Stay a Little Longer

by Dorothy Garlock

  Why wouldn’t Mother tell me about such an offer?

  What reason could she possibly have for turning it down?

  “Is the offer still good?” she asked.

  “It is,” Zachary answered with a gleam in his eyes. “And it’s one that I think you should grab. After all, there’s more than just the three of you to worry about… There’s Charlotte as well.”

  The mere mention of Charlotte’s name angered Rachel; every bit as clearly as on the day on which it was given, she remembered the promise that Sherman Tucker, Mason and Zachary’s father, had made to Alice after her husband’s unfortunate death. He had pledged to support Charlotte, always to make sure she was cared for, even if it cost him all of his wealth. But that aid had never been forthcoming.

  “Your father swore that he would—”

  “And that is a pledge that I give you my word I intend to keep,” Zachary said, cutting her off before she could say any more, “as long as you can persuade your mother to sell this place.”

  “I don’t know if—”

  “Think about it, Rachel,” he kept on, his hands gripping her shoulders. “No more days wasted cleaning up after others you hardly know, your mother and uncle no longer living in shameful surroundings, and, most important, Charlotte will finally have everything she would ever need. Everything you’ve ever wanted can be yours, and all I ask is that you persuade Eliza to do what you know is for the best, not only for you, but for each and every person in Carlson.”

  Though it pained her to admit it, Rachel knew that what Zachary offered was very appealing. The thought of leaving her chores behind, of not having to worry about rainwater pouring in through a hole in the roof, of endless days spent hanging laundry on the line, of ensuring that Charlotte was properly cared for, was as enticing to her as anything she could remember.

  But could she accept Zachary Tucker’s word as the truth? Clearly, he had a lot riding on the deal with the lumber company. In his current position, wouldn’t he say anything in order to gain what he wanted? With his reputation as something of a snake in the grass, how far could she take him at his word?

  I need to speak to my mother!

  Sensing that he had said enough, Zachary released his grip on Rachel and made his way to the door. Before stepping out, he turned back to her, seriousness written across his face. “Whether you choose to continue living from hand to mouth”—he sneered as he looked back around the house—“or to take advantage of my offer… it’s up to you.”

  Zachary Tucker was very pleased with himself. Hurrying back toward the bank, he could scarcely contain the wide smile that kept creeping up at the corners of his mouth. Even in his wildest of dreams, he had never imagined it would go so well.

  There was little doubt that he had made an impact on Rachel; the way she had blanched when he’d told her how much was being offered for that decrepit boardinghouse had pleased him no end. She was pragmatic, a realist, someone who would recognize that there was a better way to be had. His instincts to go to her had proven true.

  Now all I have to do is wait…

  Zachary didn’t feel the least bit guilty for having lied to Rachel; the mere thought of a company as successful as Gaitskill offering to rebuild Carlson’s schoolhouse was enough to make him laugh. But he had simply followed a strategy that had served him well in the past; tell the other person whatever she wants to hear. He hadn’t been lying when he said there were many who would benefit from the railroad’s arrival… not the least of whom would be him and his bank.

  What did bother him was the mention of Charlotte Tucker. His father had been nothing short of a fool when he had made the offer to care for the girl; undeniably distraught with grief at Mason’s death, he had not been thinking clearly. He’d even mentioned a ridiculous idea to send her to some sort of woman’s college. But once illness had taken hold of Sherman, Zachary had chosen to forget the promise.

  But Rachel had never forgotten.

  Having never taken a wife or had children of his own, Zachary could see Charlotte as exactly what she was; a threat to all that he had taken pains to accomplish. As Mason’s child, she could make legitimate claims to the empire her father was set to inherit. Just by right of birth, she could cut a piece from Zachary’s pie, and that was something he could not allow.

  Over the years since Mason’s death, he had made a show of concern for his niece’s welfare, without actually doing anything of substance. Now, as a condition for the sale of the boardinghouse, he knew that he would have to give her something, but he would maneuver to ensure that she received little more than she had now. No matter what, Charlotte would never be allowed to grow into a thorn in his side.

  “At least I didn’t have to see the little bitch!” he muttered.

  Quickening his stride, Zachary took comfort in the fact that Rachel was almost assuredly talking to her mother even as he walked. That Eliza had never spoken about his offer was especially good news; he had seen the pain written on Rachel’s face as clearly as words printed on a page. That hurt would only intensify when they argued. If Rachel were as persuasive as he hoped she would be, it would only be a matter of time before the Watkinses came to him, begging to sell the boardinghouse for what was offered. All he needed was time and a little patience, and all of his dreams would come true.

  But what if Eliza said no?

  Though he doubted it could happen, Zachary knew that there was a chance that Rachel would be unable to persuade her mother. By staying in her darkened room for all of these years, Eliza Watkins had shown herself to be more than a bit unstable. Even when faced with reason and a pile of money so large that she could drown in it, she could still prove to be as stubborn as a mule. Besides, she’d already turned him down once.

  If that were to happen, then he would have no choice; Travis Jefferson would have to be unleashed. On that day, people would be hurt, blood would be shed. There would be no telling what the final fate of his dead brother’s remaining family would be.

