by Lucy Evanson
Nathan left the saloon without a look back. The apartment was quiet and almost entirely dark when he entered. He hung up his coat and was on his way down the hall when he saw the soft glow of a lamplight from the sitting room.
Cora was asleep on the sofa, and there on her wrist, gleaming like a welcoming beacon in the night, was the bracelet. He softly stepped inside the room and picked up the now-empty box from the table. Such a small package. Never would have guessed so many problems were inside.
She stirred and opened her eyes. He wanted to drop to his knees and take her into his arms then, to lower his mouth to hers and let his hands run all over her body. He would have brought her to his bed and covered her with a blanket of kisses before pulling her body to his as he had before. But then she would think—she would believe—that she had been right about him all along. He didn’t dare touch her.
She touched him first. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, and she took his hand.
He let out a sigh as if he’d been holding his breath for the last week, squeezed her hand and said goodnight. When he awoke late the next morning, everything was back the way it had been.
Chapter 13
“Cora, I’m not happy about you being cooped up like this all the time,” Nathan said. “It can’t be healthy. And you said yourself that the cloak is warm enough.”
“It is,” she said. “But you know that’s not the reason I don’t go out.” She brought the dirty dishes over to the sink and dunked them in the water.
“I know,” he said quietly. “But I hate to see you stuck in the house all day.”
“Me too.” She squeezed the water out of the dishrag and began to scrub the plates. “But seeing as how I have no choice, it doesn’t do much good complaining about it.”
Nathan stood up and brought the glasses over to the sink. “Do you have any friends you can go see here in town?”
“Nobody I can think of.” If she counted the girls she used to see in the bars, then she indeed had lots of friends. Keeping in mind how close they were to the four-month mark, however, it seemed like a better idea to just lay low and not give anybody extra ammunition just now. What’s more, even though weeks had passed since she’d gone for a drink with Willie, she wasn’t eager to show her face around there, or any other bar, for some time. “Once this whole thing blows over, I’ll try to get outside more,” she said.
“Once this whole thing blows over, you’ll have your own land where you can do what you like,” Nathan said. He squeezed her shoulder. “I’m going to go read the paper.”
“I’ll come sit with you in a minute,” she said. “Want a cup of tea?”
“I’d love one. Do we have any more of those cookies?”
“You’ve had enough cookies,” she said. “Go sit down and I’ll be right there.”
He flashed her a grin and went to the sitting room while Cora finished washing the dishes and set the water to boil. Nathan had a point. She had to get out of the house more often, but every time she set foot on Main Street, she could practically feel the stares of the passers-by. Emma and her friends must have done a fine job spreading rumors, she thought.
Even running to the market for a few minutes had become almost too much to take. Whenever Mrs. Gray discovered that Cora was in the store, she set out after her like a fox after a mouse, as if she were hoping to catch her smuggling a sack of potatoes out under her skirts. The only thing that put her off the trail was the entrance of another customer, which gave Mrs. Gray the chance to whisper new rumors about Cora. It was almost to the point where Cora was going to insist that Nathan do all the shopping, and she wouldn’t have to leave the apartment ever again.
The only thing that had kept her from going completely stir-crazy was that things were going well between her and Nathan. They had started talking again on New Year’s Eve, but she wouldn’t have said that things were back to the way they had been. They actually seemed a little better. She ran her hand absent-mindedly over the bracelet that she had worn ever since that night. Maybe once she had been reminded of what other men could be like, it was easy to see how different, how thoughtful, how caring Nathan was. Other men would have given her a bracelet for some time in bed; Nathan gave her one just because he thought she would like it.
The whistle of the kettle drew her attention and she poured hot water over the tea leaves. Taking the teapot and two cups, she went to the sitting room.
“I have an idea,” Nathan said as he folded his paper and set it to the side. “I think you should try to make friends with Becky downstairs.”
She set the tray on the low table in front of the sofa. “And what makes you think she would want to be friends with me?”
“Why wouldn’t she?” he asked. “I don’t think she would have given you that vase if she didn’t like you.”
“Well, I just bought two dresses from her,” Cora said. “Maybe she appreciated the business.”
Nathan laughed. “I don’t recall any other business giving presents to their customers like that,” he said. “She likes you, I’m sure of it.”
“Well, even if she did, I can’t just drop in,” she said. “She’s got a business. She’s probably always busy.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sure she has her customers, but when I go to work I just see her sitting alone, sewing and whatnot. I bet she’d like to have somebody to talk to once in a while.”
“I’ll think about it,” Cora said. She lifted the lid of the teapot and peered inside, then poured them each some tea. While she warmed her hands around the cup and leaned over to let the steam caress her face, she did think about it. After a moment she decided that she had been right, and that Becky didn’t need anybody coming around to bother her when she had a business to run.
