Pocketful of Pearls

by Shelley Bates

  “No,” she replied. “The Elect believe computers are tools of the devil.”

  He stared at her. “Why?”

  “Because the monitor is like a window, letting the world into your home, the same as television. Radio is a no-no, too.”

  It had been a long time since complete irrationality had flummoxed him. He tried to think of something reasonable to say. “Do you believe that?”

  “Of course not.” She hefted the box of baby clothes onto one hip. “But my mother does.”

  “So that’s why you know where the nearest terminal is. But Dinah, it’s going to be very inconvenient, driving into town every time we need to know something.”

  She shrugged. “Convenience is for lazy people.”

  “No one could ever imagine you being lazy. But I’m thinking of Tamsen. What if she catches a virus or something and we need to know how much aspirin to give her?”

  “We call Dr. Archer.”

  “Is he a pediatrician?”

  “Well, no, but everyone goes to him for everything.”

  “What if she wakes in the middle of the night in pain from teething? She’s going to be doing that soon, isn’t she? You can’t just ring him up and ask him what to do.”

  “I could,” she said stubbornly. “Besides, she won’t be here by the time she starts getting teeth in. Tamara will have come back by then.”

  “Let’s deal with what is rather than what we wish were the case,” he said with a little more shortness than he intended. “There are loads of things we can learn if we have a laptop here. We won’t have to drive to town or call someone every time we need to find out some little fact.”

  “I can’t have a computer here. My mother would never get over the shame that such a thing came into the Elder’s house. And Phinehas would probably destroy it. He’s snapped the radio antennas off people’s cars before.”

  Was that reluctance in her tone? He pulled the high chair closer to the stairs to give himself a moment to think.

  “We’ll say it’s mine,” he said finally. “We simply must have one, and if that’s the only way, then we can keep it in the barn with me. No one need know it’s here.”

  Across the debris of who knew how many lives, they exchanged a long look. In her eyes he saw indecision and longing and a frustrated practicality.

  “All right,” she said.

  It was the voice of a woman who realized she was on the long, slippery slope to moral compromise. As far as he was concerned, it was about time.

  Chapter 12

  AFTER CONFERRING WITH Matthew on the features and functions a person would need on her laptop, Dinah went to the library with her credit card and ordered one off the Internet, complete with modem cable and carrying case. Every moment she sat at the library’s terminal, she kept one eye on the screen and the other on her fellow patrons. In all the years she’d been using the computer, she’d never been caught, but there was always a first time. And to be caught ordering a laptop would just add insult to disaster. It seemed crazy to spend so much money for something she was going to have to sell in a matter of weeks anyway, but she couldn’t argue with the logic of it.

  After the order was placed and she’d agreed to an exorbitant amount of money to have it rushed, she checked her stock portfolio and noted that she’d made enough this quarter to pay for the computer.

  A comforting thought.

  Then she checked her father’s portfolio and let the brokerage know he’d passed away and the accounts should be transferred fully into her name. No doubt she’d have to do a bunch of paperwork, but the accounts were joint, so they weren’t in probate. He may have been of the opinion that all she was good for was making dinner and cleaning house, but after the cancer diagnosis at least he’d had the sense to listen to Elsie and transfer partial control of the money to her. Of course, he did all his transactions by phone with his broker. What he didn’t know was that she had had all the accounts set up online as well and could tell him as much about them as the broker could.

  There were advantages to being underestimated.

  THREE DAYS LATER, right on schedule, the UPS truck delivered the laptop. While Dinah hid the packaging in the barn so she could use it to mail the unit to its new owner later, Matthew set it up on the table in his little suite, talking Tamsen through each step as she watched him from her carrier installing software and inserting CDs. Dinah came in as he plugged in the modem cable and set up an ISP account.

  “Now, then,” he said with satisfaction as the Internet came up, “let’s do some research.”

  As Dinah hung over his shoulder, she saw that his research skills were much better than hers. More, he had passwords to university libraries she’d never heard of. “All kinds of child psychology here,” he said, bookmarking site after site. By early evening they’d learned that Tamsen was roughly on track for development in her age group and what kinds of things they could expect to begin feeding her in the next couple of weeks if they didn’t hear from Tamara. And speaking of that . . .

  Dinah finished giving Tamsen her supper bottle and nudged Matthew off the chair. “It may be useless, but I’m going to send Tamara an e-mail.”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to communicate with her? Shunning, and all that.”

  “We call it being Silenced. And it’s a bit beside the point now, isn’t it? If I can buy a computer I can e-mail my sister.”

  She thought she saw the corners of his mouth twitch. The corners of her own were doing the same. She brought up her e-mail account and scanned it hopefully, but there was nothing but her usual financial digests and a lot of spam. She sent a note to Tammy’s mailbox telling her that she had received her manila envelope, that Tamsen was fine, and that she hoped she’d changed her mind and was on her way back.

  Tamsen needs her mom. You know as well as I do that this isn’t a good house to bring up a child in. I’m sure you can do better once you get settled and let me know where you are.

