Rose Kelly. She was going to be snooping around his house, asking questions. That would make any man nervous.
A knock on the door broke into his musings. Who could be coming by during such a storm?
He answered the door and was surprised to see Reverend Wilton. “Come in, come in! What are you doing out in that storm?” he asked.
The minister handed Eric his wet coat. “I had dinner tonight at the Frederickson house, and I misjudged the arrival of the storm. Arvid wanted to show me his new venture.”
They both smiled. Arvid Frederickson was always on the search for something new that would make his life easier. Eric thought that if Arvid would put as much effort into farming as he did in trying to get out of it, he’d be a great success. Of course, he never spoke his thoughts out loud, but from the looks he’d seen on other people’s faces, he knew he wasn’t alone in his theory.
“What’s his new venture?”
“Ducks.”
“Ducks. Ah. I see. Have a seat, Reverend, and dry off in front of the fire. I was about to have some tea. As you see, I’ve been out in the rain myself. Can I make you a cup, too?” Eric asked as he headed for the kitchen.
“Tea would certainly take the edge off,” Reverend Wilton said. “Thank you very much.”
“So Arvid’s decided that ducks are the way to go, has he?” Eric called from the kitchen. “Is he planning to sell them for food, or is he interested in starting a duck egg business, or what?”
The minister waited until Eric had come back with the tea. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure that Arvid’s sure. But he’s got his mind set on those ducks, and he’s already ordered them. They’ll be arriving any day now, I guess. And who knows? Maybe they’ll be just the thing, and he’ll make a fortune.”
“Maybe.” Eric knew his single word didn’t sound at all encouraging, but he knew Arvid’s history.
“Say, speaking of new arrivals in town, I hear that so far it’s working out well with Miss Kelly,” Reverend Wilton said.
“It depends on what you mean by ‘working out well,’ ” Eric responded. “To be honest, Reverend, I’m uneasy about this whole business. She says she’s just going to watch me work and ask questions, and she promises that I won’t know she’s there, but she was here today and—”
“And you knew it, didn’t you?” The minister nodded understandingly. “Eric, are you concerned because she’s a woman and you’d be working out here together—and often alone?”
“No!” Eric put down his mug of tea and paced across the room. “No, it’s not that at all.”
“Then what is it?”
Eric didn’t answer at first. He looked out the window and said, “It looks like the rain is stopping. We got a good soaking, though. The wheat’ll like that. And so will Arvid’s ducks,” he added with a wry laugh.
“You’re not going to answer the question, are you?” Reverend Wilton drained the rest of his tea. “But I think you should really try to identify why you’re so uneasy with Rose. She’s not a bad person, you know.”
“I know she isn’t, but, Reverend, I could be asking the same of you.”
The minister sat up, his mouth twitching as if a smile and a frown were struggling. “What do you mean by that?”
“It seems to me,” Eric answered with a wink, “that there’s someone in Jubilee who’s got your eye.”
Reverend Wilton put down his cup. “We’re not here to talk about my personal life, Johansen,” he said primly. “This conversation is about you—and Rose Kelly. Can you tell me why you’re uncomfortable with her presence?”
Eric shook his head. “I don’t know. Part of it is that—well, let’s face it. Would you like to have somebody watching your every move?”
The minister stood up and patted Eric on the back before raising his eyes heavenward meaningfully. “I already do, Eric. I already do.”
Chapter 5
A friend is a valuable commodity. Companionship is important to us; without it, we shrivel as unwatered grasses in the hot sun.
Rose patted the tiny bag to make sure her paper and pen were there, gave her hair a final glance in the gilt-edged mirror, and left the hotel.
It was a glorious late June day. The sky stretched out “as infinite as God’s goodness,” her mother would say. Not a single cloud marred the clear blue that swept from horizon to horizon.
Pretty. Very pretty. And quiet. Very quiet.
