“All right. We’ll rest.” She walked around to the sheet and rummaged for the shawl she had scooped up with the other clothes. It was snagged with branches and grass, but she picked them off and wrapped it over her shoulders.
The hollow in her stomach grew more insistent as she crossed her arms against her chest and watched the sky fade from gold to gray. She would have eaten by now if Dom were more cooperative. She eyed him sullenly where he stood, not even grazing, just heaving softly and hanging his big head. “Disgrazia, you should be ashamed.” There was still plenty of light to see by, but without the sun’s rays, the air grew cold. They had to go on.
She walked over and felt his neck again. It was damp with sweat, and he shivered. Was he ill? Somewhere in the trees behind her, an owl gave a throaty cry. She was not afraid, but the wild loneliness of its call sent a shiver up her back.
Setting her chin, she took Dom’s bridle. “Gidd-up.”
He followed two paces, then stopped. Pressing her head to his neck, she whispered, “Please, Dom. Per piacere.”
He stepped forward, one pace, another.
“That’s right.” She held his head between her hands. He followed slowly. At this rate, they would not reach Crystal before dark, but they were moving. Then Dom stumbled and balked, yanking her arm.
Carina bit her lip in frustration. Why was everything going wrong? Just when she thought the worst had passed, it was something new. She looked into the darkening sky. “Why, Signore? Do you have to strike my mule? It is not enough that I lose my things, my house?” And so much more that she wouldn’t put into words.
She dropped to the side of the road, folded her arms around her knees, and laid her forehead down. Thoughts crowded in, thoughts she had fought for weeks. Thoughts of Flavio, his smile, his eyes like dark velvet, the sound of his voice when he said her name.
The sound of his voice saying Divina’s name! Carina clamped her ears with her hands and fought the tears. She would not cry. She was too angry to cry. But the tears lodged in a hard knot in her chest. Was it pride to resist them? To hope, however vainly, that things might come right, could come right if only …?
Would he come? Was she worth a thousand miles to him? She slapped her knees with her palms. What if he did? Would she accept him now, knowing what she only suspected before? Why did her heart linger so? Should it not repulse her for what he was?
Carina stood and slid the loaded sheet from Dom’s back. Keeping it balanced as Quillan Shepard had tied it, she hung it across the back of her own neck. The weight pulled her head forward, and try as she might, she couldn’t tolerate it. Slipping the load over her head, she dropped it to the ground, yanked the knots open, and spread the sheet.
The pot could go, and the kettle. Until she had a kitchen she would not need them. She carried them beneath the trees and tucked them into the undergrowth, then went back to the road. The silver she would not part with, nor the books, where the weather would spoil them. She laid them in two stacks and padded them with the clothing, then tied up the middle as it had been and tried again.
Please, Signore. A small favor. It was heavy, painfully so, but she would do it. She straightened herself under the weight of her load, took Dom’s bridle, and walked. He followed without protest now that she carried his load. Maybe he had rested enough. Maybe he sensed she had no patience left. Maybe … God had listened.
By the time she reached the first outbuildings, her neck was a burning probe down to her lowest back, and her legs could barely keep from buckling. Instead of going down the main street like a gypsy peddler, she cut off toward Mae’s, every stumble on the rough ground a torment.
She reached the boardinghouse steps but could not climb them. A single lamp shone from inside, and Carina focused on that as she bent and slid the load off her shoulders. The pain of bending was so extreme, she almost cried out. Pulling herself up by the railing, she made it to the door. With the side of her fist, she banged and waited. It wasn’t long, but it felt like forever.
“Door’s open. I always keep it open.” Mae pulled it wide, and the light sprang from the hall, silhouetting her enormous shape. “What in the name of thunder’s happened to you?”
Carina swung a weary arm toward the sheet, then felt her knees buckle as they had threatened to all day. This time the chasm was only as deep as the floor.
Carina blinked against the light. A man’s face swam into view, and Mae’s, like a round moon, behind him.
