The 12 Brides of Christmas Collection
Page 17
An Irish word, most likely for mother or grandmother?
“She was ancient and blind by the time I came into the family and a completely selfish old woman. She seemed to be well into her dotage to me. The old crone seemed to never speak except to tell stories of the ‘old country.’ She always called Ireland ‘the old country.’ She was an embarrassment with her lower-class accent. I could hardly understand her. I hadn’t met her before my marriage, or I might have had second thoughts.”
Mrs. Rathbone waved a dismissive hand. “You can have that old box. I remember it well. My husband refused to part with it after his mother died. I’m not up to climbing all those stairs anymore. I’d forgotten it was up there, or I’d have thrown it away by now. Now as to dusting the library …”
Melanie listened politely while Magda found fault. Being given the box lifted her spirits, and her prayers last night combined with her renewed determination to be thankful got her through breakfast and the packing of her meager lunch. The packing was done under Magda’s watchful eye, lest Melanie become greedy and take two slices of bread.
Setting out for the short, cold walk to school before seven, Melanie feared Simon would be sitting there in the cold. He wasn’t, but he appeared minutes later and came straight for the stove Melanie had burning.
The plucky thankfulness was sorely tested for the next eight hours. Simon started a fist fight, then two other boys ended up in a fight all their own. He tripped one of the older girls walking past his desk. The whole classroom erupted in laughter. During arithmetic he used his slate to draw a picture of a dog biting a man in the backside and passed it around the room to the wriggling delight of the other boys.
And through it all, the heightened noise and constant distraction, Simon hadn’t learned a thing. And that was the worst of it. Neither Simon nor the other children were doing much work.
“My Simon is a good boy. You just need to learn to manage him better.”
Manage him.
But how?
When the children were let out at twelve for lunch, they all ran home, except for Simon.
Her heart sank at the sight of him fetching a lunch pail and bringing it back to his desk. She’d planned for the noon hour to be spent in prayer that God would help her through the afternoon.
After eating his lunch far too quickly, Simon ran around the room—it was too cold to go outside. He complained and asked questions and just generally was as much trouble on his own as he was in the group. Instead of being able to sit in silence and listen for the still, small voice of God, she’d sent up short, desperate prayers for patience and wisdom—with no time to listen for God’s answer.
He tore a page out of another child’s reading book, broke a slate, spilled ink—and then he lifted the flat wooden top of his desk into the air and dropped it with a clap so loud Melanie squeaked and jumped out of her chair.
Her temper snapped. “Simon, why are you so careless?”
A sullen glare was his only answer.
Maybe if she threw him outside and told him to run in circles around the schoolhouse to burn off some energy …
“Hyah!” Simon dropped to his knees and shoved the desktop forward. He swung one arm wide like he was lashing an imaginary horse’s rump and made a sound that was probably supposed to be a cracking whip.
Fighting to sound like it was a simple question, rather than the dearest dream of her heart, she asked, “Wouldn’t you rather go home to eat?”
“Pa rides out to the homestead every day to do chores. We’ve got cattle out there. He can’t get there, do his work, and get back in time to make a meal, so he packs a sandwich and milk for me.”
The little boy had a better lunch than she did.
“Get off the floor and get to work putting your desk back together.”
Simon stopped. “It was wobbly. I didn’t take it apart on purpose.”
He most certainly had.
“You have to stop taking things apart. Even if they’re wobbly.” It sounded like begging—and maybe that about described it. She was at her wit’s end.
“It came apart on its own. I’ll put it back together.” His begrudging tone made it sound like she’d just told him his “horse” desktop had a broken leg and had to be shot.
“You took another desk apart, and you didn’t get it put back together well. Which is why I moved you. Now this one will be wobbly, too, if you reassemble it poorly. I’ll be out of desks by Friday.”
“I’m going to get to work putting this back together right away.”
“Is there a chance you can improve on yesterday’s task?” Melanie heard the scold in her voice and fought to keep it under control.
Simon sat up straight. His eyes lit up.
Melanie nearly quaked with fear.
“I’ll bet doing it a second time will help me improve. Once I’m done with this one, I’ll work on the one from last night. This is good practice for me.”
What did he mean “practice”? “Are you thinking of doing this sort of thing for a career, Simon?”
That was a form of teaching, she supposed.
“Yep. Pa’s already given me a knife to whittle with, and I’ve carved a toy soldier.”
The thought of Simon with a sharp knife nearly wrung a gasp out of her.
“I’m going to keep at it until I’ve got an army.” He was so enthused. “Then Pa’s gonna show me how to build a toy-sized barn and a corral. He said pretty soon I’ll be helping him build big buildings. We need a chicken coop come spring.”
This excited him. “That is fine to learn a skill, but you’re supposed to be studying reading, writing, and arithmetic while you’re here at school. You shouldn’t have time to practice your building skills.”
Simon’s face went sullen again. All the brightness and enthusiasm went out like a fire doused in cold water.
“Just get on with the desk, Simon. Maybe we can figure out a way you can work on your building skills after you’re done with your studies.” She tried to sound perky, but all she could imagine in her future was one disaster after another.
