Stuck Together

by Mary Connealy

  “If you can mind your manners, then come along.”

  Vincent quivered with excitement, yet he was quiet and didn’t squeeze Mother’s hand or touch her skirts. But there was a gift that required them leaving the room? He was rarely allowed outside of this suite: his bedroom, the playroom where he also took his meals, the schoolroom, and the room where his nanny slept were his world.

  He went downstairs sometimes, summoned to his father’s study, only when he was in trouble. And of course he was allowed down to walk to the park on fine days. But it was improper for children to have the run of the house. A young gentleman remained in his rooms unless he was summoned elsewhere.

  They moved sedately down the wide, curved staircase and went straight to the front door. Mother nodded at a liveried footman, who swung the door open for them.

  Vincent saw a beautiful sight. Gerald, the Yateses’ head groom, stood holding the reins of a brown-and-white-spotted Shetland pony, its thick mane shimmering like silk. The pony shook its head, and the harness bells jingled a pretty tune.

  “A pony? And a cart, too? Mother, are you saying this is all mine?”

  Mother said, “Calm yourself, Vincent. Yes, it’s all yours. You’ll be allowed to drive it to the park when the weather is fair. You’ll have a groom riding beside you so you’ll be safe, of course.”

  Vincent’s heart pounded to think of the freedom being offered him. He’d had very little of it up to that point. His studies were taken seriously. His playtime away from the house was carefully planned with his nanny, and at least one footman was always there to watch over him. Vincent had been reminded many times of all the dangers in the world, especially when a boy was the heir to a great fortune. His father scolded him about any recklessness.

  “And it’s all right with Father?” Vincent regretted that question when he saw Mother’s smile fade a bit.

  “He hasn’t seen the pony yet. It arrived with a letter from Grandmama just today. But your father will abide by my mother’s wishes.”

  Grandmama was wealthy, a fact Vincent was never allowed to forget. Much of the wealth they had was a result of Mother’s family. Though Father was prosperous in his own right, too.

  Father worried overly about Vincent’s safety. He liked to pinch Vincent’s shoulder when he came in with torn trousers and scraped elbows. There were also scoldings and even whippings when Vincent didn’t attend to his studies.

  Mother bent down and straightened Vincent’s neckcloth. “I must get on now, honey child. My maid is waiting to dress me and do my hair. But Gerald will ride with you to the park for your first lesson.”

  Vincent looked at the man who ran his father’s stable. There was no way to hold back a smile. “Thank you, Mother.” Vincent squeezed her hand, too happy now to risk wrinkling her more.

  “Happy birthday, Vincent.” She smiled and went back inside.

  Running down the broad stairs to the sidewalk, Vincent reached the pony. His exuberance caused the animal to dance a bit. A hoof lashed out, and Vincent jumped back and tumbled to the sidewalk. A second later and he was right back on his feet. The kick hadn’t come close.

  “Have a care, Master Yates.” Gerald had a firm hold on the reins, and the cart didn’t move even an inch.

  Then Gerald’s eyes moved past Vincent and widened just as a hard hand came down on Vincent’s shoulder. Only one person in the world had a grip like that.

  Father.

  A shudder of fear coursed through Vincent’s body. He spun Vincent around, and the scowl on his father’s face was dreadful to see.

  “Have this dangerous animal destroyed.” Father never looked away from Vincent. His hand became a vise as he dragged Vincent by the arm into the house. Just as the door slammed, Vincent heard the soft clip-clop of shod feet and the joyful jingle of bells as the pony was led away.

  “I have warned you about being reckless, Vincent. A reminder you won’t soon forget is in order.”

  The whipping Vincent received left marks on his backside and legs that were a long time fading. Even at such a young age, Vincent knew his father did more damage with his whip than the pony would have done with a kick. But the pony had died because Vincent was reckless.

  If he’d known Father was standing nearby, he’d never have upset the pony and then he might have saved its life. Father’s seventh birthday gift to Vincent was one he never forgot.

  He learned to always be on guard.

