“
Cora, for God’s sake, it
doesn’t matter that much.”
“
Doesn’t matter!” Her face
turned as red as a gobbler’s. “I guess I’m the only one around here
who has any respect for Belinda’s memory.”
Luke’s stomach tied itself into a tidy
knot. That had been happening more often lately, with the friction
in the house increasing every day. It had begun long before Emily
arrived and had only grown worse since. For the first time since
Cora had moved in, Luke allowed himself to consider what life would
be like if his mother-in-law went back to her own home. For three
years, he’d been doing double work, keeping up his own land and
tending her property too. He’d done it gladly, knowing that having
Cora there was best for Rose. But things were different now with
Emily here. Two women in one kitchen could be bad business. He
didn’t know if Alyssa would have been a better match for this or
not. But it was exactly the kind of thing he didn’t want to think
about. He knew how to grow crops and tend stock. This business with
females locking horns made him wish he could escape to a chore in
the barn.
He knew he couldn’t.
He’d brought Emily Cannon here, for
better or for worse, and he had to stand by his decision. He
couldn’t let Cora Hayward run roughshod over her; he owed her what
he’d promised. His respect and protection. And he wanted his home
and his daughter back.
“
Damn it, Cora, you know
that isn’t true. We’ll never forget Belinda.” He held out his hands
in an open appeal. “How could we? But she’s been gone for three
years now. I don’t see anything wrong with using her
tablecloth.”
Cora put her hands on her hips.
Strands of faded red hair had escaped the tight confines of her bun
and hung from her temples. “Oh, you don’t! Well, if you’re going to
put my daughter’s memory aside, you can do without me,
too!”
“
What are you talking
about?”
“
I’ll just go back to my own
place and you can see how you’ll get along without me.”
Luke sighed. He’d anticipated this
threat and he was tired of being held hostage by it. He knew Cora
expected him to back off and beg her to stay. It was a dance they’d
done several times before. But not this time, by God. Not this
time.
He straightened and looked her dead in
the eyes. “Cora, if you want to go home, I won’t try to stop
you.”
“
Who’ll do the cooking and
cleaning and mending?” She jabbed a thumb in Emily’s direction.
“Your etiquette teacher? Hah! I don’t think so. She can’t even
gather eggs without breaking them.”
He glanced at Emily, whose face was
now as white as paste. He didn’t know if she could do any of the
things Cora talked about. “We’d manage just fine. Life is too short
to be unhappy, and if you’re unhappy here, maybe you’ll get on
better in your own house.”
Cora dropped her hands to her sides,
plainly flummoxed by this turn of events. “Well! It—it sounds like
you’ve been planning this all along—”
“
I hate it when you fight!”
Rose sobbed suddenly. Her gaze shifted quickly between Emily, the
flowers in her hand, and Luke. Then she ran to her grandmother and
hid her face against her ample bosom. “Daddy, don’t make Grammy
leave. Grammy, please don’t go!”
That was all that stopped Luke from
carrying the conversation any further.
“
There, there, Rose, honey.
I’m not going anywhere,” Cora soothed. She glanced up at Luke over
Rose’s head and sent him a knowing smile. “I’m staying right
here.”
The knot in Luke’s stomach gave
another twist. Maybe she was staying—for now—but things were going
to change around here. He couldn’t expect Emily to make any headway
with Rose if she had Cora trying to cross her up at every single
turn.
Emily was his wife, just as he’d told
everyone in the churchyard. He didn’t love her and she wasn’t the
woman he would have chosen for himself. But they couldn’t continue
this way, with Cora holding court like a queen while the rest of
them danced to her tune. There would be some serious talk tonight
after Rose went to bed.
“
I’ll be in the barn—one of
the horses is coming up lame. Call me when dinner is ready,” he
said. Then with a last look at Emily, and Rose sobbing in Cora’s
arms, he went outside.
~~*~*~*~~
“
Grammy, why don’t you like
Miss Emily?”
