by Jodi Thomas
Mrs. Vivian shook her head. "I wish you luck, but staying alive seems more important than reading and writing in this part of the world." She appeared to have lost interest in the conversation. "The room comes with supper at seven each night and breakfast the next morning also at seven. If you miss either serving, I don't keep a plate warm for you, and I don't refund any part of your board." She handed Rainey a key, pointed to the door, then headed back down the stairs mumbling rules she'd memorized years ago. "Male visitors are not allowed past the parlor, and there are no exceptions or refunds if I ask you to leave for breaking that rule. You'll use the bathroom on the second floor, but you'll have to carry your own water up from the pump in the kitchen. If you ask Mamie, my slave, to tote or wash clothes for you, I expect you to pay me a quarter a bundle. The first outhouse in back is for my ladies, but after dark I recommend you use the chamber pot. My house backs up to Saloon Row. I won't be responsible for your safety after dark."
"I can take care of myself," Rainey said.
The landlord glanced back over her shoulder. "I hope you carry a loaded pistol with you, 'cause someone your size wouldn't have a chance against a man."
Rainey nodded, not wanting to admit she carried nothing for protection.
Mrs. Vivian left without another word. Rainey unlocked the only door on the third floor and looked around her new home. The room reminded her of a cabin on a ship. It could not have been a smaller space and been called a room. But on the bright side, it was clean. She leaned across the bed and opened the window. If she looked up, she could see the sky, but if she looked down, she not only could see but smell the filth of the alley below. Heaven and Hell. She had her own little slice of each.
While unpacking her few belongings, she listened to bits of conversation drift up from below her window. Two women on the porch behind the saloon were complaining about their late night as they smoked thin cigars. Parts of a song reached her window from the kitchen below, and one man, already drunk for the evening, talked to himself as he found his way to the privy.
Rainey looked out and decided the buildings along the alley must act as a chimney, for sound carried everything said, even softly, to her window. She smiled, remembering a place in the great hall of the school. One spot in the entire room where a person could stand and hear everything said within those walls. She used to love standing in that spot and feeling a part of all around her.
She almost laughed. This window could work to her advantage. If she listened closely, she might be able to pick up the accents that seemed to have blended into a way of talking that sounded slightly different from any dialect she'd ever heard. Then, alone in her room, she could practice until she sounded like a Texan. She'd be safest if she blended in here.
A few minutes later, when she walked into the dining room at exactly seven o'clock, Rainey found the other seven residents of the house.
A stout woman named Margaret Ann Mathis stood and introduced everyone.
One mother and her grown daughter from Germany spoke little English. Margaret Ann explained that they were waiting for the woman's husband to finish with the fall crop so he would have time to come and get them.
Three sisters had been in Austin two months waiting for their supplies to arrive so that they could open a dress shop. Though they smiled at Rainey, they were boredom in triplicate with dull eyes and hair in different stages of graying.
The last woman was in her late thirties and introduced herself as Mrs. Dottie Davis. She wore widow's black and nibbled at her food while the others were being introduced.
As soon as Margaret Ann finished her duty of introducing everyone, she sat down and, like the others, began eating. Rainey followed suit, noticing the food, though simple, was well prepared. Compared to the meals on the train and the ship, this looked like a feast.
After a few minutes Widow Davis broke the silence by asking if Rainey knew the history of the Askew House.
"No," Rainey answered. This entire town seemed far too new to have much history.
"Then I must tell you," the widow whispered.
"Not the murder of Lora again," Margaret Ann protested. "How can you keep telling that story when we don't know what really happened?"
Widow Davis pouted. "Lora was too young to be traveling alone, if you ask me. That was her first mistake"-she raised one eyebrow and stared at Rainey-"and maybe her last."
The closest of the three sisters agreed, then poked Rainey and added, "About your age. We heard the story from a woman who lived here the night it happened. Miss Lora was young with doe eyes and hair so blond it looked almost silver."
Widow Davis interrupted. "She came to marry a Frenchman back in forty-nine just before half the men in America went crazy over the gold rush. Poor child barely spoke English and didn't know enough to come in out of the rain. They say the man she was to have married still paces in front of the Askew House some nights as if hoping for an answer to exactly what happened to his bride even though it's been years."
Mrs. Vivian was busy serving dinner to her guests and showed no interest in the story. Maybe she'd heard it one too many times.
The widow talked on while she chewed. "A few of us remember like it was yesterday and not five years ago. Mrs. Vivian had just started the place and my Henry was still alive. We had a restaurant down a few blocks." The chubby woman lowered her voice as the landlord left the room. "Seems like I remember Mrs. Vivian's husband and only son went missing down near Galveston a few months before. She had to make a living somehow, so she opened the house to women only."
Rainey smiled at the phrase. "Did they ever come back from missing?"
Everyone who understood English at the table shook their head, but one of the three sisters answered, "Not yet. We heard the husband died. If you talk to Mrs. Vivian, her son is due back any minute. Some say he just went to California and will never came back."
