“I see you found him,” Karin said. Her voice sounded threatening.
“Where are you going with that shovel?” asked Katherine.
“I was going to knock some sense into that stupid mule’s head. Alex walked me home, and not long after he left I heard the wagon come into the yard. When you didn’t come in after a spell, I came out to see where you were. I saw the chewed rope and tried to get that beast into the paddock. He bit me and took off like a ruptured duck in a hailstorm.”
“So you went after the shovel.”
“Yes, and I’m still tempted to use it.”
“You going to see Alex tonight?”
Karin looked astonished. “Of course I am. That’s why he walked me home—so I would have time to dress. He went on down to the creek to clean up.”
Katherine started to say, “I know,” but caught herself just in time. She looked at her sister. Karin looked like she was on the verge of crying. “You go on in and get yourself all gussied-up. I’ll see to Clovis.”
“I should say thank you, but it’s your fault we’ve kept that blasted mule. I don’t know why we don’t sell him.”
“Because we aren’t.”
“Well, never mind that now.” Karin threw up her hands in despair. “I’ll never be ready on time. Nothing I have looks right. I can’t find my crimping iron. My hair is a fright.”
“I think you look fine, just the way you are,” Katherine said, meaning every word she said.
Karin assumed her most astonished look, and said, “Honestly Katherine, you act as if Alex’s coming over were something he did every day.”
The mention of Alex sobered Katherine and she listened patiently to Karin’s rage. “I can’t believe all this is happening to me at a time like this,” she sputtered, “when I did so want to look so special. I don’t know why you can’t understand that. Sometimes you amaze me, Katherine. Yes, you do, and this is one of those times. I don’t mind saying, I am amazed, Katherine. Simply amazed. Here, all this time, I thought we shared things, sorrow, pain, poverty, and what few pleasantries that come our way. But I see I was mistaken. You aren’t capable of understanding matters of the heart.” With that, Karin plopped the shovel in the wagon bed and turned around, stomping back to the house.
The slamming door startled Katherine out of her stupor and she headed Clovis toward the barn. A few minutes later Katherine stepped into the kitchen and put her basket on the table. Karin was heating her crimping iron.
“I see you found it.”
“Yes,” was all Karin said, but her eyes swept over her sister. “Look at you! What did you do? Crawl home?”
Katherine looked down, not seeing anything particularly wrong—nothing a little soap and scrubbing wouldn’t take care of.
“Are you going to stand there looking like that until Alex comes and you humiliate me in front of him? Honestly, Katherine! He will be here soon. You act as if you’d like nothing better than to have him catch you looking like something the cats dragged up and the dogs wouldn’t take.”
By this point in time, Katherine had heard all of Karin’s fit that she intended to. She flew up the stairs, wishing quite frankly that sisters had never been invented. But when she came back down some time later, she thought she must have passed muster, for Karin was all smiles. “Thank you,” she said, “you look ever so much better.” When Karin smiled, the whole world seemed to light up, and Katherine felt the resentment fly right out of her heart. After all, Karin loved Alex too—not the way she loved him, but she loved him, nonetheless.
Katherine wondered if she should tell Karin that she had fully intended on changing her clothes, even before Karin threw her fit, but she was distracted by the dreamy expression Karin had upon her face as she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Turning back toward Katherine, Karin said, “Is it my day or yours to cook supper?”
“It’s yours,” Katherine said, knowing what was coming next, and deciding to volunteer before she was asked. “But I’ll cook tonight so you’ll have more time.”
“Oh, thank you. What would I do without you? You are truly the dearest of sisters.” She started from the room, then stopped. “I do want to look splendid tonight. What should I wear? The yellow muslin or the pink?” She smiled and whirled around, giving Katherine a hug. “The pink, I think. Alex always liked me in pink.”
“Alex always liked you in anything you ever wore,” Katherine said, but Karin wasn’t listening. She had gone to the ash pail and taken out a bit of charcoal, then moving to the faded and cracked piece of mirror that hung on the wall over the washstand, she rubbed a bit over her pale brows and in the crease of each eye. “There,” she said, standing back to look at herself. “It makes my eyes look ever so much larger.” She turned toward her sister. “Do we have any of that paper left, the paper with the red roses?”
