by Jane Shoup
“Can’t stand that man,” the woman whispered before walking off.
When the order was filled, Dugan insisted on payment before loading the big items onto her wagon. “Eleven dollars and fifty-eight cents,” he barked.
She pulled out thirteen dollars, all she’d been able to scrounge up, and laid it on the counter. “And you can put the rest of it toward our account.”
“Doesn’t go very far,” he snarled as he counted the money.
“The wagon is right outside,” she said sweetly.
He gave her a final scowl before she turned and left, making her way next to the office of T. Emmett Rice, attorney-at-law and Ben’s closest friend. Emmett was nearly as round as he was tall with a thick mustache that had turned silver in her absence.
“Thank God you’re back,” Emmett exclaimed when he saw her. He gave her a hug and stepped back, shaking his head. “We’ve missed you and Ben needs you.”
“I know. I’ve been back a few days.”
“I haven’t been getting out there as much lately because I’m backed up with work. This town has grown and I can’t keep up.”
“I know how much you’ve done and I appreciate it more than I can say. But why didn’t you tell me?”
“Aw, Emmy, I tried. Ben told me not to, but I know you. I wrote and got a letter back from the dean saying you’d withdrawn. With no forwarding address. Where have you been?”
She felt terrible. “It’s a long story. I made a mistake that got compounded a hundred times over.”
“Well, you’re here now,” he said with a smile that made his face look even rounder. “More beautiful than ever, and I would have sworn that wasn’t possible. Aw, and she can still blush,” he teased. “Come on. Let an old man buy you some dinner.”
“I’d like that.”
They walked to Wiley’s Restaurant, and were seated and served immediately. Em looked around at the patrons, few of whom she recognized, and the waitresses, none of whom she recognized. “Where did they all come from?” she asked in astonishment.
“Discovery of a natural resource that mankind suddenly deems valuable changes everything,” Emmett waxed philosophically. “Look at the gold rush in the west.” He shrugged. “We’ve got ourselves iron in them there hills. Been there for thousands of years, or maybe more than that, but all the sudden, we’ve learned how to manipulate it to build ourselves fancy, big buildings and railroads, so it’s got value. Great value.”
“Still,” Em mused. “How do people know? Where did all these young women come from?”
“It’s my understanding that Wiley advertises throughout the whole country, and then brings girls to whichever location he needs them. He pays the girls seventeen dollars a month, plus they get their room and board. ’Course they work six days a week, ten hours a day. Not as bad as farming, I admit—”
“Speaking of which,” she said slowly.
“Yeah,” he said with equal reluctance. “That damn fool son of Ben’s messed things up but good. He went and sold off most of the stock when Ben was first afflicted.”
Em’s jaw dropped.
“Ben softened the story, didn’t he?”
She nodded. “Yes, he did. And what about Patience?”
“What about her? She’s her mother’s own child,” Emmett said as he speared a cooked carrot. “She’d doesn’t give a fig about anybody but herself. Never did.”
“So Ben has an attack and Jimmy finds out—”
“Sent the telegram myself,” Emmett stated. “And he showed right up.” He grew somber. “You know, at first, I thought, maybe he’s finally grown up. Maybe he’s not the piece of crap I thought he was. Then I found out what he was doing. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so mad.”
Em nodded thoughtfully and they ate in silence for a few minutes.
“I see you’ve earned yourself a few blisters,” Emmett commented.
Em shrugged. “There’ll be more to come, I’m sure.”
“The thing is,” Emmett continued, growing more serious, “there’s no money left, and you can’t start over when there’s no money left. Everyone had a couple of bad seasons, then that was followed by Ben’s stroke, followed by Jimmy’s theft. It should never end up that way after a lifetime of work, but that’s the long and short of it.”
“Then we sell off more of the land and work what we have left.”
“Farming is a hard life. You know that. Someone like you, you could have anything. You could have an easy life. You cannot tell me that you really and truly want to live your life on the farm.”