  In the end, all that mattered was that he got what he wanted. Who got hurt was not his concern.

  Chapter Nine

  RACHEL PUSHED OPEN the door to her mother’s room without a knock and stepped inside. The interior was as gloomy as always, darkened by the heavy curtains draped across the windows. If it weren’t for the meager light thrown off by the small lamp on top of Eliza’s bureau, it would have been hard to see much of anything.

  Eliza was in her usual place, peering out of a sliver of space between the curtains to see outside. Her face was drawn in concentration and worry and her hands wrung nervously. Deep wrinkles, the result of many years spent in dire expectation of the worst, were etched across her forehead. When Rachel brought her breakfast, it had been clear that this was a day when her demons were getting the better of her.

  “What’s the matter, dear? Are you sick?” Eliza fretted, taking Rachel’s hands in her own. “Oh, I just knew that this was going to be a dreadful day!”

  “I’m fine, Mother,” Rachel said quickly.

  “But that doesn’t mean you’ll stay that way!”

  When her mother was like this, worked up into a frenzy of worry, Rachel knew that it was hard to talk to her about the most trivial matters; broaching a subject so important would be next to impossible. Still, she knew that what Zachary Tucker had told her could not be ignored for long, and that therefore there was much for her and her mother to discuss. She couldn’t wait for Eliza to calm down.

  “Zachary Tucker was here,” she said simply.

  “Did something happen to Sherman?” Eliza asked in a panic. “He’s been dreadfully sick. But he was always such a kind person, I’d hate for something horrible to have occurred! Oh, it would be such a tragedy! When you get to be my age, you’ll know how painful it is to watch everyone around you pass!”

  “That’s not why Zachary came.”

  “Then what on earth did he want?”

  Rachel sighed, fearful about confronting her mother, but determined
and desperate to know the truth. “He told me about the lumber company’s offer, about the plans that they have made for Carlson, and about how he’d come to you and inquired about buying the boardinghouse. He told me what they had offered and that you’d turned them down.”

  “He came around about that old thing again?” Eliza snorted derisively. “I certainly hope that you told him the same thing I did! The nerve of that man wanting us to give up our home!”

  As surely as if she had been struck in the chest, Rachel knew that Zachary had told her the truth; he had come to her mother with a very generous offer and she had turned him down, leaving the family in their financial predicament. She wondered if everything else he told her was equally true.

  “Why didn’t you take his offer?” she asked, her face flushing bright red.

  “Do you… do you want to sell our home?” Surprise was written across Eliza’s face.

  “It would make life easier for all of us,” Rachel pressed. “There’d be no more having to clean up after others, providing rooms for strangers. We wouldn’t have to constantly worry about making ends meet or paying our bills. It would be hard to leave, but with the kind of money that Zachary is offering, we could make a new start!”

  “Would you have taken the money?”

  “I would have,” Rachel said, swallowing the lump in her throat.

  Without uttering a word in reply, Eliza stepped away from her daughter and crossed the room to the scarred bureau. Picking up a silver picture frame, she stared intently into the eyes of her lost daughter, into the photograph that she had had taken of Alice right before her wedding. Rachel waited for her mother to speak, but Eliza remained silent; it was as if she were waiting for Alice to say something.

  “Why wouldn’t you take what was offered?” Rachel asked again.

  “Do you still remember the day that you and Alice spent the whole afternoon sliding on rags down the staircase banisters because you thought that you could clean them faster that way?” Eliza asked, her eyes never wavering from the picture. “I can still hear your laughter carrying through every nook and cranny of the house.”

  Rachel remembered how they had raced each other back up the steps before once again sliding down, laughing until they were almost out of breath. She recalled how on one particular trip she had crashed violently at the bottom of the stairs, but before the tears could well up and come pouring out, Alice had been by her side, kissing her scrapes and calming her fears. “I do,” she answered simply.

  “How about the day that Alice spent in the kitchen making apple pies for the Fosters after their barn burned from a lightning strike? She said she was worried that they would be too busy to remember to eat. She spent half of the night making sure things were just right.”

  Unbidden recollections of how Alice had proudly walked down the long road to the Fosters’ farm carrying a tray of fresh, still cooling pies sprang up in Rachel’s mind. It always seemed as if her older sister were leaping from one good deed to another; from knitting mittens to be sent to an orphanage in Minneapolis to giving singing lessons to some of the less well-off girls at church. There were so many selfless things Alice had done out of the goodness of her heart.

  “As much as I might have complained about it, I even have fond memories of that rainy April day she brought home that wounded, mud-caked, mangy dog and nursed it back to health in the sitting room. Then, just as it was nearly ready to be back on its own, it went and had a litter of puppies! Until my dying day, I’ll never forget the way that Alice’s face lit up at the sight.”

  “Me neither,” Rachel admitted.

  Because mine did exactly the same thing!

  “What I am trying to tell you,” Eliza continued, finally turning back to face her daughter, “is that every one of those memories happened here… they all happened right here in this house. They’re in the cracked walls and the floors, they’re right there in every corner and every closet, they are in every window and doorway and even out around the washing line, all of them waiting for one of us to rediscover them.”

