Such an odd man. Good-hearted, but so strange. Hannah remembered her vow about marrying a believer, and Marcus was the only single man left in town who preferred church to the saloon. She should set her cap for him. She’d had such a thought when at Nelda’s wedding, noticing Marcus as he stood up for Rudy.
But did being a fine man mean he’d be a fine husband? Hannah suspected he’d never speak to her if they were married, and he certainly would never speak to her enough to ask her to marry him. Why, he’d never speak to her enough to ask her to join him for coffee!
Add to that, as his wife, she’d spend great stretches of time picking him up when he fell over his own two feet.
She went on to her room in the diner’s attic. When she got there, it was so dismal it wiped all thoughts of Marcus from her mind.
Chapter 5
Hannah was practically his neighbor.
Marcus wanted her closer still. He wanted her in his house, as his wife. But he hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell her that.
Yet.
But her moving to town seemed like progress, if a man measured progress at the speed of an elderly gout-riddled tortoise.
Or if a man was an idiot.
She walked the length of Main Street at ten minutes after four every afternoon on her way home from school, right past the bank window.
Mark knew because he was newly in the habit of going for coffee at the diner at exactly ten minutes after four.
Even now he was standing near the bank window, watching down the street. If he was attentive—and he was—he could see her coming out of the schoolhouse at the far end of town. The school was set apart just a bit, and there was a livery stable that blocked that end of town, but Hannah was visible for about three seconds as she walked down the steps. Then she vanished behind the livery and was too close to be visible as she walked along the bank’s side of the street.
But he knew she was coming.
He had just enough time to get his coat on and step outside casually just as she came up to the bank.
“Marcus, going for coffee?”
“I am. How was school?” Why didn’t he ask her to join him for coffee? Why didn’t he tell her he’d like her to stay and have dinner with him? Why didn’t he tell her everyone in the whole town called him Mark and had for years? Why didn’t he stop being such a half-wit?
It had taken him two weeks to come up with “How was school?”
“We had two boys out today with the measles. I think the rest of the students have had it before, so . . .” Hannah always had a story, told in her quiet way. Which was good because it required no talking from Mark’s tied tongue. They walked nearly one full block together. The best two minutes of Mark’s day.
Then he’d get to the diner door and tell her good-bye and turn in.
One of these days he’d ask her to stay with him, join him for coffee. Except the coffee was so awful it would be an offense to lure Hannah into drinking a cup.
They reached the diner. “Good-bye, Hannah.”
“Good-bye, Marcus.” Hannah didn’t even pause. She took a few more steps, turned, and went down the alley to reach the back door to the diner, which led to a stairway up to her room.
And Mark had to go into the diner and drink that foul-tasting burnt mess they called coffee. It was none too good any time, and by this time of day it was nothing but black sludge and bitter dregs. Not unlike Mark’s life. He shuddered through every sip, gulping it fast, like bitter medicine, then carefully did it all over again the next day.
He went back to the bank, and his father was standing just inside with his pocket watch open. When Mark came in, Father snapped the lid shut on the watch. “Two minutes for the walk. Two minutes for the coffee. One minute to walk back. Five minutes of your life, every day.” Shaking his head, Father added, “Why don’t you just ask the girl out to dinner, for heaven’s sake?”
Mark shrugged out of his coat. He’d pretended that he didn’t know what Father meant the first time they’d had this talk, and now he was beyond pretense. “She barely knows I’m alive. She only glances at me; she never even slows down. It’s like she can’t wait to get our little walk over with. No, that’s not right—she doesn’t walk faster, either. She doesn’t even care enough about me to dislike me. She’d pay more attention if a stray dog trotted beside her.”
“Well, you could ask her to put a collar around your neck. Buckling it would slow her up a bit.” Father laughed.
“Mark, what is wrong with you?”
Wincing, Mark looked past his father. “Ma, I didn’t see you there.”
“You’re clearly not up to the task of asking that woman to spend time with you,” she said.