“Yes, I can. Oh, Emmett, all that time away and everything I experienced . . . the one thing I became sure of is that this is home. This is where I want to be.”
“But, honey, the farm—”
“Is exactly where I want to be. I want to make it work more than anything.”
“For Ben’s sake?”
“Maybe. In part. But the rest of it is me. My wish. I swear.”
Emmett sipped his coffee and his mustache wriggled in distaste. “Gone cold,” he muttered, glancing around for a waitress. He caught one’s attention and held up his cup. “Well, Howerton will buy more land. There’s no doubt about that. And he’s a fair man. Didn’t even try to negotiate last time. I named a price, he paid it.”
She nodded. “Good.”
“Talk it over with Ben. Decide how many acres you’d want to offer.”
“I will.”
He pushed his plate away and leaned forward onto his elbows. “Did I say how good it is to have you back?”
“It’s good to be back.”
“Then let’s have some pie.”
Chapter Seven
“She had this pretty brown hair,” Joe said. “And her face . . . just like an angel.” It was after ten at night and he was lying in his bunk, staring up at the beams in the ceiling.
Shorty flung open the door of the bunkhouse and walked in, full of news. “Her name is Emeline Wright,” he announced. “She’s the niece of Ben Martin.”
“I thought she went off and got married,” Johnny Macgregor said.
“Nope, that was the daughter. This one went off to college.”
“College,” Mitchell said. “La-te-da.”
“Bet she thinks she’s something,” someone muttered.
“Hell, she is something,” Mitchell spoke up.
“Hell, yeah, she’s something,” Blue echoed.
Mitchell looked at Blue. “You don’t have to go and repeat everything I say.”
“I don’t repeat everything you say,” Blue snapped. His face was turning red, so he bent back to his task, repairing the hole in his brogans.
“So, she’s our neighbor, is she?” Mitchell muttered.
Tommy Medlin was braiding rope and listening without comment until the tone in Mitchell’s voice registered, and he looked up and saw the look on his brother’s face. His fingers kept moving, but his mind had disengaged from the task. He was recalling another time he’d seen that look on Mitchell’s face. He was recalling Kathy Cooper.
“Whatcha gonna do?” Kathy had asked Mitchell, real flirty like, one day when they were coming home from school. “Kiss me or something?”
Mitchell had been thirteen at the time, Tommy fourteen and Kathy fifteen, but petite. She’d looked younger than either of them, but she was no innocent.
“You’d probably like that.” Mitchell laughed.
“I doubt it,” Kathy retorted.
“Ever seen a boy’s privates?” Mitchell challenged.
“I got brothers, don’t I?” she snapped. “Bet you never seen a girl, though.”
Mitchell smiled slowly. “Boys are all different, you know. Some are a lot bigger than others.”
“You look at a lot of them?” Kathy teased.
“I seen enough, I guess. You want to see? I sure would like to see what you got under that skirt.”
Kathy’s eyes sparkled brilliantly, but they’d dimmed when she looked over at Tommy. “What abou
t him?”
“He don’t mind,” Mitchell said.
“Well, I mind,” Kathy snapped. “Tell him to get.”
There was no need. Tommy was already headed off as fast as he could walk.
“He’s slow, ain’t he?” Kathy asked loudly, so that Tommy would be sure to hear.
Kathy Cooper had always had a hard look about her. Tommy had commented on it once to Mitchell. “Yeah, it’s a look that says ‘do me,’” Mitchell said. “‘Give it to me hard.’ That’s what women really want, especially her.”
Sometimes, the whores at the saloon had that look, too. Of course, he’d been with several, because who else was going to have him? But he didn’t like anything except the buildup and the release. The women always smelled bad, like sex and stale smoke and booze, and they did everything by rote, the way he braided rope. He usually kept his eyes shut during the whole thing, but it was impossible to forget where he was and who he was with. Sometimes a man needed that kind of release, but he didn’t like spending his money on pleasure that was over in two minutes. Afterwards, it always felt like a waste.
