Pocketful of Pearls

by Shelley Bates

  Her stomach turned over. The rumors were true. Thank goodness she’d purged herself of her second breakfast or she’d have disgraced the family right here in the dining room.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t,” she managed past the tightness in her throat.

  He looked a little embarrassed. “I know. It is terrible timing. I’m sorry.”

  “No, not because of that,” she assured him, casting about wildly for a reason not to go. “It’s just that I promised Rebecca Quinn I’d go over and visit her this afternoon.”

  Now she’d have to do that, on top of everything else. Why did she have no imagination when it came to inventing excuses? Because you’ve had so little practice, a voice in the back of her head answered. You’re not exactly prime date material, are you?

  Dear God, she hoped not.

  “You could still have lunch beforehand,” Derrick said, hope plain in his eyes.

  Was the man so obtuse he wouldn’t take no for an answer? It was obviously her lot in life to be surrounded by men who were simply not interested in her plans or wishes.

  She made a deprecating movement with the hand that wasn’t holding her Bible and hymnbook. “I need to help Mom with lunch. We have Phinehas and my aunt and uncle staying, and big meals are a bit beyond her right now.”

  They were a bit beyond her at the best of times, but Dinah would never say that aloud.

  “Oh. Okay.” This time he seemed to get it. “Maybe another time, when you don’t have so many obligations. I know how it is.”

  You have no idea. Any charitable thoughts she might have had toward Derrick Wilkinson were incinerated in a sudden burst of anger. How dare he presume to know what her life was like? A man could never know. Never. He fatuously thought he was making her drab little Sunday better for the space of a lunch, did he? He’d give her one brief hour of happiness in his wonderful company, right?

  Yes, and then think what Phinehas would do if he found out she’d been with another man. She’d pay for that hour. Oh, how she would pay.

  Her alternatives had never looked so bleak. Run—or accept. Die to herself.

  But maybe there was another alternative.

  She’d often toyed with the thought of the river, in the way a child toys with a weapon in daddy’s closet without really understanding what it means. The Hamilton River was high with runoff now. High and violent and fast.

  Dinah watched Derrick shake Phinehas’s hand and walk outside with eyes that saw neither of them.

  Maybe the river was the best alternative of all.

  Chapter 5

  PHINEHAS TOOK HIS Sunday duties seriously. Between that and serving everybody lunch, Dinah managed to not be alone with him or anyone else until he had gone upstairs to spend several hours preparing for the evening Mission service in town at the hall. As she cleaned up after lunch, she took inventory. She knew every ounce of food in the fridge—how much each shelf held, how many oranges there were in the bowl, how many slices of lunch meat remained in the meat keeper.

  She hoped Mr. Nicholas would take her suggestion and come in to do his laundry and have the sense to help himself to the food. Poor man. She was glad her aunt and uncle were leaving tomorrow after going to the lawyer’s office. Then she wouldn’t be so likely to forget she had a hired man. If only Phinehas would leave as well. Then she’d be free.

  Well, at least for this afternoon, she was relatively free.

  Oh, wait.

  She’d said she was going over to Rebecca Quinn’s, so she’d better do it. With her luck, Derrick would mention her proposed visit next time he was in Rebecca’s bookshop, and when he found out she hadn’t gone, that it was just an excuse not to go to lunch with him, his feelings would be hurt.

  A daughter of the favored family did not go about lying and gratuitously hurting people’s feelings.

  No, she had to go, when all she wanted to do was hide in the barn with Sheba and have a nice, long cuddle.

  Her mother beamed when Dinah told her she needed to take the car into town to see Rebecca. “You do that, dear. Visiting the elderly builds up treasure in heaven.”

