by Diane Darcy
As she wove through groups of people, Curly Jenkins, immaculately dressed, intercepted her, smiled widely and put a hand to his hat in greeting. “Ma’am. Nice to see you.”
Melissa, feeling dowdier than ever, lifted her chin. “Uh, yes, thanks.” She nodded stiffly and hurried to Richard.
Richard drew her under his arm. “This is my wife, Melissa. Melissa, the Reverend and Mrs. Wright.”
Melissa smiled politely at the middle-aged couple. “It’s nice to meet you both.”
Reverend Wright took one of her hands in both of his. “Welcome. Welcome. We’re so glad to have you here.”
His wife smiled. “I hope you’re all settled in?”
“Yes, thank you.” At the sincere and warm welcome, she felt slightly guilty about her impressions of the sermon.
More people came over, stared at her and Richard curiously, talked to the reverend and shook his hand. A few introductions were made.
Mrs. Wright sidled closer. “Tell me, do you cook, Mrs. Kendal?”
“Not very well. I’m learning, though.”
“Well, about the potluck. Perhaps...”
Melissa watched Richard chatting and willed him to look her way. She wanted to leave. The crowd was milling around on the lawn, and as she half-listened to Mrs. Wright, she searched for the kids. “Excuse me, but I haven’t seen my children.”
Mrs. Wright stopped talking to glance around, a frown forming on her face. “I sincerely hope they aren’t with those Flynn boys. They’ve been known to get into some trouble. Perhaps they’re around back? Come on, I’ll go with you.”
Melissa quickly followed the reverend’s wife around the side of the building. The last thing she needed on her plate right now were her children falling in with the bad crowd in town. In the future she was already having to deal with Jessica and her gothic leanings; she didn’t need trouble here too.
On her left, she passed the minister’s home, a carriage house with a buggy parked inside, a huge garden and some chickens in a pen.
Mrs. Wright spoke over her shoulder. “You have no idea some of the mischief these boys get into. They aren’t bad boys, but there is a streak of the devil in them, that’s for sure.”
Great. This she didn’t need. Melissa wanted to separate her children from these hooligans immediately.
They rounded the corner.
Mrs. Wright gasped. “I knew it. Boys! You know better than that! Get away from there!”
Holding her breath, Melissa looked around Mrs. Wright to see what trouble the children had gotten into. Smoking? Drinking? Some kind of drug? Cruelty to animals? Who knew what trouble these kids...
She blinked.
They were down in the dirt...playing marbles?
She blinked again, then choked on a laugh as the reverend’s wife moved forward and continued to scold them, her arms waving wildly as she tried to shoo the children away from the game. The boys, anywhere from five up to about fourteen, looked guilty and scared as they snatched up marbles from the dirt circle and started to scatter. A few girls, including Jessica, watched warily.
Melissa bit the inside of her cheek.
Marbles.
She could handle marbles.
Mrs. Wright turned back to Melissa, her hands on her hips.
“You see what I mean?”
Melissa tried really hard not to laugh. She nodded. Swallowed. “Disgraceful.” She choked on the word.
Mrs. Wright nodded, then hurried to chase some of the boys around the building.
Throwing Mrs. Wright an irritated glare, Jeremy circled around to where Melissa stood. “Jeeze, what’d we do?”
Melissa giggled. “You have obviously joined a vicious gang. Would you like me to sew you and your new friends some leather jackets? What are your colors?”
“Perhaps you need to learn to sew before making such an offer.”
Melissa turned to see the red-haired seamstress from town looking down her nose at her.
The seamstress had opened the top off a barrel that was set beneath the eaves at the back wall of the church. She placed a few items of clothing inside the drum. “Still wearing your beautifully made dress, I see. This barrel is for the needy. Perhaps you could look through it and find something new for yourself to wear? Perhaps even a hat?”
Melissa’s cheeks heated and her eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth--
“And perhaps you can shut your trap, Miss High-and-Mighty.”