Still, the next morning found Cora alone in the apartment again after Nathan had gone to work, with her only plan for the day—to make herself a strong cup of coffee—already completed. She walked from room to room, the floorboards’ creak the only noise in the place, and went to the window at the end of the hall. It was cloudy again and the gray sky did not reveal even a hint of where the sun was. It could have been late afternoon rather than midmorning and she wouldn’t have known the difference if it weren’t for the clock, which reminded her that she still had several hours to wait before Nathan returned home.
Cora went back to the kitchen, returned to her seat, and picked up her coffee cup again. The last few drops were cold and bitter. She let out a long sigh, then sharply pushed her chair back, went to the cupboard and started looking for her mixing bowl.
An hour later, she stepped into the boutique and saw Becky hunched over a dress that she had laid out on the counter. She was peering down at the fabric with a sternly sad expression, as if the dress had failed to live up to her expectations. When she glanced up to see who had come in, a broad smile filled her face.
“Cora, what a nice surprise!” she said. “How have you been?”
“Can’t complain.” She lifted the basket she had prepared and set it on the end of the counter. “I brought you something.”
“What’s this?” Becky leaned over and lifted the cloth, revealing several freshly baked corn muffins. “Oh my God, those smell delicious,” she said, inhaling deeply.
“I put a little butter in a jar in there too,” Cora said. “Put it on while they’re still warm and you’ll love it.” She looked around the shop, which was as neat as she had remembered it. “Looks like business has been good,” she said, nodding toward the full rack of dresses, each with a customer’s name pinned to it.
“Thankfully, yes, it has,” Becky said. “It keeps me busy, anyway.”
“I’m sure it does.” I knew it, Cora thought as she turned to go. “Well, I guess I’ll let you get back to work, then.”
“What are you running off for so fast? You have to share these with me.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to bother you,” Cora said.
“Don’t be silly.” Becky reached
under the counter and pulled out a couple of pieces of paper to use as napkins and proceeded to prepare them each a buttered muffin. “This is fantastic,” she said after taking the first bite. “Your husband’s a lucky man. How are things going, by the way?”
“Just fine,” Cora said. “He’s a good man.”
“And good-looking, too, if you don’t mind my saying so. Guess that explains why I haven’t seen much of you lately,” Becky said. “You two must be pretty busy, being newlyweds and all.”
Cora smiled as she felt her cheeks grow warm, and she turned to look at the dress Becky had been working on. “So what were you doing when I came in?”
“Oh, I just have to rip out the stitching along the side; it was done completely wrong,” she said. “Sometimes it seems like half the work I do is just fixing others’ mistakes.”
Cora took the hem of the dress between her fingertips. “How’d you learn to do all this?”
“My mom taught me,” Becky said, her voice muffled by a mouthful of cornbread.
“You’re lucky. Nobody ever taught me anything like that.”
“It’s easy. I can show you how, if you want,” Becky said.
“Honestly?”
“Why not? It’s kind of slow in the shop anyway, now that the holidays have passed,” she said. “You can come down whenever you have some free time and I’ll show you what I do.”
“Well…I actually don’t have anything to do right now.”
Becky grinned. “Good. Then we’ll get started.” She picked up a slender metal rod with a sharp tip on one end. “This is a seam ripper,” she said, showing it to Cora before leaning down over the dress, “and this is how you use it.”
When Cora had been a young girl in school, she was amazed to learn one day that February was the shortest month of the year. She had assumed that it was the longest, since it had always seemed like it to her. December brought in the cold weather, but tempered it with the anticipation of Christmas. January froze the lakes and rivers, but gave her the chance to play, sliding and skating on the ice. The next month was another story.
February promised nothing but more cold, and always lived up to it. There was nothing to look forward to except the end of the month, and winter’s harshest blows usually fell at this time of year, when people were already exhausted from the snow that suffocated the fields and the frigid air that crept into their homes.
This year, however, Cora hardly minded. Truth be told, the time had been passing quickly. At home, things continued to go well with Nathan, though Cora had begun to feel a growing sense of unease. When they had reached the halfway point, Cora had thought that they might really pull it off. They had hit three months in mid-January, and now they were on the verge of reaching four months since they’d been married. With so little time left, every day presented two options: the chance to get through it unscathed and find herself even closer to the goal the next morning, or the possibility that everything would come crashing down around her.
She also had a constant whispered reminder from a dark corner in her mind that even reaching her goal—her own home and a big pile of cash—would mean that Nathan would reach his as well: enough money to start his own life back home in Plainfield, without her. The house would seem pretty empty all by herself. But that was the deal I offered him, she thought. As much as she enjoyed his company now—and as often as she thought back to the night she had taken him into her bed—there was no denying that their time together was soon coming to an end, one way or the other.
Fortunately, Cora wasn’t forced to sit around the apartment and dwell on such thoughts all day long. Becky had turned out to be a patient teacher and generous with her time; Cora was now spending a good portion of most days downstairs in the shop, though they sometimes spent as much time talking as sewing.
“I’m going to have to start paying you,” Becky said one day as she hung another dress on the rack and pinned the customer’s name to the sleeve. “You’re doing as much as I am, and just as fast.”
