Emily called, “Don’t forget to use your hankie instead of your sleeve, and mind your teacher.”
Luke turned the wagon out to the main road, and couldn’t help but grin. He wasn’t sure if Emily’s instructions were just for Rose, or for him too.
~~*~*~*~~
“Rose, we haven’t visited your mama’s grave for a while. Would you like to go this Sunday after church?” Luke purposely asked the question to see how his daughter would respond.
She rolled her eyes. “We have to go to church again? We just went a couple of weeks ago.”
“Miss Emily thinks it’s important for you, and it’s a chance for her to meet new people and make friends. We could go by the cemetery on the way back.”
Rose cast him a sidelong glance. “Sometimes I stop and see Mama on the way home from school.” She admitted this as if it were news that he wouldn’t like, but it only confirmed what Emily had already told him. He didn’t care if she went to her mother’s grave, but a kid her age ought to have more going on in her life than visiting a cemetery.
“Well, that’s all right.” They rode along for a bit, the silence broken only by the clop of horses’ hooves and an occasional songbird. Then he said, “You know, if you ever want to, well, talk, I—we, it would be okay.”
“Talk about what?”
“You know—things, I guess. If something is bothering you.” Luke stumbled along, laboring under the sudden and unpleasant sensation of drowning. He didn’t know the first thing about what went on in a girl’s head. He wasn’t even sure he was supposed to. Hell, he hadn’t been raised that way. The old man hadn’t wanted to hear anyone’s opinion but his own, and Luke’s mother, a worn-out, quiet wraith, had known better than to speak up. But if Emily was right, if Rose felt like she had no one to talk to, he had to try.
“Do you ever go see Mama?”
Not for a long time, he hadn’t, but he didn’t know if he should tell Rose that. For the first year after Belinda died, the three of them—Cora, Rose, and he—went to the cemetery every Sunday. Jesus, in good weather, Cora would even pack a picnic and they’d eat on Belinda’s grave. He’d thought it was sort of ghoulish. At any rate, he discovered that instead of making him feel better, the frequent visits had affected him like acid on a wound. There had been days when the world looked so bleak he didn’t even want to get out of bed. But men didn’t give in to that kind of weakness. They just kept going, gave the world a stoic face to look at, and went about their work. There were fields and animals to tend, chores to do, mouths to feed. At night, they drank at their kitchen tables or in their barns, with the stock for company.
“I haven’t been there for a while,” he finally answered. “I imagine your grandmother doesn’t like that.”
Rose shrugged and then looked up at him. “You miss Mama, don’t you? You still love her, even though you married Emily? Grammy says you don’t.”
Damn that Cora, he simmered. “Sure, I miss her, honey.” How could he explain to a kid conflicting feelings that he had trouble understanding himself? “But . . . but I think that maybe life is for the living. Do you know what that means?”
Rose shook her head.
“I mean that your mama left us a lot sooner than any of us expected. Now she’s gone, but we’re still here. We still have years of our own lives to go on with.”
Rose seemed satisfied with his answer.
Struggling to keep the conversation going, he remarked, “Your hair looks nice today.” Her wild coffee-colored hair was braided into two long, neat plaits and tied on the ends with ribbon.
She smiled and plucked at one braid, obviously pleased that he’d noticed. “Miss Emily helped me with it.”
Chalk up another one for Emily, he thought.
“Why doesn’t Grammy like her?”
“I wouldn’t say she doesn’t like her.”
“Oh, I would.”
Luke couldn’t lie to her, but he was hard pressed to explain their complicated domestic arrangements to anyone. “We’ll work it out somehow. Try not to worry about it.”
They drove down the last hill that led into town and Luke pulled the wagon up in front of Fairdale’s small white schoolhouse. Children played in the yard, running and laughing, enjoying their freedom before the teacher came out to ring the bell.
“Thanks for the ride, Daddy.”
“See you tonight,” Luke said, watching Rose scamper down from the high seat. He looked at the other girls in the yard and saw that they were dressed very differently from his daughter. No judge of fashion, even Luke could see that she would be a target for teasing in Cora’s garish flounces. Thank God that Emily wanted to help with Rose’s clothes as well as her manners.