Or was it? She stood stock-still, listening—and hearing. Beyond the immediate town, a horse clopped its way along a dirt road, its regular and slow hoofbeats muffled by the distance. A group of four crows argued about an abandoned bit of bread in the street before her. Somewhere in the houses behind the hotel, a man spoke and a woman laughed.
So much for silence!
Rose’s steps led her to her first stop, the school. Linnea Gardiner knelt in front of the white-washed building, her face shaded by a large straw hat. With a soil-crusted trowel, she carefully dug a hole and then placed a tiny plant in it. Rose watched a moment before approaching her.
The young schoolteacher pushed a stray lock of blond hair back with dirt-coated fingers. “I’m glad you stopped by.”
“Don’t let me interrupt your work,” Rose said.
Linnea laughed. “That’s one of the reasons I’m happy to see you. I need to take a break.” She stood up, groaning as she rubbed the small of her back. “I think I’ve been in this position too long. Would you like to come in for some iced tea?”
As they entered the schoolhouse, Linnea explained that she was doing her summer sprucing up of the building and its grounds. “I do the best I can during the year, but June is my favorite time. As much as I complain, I love planting flowers. It must be because of my name—Gardiner.”
“You seem to have quite the green thumb. Do you plant around your house, too?” Rose asked.
Linnea shook her head. “I don’t have my own house here. Someday I hope I will.” She blushed a bit. “Right now I’ve only got a room in the Jenkins’s house, but they humor me and let me stick my blossoms in the ground there.”
“Is that the Mrs. Jenkins I met at the church making lefse?”
“The one and the same. She’s wonderful. I know I should start looking for my own place to live—maybe start a claim or maybe push a certain somebody a little harder, if you know what I mean—but the Jenkins family has become my own. I love Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins as if they were blood relatives.”
Rose nodded understandingly and smiled at the school-teacher. “So you have a fellow who’s not being forthcoming?”
Linnea bent over the pitcher, but not before Rose saw a flush climb the teacher’s fair cheeks. She poured them each a glass of iced tea. “Let me know what you think of it,” she said. “I put some mint in it from the garden at the Jenkins’s house. I think it perks it up a bit.”
“It’s terrific!” Rose said truthfully, taking a drink. “The mint makes it really refreshing. This is just the kind of thing a young wife should know about,” she added teasingly, but Linnea looked away and said only, “Maybe.”
It was time to change the subject, and Rose steered the conversation back to the matter of the flowers. “I’m impressed that you can do that and the flowers live. It must add a pleasant border to the schoolhouse.”
“I hope they do. I enjoy them. But the drawback,” Linnea said, sitting on the desk and staring ruefully at her hands, “is that my fingers won’t be truly clean again until winter.”
Rose put the glass on the desk and self-consciously tucked her hands under her tiny bag. Just a week ago she’d sat at the manicurist’s at La Belle’s Beauty Emporium and had her nails filed and conditioned.
The thought struck her that she wouldn’t be back at La Belle’s for another manicure for half a year. Her life was certainly changing.
“You’re the talk of the town.” Linnea’s frank blue eyes met hers.
“I probably am,” Rose admitted. “But within a week or two, I’ll be last week’s
news.”
Linnea grinned. “Make that a month or two. News lasts longer out here. There’s not as much for it to compete with.”
Rose sipped her iced tea. “How long have you lived in Jubilee?”
“Not quite two years. I came out with my family. They went back to Rhode Island last year. I stayed.”
“Rhode Island is so far away. How did your family choose Jubilee?”
“Reverend Wilton’s uncle was our next-door neighbor, and that’s how it got started. I think I’m the only person west of the Mississippi who’s from Rhode Island. Have you ever been there?”
“No, I have to admit that I haven’t. What’s it like?”
“It’s not that much different, I guess. More water and trees. The buildings are older.” Linnea chuckled. “Of course, considering that the oldest structure in Jubilee was built six years ago, there wasn’t much competition.”