  That was getting close to blasphemy, and as close as she dared come to the subject of both of them being abused. She couldn’t bear the thought of Phinehas having unlimited access to yet another generation of Traynell girls. At the same time, opening up that subject over e-mail just wasn’t right. She could do that when Tamara came home.

  She hit “Send” and watched the screen close itself. It felt a little like throwing a ball when there was no one there to catch it, but she had to try. Someone had to make Tamara see sense.

  MATTHEW PUT HIS secondhand kettle on to boil while Dinah went out into the barn to tuck her birds in for the night. He leaned one hip against the gray Formica counter and shook his head at himself. If someone had told him a month ago that he would feel such a sense of accomplishment at causing someone to sin against her church’s doctrines, he would have recommended they see a doctor.

  And not the medical kind, either.

  But the point was he was convinced God had led him here for a reason, and he needed to talk with Dinah about that reason. She simply couldn’t be expected to live like this.

  The computer monitor some kind of cosmic window to the underworld, allowing wrong into one’s home . . .

  The Shepherds as the voices of God . . .

  Women dressed in perpetual mourning . . .

  What did God have to do with all that?

  If the good Lord’s reason for bringing him here was to talk with Dinah and help her see how skewed her perspective had become, then he needed to step outside his own comfort zone and do it. He was not a man who minded other people’s business, but it was clear Dinah was willing to let him intrude now and again, as the laptop sitting on the table proved.

  Not that he was any kind of saint, himself. In fact, like Moses, he was not eloquent, and he would just as soon the Lord used someone else. But for Dinah, apparently, there was no one else. He just had to have faith that the Lord knew what He was doing.

  For a moment he was tempted to share his own story with her. If she knew the losses
he had suffered because of Torrie Parker’s unfounded accusations, it might be a kind of bond between them. And maybe the knowledge he had gained and the research he had done on the dynamics of sexual abuse could be of some use to her. But even as the thought formed, a lump of resistance formed, too.

  He couldn’t. The poor girl had enough ugliness to deal with. Why burden her with more? She already knew he wasn’t perfect. He was broke, the next thing to homeless, and he had holes in his socks. If God needed to use a humble instrument, he fit the bill.

  No, he’d keep his story to himself. Maybe the opportunity would come where he could share his knowledge. But in Dinah’s case, sharing himself would probably do more harm than good.

  DINAH MADE SURE the chickens were comfortable on their roosts before she closed the door to the outside pen. Schatzi made her contented bubbling cluck, and a pang struck Dinah as she sat in the plastic chair and no Sheba hopped onto her knee looking for a cuddle.

  Fighting back the futile tears of loss, she walked back through the dark passage and into Matthew’s suite. He smiled as she came in, then took the boiling kettle off the burner and filled the teapot they’d found in one of the boxes in the attic. It made sense for him to have them. He loved his tea and the only time she drank it was when she was with him.

  “Everyone all right?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Everyone who was alive was just fine.

  “So tell me something,” he began. “How much do you believe in the expectations of your church?”

  “What do you mean?” Dinah slid into the other chair at the cheap little table and resisted the urge to unbuckle Tamsen from her carrier and cuddle her. She should be grateful the baby was sleeping and not roaring with hunger or discomfort.

  “Well, it seems to me there are all kinds of strictures and structures in place to keep order. It’s almost as if you concentrate more on those than on worship.”

  A wrinkle formed between her brows. “I don’t understand. The structure is there to keep us safe. The way we behave is our worship. It’s our service to God.”

  “Not having a computer is service to God?”

  Put like that, it did sound a little odd. Dinah had never given the structure of her life much thought. You looked a certain way, you behaved a certain way, and if you thought otherwise than a certain way, you certainly didn’t say anything about it. The structure was there for a reason—to show people the beauty of worshipping God.

  Not having a computer hadn’t brought anyone to God, though, she had to admit. At least, not in Hamilton Falls.

  “Let me ask it a different way,” Matthew went on when she didn’t answer. “How is God deprived if you get a computer in service to Tamsen?”

  “He isn’t,” she replied. “But it might be a stumbling block to someone else if they found out I had one.”

  “A stumbling block?”

  “If they saw that I gave in to temptation, they might be tempted, too.”

  “Even though its purpose is good and in itself, it’s harmless.”

  “Yes.” Now the preaching she’d heard against the “window into the world” was really beginning to sound silly. She’d had to accept it because the words had come from the Shepherds, who were inspired by God. “We’re supposed to obey the word of God without questioning, Matthew,” she said quietly. “Anything else means we’re disobedient. That we have a wrong spirit that isn’t Christ-like.”

  “Christ questioned all kinds of things,” he said. “He was always making people think about what they were doing. And I think you question what you’re doing a lot more than you let on.”

  The water had to be ready by now. Why wasn’t he making the tea? “That’s because I’m a bad, disobedient person. I’m supposed to be a holy vessel and most of the time I just feel like an old cracked pot that somebody threw out.” And if that wasn’t an invitation to a pity party, she didn’t know what was. Shame and embarrassment scorched her cheeks. “Sorry. That was a selfish thing to say.”

  He got up from the laptop and for a horrible moment she thought he was angry. Then her panicked brain translated his gentle movements. He was just reaching for the box of tea bags in the cupboard behind her.