“You seen her, pretty boy?” Simon asked.
Tommy snapped back to attention. They were still talking about Emeline Wright. He detested being called pretty boy, but he’d long since given up trying to stop people from saying it. Now, he just acted like it didn’t bother him. “No.”
“Me neither,” Simon said.
“Body like a goddess,” Mitchell was saying. “Wouldn’t mind getting into that.”
“Like that would ever happen,” Johnny scoffed.
“Hey, screw you, Johnny,” Mitchell retorted.
“All of you shut up,” Bart Shaw called from a top bunk. “I’m trying to go to sleep.”
Tommy rose and left the bunkhouse, desperately needing fresh air and space. He put some distance between himself and the bunkhouse, reveling in how beautiful the night sky was. A magnificent shooting star stopped him in his tracks, and he had the fleeting thought that he should wish on it, but what would he wish for? This was his life and no shooting star, no matter how brilliant it was, would change that fact.
“This is nice,” Ben said as he reclined in his rocking chair on the front porch.
His speech was no less impaired than the day Em returned, but her comprehension was nearly foolproof. The challenge had been to figure out what consonants he couldn’t utter. There was nothing wrong with his mind or his sense of humor; it was just that some parts of his body had stopped working correctly. “Except you don’t do it right,” she teased. “You’re supposed to rock.”
He turned his head to watch her as she rocked and mended one of his shirts. “You know, you don’t have to work every minute of the day.”
“This isn’t really work. It’s relaxing,” she said, stretching the truth beyond its limits.
“Is this really what you want, Emmy?”
“Yes, it is,” she reassured him for at least the twentieth time.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do it,” he said with a shake of his head.
“We’re going to sell off one more parcel of land,” she said. “Maybe from the northwest side.”
“No, it’s got the pond. Sell it, and you’ll have issues with water rights and contamination and whatnot.”
“Then which one?”
He was quiet a few moments. “I don’t think we can make this a working farm anymore. It’s too much work, and it’ll take too much money.”
“This is good land,” she pleaded. “We can do something with it. Something profitable.”
“Yeah. Sell it and let them mine it,” he said wryly.
“Not that! I didn’t mean that.”
Ben studied her for a long moment. “I don’t want this land torn up either,” he admitted. “But it feels like we’re kiddin’ ourselves.”
“Well, we’re not. Maybe we do have our backs against the wall, but—” She shook her head, searching for the right phrase to explain her determination. “But all that means is we have . . . a different viewpoint.”
He grinned.
“We will figure it out,” she exclaimed.
“I bless the day you came into my life, Em. I probably don’t tell you that enough.”
She fought back a surge of emotion. “Me, too,” she said thickly.
Ben looked out at the sporadic sparks of light, courtesy of the fireflies, knowing that soon they’d die out for the season. “A few years back, Amy’s brother passed on. He didn’t have any kin, other than us, so the land off thataways,” he said, gesturing with his good hand, “came to us. I say we offer that to Mr. Howerton. It’s over a hundred acres. It doesn’t directly connect to his land, but . . . he probably figures he’ll own it all eventually anyway,” he finished with a wry smile.
Em drew breath to comment, but was distracted by a shooting star brighter than any she’d ever seen.
“Hurry and wish,” Ben said, having seen it, too.
“I already did.” Em laughed as she rose and walked to the railing, staring at the sky, although the celestial show was over.
“Then maybe all our problems just got solved,” Ben teased. “I almost feel like they did.”
Em bit on her bottom lip, thinking of how many of her problems had already been solved. She was here, safe, and away from Sonny. Plus, Ben was getting stronger, and the farm was slowly improving. They’d figure out the rest. She felt it.
Chapter Eight
“Wright, you say,” the elderly lady murmured as she looked at the photograph.
“Yes,” Sonny said. “Emeline Wright.” He looked around the tearoom, wondering if he’d missed asking any of the ladies.
