by Sarah Banks
Her roommates were not her friends. She suspected one of them, although she was unsure which, had stolen the only thing of value she owned, a necklace of Miss Hall’s that Becca had been given on her sixteenth birthday.
Becca remembered fondly the moment when she had opened the gift from Miss Hall. There wasn’t money for gifts at the orphanage. They were encouraged to create thoughtful presents like a small bouquet of wildflowers or a found hair ribbon for birthdays and Christmas. That was why she had been so surprised when Miss Hall had privately presented her with the tiny box containing a necklace of hers that Becca had so admired over the years.
She wasn’t allowed to wear it in her new position. When she found out it had been stolen from her bag at the boardinghouse Becca would have cried, except she was so utterly exhausted from her new job. Her eyes remained dry but her heart ached even more than before. The necklace had no real value, other than sentimental value to her. She was pretty sure it wasn’t real gold and the single jewel, Miss Hall’s birthstone, the birthday month that Becca also shared, was paste. But it had been her most prized possession and now it was gone. She was thankful though she had the foresight to sew the little money she had into her dress upon arrival or she was sure that would be gone now too. And she would have been on the street as soon as her monthlong lease was up.
Becca prayed nightly for the girls but added nothing for herself. This was her life now. The sooner she accepted it, the better. Some part of her mind would always flash to the letter she had written to Mr. Courtland, wondering if he would select her as his bride. But as more and more time passed, the precious little hope that she started with began to fizzle.
∞∞∞
It was Saturday, Becca’s only day off, past ten in the morning and she was still curled up in bed. It was cold, dark and dreary outside, very reflective of her mood she mused. It was hard to pull herself out of bed and if she didn’t have to, she probably wouldn’t have. She was so tired, but she needed to stop by the orphanage. It was the only day of the week that she could see if a response had been received to her letter. Casey would be expecting her and Becca didn’t want her to worry.
She freshened up before pulling on her thin jacket. Burying her hands deep in the pockets and ducking her head against the cold, misty headwind, she made the long walk to the orphanage. Smelling the food vendors along the way reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning and was likely was a large reason for her lack of energy. She would need to remember to buy something on her walk home.
“Where have you been?” Casey whispered furiously as soon as Becca entered the orphanage’s small backyard from the rear alleyway. Becca was sure to stay in the shadows, where she was fairly certain she couldn’t be seen from any window.
She smiled when she saw Casey. The girl had clearly been worrying and had a disgruntled look on her face. Becca pulled her into her arms and hugged her tightly.
Casey let Becca embrace her for a short moment before wriggling away. “You look terrible,” Casey stated bluntly.
Becca rolled her eyes. “Thank you. It’s nice to see you too,” she replied dryly.
Casey grinned.
“Anything for me?” Becca asked lightly but she already knew the answer would be no. It had been no every week for the past several weeks. It had come time for her to admit, it wasn’t going to happen, moving out west, starting a new life as a mail order bride. Somewhere over the course of the past few weeks she had foolishly allowed herself to dream. A reply would have come by now. She felt a sense of loss. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted it until now.
Casey held out a sealed envelope. “It came,” she said simply.
Becca looked at the envelope dumbly. “It came?” She repeated hollowly.
Casey nodded happily.
“What does it say?”
“How should I know silly, I didn’t open it! But you have to open it, now, I’ve been waiting all week. I’m dying!” She stated with exaggeration.
Becca only stared at the envelope. “I can’t. You open it.”
“Are you sure?”
Becca nodded.
Casey carefully opened the envelope, pulling out a single sheet of paper, unfolding it. Becca watched as Casey’s eyes quickly scanned the letter, her expression staying excruciatingly blank as her lips moved silently over the words.
Casey looked up at Becca her eyes wide, then her face broke into a big smile. “He picked you!”
“He did?” Becca asked, stunned.
Casey nodded excitedly and pulled a train ticket from the envelope along with a small amount of money. She handed the letter to Becca.
Becca took the letter with shaking hands and read it slowly.
Dear Miss Becca Smith,
I’m looking forward to meeting you and making you my wife. I don’t have much money but I hope that the small amount I have enclosed along with the train ticket will be enough to make the journey. I wish you a quick and safe trip.
Sincerely,
Alex Courtland
Becca sunk to the ground, soaking the knees of her dress in the wet grass, and started to cry. Casey knelt next to her. She wasn’t usually one to show affection but she held Becca’s hand and cried tears of happiness and relief along with her.
“See Becca, you said everything would work out and it did,” Casey said happily, swiping at her tears with the back of her sleeve.
Becca nodded. She had tried to maintain a positive attitude but blow after blow made it difficult to uphold. And being alone made everything so much harder.
She couldn’t stay much longer and take the chance that Miss Templeton would notice Casey missing. Becca wiped her eyes and prepared to say a final goodbye to her friend, knowing that she would most likely never see her again.
“I’ll write every week,” Becca promised. “Remember, it’ll take a while for the first letter to arrive. And make sure you check the mail before Miss Templeton. If she gets them first, she’ll burn them.”