  Vince remembered his father’s icy rage. For so young a boy, Vince had managed to return that rage full force. It was the first time Vince had ever seen shades of his father in himself.

  That day marked the end of Vince trying to win Father’s approval. Instead he learned to sneak. He learned defiance. He learned to bear, in unrepentant silence, the scoldings and whippings if he got caught.

  Shaking off the ugly memories, he tore open the envelope, prepared to be hostile to whatever Father said.

  He read one sentence, then his eyes fell shut on a surprising wave of tears.

  Shocked by such a show of weakness, he fought them and blinked his eyes open to stare at the letter—which was several pages long. But his vision was too blurred to keep reading after the first few lines. Mother had the same madness her father had, but at a much younger age. Vince had seen plenty of evidence. He’d gone home after the war so sick from the time in Andersonville, he had no choice but to find a place to recuperate.

  Mother hadn’t recognized him.

  Vince knew it ran in the family. When would his turn come?

  Father said that without Vince’s help, Mother couldn’t stay at home anymore. Father had written to order Vince back to Chicago if he didn’t want his mother locked away in a madhouse.

  Locking Mother away would be a public admission of failure. And Julius Yates didn’t fail at anything. It was probably just more of Father’s usual threats aimed at getting Vince to come home and take over the family business—as if Father would give up an ounce of his authority.

  But it was the ugliest threat yet, and as much as Vince doubted Father would ever do such a thing, Vince remembered that beautiful pony. He never underestimated Father’s cruelty.

  Vince tucked the rest of the letter, still unread, into his stiff, mud-caked shirt pocket. Tina wasn’t the only one who’d been in a mud-wrestling fight. Remembering that gave Vince the excuse he needed. “I’ve got to get cleaned up,” he said.

  He stalked out then, not even looking at Dare and Jonas. He wasn’t absolutely sure a tear or two hadn’t escaped his eyes, but he didn’t want to risk the others noticing if they had.

  Chapter 3

  The hot water was shocking and set her teeth to chattering. “I d-didn’t know how c-cold I was.”

  Tina and Glynna had come back to Jonas’s parsonage and only now, as she sank into the tin tub of steaming water, did Tina realize her whole body was numb from taking an icy mud bath.

  “Let me know if you need help washing your hair.” Glynna stood in the next room to give Tina privacy for her bath. She could have gone back to the diner. Tina knew Glynna had been trying hard to see that her children spent time with book learning every day, and this was definitely a disruption. But Tina appreciated that she stayed.

  Tina was a while ferreting out all the mud, but finally she felt clean again—except for her hair, which she’d pinned on top of her head. Glynna had stoked the fire in Jonas’s kitchen to a blaze while Tina had gotten the tub ready, so the kitchen was well heated. Tina finally lifted herself, dripping, out of the tub, dried quickly and pulled on a clean dress. Tina had dressed in the most modest and respectable style when she’d lived with Aunt Iphigenia, but since she’d come to Broken Wheel, she was learning to leave off the extra petticoats and corset. Her life was much easier without them.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Tina, no offense, but . . .” Glynna was talking as she stepped in the room, but she hesitated and shuddered just a bit as she looked at Tina’s hair. “Go ahead and bend over the tub. I
’ll pour water over it. We don’t dare use the muddy water from your bath.”

  Glynna hefted a steaming kettle off the stove and touched it to make sure it wasn’t burning hot. Glynna was a delicate woman, her hair gold, her skin bronze, her eyes hazel, until she seemed to be the same tawny color all over. Though she worked hard, she managed to look so pretty all the time. Tina had to fight not to be envious of her. And of course the envy was about more than how Glynna looked; it was also about her happy marriage.

  Glynna had found love and that added a glow to her sun-warmed coloring. “I’ll get your hair wet and scrub the mud out.”

  Tina pulled the pins out of her hair, and it stayed in the knot she’d formed. Dried solid.

  “This is going to take a while.” Glynna came up beside her.

  Tina leaned over the tub of brown water. They didn’t speak as Glynna poured a bucket of water over Tina’s head, then scrubbed and rinsed.

  Water ran brown into the big tin bathtub.