“Here she comes, now.” He smiled, removed the spectacles from his nose, and slid them into his vest pocket. “Well, young lady. It appears you overtaxed yourself.”
Carina glanced around the room, papered in soft cream and beige. There was a photograph of a blockish man on the wall before her, and wilting flowers adorned a painted vase on the table.
“Is she all right?” Mae’s tone was surprisingly warm.
“I think so. Pushed herself too hard, especially being new to the elevation.”
Carina stared at him, trying to piece together where she was and why. “Where’s Dom?” Her voice sounded as thin as whey.
“Dom?” Mae cocked her head. “My mule.”
“Tied up out back.”
Carina closed her eyes. Had she ever been so tired? She forced the lids to rise again. “Alan Tavish … he’ll know what to do for him….”
The doctor stood. “I’ll see him to the livery on my way.”
Carina’s eyes closed of themselves, and she gave in to the warmth and the darkness.
Like a great mother hen, Mae swooped upon Carina the next morning. “You’ll not budge from that couch until I say so.” She swung a tray with broth and brown bread spread with apple butter onto Carina’s lap. “You’re gaunt as a ghost. When’s the last time you ate?”
Carina thought about it. “The night I came in. I should have been back for supper with Mr. Beck, but Dom …”
“I thought as much. Don’t you know board comes with the room?”
Carina nodded, feeling foolish now for not eating with the men. The motion sent a fresh wave of dizziness. “My head …”
“Ten thousand feet, child. Ten thousand feet above the sea. Think about that.”
Carina did think. Could that have affected Dom as well? She suddenly pushed herself up. “I must see to my mule.”
“Doc took him to the livery. Old Tavish’ll see to him.”
Carina believed that, but there was more she must do. “Mr. Beck is expecting me.”
Mae shoved her gently into the cushions, then settled into the horsehair wing chair across from her. “As you’ve mentioned him, I’ll tell you. He was here twice last evening asking for you.”
“I was supposed to meet him for supper.”
“Well, he’ll get by that.” Mae winked, and the folds of skin scrunched up around her violet eyes.
The innuendo was clear and annoying. Did Mae think she had come all this way to find a husband? And that she would jump at the first man who offered a hand in her plight? Carina sipped broth from the bowl. The bread she couldn’t stomach yet. “I’m to be his assistant.”
“Oh? Well, he’ll hardly expect you, being that it’s Sunday, and I have specific orders not to let you out of the house today. Dr. Felden’s orders.” Carina sighed. The relief she felt shamed her. This weakness of body was foreign and frightening. Crystal was not a place to be weak. She’d seen that much already.
“If you’d rather, I can help you up to your room. But you’re welcome to stay here.”
Something in the way Mae said it tugged Carina’s heart. Was the woman lonely? She thought of the evenings on the porch with Mamma, TíaMarta, Lucia Fiorina, and old TíaGelsomina, who was not a true aunt but Divina’s godmother. And Divina, of course, unless she had better things to do, like sneaking away with other women’s sweethearts.
Mae heaved herself up. “I have a few chores, but I’ll be in calling range. In a while we’ll chat, but for now you rest.”
“Mae …” Carina sank back
into the pillows. “My books …”
“And your silver. There by the couch.” She pointed. “I figured they were important if you nearly killed yourself hauling them in.”
“Thank you. I hope the bed sheet …”
Mae waved her hand. “None the worse for the wear.” She headed out of the room.
Carina bent and ran a hand over the clothbound copy of Don Quixote. Lifting it to her chest, she closed her eyes, too tired to read but not releasing it. Her mind floated to a sun-kissed land with sloping vineyards ripening beneath benevolent rains. And a dreamer knight, neither old nor confused, but her own darkly handsome Flavio sang her name … Dulcinea. And she rose up on the song, became the song, and for a time … forgot.
Carina woke when Mae slid the book from her chest. The lamps were lit, and the window was dark. She sat up. “Have I slept the whole day?”
Mae chuckled. “You have. And I’ve brought food. Nothing fancy yet, just good solid bread and broth.”
“You’re too kind.”
