“Yep.”
“Then go ask her to come here!” Richard barked. A few heads turned at the sound of his voice but soon returned to their meals. The waitress, like the obedient dog he considered her, scurried off. Try as he might, he couldn’t suppress the rise in his hopes.
Minutes later, the woman returned with the other waitress, the one she had called Maude. Unlike the first woman, Maude was stick-thin and tall, her gangly arms hanging limply at her sides. Together, they were almost comical, their shapes reminding Richard of a female version of the actors Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
Once again Richard took the picture from his pocket. “Have you seen this woman?” he said and handed it to Maude.
She looked at it intently. Then, slowly at first but gaining in momentum, she began to nod her head. Richard could barely contain his excitement as Maude said, “Yeah. I seen her in here last week. I remember ’cause it was the day of that big storm, and there weren’t too many folk come to the diner.”
“Are you sure it was her?” Richard prodded.
“Yeah.”
“You need to be certain!”
“Mister,” Maude explained, one hand planted on her bony hip, “if there’s one thing we get used to in this line a work, it’s people’s faces. Most of the folks around here ain’t as stupid as city folks think we are. She’s a face I’d be sure to remember.”
Richard sighed heavily. All of the work he had done, all of the roads he had taken that had led to nothing but dead ends, had finally produced a result. He was on the right track. Finally, he knew which direction she’d taken.
He was feeling happy with himself, nearly giddy. All he needed to do was to keep following the road until he found her. To that end he asked, “What towns lie farther up the road to the east?”
“There’s Vincent, Beauville, Lee’s Point, and then Connelly on the way to the river,” Maude explained.
Triumphantly, Richard said, “Ladies, I do believe I will have that piece of pie, after all!” As the two of them left to retrieve his food, Richard took another long look at the photograph of Adrianna. Even in the stench of the diner, he swore he could still remember the fragrance of her perfume. It wouldn’t be long before they were reunited and then married. He smiled, and his lips trembled at the thought.
Soon . . . you will be mine!
S
TANDING ON HER
tiptoes, Adrianna peered at the top of the armoire in the corner of the living room. She’d spent the bulk of the morning searching the house high and low for any books to use in teaching Jesse, but so far she had come up empty-handed. Even now, the armoire yielded nothing but more dirt and dust motes.
Was there anywhere in the whole house that Lola had actually cleaned?
Disgruntled, Adrianna stood with her hands on her hips. With the ordeal of the previous night over, she’d hoped that the day would settle into a more normal routine. Sleep had come fitfully, her mind tossing and turning over the fight at the tavern. When she closed her eyes, all she could see was Reuben standing before her at the piano, his lips curled in an ugly sneer. Only by replaying the moment when Quinn’s lips touched hers was she able to calm herself enough for sleep to claim her.
When she’d wakened, Quinn had already left for the lumber camp.
When on earth did that man sleep
? After a quick bite of a hardly passable breakfast, she had visited Jesse in his room and told him of her intention to begin some rudimentary instruction until she or Quinn could talk to his teachers at the school. He’d grumbled, much as she’d expected him to, but reluctantly agreed to her plan. She’d happily set off in search of material. Now, over an hour later, she’d found nothing except discarded pulp magazines, and her initial elation had begun to wane.
So far, she had resisted the urge simply to ask Lola if there were any books in the house. The woman hadn’t uttered a word during breakfast, nibbling away on a piece of toast like a determined mouse. Adrianna had watched her warily. Adding what Quinn had said about the housekeeper’s relationship with Reuben to the way Lola had treated her from the moment she’d arrived at the Baxter home made Adrianna want as little to do with her as possible. Still, this wasn’t about the bitterness between the two of them . . . this was about Jesse. It was also about what she had promised Quinn. With a deep breath and extra purposefulness in her step, Adrianna set off to find Lola.
She was standing near the windows, staring out the filthy glass at the day beyond. Yet again, Adrianna’s mind raced over all of the things Lola
should
be doing, but she bit her tongue and came to a stop behind her. Slowly, as if she had just noticed that there was someone else in the room, Lola turned to face Adrianna, her face a mask of disdain
.
“What do you want?”
she snapped.
Swallowing the urge to snap back at the other woman, Adrianna explained, “I’m trying to find some books that will help Jesse with his lessons. Do you know if there are any here?”
“So there is something you don’t know.” Lola sneered and pushed her stringy brown hair from her face. “Must be hard for you to admit you don’t know everything.”
“Are there any books here or not?”
“Why the hell do you want to teach that boy anything?” Lola spat, the sugar-sweet voice she used when in Quinn’s presence as absent as he was. “It ain’t like he’s gonna get out of that chair and go off to college. Even if he walks again, he’ll still be stuck right here in Lee’s Point. Ain’t no amount of books is ever gonna change that.”
Try as she might to retain her composure, Adrianna’s patience was wearing thin. “He
is
going to walk again, and when he does, he’ll need to have finished his schooling if he has any intention of making a decent life for himself.”
“Does Quinn know what you’re doing?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying,” Lola spat. “Once him and me are married, we’re gonna sell the Whipsaw so we’ll have money. Then we can get down to what really matters . . . makin’ babies!”
Adrianna’s stomach churned at the very thought. She desperately wanted to lash out at the brash woman, to let her know that she was a servant here and until she and Quinn were married, that is all she would be, but Adrianna knew that her words would accomplish nothing except to make matters worse. She had to keep her personal feelings out of the situation for Jesse’s sake.
“All I want is to know if there are any books in the house,” she reiterated.
Lola sized her up for a moment, the scorn in her eyes speaking volumes of what she thought about the woman standing before her. With a shrug, she turned her attention back to the window.