Ma was small and round. She always wore beautiful dresses and had her white hair coiled neatly atop her head. She had a pleasant smile and the temperament of a steaming locomotive that would run you right over if you didn’t get out of her way.
“I declare it’s time someone stepped in,” she said.
Mark felt his face heating up. He knew it would be flaming red in moments. His normal reaction was to run and find a private place until his head turned back to a normal color, but not today—not with his mother saying such a thing.
“You wouldn’t say anything, would you?” Mark stood right in his mother’s way as if he’d block her from leaving. He loved his ma dearly, but right now he was tempted to drag her home and lock her in the attic, as he would any mad relative. If he had an attic.
His mother of course had no fear of him, which was a terrible shame.
“I would never embarrass you, Mark.” She tapped him on one of his red cheeks.
“It’s just that she’s been through so much, with Charlie dying and all.” Charlie was the boy Hannah had intended to marry, one of Mark’s best friends. Charlie’s death had been such a shock to all of them. Mark wouldn’t have dreamed of approaching Hannah as she was grieving his loss. But that had been nearly six years ago now. “Then her ma was ill, and then her ma died. And her brothers needed her after her ma’s death.”
“Well, they certainly don’t need her anymore, now that Essie is caring for them.”
“But I can see how being dumped in that attic room affected her. She needs time to get over the shock. I’m waiting until she’s adjusted.”
Ma snorted. “The earlier reasons may be good ones, but having to live over the diner isn’t shocking enough to stop a reasonable man.”
“Implying I’m not reasonable?” Mark, who’d excelled in math and balanced account books for a living, was the very definition of reasonable.
“I’m not implying anything. I’m saying it out loud, straight to your face that you, a man I’m proud to call my son, one of the finest, smartest, most handsome young men imaginable, are ridiculous when it comes to Hannah, and you know it.”
He’d been enjoying her kind words until she said “most handsome.” That was his mother’s love affecting her eyesight.
Ma wasn’t done. “Leaving her in that room to get over her shock is the very opposite of reasonable. She’s a lovely woman living alone in a tiny room. It’s probably cold up there. It’s probably tainted from years of fumes from Rosella’s miserable cooking. It might be infested with vermin. It might even be a firetrap.”
Ma was making things up now, but she was good at it. Now there was frozen in Mark’s mind a vision of Hannah, cold, dodging rats, dying in flames. Not fair.
“I just want to give her a bit more time.” In truth, he needed to give himself a bit more time. But he’d speak to Hannah of personal things soon. He just had to work up the nerve. “Promise me you won’t meddle.”
“Now, Mark, you know I’d never do anything to cause you unhappiness.”
He gave a sigh of relief. She patted his fiery cheek and swept around him, moving very fast for an older woman.
Marcus considered himself a bright man, but for some reason it didn’t occur to him until he was lying in bed that night that, honestly, his mother’s promi
se was incredibly vague.
Chapter 6
It was getting harder to believe she’d ever go home as Christmas drew near. Hannah’s whole family had gone on without her. Even Jeremy appeared to be getting accustomed to Hannah’s absence and had started calling Essie Ma. Essie was untidy but she fed the boys well and didn’t ever punish them that Hannah could tell. Better than if she was too harsh, but Hannah’s little brothers were getting to be a handful at school.
Hannah almost wished Essie would be more of a taskmaster when Hannah had to scold Abe for tromping into the school without wiping his feet.
“Ma don’t fuss at me for a few clumps of mud, Miss Taylor.” His sass died on his lips. “Uh . . . I mean, Hannie.”
It cut straight to Hannah’s heart.
She was still fretting over how to manage her unruly little brothers when, walking home from school on a Friday night, Hannah met Dottie Brighton on the street.
Hannah saw Marcus come out of the bank, look her way, hesitate, then turn and head for the diner alone. He would normally have walked with her, but he wouldn’t consider waiting, of course. It wasn’t like he considered their daily chat important. She thought his shoulders slumped more than usual.