Melissa turned, surprised to see Hannah behind her, angrily glaring at the seamstress.
Hannah beckoned Jessica over. “Until you can make a dress that’s the quality and style of this one, I suggest you mind your manners.”
The seamstress looked at Jessica’s dress, studied it for a long moment, slowly flushing an unbecoming pink, turned and left.
Melissa stared at Hannah, a funny feeling in her chest. Melissa knew Hannah didn’t care much for her. But besides Richard, Melissa couldn’t think of one other person who’d ever defended Melissa in her life. She wasn’t the type to need defending. She didn’t know what to think.
She swallowed and, unbelievably, realized she was on the verge of grateful tears. “Hannah...I...well...thank you.”
Hannah shrugged and looked away, obviously embarrassed. She placed something in the barrel, then turned and left without another word.
Melissa watched her go. She shook her head and her tears dried, but the feeling of gratitude persisted.
It looked like she might have a friend.
Chapter Seventeen
Children’s voices called out, and giggles and shrieks drifted through the open doorway. “Ghost in the graveyard!”
Melissa dried and put away the last dish, and looked outside the cabin. The community had come alive. Chairs had been brought outside, a table complete with tablecloth was set up in the freshly cut, green grass in front of Sarah’s cabin, and the ladies were dishing out dessert to the husbands, and quite a few single men from the bunkhouse.
A handful of children ran by the table, grabbed some cookies and headed back into the fray, shrieking, laughing, and running from the ‘ghost in the graveyard’, who at the moment was Jeremy. A couple of dogs barked, dashing to and fro, adding to the racket. Everyone looked like they were having fun.
Melissa wouldn’t mind having some fun too. She went outside and noticed the dessert table--peach cobbler and cookies–-and belatedly realized she should have contributed too. She paused, wishing she hadn’t come out after all, but it was too late to turn back, so she closed the distance. “Hi.”
Sarah smiled at her. “Hi, yourself. Come and join us.”
Melissa’s hands bunched in her skirt. “Sorry, but I didn’t make any dessert.”
“Don’t worry, there’s plenty.” Amanda lifted a brow. “Besides, I’ve tasted some of your cooking.”
It took Melissa a moment to realize she was being teased, and another moment to realize she didn’t mind. She smiled and chuckled.
Amanda winked at her.
The men, arguing about something, wandered off into a separate group.
Melissa took a seat as the light breeze in the warm air wafted the sweet smell of peaches from the orchard. She looked around. She still couldn’t believe Hannah had stuck up for her like she had. “Where’s Hannah?”
Emma, frizzy blonde hair lifting in the breeze, shook her head. “Keeping busy. She doesn’t usually come outside on Sundays.”
Sarah nodded. “She misses all the fun. I think she’d rather work than socialize.”
Melissa realized she herself had used work as an excuse to avoid company on more than one occasion. And to Melissa, Hannah seemed like an outcast. Was that how people saw Melissa? Perhaps she had more in common with Hannah than she was comfortable with.
The children ran by again, laughing, and Melissa was glad to see her kids having so much fun.
The men erupted in shouts and Melissa glanced over at Richard. He had thrown a horseshoe, and dirt puffed up in the air where i
t landed. He turned to strut and boastfully taunt the other men as they laughed. He was good at having fun. That was one of the qualities that had originally attracted Melissa all those years ago.
“Try this.” Sarah handed Melissa a bowl of peach cobbler with whipped cream on top.
Melissa spared a thought to calories, but wasn’t too worried. She worked so hard every day that she burned them off and then some.
She took a bite and closed her eyes blissfully. “Mmm. Wonderful!”
“I’m glad you like it.” Sarah smiled at her.
It was wonderful. Years of depriving herself of dessert had her moaning as she ate the buttery oats, sweet peaches and creamy topping, much to the other ladies amusement.
The men continued to play horseshoes. One of the shoes got lost in the long, wheat-colored grass by the fence and Sarah’s husband, a lanky redhead, went after it. When he couldn’t find it, the other men mocked him for his rotten throw.