“What do you think of Jubilee?” Rose didn’t like asking so many questions. Even as a reporter, she preferred guiding people into talking to her, but this conversation with Linnea invited her questions. “Compared to Rhode Island, that is.”
“I like it. The only thing that bothers me,” the blond schoolteacher confessed with a surprising intensity, “is that sometimes it gets a bit lonely, especially in the summer when I’m not surrounded by the children.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Rose mused aloud. “It seems like it might be even lonelier out on a farm, especially if someone was by himself, without a family to occupy him in the quiet hours. Or,” she finished briskly, “maybe there aren’t any quiet hours on a farm.”
“There are. My parents tried homesteading, and my father said it about drove him mad to spend hours on end battling with the elements, trying to coax a living from the land. He couldn’t stand that, and he couldn’t stand the solitary days. One day he realized that he was so desperate for companionship that he was having a full-bore argument with himself—and losing, he claimed—and he left the plow right where it was, came back to the house, and announced, ‘We’re going back home.’ ”
“How did your mother react?”
Linnea’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “She pulled out the trunks and said, ‘I’m ready.’ She’d never unpacked them except for the necessities.”
“Interesting. I can’t imagine what it must be like for those who are homesteading and living by themselves.” She swirled the iced tea innocently.
“You mean like Eric?” Linnea smiled impishly. “I wondered when you’d ask about him again.”
An uneasy blush began its telltale climb up Rose’s throat, and she shook her head adamantly. “He’s just the subject of my articles for the Tattler. I thought he’d be a good choice since he is alone. I find that intriguing.”
“I’m sure you do,” Linnea teased. “Actually, we all do. He’s quite handsome, in a farming sort of way.”
“ ‘A farming sort of way’? What do you mean?”
Linnea shook her head. “I’ve discovered that God put the land in some people’s hearts. It’s not in mine, but it is in Eric’s. Part of Eric is Dakota. He belongs here on the land, digging in it. My digging is limited to gardens in town. Eric, though, he’s planting his own roots, and they’re going deep down into the ground.”
Rose said good-bye to Linnea, promising to see her again soon, and left the schoolhouse, her head spinning with what she’d learned. None of this was what she’d supposed it would be, not a bit of it. She’d always hoped one of her stories would change someone’s life. She’d never expected that life to be hers.
Linnea was one of the surprises. In Chicago, Rose had many acquaintances who wanted to see her, wanted to be around her, wanted to share their lives with her. But none of them, she now realized, were friends, and the hole in her life was now gaping.
When she’d talked to the schoolteacher, she felt an immediate bond that settled into her soul. She’d never really had a best friend to share confidences and laughter with, and her short time with Linnea made her hunger for that.
She straightened her stance, lifted her chin, and began to walk briskly. This was a silly, melodramatic train of thought, and it was over. If she didn’t guard her thoughts better, she’d be dreaming of falling in love while she was in Jubilee, and that, she told herself, was absurd.
She’d never fall in love with Eric.
Who said anything about Eric? the silent voice asked. She couldn’t stop the smile that curved her lips dreamily.
She might not make it through these six months if she didn’t rein in her imagination. Becoming friends with Linnea was one thing. Falling in love with Eric was something else entirely.
With determination, she hitched her little bag closer and headed for her next stop, the mercantile. It was right in the center of the town, across from the bank. Even this early, Jubilee was settling into a traditional city structure.
After the brightness of daylight, the interior of the store was dark. The matter wasn’t helped at all with the mounds of goods in the single window, blocking out most of the light. Rose blinked several times to get her bearings.
When her eyes became accustomed to the dim interior, she realized that this was nothing like the large stores she shopped at in Chicago. The small room was crammed with objects of all sizes, shapes, and hues. A table in the center of the store was piled with bolts of fabric. Vivid red calico, deep blue poplin, coffee-brown chambray, and delicate pink lawn created a kaleidoscope of color.