The widow agreed. "My Henry used to say both Miss Vivian's husband and her grown son were meaner than skunks. Never worked at nothing but being no good."
"What happened to the French girl?" Rainey pulled the conversation back on track. "How was she murdered?"
Grace, the oldest of the sisters, answered, "I've asked around and no one seems to know. All they found was her ivory dressing gown, hanging neatly on the back porch."
"Then how do you know she was murdered?" If all the women hadn't looked so pale, she would have thought they were kidding her.
"Blood," the widow said. "There was blood trailing all along one side of the alley. Lots of blood, running from building to building, as if someone had dipped a wide paintbrush in a tub of crimson." Everyone except the two German women leaned closer as she continued. "They said all her things, her clothes, her shoes, even her brush and comb were still in her room looking as if she might have just stepped out for a moment. The only thing missing was a small chest of valuables she'd brought as a wedding gift from her parents."
The talkative sister picked up the story. "They never found so much as a lock of her hair. No one reported seeing or hearing anything that night, but that little bedroom on the third floor has been hard to rent ever since."
"My room," Rainey whispered, but no one seemed to hear.
The widow shook her head at one of the old maid sisters. "How could she have been killed and no one hear? It gives me chills in the night, it does. People die in this town sometimes, but not like that. Not with their blood marking the alley."
They finished the meal and all said their good nights. Rainey climbed to her room and watched from her window. The three sisters made a trip to the privy together, with two standing guard while one went inside.
For them the alley was an evil place to be feared, but Rainey couldn't help but wonder how much of the story was true. A young woman going out back at night-maybe. Folding up her dressing gown and placing it on the porch while she crossed to the privy-very unlikely. Someone killing her and dragging her bloody body down the alley without anyone seeing or hearing anythin
g-impossible.
Judging from the noise, the alley was almost as busy as the street.
She leaned out the window. A drunk was settling down in the corner of the saloon's porch. Two girls with feathers in their hair were smoking and complaining. It was too dark to tell if they were the same two she'd seen earlier. A few houses down, a man with a wagon appeared to be unloading barrels. He swore each time he strained.
At nine she heard the doors to the boardinghouse being locked. Not wanting to waste the one candle, Rainey dressed for bed in her new nightgown and settled in, listening to the voices below. As she drifted into sleep, she thought of Travis McMurray and wondered how he was doing.
Sometimes, when she thought of him, she decided he seemed the only real thing in her make-believe world. He'd been so solid. For the short time she'd been with him, she felt as if she wasn't invisible.
She wished she'd stayed a little longer by his side that last time. His arm had felt so good around her shoulder. She wouldn't have bothered him, but she might have spread her hand out on his chest just to make sure he was breathing normally and not in too much pain.
Her last thought was that she must be crazy to dream of a man she barely knew. But she couldn't help wishing she'd touched him, or that he'd touched her.
At dawn Rainey began her search for employment. After wearing trousers for weeks, she found that her skirt seemed heavy and cumbersome. The heat of the day made her feel like she was melting inside all the layers of material. By midafternoon she decided to abandon her quest early and return to her small room on the third floor of the Askew House.
She found the three sisters in the drawing room planning their store. Mrs. Vivian sat in the office working on her books. When Rainey said hello, the landlord looked surprised that anyone would bother greeting her.
"Mrs. Vivian, I was wondering why you named this place the Askew House?" she asked just to make conversation.
Mrs. Vivian looked pleased. "My maiden name was Askew. When my husband returns, I plan to change the name." The thin woman straightened and held her head high. Loneliness surrounded her, and Rainey guessed that she knew her man would never return but chose to live the lie.
Rainey didn't dare ask how long he'd been gone. The son also seemed a topic no one addressed to Mrs. Vivian.
Once in her room, Rainey cried into her pillow, feeling as if she'd spent a lifetime alone. When she'd been a child her mother had never had time to talk to her, her father never bothered unless he was angry, and the other girls at school considered her beneath their station so never offered friendship. Now it seemed she'd made it all the way to Texas and found only lonely people populated the state.
She tried to see one good thing. At least on the third floor she couldn't hear the clock that chimed in the foyer every hour. If she had her way she'd never live by the sound of a clock again. For as long as she could remember, her father had insisted every detail follow a schedule.
Rainey let her mind drift back to her life before. The order to it all, the boredom. Now she couldn't believe she'd let it go on for so long without saying or doing something, but she'd been afraid of what might happen with change. Boredom had been bearable, change frightening.
Finally, exhausted, she drifted off to sleep and almost missed dinner. She ran down the stairs not realizing until she stepped into the dining room that she'd forgotten her shoes. She slowed, moving in small steps so that no one would notice.
Tonight, since she was no longer new, no one bothered to speak to her. The meal was eaten totally in silence except for the German mother and daughter, who whispered to each other with words no one else understood.
The widow, Dottie Davis, looked tired and Rainey couldn't help but wonder what they all did during the day.
Rainey almost ran back upstairs. Somehow the others made her feel even more alone. She told herself she simply needed sleep. But after dark she couldn't force herself to close the window. She found the conversations she could overhear far too interesting.
