Love Blooms in Winter (3 page)

“Tom…your kin. Do you have an address where I can reach him?”

Shaking her head, Pauline took another sip of tea. “It’s all right, dear. They’ll take care of everything.”

“Who will take care of you, Pauline?”

“They will.” She smiled. “They come around every night and I feed them. If I don’t, they get in the biggest squabble you’ve ever heard.”

Mae sat back. Pauline was gone again.

“They screech and take on until I go outside and feed them gravy.”

“Really.”

Pauline nodded. “I don’t think they’re my kin, but they tell me they are.”

Mae settled a warm throw around the woman’s thin frame and got up to put more wood on the fire. How was she going to find Pauline’s relatives?

If only Mae’s best friend, Lil, lived closer, she could talk to her, but it was sometimes hard for Lil to get into town in the winter. Her hog farm demanded her time.

Mae’s eyes focused on the small writing desk in the corner. She knew it wasn’t her place to pilfer through Pauline’s private papers, but how else would she find a clue to the woman’s past? Pauline had lived in this house for as long as Mae could remember, and the only thing she’d ever heard about Pauline’s past concerned the railroad ruckus. She never married. Therefore she had no children.

Settling in a chair across the room, Mae contemplated her choices. Her gaze shifted back to the desk, where late afternoon light highlighted a thick layer of dust. The house often smelled of pot roast or stew, but today it reeked of winter and neglect.

Getting out of her chair, she moved toward the desk, lightly wiping away a layer of dust with the hem of her dress. “Pauline?”

The elderly woman’s mind came and went swiftly. Perhaps now that she had finished her tea her memory might be clearer.

“Yes, dear?”

“About Tom?”

The older woman smiled. “Yes?”

“Would you happen to have his address?”

Downing the last sip from her cup, Pauline gave her a dry look. “Cats don’t have addresses, dear.”

Cats? Cats. Tom cat. Mae’s eyes focused on the bundle of fur curled up beside the stove. Giving her a wide yawn, the cat turned around and then settled back on the rug. The woman took in every stray that wandered her way. To date, she had a dozen or so dogs and several cats housed in a large shed beside her house. She allowed the one cat inside but barred the others except on warm days, when she left the front door open and the animals wandered in and out at will. They were pests to the whole town, but folks long ago decided they had to live with the fact because nobody else wanted them. Most of the animals had been dumped on her. An occasional guilty party would leave a sack of feed on Pauline’s doorstep, but she depended on neighbors’ scraps to nourish the pack.

Tom cat.

Mae’s hopes faded. He’d be of no help.

Before leaving for the day, Mae fixed supper, tided up a bit, and then brought in enough wood to last until morning. When Pauline asked for prayer, Mae got down on her knees and the two held hands, thanking God for His favor yet another day. As Mae left for home, fingers of darkness laced the snow-laden sky. Soft snowflakes had turned into stinging sleet pellets.

Stomping her boots clean on her own worn mat moments later, Mae reached for the doorknob and entered her warm kitchen, which was filled with the heavenly scent of baking bread. Jeremy turned from the stove, his cherubic features red from the heat. “Hi, sister.”

“Hi, Jeremy.” When she passed him to hang her cloak on the rack, she gave him a peck on the cheek. Their mother was in her late forties when she died giving birth to him, so Dad and Mae had raised the infant. He was the apple of both his father’s and sister’s eye. “God has sent this child,” her father would say when they knelt to pray at night. “He’s been sent to heal our grief.” But Dad never got over his anguish. For years he struggled to overcome the loneliness that filled his waking hours. Long days crawled by as he dutifully set off each morning to perform his job as the town cobbler, but the light had gone from his eyes. The Gerald Wilkey everyone knew and loved became a shell of a man, aimlessly going about life, caring for Mae and his newborn but never caring for himself.

Mae watched as the father she adored withered on the vine. Five years ago he was thrown from a horse and suffered massive head injuries. He died fifty feet from the house. The responsibility to raise her nine-year-old brother had fallen on her.

“I love to come home to the smell of baking bread.” She set the store-bought bread aside and gave Jeremy a tight squeeze. “It’s scrumptious.”

“You like my cooking.”

Pride seeped through his voice. The one thing Dad never permitted was difference. Jeremy was treated like any other young boy his age, even though his limitations were many. Mae had always thought he understood more than he was given credit for. Jeremy’s mind might be stunted, but his instincts were sound.

“I hope you weren’t worried about me.” She lifted the lid on a pot of beans and sniffed the bubbling contents.

“No. I looked out the window and saw you go into Miss Pauline’s house.”

“Yes, poor dear. She’d fallen again, so I helped her get her supper.” She set the lid back on the pot. “Let’s eat soon. I’m tired and want to go to bed early.”

“Okay.” Jeremy busied himself setting the table. The dishes were evenly spaced; fork on the left, knife and spoon on the right. Mae taught him basic manners and etiquette, and he was a quick learner. If only he’d remember to set the butter anywhere but on the woodstove. Removing the dish with its soupy contents, she said quietly, “The butter goes on the table, sweetie.”

The meal was on the table a few minutes later, and Mae didn’t realize how hungry she was until she bit into the warm bread. “You’ve done an excellent job, Jeremy.”

A blush crept up the young man’s cheeks. “Thank you, ma’am.”