  By that reckoning, Dinah’s heavenly account was in great shape. She had to smile at Elsie’s description of Rebecca as “elderly.” They were only half a dozen years apart, and in Dinah’s opinion her mother was a lot closer to “elderly” than Rebecca Quinn, who ran her own business with calm competence and lived in a beautiful house. The thought of the sunny, spacious apartment on the top floor recently vacated by Julia McNeill was enough to set Dinah’s teeth on edge with envy. What she wouldn’t give to be able to live independently. If she lived in Rebecca’s apartment and got a job again in town, Phinehas wouldn’t be able to come and visit. He wouldn’t be able to stay with a single woman on her own the way he stayed at her parents’ house, and if she were working, the most he’d get out of her would be lunch at a local café.

  She would never have to be alone with him again. Ever.

  Dreams.

  She sighed. She’d given up on dreams. They were as insubstantial as worldly people’s cigarette smoke and just as harmful.

  REBECCA WAS A little surprised to see Dinah on her doorstep, but she hid it well. Evidently she’d had a lot of practice at being the recipient of Sunday afternoon visits.

  “How lovely to see you, Dinah.” She shook hands cordially. “Are you here to ask about the apartment? Because if you are, of course, I can’t transact business on the Lord’s day.”

  Dinah stared at her. Was she so transparent? If she showed her feelings about something as simple as an apartment, what might she show about things that were terrible in their importance?

  “N-no,” she stammered. She sat down a little heavily on Rebecca’s English chintz couch. If she ever were to have an apartment, she’d have furniture just like this. Comfortable, with beautiful roses printed on it. And lots of yellow. She would love to be able to live with yellow, even if wearing it wasn’t permitted. “I just came by to—to bring you some eggs and see how you were.”

  Eggs. I need to take some to the Blanchards, too. Mustn’t forget.

  “How kind of you.” Rebecca took the eggs and stowed them carefully in the refrigerator. “But really, I should be visiting you. How is your mother?” She sat in the easy chair opposite Dinah.

  “She’s holding up as well as can be expected. Aunt Margaret and Uncle John are a great comfort to her. And so is Phinehas, of course.”

  She felt like a parrot, mouthing the same lines to everyone she met.

  “And what about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. How are you doing? I imagine the burden of making everyone comfortable is falling on you.”

  Dinah wondered if such graceful honesty was the product of age or experience. She wished she could say what she thought, just once. What a relief it must be to take control of your own words and scatter them where you wanted to, without fear of the consequences.

  “I’m all right,” she said at last.

  “It’s a pity you’re not interested in the apartment,” Rebecca mused, her alert blue gaze never leaving Dinah’s face, her spine straight, her hair a perfect cloud of silver around her head. “I need a tenant and most of the girls in town are too young.”

  Temptation opened its sharp jaws and bit Dinah hard. “I have no way to pay the rent, Rebecca,” she choked out. “I had to leave my job at the bank when Dad got so bad.”

  “I’m in need of an assistant at the bookshop. Julia gave me lots of notice, and I’ve had a number of applicants since she went to Seattle, but I’ve been waiting for just the right person. Not everyone can put up with me, you see.”

  She smiled, and Dinah’s throat closed with sorrow and gratitude and frustration at the unfairness of life. Rebecca was offering her everything she wanted as casually as some people said “Pass the butter.” And she had no choice but to refuse.

  But not just yet. In a moment. She wanted to savor the sweetness of the offer and its possibilities, just for a mom
ent.

  “Do you hear from Julia?” she whispered.

  “Yes, regularly. I do speak to people who are Out, you know, dear. They were married in January, she and Ross. Did you know?”

  Dinah shook her head.

  “And little Kailey, his daughter, was flower girl. It was very small and private, with just me and his family there, but they’re so happy it filled the whole room. I took lots of pictures, if you’d like to see them.”

  Dinah stood abruptly. “Thanks very much, but I need to get back home. And thank you for the job offer, but I have so much to do with running the ranch and looking after Mom that I just wouldn’t be able to handle working in town as well. I do appreciate your thinking of me.”

  Barricading herself behind the formal phrases, she got herself out the door and away from Rebecca’s concerned, confused gaze. Halfway home she pulled over to the side of the highway next to the lake, in a graveled space where fishermen parked their vehicles. Gripping the steering wheel like a drowning person, she wept all her grief and frustration and envy out into the cooling silence of the car.