Then a thought struck her. “Say, Simon, is your pa a good carpenter?”
“Yep, he built our sod house, and it’s the best one all around.”
The best house made of dirt. What a thrill.
“And he built a sod barn.”
“Will the chicken coop be made of sod, too?”
Simon shrugged. “I reckon. Where would he get wood? There ain’t no trees around. They didn’t name this town Lone Tree for nothing.”
Melanie thought of the majestic cottonwood that stood just outside of town. Alone. But the folks in town were planting trees. They’d tilled up the ground around the tree so seedlings had a fighting chance to sprout. Now little trees poked up every spring and were quickly transplanted. There were hundreds of slender saplings scattered around, but they were a long way from trees.
“Let’s see if you can do a better job repairing this desk than you did last night. It will be a test of your skills. And please don’t take anything else apart.”
“But it was wobbly. It needed me to fix it.”
Melanie decided then and there to impose on Mr. O’Keeffe and his admirable carpentry skills to keep the building standing—if working with sod translated to working with desks. What his son took apart, Mr. O’Keeffe could just reassemble.
And she’d start tonight because she wasn’t going to let Simon go home to an empty house, no matter how late she had to stay at school. She’d felt the Lord telling her not to do that again.
Judging by last night, she could be here very late.
And wasn’t Mrs. Rathbone going to have something to say about that?
Chapter 6
“Miss Douglas, Simon would be fine at home alone.”
Melanie arched a brow at Henry O’Keeffe as she rose from beside the stove, where she’d been working on a desk, with Simon beside her. “He will stay here at school every day until you come for him. The only way
to stop him from staying late is for you to get here at a reasonable hour.”
She brushed at her skirt, and Hank suspected she had no idea what a mess she was. Her blond curls were about half escaped from the tidy bun she usually wore. Her hands were filthy. Her nose was smudged with grease or maybe ash. Something black was smeared here and there. She didn’t seem aware of it, or she’d have given up on smoothing her dress: that wasn’t the worst of her problems.
Hank’s temper flared, but he knew himself well. The temper was just a mask for guilt. Simon had spent too much time alone in his young life. The schoolmarm was right.
“I can try and find someone around town who will let him come to their house after school. I know it’s not fair to ask you to stay here with him. I apologize that you got stuck—”
“Mr. O’Keeffe,” she cut him off.
Then she gave him a green-eyed glare he couldn’t understand—except it was pretty clear she wanted him to stop talking.
There was a crash that drew both of their attention. Simon had just tipped over a bucket of coal, and black dust puffed up in the air around him.
“It is fine for him to be here. I enjoy his company.” Her face twisted when she spoke as if she’d swallowed something sour. So she must not want him to say she was stuck with Simon. Which she most certainly was. Where did the woman get a notion that speaking the truth was a bad idea?
“Simon, clean up that coal and stay by the stove where it’s warm. Miss Douglas and I need to speak privately for a moment.” He clamped one hand on her wrist and towed her to the far corner of the room, which wasn’t all that far in the one-room building.
She came right along, so maybe she had a few things to say, too. All complaints, he was sure.
“Mr. O’Keeffe—”
“Call me Hank, for heaven’s sake.” Hank enjoyed cutting her off this time. “It takes too long to say Mr. O’Keeffe every time.”
“That would be improper.”
She might be right, because Hank didn’t know one thing about being proper. Dropping his voice to a whisper, he leaned close and said, “I’m sorry about this, but I work long hours and I see no way to run my farm and keep this job without working so long. And this job supplies us with a house in town—which we need because our sod house is too cold to live in through the winter.”
She tugged against his hold and startled him. He hadn’t realized he’d hung on. “You need to figure something out. Simon is running wild. He’s undisciplined, and I think a lot of what he gets up to is a poorly chosen method of getting someone, anyone, to pay attention to him.”
“He’s just a curious boy.”
A clatter turned them both to look at Simon, who had stepped well away from the coal bucket and was tossing in the little black rocks one at a time. A cloud of black dust rose higher with every moment, coating Simon and the room in soot.
To get her to look at him so he could finish and get out of there, Hank gently caught her upper arm and turned her back to face him. “Things are hard when a man loses his wife and a boy loses his ma. I know we aren’t getting by as well as we could, but that’s just going to be part of Simon’s growing-up years. Short of—” Hank dropped his voice low. “Short of letting someone else raise him, I don’t know what else to do. And I won’t give him up. I love my son, and his place is with me.”
“Clearly, what you need to do, Mr. O’Keeffe—”
“Hank.”
“No, Mr. O’Keeffe.”
“No, Hank. Everyone here calls me that. Men and women both. Nebraska is a mighty friendly place, and you sound unfriendly when you call me Mr. O’Keeffe.”
“Not unfriendly, proper.”
“Call me Hank, or I’m going to start letting Simon sleep at school.” Hank had to keep from laughing at her look of horror.