Slowly, hour after hour, she began to recognize the voices and give each one a name. This was her world, she reasoned. She was a watcher, a listener, but never a part of all that went on around her. It had been that way all her life. Most of the girls in her class in school never bothered to learn her name. She'd been a shadow as a student and as a teacher. Why should anything be different here?
The sadness of it might have smothered her, but in the corners of her mind Rainey remembered the Ranger who'd danced with her… who'd kissed her… who'd told her he'd find her.
She'd heard once that somewhere in the world everyone has someone thinking about them. If that were true she could only hope that someone would be Travis McMurray.
CHAPTER 11
Two days later Pearl Langland called on Rainey at nine in the morning.
Rainey had planned to dress and look for a job, but she'd fallen asleep after breakfast. The night's conversations in the alley seemed the only interesting part of her life, so Rainey lost the battle that morning with sleep.
"Wake up." Pearl pounded on her door. "Rainey, if you are in there, open the door, I can't hold little Jason much longer."
Rainey pulled on her cape as a dressing gown and let in her friend. She didn't try to pretend everything was fine. Her mother's words echoed in her ears-that no respectable woman remained in her nightclothes after dawn. She held her head high and waited for Pearl to say something.
The mercantile owner's wife looked at Rainey and nodded once as if she understood. After setting the baby on the floor she said, "I've thought of a way for you to make money enough to at least pay for your room and board. Are you interested?" She hadn't come to lecture, she'd come to help.
Rainey listened even though she wanted to scream that she'd tried every way to get a job. No one wanted to give a woman, a stranger among them, employment. She'd even considered dressing as a boy and working at the stables. That might be her only choice next week when she was asked to leave the Askew House. Mrs. Vivian had made it plain that no credit would be extended.
"My Owen takes in peaches in trade sometimes from the farmers who don't have cash to pay for supplies. He says he'll make you a good deal on the peaches or anything else he takes in."
Rainey remembered the bowls of peaches on Pearl's table. "What would I do with them?"
"Pies," Pearl answered. "He swears that pie you made was the best he'd ever tasted."
"You really think I could make money baking pies?"
"I put a pen to it, and I figure even buying the sugar and flour, you can double your money if you want to turn the fruit into pies. My Owen says there's not a cafe in town that has desserts worth eating. I'd loan you my kitchen if you'd help me watch Jason while you're cooking. Owen says if I could handle the store two or three days a week, he could sell double if he agrees to make deliveries."
Rainey smiled. "You'd let me use your kitchen?"
"I'd love the company. It would be hard work on your part. Lots of peaches are coming in right now. You'd have to can all you could. Once the season is over, we'll think of something else to cook." Pearl grinned. "I'd set up your books for free samples. Making pies is something I've never got the hang of, but figures, now that's another story. To my way of thinking it would be a good deal for everyone."
Rainey tried not to shout. Hard work, honest work, didn't frighten her. Starvation did. "When do we start?" The cooks at the school had taught her how to bake almost by the time she could walk. If Pearl thought she could make pies and sell them, Rainey would make all the market would bear.
"My Owen is loading the wagon now. He'll wait until I get back to the store before he leaves." She glanced around the tiny room. "You can work all day today making samples to pass out… unless you have something else to do."
Rainey didn't answer. There was no need. Pearl knew the truth.
She stood and dressed as fast as she could, then carried Jason for Pearl as they made their way back to the little store. Within an hour
Rainey was pealing peaches with Jason playing at her feet.
About one Pearl closed the store for lunch and joined Rainey in the kitchen where five pies were cooling. "I love this smell," she said as she took a bite of the potato soup Rainey had made for lunch. "Where'd you learn to cook?"
"At the school where I taught. Most of the girls had parties and outings on the weekends. My parents were usually busy entertaining prospective students and their parents. I always felt like I was in the way, so I learned to keep busy in the kitchen. The school cooks could bake anything, and over the years they passed some of their talents along to me. After the girls returned from their parties, they'd follow their noses to the table and tell me of their adventures over soup or desserts."
"You were young. Didn't you ever go with them? There must have been so much to see and do in a big city like Washington. You could have met a young man." Pearl knew little of the kind of life Rainey talked about. For her, school had been a one-room house where she'd attended when the crops were in.
Rainey shook her head. "No. It wouldn't have been proper. My father wouldn't have allowed it." She shrugged. "Look what happened at the one dance I did go to. The man I danced with thinks I'm a horse thief."
Pearl raised an eyebrow at Rainey as she rocked her baby in her arms.
"All right." Rainey shrugged. "Maybe I did borrow his horse. But I care about Travis McMurray. I'd take the animal back if I could. I'd give anything to know how he's doing. When I left he'd lost so much blood. He might even be dead for all I know. You should have seen him, Pearl. His dark hair half covering his eyes with him so still he looked more like a statue, than a man."
Pearl gently laid the sleeping Jason in his crib. "You should write your Ranger and tell him you're sorry."
"He'd come after me with a rope."
Pearl laughed. "Well, at least you'll know he's still alive."