“
I didn’t say I don’t like
her.” Cora made the paring knife fly as she peeled potatoes at the
kitchen table. The new Mrs. Becker had gone upstairs, and she
doubted they’d see her again for hours. “She just has no business
going through other people’s belongings. You’d think she’d know
with all that fancy etiquette she keeps talking about.”
“
Well, then why don’t you
like Daddy?”
“
I like him well enough,”
Cora lied.
Rose had pulled her chair close and
sat watching her as she worked. “But you act like you don’t. You
say bad things about him.”
“
He wasn’t the man I wanted
your mama to marry.”
“
I know, but he did, and
that was a long time ago.”
Cora carved off a peeling a yard long,
all in one piece, and threw it into a bucket for the hogs. It was a
silly talent, but privately she was proud of her ability to peel a
potato or an apple or a turnip in once long ribbon. She’d bet Mrs.
Becker couldn’t do that. She picked up another potato. “I’ll
explain more when you’re older. But for now, I’ll just say that I
can’t forget Luke is the reason your mama died.”
She felt Rose’s eyes on her, big and
disbelieving. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“
That’s enough for you to
know now.” She gestured at her with the paring knife. “You just
remember, Rose—no one in this house loves you as much as I do. No
one.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The next several days were filled with
tension in the Becker household. Emily loathed the hours when Rose
was gone to school and Luke worked in the fields. That left her in
the house with Cora, a woman plainly determined not to accept
Emily’s presence as anything other than that of an unwelcome guest.
At least there had been no more ghastly scenes like the one on
Sunday after church. But that was probably because Cora had simply
stopped speaking to her.
Although Emily should be the lady of
the house, she knew she wasn’t. Her position was such an
uncomfortable one. She had no right to rearrange the parlor
furniture, or plan meals, or do any of the things other wives did.
Since she didn’t know which items around the house had belonged to
Belinda, she was afraid to touch anything outside of her own room.
And even there, the dead woman had left her mark.
One morning following
breakfast, while Cora was in the yard beating the dust out of the
hall runner and Luke worked in the front yard mending a section of
fence, Emily climbed the stairs to get her sewing basket. Her hem
had come loose in one spot and she knew if she didn’t fix it right
away, the rest of it would soon follow. As she walked toward her
room, she passed her husband’s closed bedroom door. She had never
seen the room and she let her curiosity get the better of her
manners. Of course, such snooping was an intolerable breach of
etiquette. She supposed. Was it really so bad to investigate the
home that was now hers? As she gripped the knob, her heart climbed
to her throat and she glanced up and down the hall, feeling like a
thief. From outside, she heard the steady
thump-thump-thump
of Cora’s rug
beater, reassuring her that she was alone in the house. Quickly,
she opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it again. Taking a
couple of deep breaths, she waited for her hammering pulse to slow.
At last she turned to look around.
The room was not as bright
nor as large as hers. In fact, it seemed as spare as the plain
cells that Mrs. Wheaton had let to her boarding students, and the
furniture was almost as simple. The view from the single window
overlooked the front yard where she saw Luke. As if feeling her
eyes on him, he looked up at the same time. She jumped behind the
curtain, her heart bumping around inside her chest again, like a
bee trapped in a jar. God, what would he think, what would
he
do
if he knew
she’d trespassed on this sanctum? Peering at him from the curtain,
watching as he worked—he pulled the wire fencing so tight that the
muscles in his arms stood out in sharp relief—she at last felt
satisfied that he hadn’t really seen her in the window. The voice
of common sense, the one she’d always listened to, told her that
she ought to just leave now, while her crime was still undiscovered
and her sin not yet too bad. But the curiosity that had led her
here in the first place silenced the voice and she
remained.
It seemed odd that hers, a seldom-used
guest room, would be nicer than that of the master of the house.
The bed was big, though, and took up most of the floor space. In
the corner stood a straight-backed chair with a dirty pair of
coveralls and a shirt thrown over it. She stepped deeper into the
room and stretched a tentative hand toward the quilt.