  “Mother,” Rachel began gently. “Alice is…”

  “Dead,” her mother finished for her, the first wetness appearing in her eyes even as a smile spread across her face. “I know that,” she agreed. “I know that there are no new memories to be made, but each and every day that I spend here in this house, I feel as if these older memories, these recollections of happy times, are with me, as if Alice were still with me.

  “If we were to agree to sell this home, if I were to just accept all of the money that Zachary is offering and move, we could take the memories with us, but no matter how badly we wished things wouldn’t change, they would never be the same. Wherever we went, to whatever new home, we could never manage to bring Alice with us.”

  Rachel knew that much of what her mother was saying made sense; there were days that she had spent walking around the boardinghouse, remembering special times she and Alice had spent together. Not only was there the ever-present burden of Charlotte’s uncanny resemblance to her mother, but there was also simply nowhere in the house to go without some memory, some glimpse of a much happier time, coming back to her.

  Still, Rachel wondered if by so desperately clinging to the past, they were denying themselves the opportunity to live. The truth was that Alice was gone, and while her death had been so devastating for them all, there was nothing that could be done to change it. While Rachel didn’t want to let go of her treasured memories of her sister either, choosing to wallow in their past wouldn’t ever completely assuage that loss, nor completely erase the pain.

  “Besides,” Eliza argued, “Zachary Tucker cannot be trusted.”

  “I know that.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” her mother snapped, cutting her off. “For as long as I live, I’ll never forget what Mason told me… about how his brother had ruined Archie Grace’s life.”

  Momentarily confused, Rachel could only echo, “Archie Grace?”

  Everyone in Carlson knew the sad story of the town’s blacksmith. Ten years earlier, heartbroken over the recent loss of his wife to influenza and despondent over money troubles, he’d gone out to his workshop one summer night with a bottle of whiskey and a length of rope and hanged himself. The whole town had turned out to pay their respects; there hadn’t been a dry eye at his funeral.

  “What did Zachary have to do with Mr. Grace?”

  “While there was no denying that Archie was devastated by his wife’s death, the truth was that he was pulling himself together,” Eliza explained slowly, her green eyes as flat and cold as a Minnesota plain in winter. “There were rumors that he’d come into some money, something about an aunt back east who had always been fond of him, and that he would finally be able to pay off some of his outstanding debts. The way that Mason explained it, Archie had been so wound up when he’d received the money, he’d run off down to the bank around closing rather than wait until morning.”

  “And Zachary was there?” Rachel asked.

  “He was…”

  A sickening feeling began to spread across Rachel’s gut; she had thought Archie Grace to be a nice man, always ready with a cheery smile or laughter. The insinuation that Zachary had something to do with his death was repulsive, but she wanted to know more, to learn the horrible truth.

  “As a matter of fact,” Eliza continued, “Zachary was the only person there, just locking up for the night. Archie came upon him on the front steps, a bit breathless from running over, and said that he wanted to make a deposit. Zachary told him that he would take care of it, and so Archie just handed over the money… It was the last time he ever saw it.”

  “Zachary took it?” Rachel blurted incredulously.

  “Not according to him, but yes, he did.” Her mother sighed. “The next time Archie went to the bank, he found that there was no record of any sizable deposit. Confused and growing angrier by the moment, he confronted Zachary, but the bastard acted as if he had no idea what the poor
man was talking about. Even when the matter was brought to Sherman’s attention, Zachary clung to his lie, swearing on his late mother’s grave that he had never taken Archie’s money. Behind closed doors, he suggested that maybe Archie had been drinking or was a bit confused.”

  “But… but that’s not right,” Rachel protested. “Surely someone saw Mr. Grace giving Zachary the money!”

  Eliza shook her head. “Remember, it was a late February night and Zachary had been alone at the bank. Besides, you know how quickly the sun sets come winter. Since it was so cold and dark, not a soul was around to see him rob that poor man.”

  “But who would have believed him?”

  “Sherman had no choice.” Eliza shrugged. “When he demanded the truth of his son, Zachary sat there and lied to his face every bit as slick as rainwater running off a duck’s back. You also have to recall that Archie had been going through a tough time and he’d been known to tie on one or two at the tavern. What with those two things working against him, poor Sherman had no option but to accept Zachary’s take on the event.”

  “And then…” Rachel began but couldn’t finish.

  “And then Archie took himself out to his workshop and hung himself,” Eliza explained with a heavy heart. “There weren’t many folks that knew what had happened at the bank. Sherman made sure that tongues didn’t wag, so most all of Carlson figured that Archie couldn’t take the loneliness any longer and saw only one way out of it.”

  “But Mason told you the truth?” Rachel asked.

  “He did.”

  “He believed what Archie had said? That his own brother was a liar?”

  “I’m sure that he’s always known that Zachary was no good,” Eliza sneered. “Living with him for all of those years had to have taught him something, but I think even Mason was surprised by the depths of Zachary’s deception of Archie Grace. When he told Alice, she was so horrified that she burst into tears and, to the best of my knowledge, never spoke to her brother-in-law ever again. I doubt that Mason would have blamed her.”