Barrels, boxes, cartons, and jars vied for room and were stacked on top of each other in precarious pyramids.
Over it all, the smells—pickles, flour, soap, oil, fish—blended into one.
“Miss Kelly!” Freya Trease rose, laboriously from her seat behind the counter, her ample figure swathed in a green sprigged apron. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Please call me Rose. This is a wonderful store.”
“Thank you.” Freya brushed an invisible speck from her voluminous bodice. “It’s probably quite different from what you’re used to in the big city.”
“We have small stores, too.” Rose picked up a roll of white lace and studied it. “This would be lovely as an edging, wouldn’t it?”
“It would,” Freya agreed. “Is there something in particular you’re looking for?”
Rose put back the spool of lace. “Not today, but I know I will eventually. After all, I’m here for six months.”
“Six months can be a lifetime, or it can pass in the blink of an eye.” The plump shopkeeper wiped the counter with a cloth she pulled from her apron pocket. “This land will be the death of me yet.”
This was exactly the kind of thing she was looking for. Although the focus of her articles would be the homesteader, insights into the lives of those who shared his community would make the stories come alive.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, trying to appear casual as she ran her hand over the edge of the pickle barrel.
“The dust from the fields,” Freya said, showing Rose the smudged cloth. “But it’s not as bad as during harvest.”
“So living here is a real trial, is it?” Rose suggested, hoping that Freya would disagree—and provide her with a quotable line.
“It can be. The mosquitoes in summer, the blizzards and biting cold in winter—yes, there are times when I think that I was out of my mind to leave New York.”
“Why do you stay? Because of the store? Your husband?”
Freya smiled. “I stay because this is the most beautiful place on earth.”
Rose glanced out the window at the building across the street. The rough-hewn exterior was a marked contrast to the elegant sign grandly proclaiming it to be HOMESTEAD HONESTY BANK in black and gold script.
Beautiful? She’d heard that beauty was in the eye of the beholder, but there had to be something terribly wrong with Freya’s eyes.
The shopkeeper laughed. “You don’t believe me, do you?” She shrugged her well-padded shoulders and looked Rose direct
ly in the eyes. “This is the perfect place for some people but not for everyone. We all have our own reward waiting for us, our final home, but I’ve found that God has settled us differently on earth. My ideal home may not be yours.”
Rose knew where her ideal home was—her roomy apartment overlooking the crowded skyline of Chicago. The city teemed with life. Even though she’d just arrived in Jubilee, she knew she could never stay here.
The image of Eric Johansen floated into her mind, and she immediately corrected herself: She could stay here. Maybe.
“What do you know about Mr. Johansen?” she asked Freya, trying to make her words sound like an idle question. “He seems to be happy here.”
Freya’s face clouded. “He is. There’s something holding on to him, though.”
“Really? Why, I wonder what it could be.”
“I don’t know.” The dust cloth snapped once more across the spotless counter and disappeared back into the roomy apron. “It’s not my business.”
Unspoken, the sentence continued, And it’s not yours, either.
Experience had taught her to listen to what was not said, and Freya’s comment increased Rose’s curiosity. The shopkeeper didn’t seem to know what dark event marked Eric’s history, but the fact that she had sensed it was important.
Discovering a delicious tidbit like something mysterious in Eric’s past was enough to add a spring to her step. She was like a bloodhound on the track of an enticing scent, and it led her right to the person of Eric Johansen himself.
Eric shut his Bible. There was something about reading the Word that reached into his soul and calmed him. Lately he’d found himself turning to it more for the comfort it offered him.
This was his fourth summer in Jubilee. His body was already tuned to the flow of nature in the territory, to the growing seasons that echoed his own. June was the month of new life. He’d come to anticipate this time when the earth burst into glorious green.
But now, instead of feeling great anticipation, he was unsettled.
What had he agreed to? Had he really said he’d allow Rose Kelly to follow him around?
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