  “You are none of those things,” he said softly. He poured hot water into the fat brown teapot, swished it out, and dropped the tea bags in. “You are a beautiful woman, with a kind, generous heart. That wretch of a Phinehas has taken what is loveliest and twisted it so you don’t even recognize it any more.”

  Beautiful? Was he crazy? She was skinny and awkward and all her body was good for was attracting the wrong kind of attention. Rage and self-contempt burned her throat and she bent to snatch the carrier up off the floor. The abrupt movement wakened Tamsen, who began to cry.

  Dinah hardly heard it above the roar in her own head and the desperate urge to flee. It wasn’t until she’d run across the yard and was safely in the house that she came to herself and realized Tamsen was screaming with all the fear and rage of one who believes she will never be cared for again.

  AT ONE IN the morning Dinah finally admitted that trying to sleep was pointless. A glance out the hall window, which looked out over the barn, told her she wasn’t the only one—the lights in the hired man’s suite were on, too. In fact, the only person getting any sleep was Tamsen, for which Dinah was pathetically grateful.

  After scaring the baby earlier, it had taken an hour to calm her down enough to distract her with a bottle. Tamsen knew perfectly well Dinah wasn’t her mother, so even when Dinah tried to hold and comfort her, she wasn’t having any of it. Or maybe it was because Dinah couldn’t relax—maybe the child felt the stiffness in her muscles, the rage in every fiber.

  Dinah was convinced sheer exhaustion had finally sent Tamsen into dreamland, and she’d tucked her into the old white crib they’d brought down from the attic with a sigh of relief. Who had told her that little babies were easy to take care of? It must have been Linda Bell, who looked after other people’s kids for a living. If this was the easy part, she didn’t envy Tamara the later stages of motherhood one bit.

  But it wasn’t stress over the baby that was keeping her awake now. It was the war going on inside her and the pictures her mind played on the darkened ceiling of her room.

  How could he spoil their friendship by calling her beautiful? In just the same way Phinehas had rooked her in, had shown her love and attention, and then—when she was addicted and couldn’t live without it—had begun the unspeakable.

  Now she was going to have to ask Matthew to leave. She couldn’t bear the sight of him, knowing that he was thinking of her that way. Knowing what was in his mind the moment she let her guard down. She was alone out here, and he could begin his campaign of misery at any time he chose.

  Well, she’d handled worse things than firing a hired man. She could do this, too, much as it hurt. She’d actually begun to think of him as a person, not a man, which was new in her experience. She’d even smiled at his gentle jokes and admired his skill with a computer, even if he was sort of useless at practical things like managing a walking tour on his own.

  He’d protected her and even saved her life, but that was probably just part of the buttering-up process. If she saw him as her protector, she’d be more likely to let him get close, wouldn’t she? Well, fool me once and it’s your fault, she thought. Fool me twice and it’s mine.

  He’d gone and spoiled it and proven himself to be a wolf in men’s clothing, seeking to devour. In the morning she’d hand him his wages and he could just go buy a bus ticket and devour somewhere else.

  With a decision made, and control asserted somewhere, even if it was only in her mind, Dinah turned over and tried once again to go to sleep.

  NATURALLY, ONCE SLEEP did come, she overdid it. Dinah cocked a bleary eye at the alarm clock on the bedside table and groaned. Nine thirty? Good grief, the baby had probably died of starvation. In fact, she must be dead or the screams of enraged hunger would have roused her hours before.

&nb
sp; Oh, no. Oh, no.

  Dinah crawled out of bed and staggered to the door, where she snatched her dressing gown off its hook and ran down the hall to Tamara’s old room. By default it had become the baby’s room, more because there was room for the crib and a writing desk that did duty as a changing table than for any other reason.

  The crib was empty and the carrier gone.

  Had Tammy come back in the early hours and taken her? But no, there was the diaper bag sitting next to the bed. Mystified and filled with dread, Dinah ran down the stairs and skidded to a halt in the kitchen doorway.

  Matthew looked up and smiled. “Good morning.” Tamsen lay cradled in his left arm, both little starfish hands splayed against the bottle. Her plump cheeks worked in and out, flushed with the effort of wrestling nourishment out of it.

  “This is one bottomless pit of a baby,” he said proudly. “We had one breakfast at six o’clock, and decided to have our elevenses early. At this rate she’s going to start putting on the pounds.”

  If she hadn’t been so astonished, Dinah would have found the scene comical. Matthew’s elbows stuck out at angles, as if he couldn’t quite get the knack of holding her comfortably, and he held the bottle in his fingers as if he were poking it through the bars of a cage at the zoo.

  Tamsen didn’t seem to mind one bit. In fact, she was a whole lot happier on Matthew’s lap than she had been on Dinah’s last night.

  Last night.

  The angry speech she’d rehearsed in her head seemed to be written in washable ink and it was fading by the second. How was it possible he’d forestalled Tamsen’s crying and managed to feed her twice already without waking her, Dinah? And how deeply in need of sleep was she that she’d missed it all? Most important, what depths of consideration and care did it show in this man that he’d (a) thought of all this and (b) acted on it?