“I just heard at Claasen’s that Essie’s expecting a baby.” Dottie smiled as if chatting about the simplest of happy news.
“A b-baby?” It wasn’t simple to Hannah. It was stunning. And Dottie told her as if it were all over town.
“Yes, of course. Hadn’t you heard? Well, I’m sure it comes as no surprise. After all, Essie’s a fairly young woman, and you know your pa. Always wanting more sons.” Dottie rolled her eyes and headed on home, not knowing she’d just blown Hannah’s life apart.
Hannah couldn’t remember how she’d gotten to her room. She swung her door open and stopped.
For the first time she really saw where she lived. She’d never planned on staying, so she’d paid it no mind. Until now.
It was dingy and untidy. Her flyspecked windows mocked her. The bed in the corner of the single room was unmade. A wooden crate sitting on the floor held her clothes. A single shelf in the kitchen held her plate, bowl, and cup. One of each was all she owned. She’d never needed more, because she’d never invited anyone over for dinner.
The few cooking utensils Essie had left behind were stacked with the plate and the meager supply of foodstuffs Hannah kept on hand. The potbellied stove burned badly because the soot had never been cleaned out.
Hannah realized she’d deliberately chosen to live so poorly because to make the place pretty would be to admit she was staying.
The news about Essie and a baby had torn the blinders off Hannah’s eyes. She was never going home. No, better to say, she was home.
Well, it was high time to face the facts. Her father’s remarriage hadn’t been a betrayal to anyone. In fact, to the rest of Dry Gulch, it had been a foregone conclusion. A new baby on the way was the same.
And now here she stood, a woman who’d always taken pride in her home, when all along it had been her pa’s. Now that she had her own, it was slovenly and shameful.
With a shudder Hannah admitted she wasn’t going anywhere. And that meant she needed to make this tiny attic into a home.
Essie had said it, but it had taken Hannah a long time to hear her.
It was time to grow up.
Hannah spent Saturday on her knees, scrubbing. She did plenty of praying while she was down there, too. And if once in a while she caught herself scrubbing with more force than necessary, and realized she was imagining her father’s face under her scouring brush, well, she stopped and went back to her prayers.
Her knees ached when she finally finished the last grungy little corner of the room. She lifted the full washbasin, headed down the narrow stairway, and heaved the last of many buckets of gritty brown water into the alley.
She climbed back up the stairs and took stock of the place. Her room was so small the bed took up one whole wall, but it was neatly made with clean linen. The beautiful wedding-ring quilt she’d had stored in her hope chest now covered it.
The gleaming window in the wall between the bed and the newly cleaned stove now had a pretty curtain of tatted lace. Hannah’s open hope chest sat below the window, and the embroidered linens Hannah had painstakingly created with her own hands were spilling out of it.
She had several dresses and her cloak hanging from nails on the wall opposite the bed. A wooden crate on the floor under her dresses held her other bits of clothing.
Her only other possession was Essie’s chair.
Hannah only controlled the urge to toss the ugly chair down the steps and out into the alley because she had nowhere else to sit. But soon. She had to do something soon. And she knew just what.
She was going to buy herself a Christmas present. She went to the window and looked outside, afraid she’d let the whole Saturday slip past while she worked. It was late afternoon, but the businesses weren’t closed yet. She gave herself a quick sponge bath to wash away all the grime, then quickly changed from her housedress to a fresh blue woolen one. With nimble fingers she undid her braid, combed her disheveled hair, rebraided it, and twisted it into a tidy bun at the base of her neck.
She pulled on her cloak against the December weather, tossed one last disgruntled look at the chair, and marched down the stairway and out into the sharp cold of the north-Texas winter. She went straight to the bank.
Marcus Whitfield was seated behind the counter. Hannah considered the man as he sat there. He was her friend even though he never spoke a word that wasn’t required of him. They had their daily walk together, which she realized for the first time he could have avoided with little trouble simply by waiting until she’d passed the bank on her walk home.