“She’s lovely. And it does seem like a familiar face,” the woman mused.
Sonny looked at her sharply. “Does it?” This was his second trip to Lynchburg, the first having been utterly unsuccessful. Em had managed what he had thought was impossible; she’d managed to disappear from Richmond and elude him for more than a month. He’d searched here and in Bridgewater, where he’d first met her, but so far, there had been no sign of her. It was frustrating as hell, but that only made him more determined to prevail. She’d put his reputation on the line, which was something he could not allow.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, handing the photograph back. “It does seem familiar, but I cannot place it, even with the name.”
Sonny swallowed back his disappointment. “Thank you for looking.”
“Why did you say you’re searching for her?”
“A relative died and left her a sum of money. I’m the solicitor for the family.”
“Ah! Well, if you’ll leave your card, I’ll certainly write if I remember anything.”
“I’ll do that, ma’am.”
“And have some tea, dear. A good strong cup of tea makes everything better.”
Chapter Nine
On Friday, the hands of the Triple H were excused early because of a good week’s work and a looming thunderstorm. After collecting their pay, the majority of them headed into town, feeling celebratory. Gregory Howerton arrived just ahead of his men, although his horse had thrown a shoe along the way, which was why he was bent over inspecting his stallion’s left front hoof when the others began arriving. He looked up at the group of men approaching and motioned for Tommy, who immediately broke off from the others and went toward him. “He’s thrown a shoe,” Howerton said when Tommy reached him.
“I’ll take care of it,” Tommy said, taking hold of the reins.
Howerton allowed the transfer and then watched as Tommy started to the livery without comment or complaint.
James and Quin had lingered behind as the other hands filed inside. “Sure you want to trust an idiot with that?” James asked with a smirk.
Howerton turned to him and fixed him with a cold stare. “Tommy’s not the idiot.”
James’s smirk vanished. Howerton brushed past him and Quin extended his hand in a you first gesture. “I can’t seem to say anythi
ng right,” James complained.
“Learn not to say anything,” Quin suggested.
Emmett was stuck with a talkative client, so Em left the office and meandered up the street, looking into shop windows as distant thunder rumbled. She glanced up at the grayish-purple sky, wondering how soon the storm would hit.
She passed Eleanor Simmon’s Dress Shoppe where the ‘newest fashion from Paris’ was, in fact, not terribly new. She smiled to herself, glad of it. She didn’t miss, and she would never miss, the elegant gowns she’d left behind. Walking on, she noticed Joseph Schultz sitting at the entrance to the livery he owned and operated. He was seated on a tall stool at an even taller table, hunched over a saddle he was repairing. It was a sight she had witnessed many times, though not in a few years. He looked up and smiled to see her. “Emeline!”
His handlebar mustache had grown bushier since she’d last seen him. “Hello, Mr. Schultz,” she said when she got close.
“It’s good to see you, Miss Emeline. And as pretty as ever.”
Her face warmed. “It’s good to be home.”
“Still can’t take a compliment, I see,” he teased. “All that learning in college and they didn’t teach you that?”
“Truthfully, I’m not sure what I learned of any real value.”
He grunted. “And in the meantime, been some big changes around here, eh?”
“Yes, indeed. I’m not sure what to make of them all.”
“Where’s my manners gone to? You probably don’t know Mr. Medlin, here,” he said, shifting on his stool to glance behind him.
Em followed his gesture and locked gazes with a man standing inside the livery. With his dark hair, well-proportioned features and compelling blue eyes, he was, without question, the most handsome man she’d ever clapped eyes on.
“Tommy,” Mr. Schultz continued, “this is Miss Emeline Wright.”
Tommy tipped his hat to her. “Ma’am.”
“Mr. Medlin,” she returned. Her voice sounded breathy and strained, which was ridiculous. For one thing, she had absolutely no interest in a man, any man, no matter how handsome he was.