Luke slept here. This was where he lay
at night. What sweet memories and private demons visited his
dreams? Did she, Emily, ever cross his mind? No, of course, she
wouldn’t—it was foolish of her to even ponder the question. Her
fingers trailed up to the pillow, where his head would rest. Did he
lie sleepless and watch a shaft of moonlight cross the wall, as she
sometimes did, reviewing the regrets of his past and fearing the
uncertainty of the future? Were there nights that seemed to have no
end, nights when he longed for love as she did? Or was he content
to live with the memory of what had once been? She smoothed the
fabric with her hand, then leaned over and inhaled the scent of him
on the pillow. It was clean and male and familiar. Now she would
think of him, just one door away from her, with only a single wall
separating them in the
darkness . . .
The depth of intimacy this image
evoked scalded her cheeks, and she snatched her hand away as if
she’d stroked his brow in his sleep instead of merely touched the
pillowcase.
Turning from the bed, she faced the
dresser, a simple oak piece upon which stood some personal items—an
alarm clock, a razor, a woman’s vanity set consisting of a carved
cherry hairbrush and a hand mirror, and a small, silver-framed
photograph. Emily picked it up. She recognized the handsome,
unsmiling young man in the picture as Luke. Next to him stood a
wedding-gowned girl. So this was Belinda, the woman who had such a
grip on the hearts of those under this roof. In the photo, they
both looked stiff and fixed. Still, there was a gleam of joy and
hope that shone in Luke’s eyes that even the requirements of
photographic portraiture could not dim. Emily’s heart contracted a
bit—she had never seen that look in his eyes. Life, it seemed, had
washed away those emotions and left behind the man she knew now.
But plainly, the dark-haired beauty who’d stood beside him that
day—and Belinda had been lovely, there was no doubt—had given him a
spark of inner fire that Emily wondered if she would ever
see.
Downstairs she heard the
back door open and slam and she jumped, feeling as guilty and
dishonorable as she had when she’d read Luke’s last letter to
Alyssa. Footsteps on the kitchen floor, accompanied by her
husband’s tuneless whistling, paralyzed her momentarily. Quickly,
she replaced the photograph on the dresser and eased open the door,
her heartbeat thudding in her ears. Then she stepped into the hall
and closed it with a quiet
click
, feeling downhearted and wicked
rather than enlightened by her exploration.
~~*~*~*~~
That afternoon, Emily dressed as
carefully as she would have for a shopping excursion in Chicago and
set out for town with her small market basket. She needed to buy
ammonia and castile soap to make the cleaning cream for her dress.
She was surprised that Cora had neither in the house—how did she
clean spots from the family’s clothes? Of course, it was possible
that Cora had simply denied having the supplies on hand. Emily knew
it was an unworthy thought, but considering the strain between them
she couldn’t stop the notion from creeping into her mind. Anyway,
it would be good to get away from the stifling
atmosphere.
She hoped the druggist carried what
she needed, and that she could avoid going into the general
store.
The mile walk into Fairdale gave Emily
a different perspective of the countryside than she got while
riding in the farm wagon. The mild spring day was filled with the
scents of freshly-turned earth, new greenness, and the air was
clear and full of the tang of spring. The sun cast short shadows on
the road, and along the way she paused to watch lambs capering
among a herd of fleecy sheep.
Life here moved at a much slower pace
than she was accustomed to. In Chicago, housewives with busy
households kept strict schedules. They had at-home days when they
entertained visitors with teas and luncheons, and those days when
they themselves called on others and attended the sick. Many were
involved in church and social-welfare activities, and still had the
responsibility of raising their children and maintaining their most
important domain, the home, as a sanctuary for their world-weary
husbands. Here, though everyone worked and was busy from dawn to
dark, the rhythm of days and seasons seemed to govern life more
than did the clock or social status. On the one hand, she found her
surroundings as alien as if she’d been dropped into a foreign
country; nothing in her training had prepared her for this. And
yet . . . yet there was something appealing
about living closer to the land, where putting on different clothes
for morning and afternoon was never thought of. But twenty-eight
years of ingrained social habits were as much a part of her as her
eye color or the cowlick she struggled to tame every day—she wasn’t
likely to change now. Regardless of those rebellious, risqué
thoughts she sometimes entertained.