“I will, I promise,” Casey choked out, her eyes still wet with tears.
“And you’ll read it to the other children if you can?” Becca asked.
Becca’s heart broke at the sight of Casey’s tears. She had never seen Casey shed even a single tear before and now both of her cheeks were soaked with silent tears, dripping from her chin.
Casey sniffed and nodded.
“I want them to hear about my adventures. And imagine better things for themselves, a home and a family,” Becca said, getting to her feet, pulling Casey up with her. “And one last thing.”
“Yes?”
She drew Casey into a hug and whispered tearfully, “I love you Casey. You’re like a sister to me, my very best friend and I will miss you so very much. Thank you for everything.”
Chapter Six
There was bounce in Becca’s step for the first time in weeks. She arrived back at the boardinghouse in record time, immediately pulling her valise out from underneath the mattress and quickly collected her few belongings from her small corner of the room. Only one of her roommates was there, and she watched silently as Becca packed her meager possessions in a few short minutes and left the boardinghouse for good.
After asking for directions, Becca made her way to the train station. She would be leaving the day after tomorrow. The sun would be setting soon and she needed to find somewhere to stay that she could afford along with something to eat, she was starving. She asked the man at the ticket window for a lodging recommendation nearby and he pointed her in the direction of a three-story hotel just across the street.
It wasn’t the most practical use of her funds, but she splurged on a room with the money Alex had sent. The room was small but it was clean, warm and private. It faced the train depot but she didn’t mind the noise. In fact, she liked that she would be able to see and hear the trains come and go, knowing soon she would be on one herself. To meet her husband she realized. Becca couldn’t believe it.
She leaned her for
ehead against the window frame and closed her eyes. As the sun, which had only recently made an appearance, began to set behind the train station, she prayed that Alex was a good man, that she would be the wife he wanted and that they would have a good life together.
Becca opened her eyes to a darkened sky and a growling stomach. She went back downstairs and purchased a large amount of food, enough for three or four people, from the hotel restaurant and ordered up a private bath from the hotel desk. She returned upstairs and unpacked the food onto the bed and began eating with relish and delight. She couldn’t keep the smile off of her face, an occasional bubble of laughter escaping her throat.
The tub was delivered along with several buckets of steaming water and soon she was immersed in wonderfully hot water, sinking to her shoulders. Had she ever had a hot bath? Lukewarm, yes. She stayed in the tub until the water cooled and then quickly washed her hair and body before jumping out and drying off. She changed into her nightgown, packed away the remaining food except for dessert and wrapped herself in a blanket from the bed. She pulled a chair close to the window and ate a piece of blackberry pie that made her moan around her fork and watched the goings-on of the train station as night fully descended upon the city.
Soon there was a knock on the door and the tub was hauled away. She crawled into bed earlier than she had in quite some time and slept better than she could ever remember sleeping before. She slept all that night and nearly all of the next day. Sometimes the train whistle or the rumble of the train on the tracks would wake her but she would just smile, roll over and go back to sleep.
A couple hours before sunset Becca finally forced herself out of bed. She had one more thing she needed to do. She got dressed and went outside. She was unfamiliar with this part of town so she was sure to stay close to the hotel as she roamed the nearby streets and shops until she found a ready-made dress that she could afford. It was plain but practical. She needed something better than the worn dress she currently wore every day and this would do nicely. She admired the other textiles and hoped that even though her husband-to-be made it clear more than once that he had minimal funds, that she would someday be able to afford to purchase material so that she could own several dresses, nightgowns and other garments. She was handy with a needle and thread, perhaps she could get some work on the side to help afford luxuries such as those for herself and her husband.
She returned to her hotel room with only her new dress and a small tin of salve for her red and chapped hands several weeks of cleaning at the hotel at earned her. She finished off the remainder of her food from the day before. She had spent all of the money Alex had sent in a span of twenty-four hours and only had a little of her own remaining to pay for food on the journey but it would be enough she told herself. It had to be.
She sat in the chair next to the window wrapped in a blanket again, warm and full, as she watched the bustling street below as darkness once again came over the city. A train was slowly pulling away from the station. Tomorrow, she would be on that train, Becca realized, and the next chapter of her life would begin.
Chapter Seven
“Is she pretty?” His little brother asked.
Alex rolled his eyes and asked, “Don’t you ever get tired of talking?”
“No, why would I? I hardly get to talk to anyone but you,” Billy replied.
Alex turned when he heard the train whistle in the distance. He squinted. He could see a faint smoke plume in the distance, still miles away. The train would be here soon and on it, his bride, a woman he had never met. It had to be one of the craziest things he had ever done. Right after leaving behind everything he had ever known and moving to Sweet Creek.
Alex had only lived in Sweet Creek for close to a year now. After his parents died within days of each other during a cholera outbreak back in Ohio, Alex had taken his fifteen-year-old brother, now sixteen and travelled further west. His father had always talked about doing it so Alex finally did, as a sort of tribute to his father.