He didn’t speak much to her, but she knew he could talk just fine. She’d heard him visiting with others after church. But when she wandered near, Marcus always turned quiet.
“Merry Christmas, Marcus.”
He looked up from his ledgers reluctantly, as if he were reading a riveting novel instead of columns of numbers.
“Hannah.” He nodded with one small tilt of his chin. He silently waited for her to speak.
“I’d like to withdraw ten dollars from my bank account, please. I’m buying myself a new chair for Christmas.”
“Claasen’s.” Marcus went to the cashier’s window and opened the drawer in front of him on that single cryptic word, but Hannah knew what he’d meant.
“The general store has chairs, then?” she asked curiously. “I thought I’d need to have one built. I don’t remember seeing any chairs in the store.”
Marcus stared into the drawer, as usual not making eye contact with her. “Settlers lightened their load. Just today.”
“Oh, I hope there’s something there I can use. The single chair in my place is so dreary. I want to brighten up the place a bit.” Some twist of loneliness made her add, “I’m making some changes, Marcus. I’ve just now realized that I’ve spent the last years feeling sorry for myself. Grieving for Ma, raising my little brothers, missing Charles.” Charles was the boy she thought she’d marry until he was killed in a fall from a bucking horse. “All in all, I’ve wasted years of my life. That’s a sad thing for a woman only twenty-two to admit, isn’t it?”
“They’ve been tough years.” That was a whole sentence, which for Marcus was pretty good.
“Yes, yes, it has been tough. I suppose I earned the right to every tear I’ve shed in that time. Thank you for reminding me.”
Marcus surprised her then by looking into her eyes. She could see the struggle he had lifting his chin, which seemed fastened to his chest when she was around, and she appreciated that he made the effort. She was also a little surprised to notice how pure blue his eyes were. Intelligence gleamed out of his eyes along with his shyness. He’d been smart in school. The two of them always competing for top of the class—Marcus usually bested her.
“I can help get the chair up to your
room . . . that is, if you find one,” he said politely.
Two sentences. A personal record for Marcus. “Why, thank you, Marcus. I hadn’t really thought about how I would carry it, because I didn’t expect to find one so quickly. I’ll let you know.”
Hannah took the ten-dollar coin from him and said again, “Thank you.” And then she left the bank, a woman on a mission.
She crossed the street and walked into Claasen’s. Essie was there shopping. Pa was nowhere in sight, and neither were Hannah’s little brothers. Essie was talking with Marcus Whitfield’s mother and Gertie Claasen. Dottie Brighton was there, too, visiting with Grace Weber and guiding her through the store, pointing out what merchandise there was, so sightless Grace could choose the items she wanted.
Every person in the store turned when Hannah came in. Essie and Mrs. Whitfield exchanged a glance that was a bit too sharp. She wondered if they’d been talking about her, but that was unlikely. Dottie and Grace exchanged a few quiet words, too, but Hannah assumed Dottie was telling Grace who had come in.
She greeted them with a special word for Grace, who at one time had taught at the school with Hannah. Then Hannah’s gaze fell on a stack of furniture jumbled in the store so that it blocked the shelves on one wall. The first thing she noticed was a wooden rocking chair just like the one she’d rocked her little brothers in.
Hannah asked, “How much do you want for that chair, Mrs. Claasen?” Hannah hoped Essie didn’t take offense that her old chair wasn’t good enough. But Essie didn’t seem like an overly sensitive sort, which was a good trait when dealing with Hannah’s pa.
“Two dollars. Like as not these folks thought they could bring their whole house west with ’em.” Mrs. Claasen sniffed.
Hannah noticed a small, delicately carved table and two matching wooden chairs. And there was a beautifully polished wooden bed frame leaning in pieces against one wall.
Essie and Prudence Whitfield seemed to be talking about something terribly important. Hannah didn’t know the women were overly friendly. Dottie and Grace went and joined in the quiet conversation.
A Match Made in Texas Page 26