As he drove off toward Main Street, he sensed that he’d forged a little path into his daughter’s heart. And it hadn’t been as hard as he’d expected.
~~*~*~*~~
Luke walked into the general store and was immediately struck by the familiar scents of bacon, coffee, leather, and soap. He wasn’t much interested in shopping, but he’d always liked coming in here. Out front in the summer, a couple of men always occupied the bench Franny kept there, and in winter, they bellied up to the stove to spit, whittle, and spin yarns. It was the way her father had run the place, and Fran had kept it that way after he died. She carried a lot of different merchandise to appeal to all of her customers, and had a knack for artful displays. Behind the counter, rows of glass jars full of peas, beans, rice, and candy lined the shelves. He supposed she’d make some man a reasonable wife, if that man didn’t mind being ordered around like a flunky. Franny Eakins was bossy and insisted on being in charge—in all matters—which was one reason Luke had never been very interested in her, even when she was young.
This morning she stood behind her counter, unpacking a crate of baking soda. This was the first time he’d seen her since the day in the sandwich shop, when Rose had stolen the candy. He hoped she’d had enough time to cool off by now. “Hi, Fran. How’s business today?”
The look she shot at him from beneath her caterpillar brows—well, a lesser man might have frozen dead in his tracks. He didn’t wince, but he had no doubt that she was still mad.
“Luke,” she acknowledged.
“I need to order a new hip strap for my team.”
She set aside a box of soda and reached for a green-backed ledger on the desk behind the counter. Flipping through its pages, she ran her finger down a column, then spun the book around, pointing to his name entered there. “I see here that you owe one dollar and thirteen cents on your account. I can’t add anything to it until you pay off your balance.” She paused and lifted her chin. “That includes the candy and the pencil that your daughter stole from me.”
Other names on her list had sums next to them that were ten or twenty times higher. He’d run up much higher balances in the past, himself.
He stared at her, unblinking, until she finally dropped her haughty gaze. “One dollar and thirteen cents,” he repeated, reaching into his pocket, “as much as that, is it?” He put a silver dollar, a dime, and three pennies on the counter and pushed them closer to her. She snapped them up like a miser counting her last coin. “Is this about Rose? Or is there a problem between you and me?”
Her chin came up again. “You and me—I don’t know what you mean.”
Franny had been as obvious as Clara in her maneuvers to snag him after Belinda died. He’d never led her on, never once allowed her to believe that he regarded her as anything more than an old acquaintance. Even in their youth, he’d had nothing to do with Fran. He just wasn’t attracted to her. So he’d ignored her clumsy attempts at coquetry that she sent him from her rows of jars and boxes. That had only made her more determined. But her attitude toward him changed once he began receiving letters from Alyssa Cannon. While he’d never discussed his plans with anyone, she’d sniffed those scented letters like a bloodhound and begun giving him baleful looks. True, Rose’s antics hadn’t helped, but he sensed that Fra
n’s hostility went deeper. He had to do business with her, though, and decided to let the matter drop.
“I need that hip strap, Fran, and a package of black dye.”
Her manner was crisp and clipped, and she took his order with a minimum of chitchat. If she wondered what the dye was for, she didn’t ask. When she offered to put his purchases on account, Luke refused and paid cash. It wasn’t easy. At this time of year, he didn’t have a lot of money. But if Fran was going to pucker up like a prune over a dollar, he didn’t want to give her the chance to get snippy again.
He was just about to leave the store—couldn’t wait to leave—when his eyes fell upon a bolt of blue-green fabric on a table near the door. It was the color of a mallard’s head, rich, dark, and almost iridescent. He glanced down at the box of black dye in his hand. He could imagine that teal color on a woman with creamy skin and light hair, the sun falling upon her and making her gleam like a rare gem. And wasn’t that church social coming up?
“I’ll take some of this, too.” He pointed at the bolt.
Now Fran’s dark brows drew slightly. “What? That grosgrain silk? I just got that in.”
“Well, it’s for sale, right?”