His father would have loved it out here. Alex did. It was nice and spacious. There was a sense of community and yet room to breathe. He could get anything he needed in town and if they didn’t have it, it could be ordered and delivered via train in no time at all. The landscape was stunning, the land fertile and water plentiful. His first spring and summer farming had gone well and he anticipated the coming year to be even better. Alex smiled. He could see himself growing old here.
He glanced at his brother and saw him too watching the train approach. Six years in age separated the two of them. He had promised both of his parents that he would look after Billy. At the time of his promise, he hadn’t even known if Billy would survive. Both his parents and Billy had all gotten sick within hours of each other. First his mother had perished, and then his father. It had all been like a bad dream that Alex couldn’t wake up from. He knew that someday he would lose his parents, it was an inevitable part of life but why did it have to be like that, so sudden and so quick? He hadn’t been ready.
Alex thought he was going to lose Billy too. When Billy had finally started to show signs of improvement, Alex had gone to the barn and bawled his eyes out. He had never cried in his life, not before or since, outside of being an infant, but he cried that day, so hard he had been gasping for breath.
He nursed his brother back to health. It was several weeks until Billy was mostly back to his normal self. The death of his parents had been even harder on Billy than Alex, not only because of his younger age but also because their parents had still been alive when Billy had first fallen sick and when he finally came out of his delirium, their parents were dead and buried.
Not long after Billy got well, did the idea to travel further west come to Alex. It was when he was sitting in front of the hearth one evening, flipping his father’s pocket watch open and closed over and over again, the worn gold plating and glass clock face catching the firelight.
He remembered his father’s dream, he often talked about it late at night in front of the fireplace and Alex decided it would be his dream too. There was nothing for them in Ohio anymore anyway. They had no other close family save each other.
When Alex mentioned the idea to Billy, he saw his brother’s eyes light up for the first time in weeks and he knew it was the right decision. Of course, Billy was always open to any kind of adventure. So they sold his parents’ small farm, contents and all, for a paltry sum of money. Not really what it was worth, but enough money to head west and start again.
They headed west with no particular destination in mind with only their horses and bulging saddlebags. Alex figured they would know where they wanted to settle when they saw it. Sweet Creek was one of many towns they stopped in for supplies. It was a nice place so they camped out a few days longer than planned. When they learned of a small abandoned homestead for sale several miles outside of town they went to check it out.
It was priced to sell and it was no wonder. The property was located more than an hour outside of Sweet Creek. The house was small and incomplete and not in the best condition having been abandoned and left to the elements for at least a couple of years. But more importantly there was a barn, thankfully in better shape than the house although it would need some repair too. Most importantly there was good soil and a source of water. All they had to do was look at each other and know that this was the place, the place where they would be starting fresh.
Alex hadn’t thought much more about the future than getting the farm up and running. Perhaps he had been a little ambitious. It was a lot of work for just two men. But he was a patient man and not afraid of hard work. It wasn’t until a few weeks into the venture that Alex realized just how much his mother had done around the house and farm back in Ohio while the men had tended to the fields and the animals. Instead of missing her less as time passed, he found himself missing her even more. He wished that he had been more appreciative. Not that he was ever ungrateful, but he should have told her just how much he appreciated all she had done f
or them, both of his parents.
A few months after settling in Sweet Creek Alex had begun to entertain the idea of marriage, and the merits of having a wife, something he had never considered before. Options were limited in Sweet Creek seeing how single women were in high demand here and most every place this far out west. Alex had even heard of single women stumbling upon Sweet Creek in their travels, visiting a relative and such, and being engaged before sundown. He couldn’t afford the time or the money it would take to return east, even temporarily to seek a bride. The struggling farm could certainly use a woman’s hand but it didn’t seem to be in the cards for him. Maybe in a couple of years, once the farm was more stable, he would be able to spare some time and head east.
It worked out to be that he didn’t have to go that far to find a wife after all because on his infrequent trips to town he was noticing more and more women. Of course they were married women now but where had they come from? Especially since at least two of them were married to men Alex knew had been single the last time he had come into town.
As luck would have it, a simple trip inside the mercantile held the answers. As Alex was scanning the goods, deciding which ones he could afford and the ones he could do without for the time being, he overheard a conversation between the woman behind the counter and a customer. There were mail order brides coming to Sweet Creek.
Alex wanted to know more but frankly, he was too embarrassed to ask. He purchased his supplies and left the store. He put his purchases in the wagon, climbed back into the driver’s seat, but he didn’t leave. After nearly a half hour, there was a lull between customers and he ducked back inside. He swallowed his pride and with cheeks that he was sure were as bright red as the tomatoes his mother grew each summer, he asked the store proprietress Jenny Martin how a man would go about getting a mail order bride.
He had expected her to laugh at him but she didn’t, no, not at all. She was very kind and understanding. She explained what she knew about it, which had been quite a lot, and sent him to Lucy Spencer, the owner and operator of the Sweet Creek Mail Order Brides Agency.