“I think there’s a bit of it left in the bureau drawer.”
“Oh, good!” Karin looked at her reflection again. “I do think I’m a little pale…the excitement and all. A little dab of the rose paper dampened and rubbed on my cheeks should give them a nice bloom.” Without taking her eyes off herself, she said, “Oh, I almost forgot. You really need to mend that fence next to the barn. Clovis has been at it again. He ate all the irises along the fence on the other side of the house.”
Karin’s sigh brought Katherine’s mind back from Clovis and the irises to Alex. “I simply can’t believe Alex is back.” She turned to look at Katherine. “And you said he wouldn’t come back.”
Katherine followed her into the parlor. “I said there was nothing left around here for Alex or Adrian, and there isn’t.”
“Apparently you forgot about me,” Karin said. She pulled the fringed shawl off the back of the sofa and wrapped it around her shoulders, turning her head this way and that in front of the mirror before discarding the shawl. “Oh, Katherine, I don’t know what to do.”
“About Alex?”
“Yes. You know, it’s funny, the way I thought I was over him, but the minute I saw him standing there with you in the kitchen, I knew he still held all the old magic. Now I just feel a little crazy, like I want him, but I don’t want him.” She looked at Katherine. “That doesn’t make any sense does it?”
“Not really.”
“I love Alex. I really do. I know I haven’t acted like it while he’s been gone, but I’m not the kind to pine for anybody. I didn’t know if he would even come back. I couldn’t be expected to sit around longing for him, could I?”
“No, I suppose not. What difference does it make? You didn’t pine for him.”
“I know, but it’s strange. The moment I saw him, I knew I’d marry him in a twinkling if…”
“If he weren’t so poor?”
“It sounds so cold and calculating when you say it like that.”
“It is cold and calculating.” Katherine saw the hurt look on her sister’s face and regretted her harshness. Karin couldn’t help being the way she was any more that Katherine could. They just wanted different things, that’s all. Katherine felt cruel for being so judgmental of her sister. At least Karin was honest and admitted what she wanted. And she wasn’t afraid to go after it or work hard.
Karin wasn’t just a hard worker, she pursued money relentlessly. She was dogged in her determination, ruthless with her own person, scraping and saving every penny she could get her hands on, holding down a job in town, then spending her evenings doing sewing and mending, sometimes even cooking for anyone willing to pay the coin. She detested her poor conditions and had decided years ago to do something about it. Everything she did was part of her plan—the way she dressed, the reason she worked so hard, the motivation behind the men she chose—except Alex, that is. Katherine thought about that for a minute. She guessed Alex had managed to get his foot in the door when Karin was younger, before she was so dogged and determined to better herself. Now he was like an old habit. Old habits were hard to break. How well Katherine knew that, for she had loved Alex most of her life. In spite of that, Katherine’s heart went out to her sister. She didn’t envy Karin any. Sooner or later, she would have to decide. A man like Alex wouldn’t wait forever, no matter how much he loved Karin.
“I’m sorry,” Katherine said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s all right. I suppose, in a way, you were right. I know Alex has no way to support himself, let alone a wife. And for that reason I know I could never marry him. I suppose I keep hoping something will happen, something that will make him a wealthy man.”
“That’s not very likely to happen.”
“I know that, but what else can I do? There certainly aren’t any prospects around here to speak of, save Carter Turner. Every woman in five counties is after him.”
“That’s not a very nice reason to keep seeing Alex. Anyway, you know Carter is sweet on you.”
Karin ignored Katherine’s stab. “Carter may be sweet on me, but that won’t make his mama like me any better.”
“Mrs. Turner doesn’t like you?”
“She doesn’t like anyone that she sees as a threat.”
“How do you mean?”
“Lavinia Turner isn’t about to let Carter marry any of the women who are after him, including me.”
“Why not?”
“Because she comes from one of those fancy Boston families—you know, the ones that know their ancestors all the way back to Adam.”
“If things don’t work out with Carter, someone else will come along,” Katherine said.
“They won’t come here, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll go to them. That’s why I’ve been saving my money. Before too long, I’ll have enough to leave this place and I will, without letting my shirttail hit my back.”
