
Previously when all the children were still home, they’d operated the farm by themselves, but now they had to hire help and most people would rather work at easier jobs.
Forrest kept telling Cynthia that she would be better off working in his store or at the bank, where he could get her a job, and living in the comfortable house on Crockett Street and sometimes she was tempted by the idea of decent working hours and modern bathroom facilities, but something kept her here. She wouldn’t stay at the farm forever, she knew that, but for now something about the basic, very physical lifestyle, was healing wounds from the past.
So this morning though she didn’t manage to jump joyfully up, she still dragged herself from bed, dressed hastily in a simple dress and heavy work boots, visited the toilet, than washed her face and hands in the basin in the kitchen with soap that Mrs. Clark made herself. Quickly brushing her hair, she peeped in to find Betsy still sleeping soundly, than went outside again.
The morning felt fresh and slightly damp, the grass wet with dew, and the air smelling like the world was newly minted. Within minutes she was in the big barn, a cow munching grain while she tugged at the teats that released a steady stream of milk into a wooden pail.
How Moss would laugh to see her now! She couldn’t help thinking how squeamish she’d been about things to do at the ranch that involved anything other than her beloved horses.
Mr. Clark was one of those people who stayed silent in the mornings and the hired hand, the other hired hand, Ben never said much at any time of the day so Cynthia was left to her thoughts. She’d had a big argument with Evan when she announced her plans to move out here and since then he’d pretty much left her alone. She felt like she’d lost her best friend, but if he couldn’t understand her need for independence she didn’t know what to do about it.
For the first time in her life she was earning her own way and supporting her daughter. It was a good feeling.
The sun was well up in the sky by the time the cows were milked, the calves fed, and the cream separated from the milk by the hand-cranked separator, the operation of which was largely her responsibility.
Betsy had gone with Maggie to let the chickens out and give them fresh water and feed. Ben had already eaten his breakfast and headed out to deliver the bottles of fresh milk in town when Cynthia joined her daughter and the Clarks in the farmhouse kitchen for breakfast.
There had been a time when she could not have imagined consuming the kind of morning meal that Mrs. Clark served them, but now with several hours of hard physical work under her belt, she managed to eat her share of eggs and ham, browned biscuits, cream gravy, and fried potatoes. Having developed an over-familiarity with milk, she refused a glass and chose to drink water with her food. She still missed her morning coffee and, to a lesser degree, tea, both hot and iced. As a matter of fact she missed ice, which was rarely available, and Betsy still didn’t understand why she couldn’t have the occasional Coke.
Still it was a reasonable tradeoff. They had vegetables and fruits of a quality she’d never been able to purchase at any price. The eggs, milk and meat were free of enhancements, hormones, or any other additives and their lives were busy, active ones. She couldn’t see but that this was a healthier lifestyle for her daughter.
Even the air they breathed was clearer and cleaner.
“Don’t forget,” Mr. Clark said when they finished the meal. “Special meeting called for this afternoon.”
Mrs. Clark nodded. “We’ll leave at three, Mrs. Burden. Betsy can stay here with Maggie.”
Cynthia couldn’t help being startled. Afternoons were as busy as mornings. Here on the farm, even Sundays were work days. Cows had to be milked and animals fed and watered even if it was the Lord’s Day. They always did plenty of chores before going to church, not the same church the Stephens attended, but a small chapel out in the country mostly attended by farm folk. “Meeting?” she asked questioningly.
“You have as much right as anyone,” the woman declared challengingly. “Course the children don’t have to go and most leave ‘em at home if they have someone to look after them or else they get restive. Maggie doesn’t have to go until she’s eighteen.”
“I’d rather stay here with Betsy,” Maggie agreed, yawning. “Until I’m eighteen Ma and Pa vote for me.”
“Just the way you will for Betsy,” Mrs. Clark agreed.
Finally she realized what they were talking about. The community-wide meeting she’d interrupted on that first evening! This was how the community was governed, by the votes of each individual at this meeting.
“I don’t really belong,” she protested, “not yet.” After all she’d been here for several months now and this was the first time anyone had suggested she attend.
“Best to start the way you mean to go on,” Mr. Clark said. “You’ll go with us.”
Mrs. Clark nodded. “You belong now, Mrs. Burden. Best folks know that.”
She looked from one to the other, recognizing what they were trying to tell her without actually coming out and saying the words. Her being at the meeting might be a matter of contention, but they would be there with her.
That afternoon she put on a sunshiny yellow cotton that was usually reserved for Sunday wear and a simple straw hat touched with a hint of the same fabric used to make the dress and got into the buggy with the Clarks for the ride into town.
When she’d thought back on that meeting she’d interrupted she’d been puzzled that it had been held in the middle of a work day instead of in the evening, but nobody had to tell her after living for months here how many handmade cand
les would have been wasted by holding a public meeting after dark. Such business was best conducted by the light of day.
The scene looked much as it had on that afternoon she’d first arrived, the street near the school crowded with buggies, wagons, and people on horseback, though most of them who lived near enough seemed to be approaching on foot.
She saw Evan and Forrest and lifted her hand in a polite greeting while the Clarks nodded.
Among the first to enter the summer-warm auditorium, her employers chose seats near the front. A little reluctantly she took the seat next to Mrs. Clark. She’d much rather have been in the back row. Even though the auditorium quickly started to fill, her face began to burn with a mixture of anger and embarrassment as the seats around them, both sides as well as directly in front of and behind them, stayed empty.
Wasn’t six weeks of isolation enough to prove I’m not dangerous? She asked the question silently, though she would have liked to shout it out loud.
Instead she pretended not to notice, looking up on the stage to where Forrest Stephens was seated with four other council members, two women and two other men. He saw her and smiled and waved.
She smiled back, her anger softened. Nobody had been as reluctant to accept her at first as Evan’s father, but now he treated both her and Betsy as though they were members of the family.
A rustling at her side alerted her that someone had finally chosen to take the seat at her right. The black woman who had been the first in town other than Evan to greet her, sat down, moping her brow. “Going to be a hot summer,” she said. She patted Cynthia’s shoulder, than leaned over to greet the Clarks as old friends.
The next to join them was the hired hand Ben, who had stayed in town after his morning’s delivery. Ben sat down next to Mr. Clark.
It was no surprise when Mrs. Myers seated herself next to Miranda, greeting her as Mrs. Murphy. It always made Cynthia smile to realize how formal these people were with each other, but it was beginning to seem natural. She couldn’t even imagine calling the Clarks by their first names even though she’d addressed their daughter as Maggie from the first.
Letters From Another Town: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 2) Page 11