The women chatted as Melissa finished her dessert. She placed the bowl in a tub on the ground with dirty dishes in it, then determined to have some fun too. Unfortunately, she didn’t know many games. She remembered the request for lessons. “Would you ladies still like to learn a little self-defense?”
The three women looked at her expectantly.
Amanda nodded. “That would be nice.”
The other two ladies agreed.
Melissa motioned them to the front of the table and faced them a little nervously. “Okay. We’ll start with dislodging an attacker’s hand.”
Emma put a hand to her scrawny chest, a look of horror on her face. “An attacker?”
Her voice, reminiscent of Vivian Leigh from Gone With The Wind, had Melissa smiling. “Yes. What if someone tried to attack you? Let’s say a man grabs you by--”
Emma was shaking her head. “My husband would never allow any man to attack me.”
Sarah and Amanda exchanged a glance and a smile. Perhaps denial was normal behavior for Emma? Melissa tried again. “It’s a rhetorical question. What I’m trying to say is--”
”Yes,” Sarah nodded vigorously. “If anyone tried something like that, they’d be lynched.”
Amanda agreed with a nod. “Or worse.”
Melissa bit back her frustration. This was going nowhere fast. “But what if your husband weren’t present?”
“Then another of the men would step in.” Sarah made the statement sound like fact.
Melissa took a deep breath. “But what if no one was around and you had only yourself to depend upon?”
Sarah looked surprised by the question. “Where would we be, where no one else was around?”
Melissa sighed. “Okay. On the very unlikely chance that you were in an isolated location, and were caught unawares, and there were no men around to help you, and a lunatic, who’d escaped from an asylum, came upon you and--”
“If a lunatic escaped from an asylum, my husband would never leave me alone until he’d been caught,” Amanda assured her.
Emma nodded. “Besides, we don’t have an asylum around these parts.”
Melissa rolled her eyes. “But if you did have an asylum--”
Sarah shook her head. “They’d never build one around here. But down in Mexico they might. They have prisons down there. But the prisoners never escape.”
Melissa took a deep breath. “Okay,” she used her hand for emphasis. “Say you lived in Mexico next to an insane asylum, which stood next to a prison, and in the middle of the night there was an earthquake, and both the prison and the asylum walls fell down and a lot of crazy criminals escaped, and--”
“I’d never live next to a prison.” Amanda shuddered. “What if someone did escape? Besides, I don’t think they have earthquakes in Mexico like we do here in California.”
Melissa shut her eyes and pressed her fingers to her forehead. “You are missing the point.” She opened her eyes. “What I’m trying to say is...”
She looked into three pairs of teasing eyes and her own widened.
They were kidding!
They were teasing her!
A wonderful feeling of acceptance welled up within her. She jumped up, grabbed the spoon with a dollop of cream on the end and advanced threateningly toward Amanda who grinned and backed away.
Melissa narrowed her eyes. “Say someone you know, who happens to live next door to you, is driven insane by your smart mouth, and she chases you down and attacks you in front of a dozen witnesses, before anyone can come to your rescue!”
Melissa lunged toward Amanda with the cream.
Amanda shrieked and ran around the table.
Melissa followed.
Sarah and Emma laughed and backed away.
Amanda held up both hands. “All right! I concede! I need to learn to defend myself!”
With a laugh, Melissa threw the spoon back in the cream. She glanced at the men to see them all grinning. Richard looked especially happy.
She ignored him and turned to the three not very penitent women. “All right then, listen up.”
* * *
Later that night, Melissa lay in bed next to a sleeping Richard and watched shadows dance gently on the board ceiling above her head. The night sounds had quieted, the children had drifted off to sleep, and Melissa realized she was smiling.
She was warm, comfortable, cosy under the cool sheets, her pillow was soft beneath her head, and she felt...content. All in all, it had been a pretty good day.
First Hannah had stuck up for her, and then she’d had fun with the Cowboy Wives. It almost felt like she had friends.