  “I have to give it one more scrubbing.” Glynna went back to work.

  While Glynna lathered up a second batch of foam, Tina decided they could talk. “Earlier, you said something about ‘no offense’?” Tina braced herself to be deeply offended. That was usually the way when someone said “no offense.”

  There was a long hesitation, which Tina appreciated. It wasn’t as if Glynna was eager to be offensive.

  Glynna was always quiet and sweet, but now she was more hesitant than usual. “I am not sure you’re doing the Lord’s work with your picket line.”

  Tina wasn’t surprised that this was the topic. It stood to reason and she was fully prepared to defend herself. “I can’t imagine the Lord isn’t fully supportive of my cause.”

  “Yes, well, that’s true, I’m sure. The Lord most likely has no use for a saloon. Although Jesus did turn water into wine at that wedding in Cana, so clearly some drinking is acceptable.”

  “This is no wedding, and the only thing miraculous in Duffy’s Tavern is how easily a fool hands over his hard-earned money.”

  “I’m ready to rinse.”

  Tina braced her hands on the edge of the tub and relished the feel of warm water washing away the soap and the last of the chill from her body. This time the water ran with clean white suds that gave way to clear water. Her friend wrapped Tina’s dripping hair in a towel.

  “I’m wondering if maybe . . . well, the men now mostly just ignore your picketing.” Glynna and Tina each took a handle on the metal tub of muddy water and carried it together out of the kitchen.

  As they lugged the heavy tub out of the parsonage, around back and poured the water onto the cold ground, Tina said, “Not all of the men ignore me.”

  Vince was the first face that popped into her head. Then Jonas and Dare. Really, with those exceptions, most of the other men walked right past her as if she were invisible. Although Sledge Murphy was inclined to speak to her favorably about biscuits, and Tug Andrews had a tendency to growl. That was how he acted with everyone, though, so she hadn’t taken it personally.

  “Most of them. The thing is, it’s possible your picketing has lost any effectiveness it ever had.”

  Tina noticed that Glynna was too kind to say it never had one speck of effectiveness.

  “Maybe we should think of something else. Some new approach. I saw Duffy’s face when he almost punched you.”

  “Duffy didn’t punch me. And I know he didn’t set out to.”

  “Which means you recognize at least some decency in him.” Glynna poured water from the kettle on the kitchen stove, then began shaving soap into the steaming tub.

  Tina sniffed and didn’t respond to the comment about that low-down, whiskey-selling Duffy Schuster.

  Glynna plunged Tina’s muddy clothes into the sudsy water.

  “I’ll wash those, Glynna. You don’t have to.”

  Glynna, kneeling beside the tub, smiled. “It’s one of my few housewife skills. Let me do it while you dry your hair.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate the help.”

  Nodding, Glynna went back to her worrying. “The thing is, if Duffy—or any of that crowd—had punched you, I think that would be deeply shaming to a man.”

  Tina thought of Glynna’s husband, the one before Dare, who’d put his hands on her in violence. Glynna had come to Broken Wheel as a mail-order bride for Flint Greer, the man who’d killed Luke Stone’s father. She’d thought she was rescuing her children from an ugly life when her traitorous first husband, after years of stealing from the Confederate Army, had been hung. But her life with Greer had turned to one of heavy fists and constant fear. Jonas, Vince, and Dare had fought at Luke’s side to free Glynna and get the ranch back. Through all that, Glynna had ended up married to Dare Riker, the doctor in Broken Wheel.

  “Are you saying I should just give up?” Tina didn’t want to, not one bit. “My aunt Iphigenia taught me to persevere. She always said, ‘Do what is right, come what may.’”

  “Yes, well, of course you need to do what is right, but I’m wondering if perhaps a fresh approach might be needed to achieve your ends. It can’t be God’s will that you were involved in a fistfight on the street in the mud, can it? I know things are a bit different here in the West, but it isn’t at all proper.”

  Put that way, Tina had some doubts of her own.

  “I think if Duffy had struck you, if you had in any way been hurt in that ruckus, it might . . .” Glynna’s eyes met Tina’s.