Mae handed her the bowl. “Kindness has a way of coming around again.”
Carina sipped the broth. “It’s good. I’m hungry.”
“And you have color in your cheeks. Tomorrow you’ll feel like your old self again. Just takes a while to build up the blood. After that the climate’s right healthful. At least that’s what they tell the tuberculars.” Mae reached for the chair to settle in but stopped at the knock on the door. She heaved a sigh and went out.
Carina heard her outside the door. “No, Berkley Beck, you can’t see her.”
“Now, Mae …”
Carina could just picture his expansive teeth and “butter won’t melt” expression. He wouldn’t get past Mae, though. Carina would bet on it.
“You can see her tomorrow.”
“I only have a small thing or two to say—”
“Save your small things for the mornin’.”
“You’re cruel, Mae Dixon. Can’t you see I’m sick with worry?”
“Worry? Hah. It’s lovesick you are, and that’ll keep. Good night, Berkley Beck.”
Carina cringed. She must put an end to that talk immediately. The door opened, and Carina caught just a glimpse of Mr. Beck’s face before Mae closed the door behind her.
“There now. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, he’ll be right fond in the mornin’.”
“It’s not fondness between us. It’s business. Maybe legal business. Maybe my house next door—”
Mae waved her hand. “Honey, you aren’t gettin’ that house back. You may as well put it out of your mind.”
Carina sat up. “It belongs to me. I paid for it. I have the deed.”
“You have a deed.”
“What do you mean?”
Mae laughed. “Half the deeds in town are forgeries. Claim jumping is a sport up here. The only way to have your property is to keep possession. And that ain’t easy.”
“You have yours.”
“I’m a landmark. Anyone comes in here raisin’ Cain, I pull the pistol. Besides, the men won’t give me trouble. They like too well the way I run things, leavin’ the door open all night and fillin’ their bellies at my table.”
Mae cracked the knuckles of both hands, tapered hands that seemed too small for her. “Still, if I don’t stay on my toes … Why, there have been people who built all day, went to sleep, and woke to find their work pulled down and someone else’s building in its place.”
“But how can they—”
“Because they do.”
Carina sank back into the cushions. “Mr. Beck would have told me.”
Mae raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “Well, maybe. He’s given you a job, you say?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what brought you here?”
No. But what would Mae think of her true reasons?
Mae shook her head. “I guess you know what you’re doing, but Crystal’s not exactly abounding with opportunities for women. Though that’s not to say that those of us with a mind to it can’t make it happen.”
“I intend to.” Crystal may be far from what she expected—worse than she could have dreamed—but she was here now, and she would make the best of it.
Mae nodded. “Well, put on the feed, then, so you won’t be passing out on the porch.”
Carina bit into the bread, coarse and brown and heavy. Not at all the crusty white loaves the size of her thigh that Mamma had sliced and drizzled with thick green olive oil, vinegar, and salt. Carina sighed. If the Carruthers had not taken her house, she might even now be baking a loaf … but the olive oil and vinegar were gone with the tomatoes and wheels of crumbly black-rind cheese.
She had lost all of the things she would have used to make a home. How would she replace them? Work. By earning enough to buy again what she needed. “I hope Mr. Beck won’t change his mind.”
“I’m sure he won’t. He had a daisy in his lapel.”
Carina frowned, but Mae laughed, a thick mezzo laugh that shook the rolls at her neck and squeezed the pouches almost shut around her eyes. It was a contagious laugh like Mamma’s, a laugh that wrapped around and squeezed you. In that moment, Carina wanted to hug her, to grab Mae’s arms and dance, throw back her head and laugh as she had with Mamma when she was very small. But that was the Italian, not American, way.
“I remember when Herb Dixon came courtin’ the first time. He was so nervous I thought he’d faint same as you did right out on my floor.” Mae laughed again.
Carina turned to the picture on the wall, a small, square, unremarkable man with thinning hair and round, guileless eyes. “Is that Mr. Dixon?”