“Fine, Hank then. But—”
“He can stay then? Until I get done with work each night?” She’d offered. Her offer was laced with sarcasm and completely insincere, but it was too late to take it back now. Hank knew he was supposed to promise to get here on time, but he couldn’t do any better than he had been doing, and besides, making those green eyes flash was the most fun he’d had in a long time.
She didn’t disappoint him. Burning green arrows shot him right in the chest. He got that same jolt he always got from her, and it occurred to him that he’d never had any idea what his wife had been thinking. Greta had always been a complete mystery.
Just thinking about it drew all the misery of living without her around him and all the fun went out of teasing Miss Douglas, who had never invited him to call her Melanie. Hank decided not to let that stop him. And if it annoyed her, all the better, because he needed her to stay away from him. He’d never again put himself in a position to face pain like he had when Greta died birthing their second child.
With that memory of pain, suddenly he couldn’t wait to get away from the green-eyed schoolmarm and her fault-finding ways.
“Let’s go, Simon. We’ve kept Melanie here late enough.”
Her gasp followed him as he rushed to get Simon, who was now in desperate need of a bath. They were gone before the bickering with Melanie could start up again.
“Late again?”
You are a master of the obvious. “Good evening, Mrs. Rathbone. It’s been a long day.”
She waited. Maybe tonight would be the night Mrs. Rathbone would be agreeable. Or at least send her to bed with her supper and not a single word of criticism.
“If I told anyone on the school board that you’re out at such a late hour, you’d be dismissed immediately. You are supposed to be a young lady of exemplary morals.”
Melanie wasn’t sure what the point was of that comment. She almost expected Magda to start blackmailing her.
“Split your thirty-dollar-a-month salary with me, or I will tell the school board about your sinfully late hours.”
They wouldn’t fire her. But Magda might kick her out of the house. Melanie wondered if the school board would object to her sleeping at the school. She was tempted to hunt them up and ask, but she knew it was improper for her to live alone, and sleeping at the school would certainly be alone. Unless, of course, Hank got any later and Melanie started sleeping there with Simon. A woman and her—sort of—child could stay alone together.
If she walked away, Magda would call her back, upset at her impertinence. If she defended herself, Magda would only speak louder and become more critical. If she sat down to have a long, reasonable chat with the old bat, Magda would take offense at the familiarity of a woman living on charity thinking to sit with her as an equal.
Melanie suddenly couldn’t stand it anymore, and she opened her mouth to tell the awful old woman to go ahead and report her. Melanie would sleep outside through a Nebraska winter before she’d take any more of this.
Then out of nowhere came her memory of that box. And with it came peace. Calm. How odd. She was able, without any trouble, to stand and take the harsh words Mrs. Rathbone handed out, and when the inevitable “go to your room” moment came, it was as easy as if the poor old lady had just politely said good night.
“I’ll see you in the morning, ma’am.” Melanie turned away to the sound of an inelegant snort of disgust.
She picked up her supper, even colder than last night, and walked up to her room. The moment she entered, her eyes went to that box. What was it about that box that seemed an answer to prayer?
Even though that made no sense, Melanie knew it was true. She’d prayed for patience and that box had … had … glowed at her.
She ate quickly and removed the pins and combs from her hair, eager to put them away. Lifting the box from the trunk where it sat, Melanie sat on her bed, the closest the room had to a chair, and held the box in her lap.
Mamó Cullen. Melanie pictured an old Irish lady, wrinkled and full of charming stories of the old country. Was it possible Mamó Cullen hadn’t been that thrilled with her new granddaughter-in-law and had, in fact, been unkind?
Melanie slipped her pins and combs into the top drawer on the left. Then, on impulse and because she really didn’t want to put it down, Melanie pulled the little drawer all the way out and set it aside. Why was the drawer so small? She looked into the space where the drawer had been and saw solid wood. Then she pulled out the seven other drawers that went down the front of the box, each with a little brass knob just like those that didn’t do anything. Each drawer was undersized. But this box wasn’t heavy enough to be solid wood through and through.
Reaching in she touched the back of one drawer—playing with it, tipping the box sideways, holding it up to the lantern light so she could see the back, she touched and then pressed and thought the back gave just a bit. Not solid wood.
There had to be something in that unaccounted for space. She worked over the box for nearly an hour when she heard a little click and the back of one drawer slid sideways just a fraction of an inch. For a moment she thought she’d broken something, but looking in, she decided it wasn’t broken, that piece was meant to move.
Finally she got it to slide farther, and that was accidental, too. She must have gripped something in just the right way, because the back of that drawer tipped forward, and Melanie could see it was on little hinges that showed when the cunning slat of wood fell flat. Something was in there.
Reaching, Melanie realized her fingertips trembled. She pulled a small scrap out, old, yellowed with age. A bit of cloth, no, a delicate handkerchief, very fine and nearly a foot square when she brushed it flat.
It was embroidered in each corner with a piece of a Nativity scene. Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus in one corner. Two shepherds—one with a shepherd’s crook and the other with a lamb around his neck—filled the next corner. Three wise men and a camel were in the third corner. In the fourth, in beautiful flowing script, stood the words Peace on Earth.