“Don’t be silly,” Cora said. “I’m still learning, and I wouldn’t even know how to do any of this if it weren’t for you. I should be paying you for the lessons.”
“Well, I’ve shown you almost everything I know how to do,” Becky said. “And now that we’re faster, business has even picked up. It would be only fair.”
Cora glanced outside as she saw another carriage roll to a stop in the street. Becky was right; the shop had always been busy, but since she’d begun to help out, word must have spread and there was now an almost-constant stream of people in and out of the boutique. Sometimes it was overwhelming to look at the notebook they used to track orders and see how much work was ahead of them. “We can talk about that later,” Cora said. “In the meantime, I thought I’d try to start cutting for Mrs. Anderson’s order, if you don’t mind.”
“Be my guest,” Becky said, smiling as she picked up the shears and handed them to Cora.
Cora took the notebook to the back room and examined the order. Mrs. Anderson had selected pattern 24—a simple day dress with pleated sleeves—and a light green cotton. Start with the big pieces first, Cora reminded herself as she wrestled the bolt of fabric onto the work table and spread open the pattern so that she could see what needed to be done.
She opened a drawer on the work table and took out the tape measure as she heard the small bell over the front door out in the shop. She would start with cutting the material for the skirt panels, which were large pieces and easy to mark out.
“Good morning,” she heard Cora say. “What can I help you with today?”
“I’ve got a dress out in my carriage that I want you to take a look at. It needs to be let out a tiny bit.” Cora felt goose bumps cover her arms, and she couldn’t help gasping as if cold water had just been poured down her back. The voice was Emma’s.
Cora stepped to the doorway. Her cousin’s eyes flared wide when she saw her.
“You!”
Becky turned to Cora. “You two know each other?”
“This is my cousin,” Cora said.
“I haven’t seen much of you around lately,” Emma said. “I guess you’ve been holed up all winter, huh? Like an animal?”
“I’ve been busy,” Cora said. “It doesn’t concern you anyway.”
“How long have you been working here?”
“I don’t work here,” she said. “We’re just friends.” Cora turned to Becky. “Sorry, we need to talk. I’ll bring her upstairs.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Becky said. “I was going to go out to get some water anyway. You can stay right here.” She took the bucket from the side of the stove and threw on a shawl. When Cora heard the back door close, she turned back to her cousin.
“So I haven’t seen Drake around lately,” she said. “I suppose he got tired of bothering me.”
Emma’s eyes lit up as she grinned. “Oh, he’s been working, just not around here,” she said. “I got word from him yesterday, in fact. He discovered some very interesting information.”
“Really? And what information is that?” Cora asked, trying to keep her voice flat and even.
“You’ll find out later,” Emma said. “Along with everybody else.” She went to the wall and lifted the corner of a bolt of fabric, rubbing the cloth between her fingers. “You know,” she said, turning back to Cora, “you can still make things right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this little charade you’re playing at,” Emma said. “We all know you’re in this just for the money. I know it, you know it, your friend Pete knows it.”
“Paul,” Cora said. “And he’s not my friend; he’s my husband.”
“Maybe,” Emma said. “But how are you going to feel when he’s in front of a judge who’s about to send him to prison? And how are you going to feel when it’s your turn?”
“Can you get to the point?”
Emma smiled at her. “My point is that you can avoid all these problems.” She step
ped closer and reached out to squeeze Cora’s arm. “You can just come over to see my attorney and he’ll draw up some papers for you to sign. If you agree to give up your portion of the inheritance to me, then that’s the end. Everything will go back to the way it was.”
Cora reached up and removed Emma’s hand. “Sure, just the way it was,” she said. “Except you’ll have all the money and the house.”
“It’s not about the money,” Emma said. “I just don’t want you to get in any trouble. I’m trying to help you.”
Cora snorted. “If I remember right, you called me a sinner and a cheat while you were at the house,” she said. “And now, out of the goodness of your heart, you’re trying to help me? No, thanks.”
Emma’s eyes narrowed and she tried to smile again, although it looked more like a grimace. “You can believe whatever you want. If you refuse my help, at least I know that I tried.” She reached into her purse and fished around for a moment before pulling out a cream-colored card. “This is my attorney. His office is one block down from the mercantile,” she said, handing it to Cora. “I’ll let him know to have things ready in case you change your mind.”
They heard the back door open and in a moment Becky was there with the bucket of water. “Do you need some more time?” she asked quietly.
“No, we’re done,” Cora said as she turned and stepped into the back room, slipping the card into her sleeve.
“You know, you really should put more thought into choosing your friends,” she heard Emma say to Becky. “You don’t want the kind of women like…well, like her hanging around your business.”
“I choose my own friends,” Becky said. “Now what was it you needed?”
“Oh, yes,” Emma said. “I have a dress that needs a few adjustments.”
“I’m sorry. My schedule is all full.”
“What?”
“I can’t do it,” Becky said. “But I hear Mrs. Gray over at the general store does excellent work. You should go on over there.”