  It was a well-insulated car. None of the fishermen even looked up.

  It took about twenty minutes before she got herself under control, and then a glance into the rearview mirror told her she’d better give it five more. It would be just her luck if some of the Elect passed her on the highway, and what would they think of her red-rimmed eyes, wet face, and trembling mouth?

  Maybe they’d think she was grieving her father. But maybe not. She couldn’t risk any gossip.

  When she finally got home, she found that—a miracle—Elsie had taken it upon herself to start dinner. Wrung out from the emotional storm, Dinah set the table on automatic and only came to life when the roasted chicken, green beans, cauliflower with cheese sauce, and mashed potatoes were dished up and set in front of her. Then she discovered she was ravenous.

  After supper, she glanced into the laundry room and remembered she needed to take Matthew Nicholas a plate instead of dividing the leftovers between herself and Sheba. She filled one, covered it with a sheet of plastic, and smuggled it outside under the jacket laid over her arm.

  The chickens came running at the happy prospect of a sunset snack, but Sheba was not among them. Dinah convinced them that the plate was not meant for them and tossed them a handful of scratch. Even when she called, “Sheba! Treats!” the black-and-white hen did not appear to take first dibs—the right of the alpha hen—on the snack she loved.

  Dinah searched the barn, calling, but her darling was nowhere to be found. Finally, she knocked on the apartment door, and when Matthew Nicholas answered it, handed him the plate absently and said, “Have you seen Sheba? I can’t find her anywhere.”

  As if to remind himself that he had to answer the question before he could eat, he spread one hand over the plastic. “No. I’ve been reading all afternoon. Shall I help you look?”

  Dinah frowned. “No, I’ve searched all over already. You don’t suppose she got out of the pen, do you?”

  “She might have. But the fencing seems very secure.”

  “I’m going to look. You stay here. My mother would have a fit if she looked out the window and saw a strange man rambling around the place.”

  “I did shave,” he said, straightening. “I look relatively human.”

  But she was in no mood to trade gentle jokes with him. Sheba was missing. Please, God, don’t let her have been eaten by something. Help me find her. I’ll be good, I promise. Just help me find her.

  A search of the yard that extended out to the edge of the woods proved fruitless, but she didn’t find a heap of feathers inside the tree line, either. That was a positive sign. Maybe Sheba had gone broody and was hiding a clutch of eggs somewhere.

  A second search of the barn turned up some stray eggs, but no Sheba. Someone had to have seen her.

  “Mom?” Inside, she pushed open her mother’s bedroom door and found her lying back on the pillows, a cloth over her eyes. “Have you seen Sheba anytime today? I can’t find her anywhere.”

  Elsie stirred and moaned. “Keep your voice down, dear.” Her voice was weak. “I did a little too much this afternoon. My head hurts. Who or what is Sheba?”

  “My alpha hen. The big black-and-white Wyandotte. She seems to be missing.”

  “You have names for them?”

  “Mom, of course. They all know their own, too. Chickens are smart. But have you seen her anytime today? Like when you went outside?”

  “If it’s that big black-and-white one,” her mother sighed, “yes, I’ve seen it.”

  “Oh, good. Where did—”

  “I had Uncle John butcher it for dinner. The Bible says we’re to provide our best for the Lord. That bird was so big and fat, and you know how Phinehas loves a nice roast chicken.”

  THE SCREAM FROM inside the house pierced even the walls of the barn.

  Alarmed, Matthew dropped the ancient issue of Western Cattleman he’d found in the tack room and leaped off the bed. In the open area of the barn, the chickens were standing up on their roosts and murmuring uneasily.

  The back door slammed and he ran to the nearest window, being careful to keep out of sight in case the person running down the steps was not Dinah.