  Glynna was a true friend, one of the few Tina had ever had. Aunt Iphigenia’s home hadn’t been the type of place a young girl brought her friends. So Tina didn’t want to upset Glynna. “It might what?”

  “I don’t know how a man’s mind works.” Glynna was silent a moment, focused on her washing. “But any man has to hit a woman for the first time.” She stopped and looked up, and the gentle sound of sloshing water ended. “Do you think the second time might be . . . be easier maybe? Do you think a woman being in the middle of a brawl such as that one today could harden a man? Maybe turn him into a man who hits women? You wouldn’t want to have any part in bringing a man to that, now, would you?”

  “A woman can’t be blamed for a man hitting her. It’s not your fault your husband struck you.” Tina combed her tangled, wet hair in front of the stove with its crackling fire. The kettle was steaming again, the stove’s water wells heating. It made her furious to think of Glynna somehow blaming herself for what Greer had done.

  And yet it was an intriguing and upsetting question. What if Tina had been punched? How would that have made a man—one who knew better than to hit a woman—feel?

  “I have to admit that in the midst of all this, I haven’t spent much time considering Duffy’s feelings.”

  Glynna smiled. “He doesn’t seem like the sensitive type, for the most part.”

  “So do you have any idea what else I might try?” Tina stopped her combing and looked at Glynna. The woman was older, and she’d certainly lived through more troubles than Tina, though Tina’s own life couldn’t be considered an easy one. Still, Tina was willing to take advice.

  “Not really. Can you think of anything?” Glynna went back to her washing, while Tina had the snarls in her hair to consider.

  Finally, a bit nervous to mention it, Tina said, “There is one more cause in this town that concerns me.”

  Glynna lifted Tina’s dress out of the water and wrung it out. “What’s that?” Looking cheered by Tina’s mention of a different cause, Glynna worked as she waited.

  But that cheerful expression wasn’t going to last. “I’ve been up-upset . . .”

  “About what?”

  Glynna might not like this.

  “Well, about the way they’ve got Lana Bullard locked up.”

  Glynna froze, the dripping dress in hand. “Um . . . they locked her up because she tried to kill Dare. And me. And Vince. And Paul.”

  “Vince and Paul were only attacked in the fight afterwards.”

  “Which wou
ldn’t have made them any less dead.” Glynna’s friendly expression had turned wary.

  “And you were a hostage, not her true victim.”

  “It felt very true while that knife was at my throat.” Glynna ran a hand over the barely visible nick on her throat, where Lana had held a knife while she made accusations against Dare, who had already been stabbed. “Lana is a dangerous woman.” She set the dress aside and pulled a chemise from the rinse water next. She spoke very precisely, as if carefully weighing each word. “What exactly do you think should change about her current imprisonment?”

  “I’ve heard that if a person commits a crime while they’re insane, they aren’t really responsible for the crime and they need some kind of treatment, not prison.”

  The two women scrubbed and combed in silence for a while. At last Glynna said, “I suppose there’s no denying she’s furiously mad. But how do you treat such a thing? She can’t be let out of jail. She’s too dangerous to be on her own.”

  Tina nearly had the tangles out of her hair before she came up with an answer. “I think we need to see if we can cure her of her madness.”

  “How in heaven’s name do we do that?” Glynna shook out the dress and took it to a clothesline strung along one wall of the kitchen. She pegged it by the shoulders and reached for the next piece of clothing.

  “I thought maybe, since he’s a doctor, Dare might know.”

  “But Dare’s who she wants to kill.” Glynna was clearly more interested in her husband not being subjected to another attack than she was in justice. “How could he possibly help her?”

  “Who else?”

  “Why would Dare want to help a woman who stabbed him and almost killed me?” Glynna was asking a really good question.

  Tina set her comb aside and gave Glynna a sheepish shrug of her shoulders. “Do what’s right, come what may. I’m hoping he thinks it’s the right thing to do.”

  Chapter 4

  “I’m never going to help with something so wrong.” Dare skidded to a halt in his pacing.