After dinner he cleared the dishes. He meticulously washed each bowl and plate and laid it on a tea towel-covered counter to dry. The small three-room house was neat and orderly. Not a spot of dust anywhere. He slept on a pallet, close to the cook-stove, on the kitchen floor.

When he’d finished, he tapped at Mae’s bedroom door. “I’m going now.”

Loosening her hair, Mae frowned when the long blond tresses escaped their pins. “It’s snowing. Where are you going?”

“To feed the animals.”

Of course. Meg’s hand dropped to her side. She hadn’t given Pauline’s cats and dogs a thought today. Pauline paid Jeremy a small amount to feed and water her animals. Mae vividly recalled the day when Pauline humbled herself enough to ask a favor of Jeremy. “My mind isn’t what it used to be,” she’d said. “And I don’t want my babies to suffer. Will you feed and water them?”

Her babies. During the day they roamed the town, digging up flower beds, loitering on the General Store porch, barking, and running everywhere in a pack. Pauline’s dogs were the community’s nuisances. And if Mae wasn’t mistaken, she’d seen Elmer Hensley’s mutt running with the bunch lately. Old Man Hensley apparently decided he didn’t want the dog in the house anymore and dumped it in Pauline’s yard. With her failing memory she’d never noticed that she’d acquired another “baby.”

Ramming a pin back in her hair, Mae sighed. “I’ll go with you.” She could trust her brother to do his task, but with the worsening weather he might become confused and wander off. Jeremy had a good, if not better, sense of direction than she, but it was easy to get lost in a storm. The wrong path taken…one small misjudgment…She shuddered.

On the way out, she sliced off a large chunk of bread and wrapped it in a cloth. Taking a jar of apple butter from the pantry, she packed it in her basket and followed Jeremy out the back door into the cold.

The force of the wind surprised her. Mae huddled deep into her cloak and reached to tug Jeremy’s hat down more firmly on his head. Warm lantern light bobbed a cheerful ray across the mounting drifts.

The two crossed the road and headed straight for the drafty shed. Weathered wood creaked against the heavy gale. Inside, the animals sent up an earsplitting ruckus.

Unlatching the door, Jeremy stood back and urged Mae inside. The racket was so loud she could barely think.

After hooking the lantern on a peg above his head, Jeremy waded through the pack of howls and meows with animals crowding his leg. Dogs leaped and the cats clung to his trousers as he lifted the large lid on a barrel and scooped out mash left by sympathetic neighbors. Rafters shook when the hungry animals made a beeline for supper. Mae braved the outdoors for the rain barrel and cracked the ice on the surface with a garden hoe in order to get enough water to fill two large buckets.

A little while later, she leaned against the heavy door as Jeremy fastened the lock. The howling wind made it impossible to hear one another, so Mae pointed at the basket containing Pauline’s bread and apple butter sitting beside the barn and motioned for Jeremy to follow her.

Mellow lamplight spilled from the front window when Mae climbed the porch steps and knocked.

Pauline answered almost immediately. “Goodness’ sake! Is that you making all that racket, Mae?”

She liked to think it wasn’t her. “I came with Jeremy to help feed the animals.”

“Oh, how nice. Come in and warm yourselves before you catch a chill.”

After knocking snow off her boots, Mae stepped inside with her brother behind her.

“Hello, Jeremy.”

“Hi, Miss Pauline.”

“Would you like a cookie?”

Jeremy’s face brightened.

“Oh, dear.” She shook her head. “I haven’t baked any in a while, but I have cornbread.”

Mae extended the basket. “Thank you, but we’ve just eaten. Jeremy baked bread this afternoon, and I brought you some along with a jar of apple butter.”

“Apple butter! My favorite sweet.”

Mae’s gaze fastened on the desk. The drawer was open, gleaming like a gold coin in the fading light. Big as you please, here was her chance to investigate Pauline’s family…or lack thereof.

“Can I fix you a piece of bread and butter?” The older woman shuffled toward the kitchen carrying her treasures.

“No, thank you…” Mae’s eyes traced the open drawer. Would there be a reference to Tom in there? Or a Jim—or Madge—or anyone? The odds were slim, but somewhere she must have a family album or journal with family contacts.

Pauline sniffed the air. “Fresh bread smells so good on a cold winter evening.”

“Jeremy is quite the baker,” Mae mused. “I see we’ve interrupted you.” Her eyes pointedly fixed on the open drawer.

Seemingly unaware that she’d been doing anything, the woman’s gaze followed Mae’s. “Oh, yes. I was trying to tidy up a bit, but my goodness, I don’t know what to throw away or to keep.”

Mae seized the moment. “Why don’t I help you?” She glanced at her little brother. “Warm yourself by the fire, Jeremy. I’ll just be a minute.”

It didn’t take long to sort through the drawer’s contents. Important papers were now in a neat pile and odds and ends in another. Old scraps and pieces of junk were thrown away, and the best part of all was that Mae had discovered one small clue. Tiny, but anything helped. In the very bottom of the drawer she found a slip of paper with the name “Tom Curtis” and a Chicago address scribbled on it. At the moment Pauline wasn’t sure she even had family.

“I have three cats named Tom,” she offered.

“It’s okay. Perhaps this is the information I need.” At least it was a start. Now all Mae had to do was hope this Tom was still alive and living at the same address.