  But it was. Her arms flapped, her legs pumped, and her mouth was frozen in a silent scream as she tore across the yard and around the corner of the barn. He dashed to the door that opened on the side facing the mountain and yanked it open in time to see Dinah fall to her knees on the rubbish pile with a howl that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

  She vomited violently on the ground. She didn’t even bother to wipe her mouth as she reached over the rubbish heap and picked up a limp object with both hands, cradling it as if it had been a child or a small creature.

  He stepped outside and moved closer to get a better look. With a jolt, he realized what she held.

  It was the head and neck of a chicken. Black-and-white feathers covered it. Feathers that were still glossy and thick.

  Sheba.

  He had known she was attached to her birds. But he hadn’t known that attachment went this deep. This was the grief of a mother for her child. Or of a lonely child for her only friend.

  Oh, God. Oh, dear God. Tell me what to do.

  He moved without thinking, putting himself between the unknown threat and the trembling, weeping woman in the rubbish who was stroking the bird’s head with gentle fingers. The warm, sharp smell of vomit and rotting vegetables billowed into his nostrils as he knelt beside her. He hesitated, then placed an arm around her shoulders.

  “Dinah.”

  With a shriek, she jumped to one side and scrambled to her feet, clutching the limp object to her chest with hands that were streaked with its blood.

  “They killed her! They killed Sheba, my sweet girl, the only thing in this whole world that I care about—they killed her and served her up to him for dinner!”

  “I’m so sorry. How is it possible?”

  She glared at him, wild eyed. “Why didn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you do something? You must have heard them catch her and take her away!”

  The last thing he wanted was to be shoved into the enemy camp. “I must have been asleep. I did nod off this afternoon while you were out. And even if I hadn’t been, I’m not supposed to show myself, am I?”

  “Who cares?” she shouted. “You could have saved her life!”

  He couldn’t explain the futility of a homeless man attempting to stop a property owner from butchering one of her own chickens in her own yard. But neither could he say such a thing to Dinah.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said again. “I should have done something.” What else could he say? He’d had his moments of feeling inadequate and voiceless in the past, but not like this.

  “No,” she moaned, the fire dying as suddenly as it had roared into hysterical life. “I should have been here. It’s my fault. I let myself be tempted by the apartment and this is what ha
ppened. My poor, poor darling. She was punished instead of me.” She stroked the pitiful remains of her pet, and even though he didn’t quite understand what she meant, Matthew’s heart squeezed with compassion.

  “Come,” he said. “We need to give her a decent burial. She deserves better than the rubbish heap.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “She does.”

  As Dinah sat on a fallen log and crooned over her lost bird, Matthew dug a deep hole near a big rock in the trees, where no one at the house could see what was going on. When he finished, he leaned on the shovel and took a brief inventory of his vital signs. His strength must be returning. He wasn’t even panting.

  Dinah wrapped Sheba’s remains in a cloth she’d found in the barn and laid the little bundle in the hole with careful tenderness.

  “Would you like to say a few words?” he asked. “Or shall I pray?”

  “No,” she said, still on her knees. “Even though she was more human than those people down there.”

  “I think that might cover it.” His smile was gentle and sad, and she held his gaze. Sorrow and anger fought with a newborn sense of recognition in her eyes. Recognition of what, he wasn’t sure. Companionship, perhaps? Complicity?

  He held a hand out to her, and she took it and got to her feet. Then her face seemed to waver and dissolve and she began to cry, with the huge, heaving sobs of a small child who has not yet learned control, hugging herself and rocking back and forth.

  Matthew filled the hole in much less time than it had taken to dig it, tamped the soil down hard, and leaned the shovel against the rock. Then he stepped over to Dinah and wrapped his arms around her. He wasn’t sure whether she would accept his comfort, but something in her complete abandonment of control made him offer what little he could.

  She sobbed against his chest for a few seconds, then seemed to recollect where she was. With a gasp, she jerked away. She would not meet his eyes. Wiping her cheeks with the heel of her hand, still hiccuping a little, she set off across the field to the house and did not look back.