“Does Alex know you’re still so set on leaving here?”
“He asked me that today.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Of course I did. I may be a lot of things, but I won’t lie to Alex.”
Katherine nodded. “What did he say?”
“He said we weren’t as far apart as I thought, that he wanted a lot of the same things I did. He’s changed a great deal, Katherine. I suppose the war did that to him. He doesn’t want to be poor any more than I do, but he still loves the land, still has hopes of being a farmer—a rich farmer.”
“Perhaps he will be.”
“Perhaps. Who knows? In the meantime, I won’t change my plans. I won’t ever change them. I told Alex that. He asked me to give him a chance to get the farm on its feet. He still thinks he can make that place pay.”
“So you’re going to keep seeing him?”
“Yes, at least until I get enough money to leave here.”
Katherine’s heart fell to her feet.
Alex came for Karin at eight. It was Katherine who answered the door, but the minute she led Alex inside, Karin came down. Suddenly feeling like a third leg, Katherine watched Alex devour her sister as she walked into the room. A moment later she watched the way he glanced down into Karin’s wide-set eyes. At that point, Alexander Mackinnon smiled a smile that Katherine Simon would have chopped off five fingers to have seen bestowed upon herself. She made her excuses about needing to see to the kitchen and left, knowing even as she did, that neither one of them realized she had done so. So much for her plans to get Alex to notice her.
Alex didn’t waste any time taking Karin outside. Katherine had barely finished mouthing her words when he took Karin’s hand and led her out into the warm, fading light of late evening. “You want to take a ride? I cleaned up the buggy, just in case.” Karin nodded, and Alex followed her through the gate, taking her in his arms as soon as they reached the buggy. Karin’s eyes flashed back toward the house. “Not here, Alex. Katherine might be watching.”
“So? We’re not doing anything wrong.”
“Help me into the buggy, Alex. Let’s get away from here so we can be alone.”
Since that was exactly what Alex had in mind, he didn’t waste any time. He guided the buggy into a turn and headed it down the road, taking the fork that led away from his own place. “I suppose we can just ride down the road a piece,” he said.
“Anywhere, just as long as we’re away from here awhile.”
“I know it’s been hard on you,” he said, “trying to run the place since your pa died.”
“Katherine mostly runs the place, since I’m working in town. I help out with the money for things we need.” She laid her head against Alex’s shoulder. He shifted in the seat, bringing his arm around her, drawing her closer. Lord! Did she ever smell sweet. Just like flowers.
“You’re right,” she went on. “Things have gone from bad to worse since my folks died. Sometimes I think Katherine is fooling herself when she thinks she can keep on running this place, even after I’ve gone.”
At that reminder, Alex fell silent. After a bit, he said, “How’d your pa die?”
“He just wore out, Alex. Just like mama did. And this is what did it to them,” she said, waving her hand out across the stretch of land that sloped away from the road on either side. “Maybe that’s one of the reasons I want something different, why I can’t forgive this wretched land, this place.”
“You can’t hold a grudge against land.”
“I can, and I do. This place takes and takes and takes. It never gives anything, not even hope.”
He turned the buggy down the road that ran up to the old McCracken place. There was a nice little tank of water just below the place where the old barn had stood. Of course that barn had blown away long before Alex left, but he was hoping the tank was still just as pretty, with its drooping branches of willows that skimmed the water’s surface. The catfish were probably working the top of the water this time of day. He almost mentioned that to her, then remembered Karin wouldn’t be interested in such as that.
“It should be nice and cool down by the tank,” he said as they crested a rise and he could see the tank still looked as lovely as he remembered it. He guided the buggy around one side of the dam and down into a grassy spot between two big trees, one a hackberry, the other a cottonwood.
When he pulled to a stop, he asked, “Do you want to get out and walk for a bit?” She nodded and he swung down from the buggy and tied the horse before he came for her, holding out his arms. She stood, placing her hands on his shoulders as he drew her down into his arms. She fit as perfectly as she ever had. Alex didn’t wait. He couldn’t. He whispered her name once, then stopped anything she was going to say with his mouth against hers. “I want you,” he said. “I’ve always wanted you.”