“Yes, but, what are you—why would—” She stopped herself and her nose went up, and she was all businessy again. “How much do you want?”
“I don’t know. Enough to make a dress.”
“For Rose?”
“No, for a woman.”
~~*~*~*~~
All the way home, Luke eyed the twine-and-paper-wrapped package in the wagon bed behind him, cursing his impulsive purchase. When he was young, he’d been impetuous, making decisions with no thought of the consequences, and more than once he’d paid the price. As he grew older and settled down, trying to prove himself to both Belinda and her mother had made him circumspect and, well, maybe even stodgy, he supposed. Something had come over him today, though. He wasn’t sure if it had been Fran’s curt attitude or something less easily defined. He’d just seen that teal color and thought of how well it would go with Emily’s coloring.
Huh, as if he knew about that kind of stuff.
But now he was worried. She had asked only for black dye—what if she didn’t want this material? Franny had tried to sell him just six yards, but he didn’t know if that would be enough. So he’d bought ten. It had cost over five dollars, a hell of a lot of money for a dress or anything else that couldn’t reproduce or provide food for the table. More than five dollars for frippery. And as soon as Fran had made the first cut with her scissors, he’d known he couldn’t change his mind.
He passed Chester Manning’s farm, where he saw Chester tending his sheep. The flock looked good, as good as sheep could, anyway. Luke had never been interested in raising them himself. Last year had been hard on the Mannings. Chester had fallen off the barn roof and broken his leg, smack-dab in the middle of harvest. He was laid up for over four months, and Luke had rallied the neighbors to help bring in the Mannings’s onion crop. First they’d pulled the onions, and then everyone, including Chester’s wife Jennie and their six kids, had spread them out to dry. Chester had watched the work from the back of a wagon, where he sat on a divan brought out from their parlor, cursing his bad luck and his splinted leg. After they’d dried, they came back with wagons and drove Chester and his crop to market.
It had been a lot of work—two hundred acres worth—but that’s what neighbors did. It was so different from the way Luke had grown up—the old man had never done anything for anyone unless he stood to gain from the deed. People who acted out of charity or human decency were all saps to Cole Becker. Even those who’d occasionally helped his own family. But Cole had been such a miserable failure as a man and at life in general, Luke had finally figured out that if his father thought something was right, it must be wrong. Over the years, Luke had discovered that was usually true. So he tried to do the opposite of what Cole would have done, hoping everything would turn out.
Chester hailed him with a wave and a call. “Hey, Luke!”
“Whoa, there, whoa.” Luke pulled up the wagon next to Chester’s barbed wire fence.
The rawboned man walked along the fence to catch up to him. He still limped a little—the break had been a bad one. When he came abreast of Luke, he turned up his sad, weather-seamed face to Luke’s and shaded his eyes. He was only a couple of years older than Luke, but he had the look of a man who’d spent forty years in the outdoors. After the two exchanged the usual talk about weather, crops, and feed store prices, Chester said, “We heard about your new wife. Congratulations, Luke. Jennie is meaning to come by and say how-do to her one of these days. You know, make her feel welcome.”
Luke smiled. Chester didn’t ask a lot of nosy questions about how the marriage had come about, or comment that it was high time he took another to wife. He merely wished him well, and Luke appreciated it. “Thanks, Chester. Emily would like that. She hasn’t had a chance to meet many people yet.”
The other man nodded. “I ain’t forgot how you helped us out last year, so I have a little wedding present for you.” He turned and gestured at his flock of sheep. “You pick yourself out a ewe and a lamb. Whichever ones you want.”
“Oh, hell, Chester, you don’t have do that. I wasn’t the only one who came. A lot of folks worked to—”
“Now, now, it ain’t a matter of have to. I want to do this. Yes, everyone pitched in, and I’m grateful to each but I know that you were the one who organized ’em.” His expression was naked and earnest. “God, Luke, I’d have gone bust if you all hadn’t helped out.”
Luke knew he couldn’t offend the man’s pride by declining his offer, but he didn’t want a damned sheep. “It’s too much—you can’t be giving your flock away like that.”