She turned onto her side and put an arm around Richard.
His hand came up to cup her elbow and give it a squeeze before he dropped his arm onto the bed again.
She kissed Richard’s back and snuggled into his heat.
Perhaps tomorrow would be even better. She remembered Sarah’s warning that they had laundry in the morning and groaned.
She pressed closer to Richard, closed her eyes and tried to drift off to sleep. What was the saying? It’s a great place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there?
She realized the smile was back on her face again. Well, she might not want to live here forever, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to stay just a bit longer.
Chapter Eighteen
A few weeks later, Jeremy and Jessica came running inside the cabin. Jeremy’s face was beaming. “Mom! Come with us! We have to show you something down at the creek!”
Jessica nodded. “Hurry! It’s amazing!”
Melissa first reaction was to put them off. She didn’t want to go. She’d finally stolen a minute for herself to draw on some paper Hannah had given her. Melissa suspected the gift hadn’t been given out of the kindness of Hannah’s heart, but rather to get rid of Melissa. Either way, she was drawing new designs. And granted, she felt a little silly because they were western in style, but still, there was no one to see and she was enjoying herself.
She opened her mouth to refuse their invitation, looked into their bright, excited faces, and couldn’t do it. She put down her charcoal stick. “All right. Where are we going?”
Jessica squealed. “Come on!”
Melissa wiped her hands and followed. Their cheerful faces made her smile and she felt, more and more, that she was doing the right by her kids; becoming a better mother.
Melissa waved at the widow and Hannah as she walked by the garden, and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try the friendship thing again. “Hannah, we’re going somewhere exciting! Do you want to go with us?”
Hannah shook her head and turned away.
The widow, grim-faced, watched Melissa for a moment, before plucking a few plum tomatoes and placing them in a basket.
Melissa frowned, wondering where the disapproval came from. Who knew what made the old bat tick?
As they walked away from the ranch and toward the fields to the north, Melissa realized that, for the most part, their days had fallen into a routine. Richard went to work early;
some days he took Jeremy, some he didn’t. Jessica and Melissa, more often than not, joined the ladies in some undertaking: churning butter, cooking, communal laundry, the slaughtering of a hog, raiding honey from bees, preserving vegetables, fruit, gardening, whatever. The list was endless.
They walked for about twenty minutes, the kids talking and giggling as they got closer to the main road.
Jessica turned to smile. “I think this is where the Davidsons’ house is in the future.” She pointed. “And this is about where their trampoline stands. Can you believe how different it looks?”
Melissa wasn’t sure who the Davidsons’ were, but she nodded.
“It does look different.”
Jessica pointed. “And that’s where the Nortons live. Ericka is going to freak when I tell her about all this.”
“I doubt she’ll believe you, but I sincerely hope you soon get the chance.” Melissa looked around at the trees, bushes, long grass, and dirt. The subdivisions were gone. Or more accurately, hadn’t been built yet.
Everything was so wild now. Realizing they’d come quite far from the ranch and to an isolated area, Melissa glanced around at the slight hills and foliage uneasily. “Are there any wild animals around here?”
Jeremy shook his head. “No, Willie says there’s nothing that’ll hurt us.”
Melissa’s gaze continued to wander the harsh terrain. “Hmm, well as long as Willie says so. What about marauding Indians?”
Jeremy laughed. “No, not anymore. But Merrill says his cousin got scalped and his whole family was killed about twenty years ago in Ohio. And one of his dad’s friends died and was mutilated at the battle of Little Bighorn. Can you even believe that?”
Melissa nodded at the unwelcome information. Unfortunately she could, but didn’t want to dwell on it. Perhaps she needed to keep Jeremy away from the cowhands. “What about skunks?”
“Yeah, there’s skunks around,” Jeremy said matter-of-factly.
Melissa laughed. “You couldn’t have lied?” She shook her head. “Just make sure you keep them away from me.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes and walked ahead. “They’re mostly nocturnal, Mom.”