For a moment, Adrianna thought that Lola intended to ignore her, but she said, “There’s a box up in the attic, but I can’t say for sure what’s in it.”
“Where is . . . ?”
“. . . The attic? Even an idiot knows where an attic is.”
“What I meant was, how do I get there—”
Lola cut her off. “At the end of the hallway there’s a door.”
Without a word of thanks, Adrianna turned on her heel and left the room.
Every word that comes out of that woman’s mouth irritates me.
For the life of her, she couldn’t fathom why Quinn employed her. Adrianna tried to tamp down her anger as she headed for the door leading to the attic.
As she passed by Jesse’s room, she glanced in to see him lying on the bed reading one of his magazines. She went up the stairs, continuing down to the end of the hallway, and pulled open the door leading to the attic. Adrianna was instantly assaulted by a wave of stale, warm air. Before her, the narrow steep stairs extended upward into a murky darkness. She fumbled along either side of the doorway, feeling for a light switch but found none.
She muttered a seldom-used swear word to herself.
Leaving the door open behind her for some extra light, she grabbed on to a railing and began to make her way upward to the attic.
At the top of the stairs, Adrianna looked across the attic to the small window. She stood still, allowing her eyes to adjust to the scant light that came through the dirty pane.
Even before her eyes were able to make out any details, she felt the heat. The attic was an oven. Sweat instantly began to bead on her forehead and then run down her cheeks. Every breath she took seemed to weigh on her chest like a load of bricks. The heavy air was full of dust and mold. It must have been a long time since the attic had been aired, as even the small movements she made had stirred up the dust.
Finally, her eyes began to make out shapes. The pitched roof of the house ran along its entire length. Boxes of all shapes and sizes were piled here and there across the rough floor. A tailor’s mannequin had tipped over and leaned precariously against a dilapidated dresser. The attic in Quinn’s house was definitely a refuge for discarded items.
“Where shall I look first?” she said aloud.
Making her way cautiously around the stairs, she inched forward into the gloomy attic. Waves of heat washed over her as she moved. Her clothing began to stick to her as rivulets of sweat ran down between her breasts.
“Find the books and get the heck out of this place,” she said to herself.
The first box that she came to held discarded clothing, as did the second. The third one she opened appeared to hold nothing but everyday trash, easier to toss up into the attic than to take where it belonged. If she were to make a wager, Adrianna would swear that this was Lola’s doing. She’d not put anything past that lazy woman!
Suddenly, a movement out of the corner of her eye startled her. In that split second, she imagined rats running along the base of the attic’s walls, making a beeline for the stairs in order to block her escape. Now the air, thick and hot, seemed to magnify in its intensity around her, smothering her as if it were a blanket.
Moments later, she found the source of the movement: herself. Pressed tightly against the roof’s pitch stood a full-length mirror. Inside an ornate wooden frame, the mirror’s glass had been broken vertically and half of it removed. In the strange, half-image before her, she had to squint in the gloom to make out any details. The face that looked back at her glistened with sweat; her hair hung in wet strings.
As she inched sideways to take a better look, her knee struck something hard.
“Ouch!” she yelped.
When she bent over to rub her wounded knee, Adrianna discovered a dark wood trunk lying next to the broken mirror. She hadn’t been able to see it until she bumped into it.
“Maybe you’re just what I’m looking for.”
She knelt down in front of the trunk and turned to allow the light from the window to shine on it. Seizing the trunk’s handle, she tugged and pulled with all of her might. Whatever was in the trunk weighed a lot! Grunting and groaning, her muscles aching from the strain, she kept on until she managed to drag the large box near the window. Now she would be able to see more clearly. As she struggled to open the trunk’s latch, the light provided her with a sight that she would rather not have seen: A huge brown spider ambled over the trunk’s lid a few scant inches from her hand.
“Oh!” she cried and fell back.
Calling on all her courage, Adrianna brushed her hand across the lid in the hope that it would drive the spider away and quickly undid the latch. Grasping the lid firmly with both hands, she pushed upward and threw it back.
She had struck the mother lode! The trunk was full of books, books, and more books! As she pulled them out, she looked at their titles in the light, her smile growing wider and wider. She found
Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe
, and
A Tale of Two Cities,
all of which were books that she had enjoyed reading with her father. There was even a copy of Horace Greeley’s
The American Conflict,
which she could use to teach Jesse history. All of the grief, from Lola to the heat of the attic and the big spider, had been worth it!
“Jackpot!” she exclaimed.
As she was pulling out the last of the books, something in the trunk grabbed her attention. In the faint light she could see several photographs scattered across the bottom of the box as if they had been tossed there haphazardly. Tentatively, trying to ignore the possibility that more spiders lived in the trunk, she reached out to pick up the photos.
The first photograph was of the same two people who had been in the picture she’d seen upon first entering the house. She’d initially assumed that the two people had been Quinn’s parents, and this new image seemed to prove it. It was another studio portrait, identical in many ways to the first, but the man and woman were much younger. Through the gloom of the attic and the graininess of the picture, Adrianna could see Quinn staring back out at her through his father’s face; the same piercing eyes, the tight mouth that seemed to hold mischief at the corners. Jesse resembled his mother, with a rounder face that was not as sharp around the edges and a gaze that was inquisitive and maybe a touch sad.
The second photograph was another window into an earlier time. This was also a studio photograph, but much less formal than either of the other two she had seen. There, standing beside his parents, was Quinn and sitting on his mother’s lap was Jesse. Both were much younger; she would have guessed Quinn’s age at no more than fifteen, and he wore the annoyed look of young man who was being forced to take a photograph he did not want to pose for.