In the end, though, Luke drove home with a gift he wasn’t certain he should have bought, and one he didn’t want baaing behind him in the wagon bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emily sat at the kitchen table looking at a book of dress patterns for Rose. Not knowing what might be available in Fairdale, she’d brought with her from Chicago the latest copy of Metropolitan Fashions which featured Butterick patterns. As she studied the pages, she starred with a pencil those dresses she thought the girl might like. Here were several nice ones, with simple lines and pretty aprons to wear over them. Some of the dresses had a single edge of pleats or one ruffle, but they wouldn’t smother Rose. And they would be reasonably easy projects for her, if Emily helped. She could order them directly from the catalog, and even buy fabric too, if she wanted to avoid going back to the general store. Or maybe she could take Rose on a shopping trip to Portland.
Oh, that was a grand idea. She gazed at the stove, imagining the adventure. They could catch the boat early one Saturday morning, go to one of the big department stores there—she’d overheard a pair of women talking about them on the trip from The Dalles. They’d been going all the way into Portland, and they made it sound like such a busy, cosmopolitan place. One of them mentioned a particular store, Meier and Frank, in almost reverent tones. She and Rose could have lunch in a nice café or even a tearoom, perhaps, and she could show Rose that knowing how to have proper tea wasn’t the complete nonsense that Cora had implied. It would be even nicer if Luke came too—they could stay for dinner and take a late boat back to Fairdale. It would be a wonderful day, the three of them together.
Emily’s reverie came to an abrupt end when she realized how expensive such a trip would probably be. The boat fare and the spending money they’d need were probably a lot more than Luke could afford right now.
Sighing, she rested her hand on her chin and looked at the Butterick illustrations again. Well, she could still order the patterns and even the fabric by mail, and avoid a trip to the general store. But she knew that eventually, she’d have to deal with Fran Eakins again. She would simply have to rise above the woman’s hostility. And, for all she knew, she might have actually put Fran in her place the last time she talked to h
er. Probably not, though.
Just as she marked another page in the catalog, she heard the horses drive past the house and the wagon’s iron wheels crunching on the gravel drive. Her heart did a little flip, giving her a fluttery sensation in her chest that nearly took her breath. She told herself it was simply because Luke was back with her black dye, and she could do something about the deplorable state of her own dress. But that was silly, and she knew it wasn’t true.
She wanted to see him again, to talk to him, even though he sometimes made her feel as tongue-tied as a girl Rose’s age. She didn’t like that part. That she should even be attracted to him was a mystery. He was not the kind of man she’d envisioned for herself, when she’d had the temerity—or hopeless hopefulness—to imagine a husband. She’d pictured a pale, slim, middle-class man who wore a suit every day to his job as a bank teller, or a maybe even a secretary or senior clerk. He would have dexterous hands to play a musical instrument, such as the violin, he’d like to read, and he would be well-informed about current events. Getting him to church would not be a struggle, he might serve on a social welfare committee or two, and they would lead respectable, proper lives.
None of these descriptions fit Luke Becker. He was big through the chest and shoulders, and his arms were roped with muscle and tendon that moved in a fascinating concert when he worked. He had a farmer’s hands, large, callused, and rough, but she’d seen him tend the horses with the gentleness of a physician. He probably had no musical ability, he’d grown up in questionable circumstances, had a reputation for being wild when he was young, and he drank whiskey at the kitchen table. He wore rough work clothes, had a job that got him dirty and sweaty, didn’t like going to church, and he rarely wore a suit, although he looked very nice when he did. No, he was not the man she’d pictured for herself. Circumstances and her impulsive decision had brought her to him.
Sometimes, though, a raw flicker flashed behind his weary eyes—she’d seen it this morning in her bedroom. When the “snake” had rattled in her wall again, she’d turned to Luke to point out the location, and had caught him looking at her in a way that no man ever had. It was so brief, she almost thought she’d imagined it. After all, what did she know about how men looked at women? And why should she, Emily Cannon, believe for even one second that she could evoke that flicker she’d seen in his eyes? But she was intrigued by the very possibility, even as she feared it.
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