“We were married only a year. He took a fever and died on me.” Mae wiped her eye. “Twenty-nine years, and I still miss him. He hardly ever spoke, but he listened. A warmer-hearted man I never knew.”
Carina quaked suddenly. Twenty-nine years! Eight more than her full age. Could the hurt last so long? “He brought you up here?”
“My nephew did. Mr. Dixon left me with a handsome sum, and my sister’s son had a use for it. So we moved up to Placerville and staked a claim.”
“Placerville?”
“The remains west of town are Lower Placer. We lived in Upper Placer, farther up the gulch. It was hardly more than a gulch camp at its best, forty-niners who staked out here instead of haulin’ all the way to California, fifty-oners who’d failed in the sunny gold fields of their dreams, slogging homeward and snagging on the Rockies with enough dream left to dig in once again. Then others trailing in for one reason or another.”
“Did you find gold?”
“Sure. Dug the riverbed all day long, sluicing gravel for a handful of dust. Then Matthew had enough of it and went his way, but I had the mountain in my blood. A new rush of folks were startin’ to work other gulches. Let’s see, that would’ve been ’59. They weren’t just lookin’ for gold in the creeks. They were surveying other metals and coming in with machinery and real know-how. I had a head for business. Where there were men, there’d be a need for a roof and food for their bellies.”
She chuckled. “I was never in much romantic demand, not after Mr. Dixon. And not a one ever suggested such. They knew better.”
Mae patted her belly. “But I kept a good house for them that wanted such. The first was a tent in which twelve men slept in six cots taking shifts. They had regular meals same as I give them now, though the accommodations have improved.”
Not tremendously, Carina thought. She handed Mae the finished dish tray. “Will you stay here always?”
Mae shrugged. “I have nowhere else to go. And I’ve come to know it here. Leastwise, it knows me.”
It was good to be known, respected, Carina thought. Mae had dug into the mountain and found her place. It was possible. But was it what she intended for herself?
SIX
How can one change a moment passed? Even a moment that should never have come.
—Rose
THE NEXT MORNING Carina felt stronger tha
n she had in days, having slept through the din without waking. Maybe she had grown used to it. Maybe Mae’s care had fortified her. She rose from the couch, washed, and dressed, then with a deep breath left the haven of Mae’s rooms.
Mae was serving breakfast on the long tables in the dining room, hot cakes and pork sliced thick and fried. Sweat beaded Mae’s forehead, and her cheeks were flushed and red. There was a greasy sheen to her hands as she plopped a plate down where Carina sat awkwardly between two men who had made room for her.
Carina eyed the crisp, blackened bacon and spongy hot cakes with thoughts of Mamma’s sausage and peppers, fresh bread and milk. She picked up a charred stick of bacon. With a sigh, she said a silent blessing, then, like the men around her, she devoured it.
After eating, she took the box of silver and made her way down Drake to Central Street. As she reached Berkley Beck’s office, the door opened and a gruff, sour-faced man pushed out. He neither looked nor spoke to her but grumbled under his breath. At least he didn’t spit. She went inside.
Berkley Beck stood immediately. “Miss DiGratia. I’m overcome at seeing you so hale. I was terribly concerned.” His hair was smoothed back and parted, his suit uncreased, but he wore no daisy in his lapel.
She breathed her relief. “Thank you, I’m quite recovered and ready to work. But could you recommend a safe storage for this?” She held up Nonna’s silver. “My walls are canvas.”
He eyed the box. “Certainly. I have a small safe; though if you don’t mind, I’ll keep its location to myself.”
She handed him the wooden box. Whatever place he had would be more secure than a room with a door that locked but walls that could be cut with a knife. She hadn’t risked the steep slope only to have some ruffian steal the silver from under her bed.
He set the box on the desk. “As you see, I’m prepared for you.” He motioned to the crude desk he had placed opposite his own. “It’s not pretty, but it’ll have to do, I’m afraid. I regret we haven’t more room. Unfortunately, my living quarters take up the balance of the space behind the office. At some point I hope to move, but until then …” He spread his hands.
The Rose Legacy Page 6
