by Lyn Cote
Finally Cash stepped forward and held out his hand to Hallawell. The other man hesitated, then reluctantly shook Cash’s hand. Without a word Hallawell walked out.
Cash nodded to the sheriff, then left with Jane. The night sky still drizzled. Jane unlocked her car. They got in—wet, silent and distant. Keeping her eyes straight ahead, she drove out of the lit parking lot onto the dark county road.
“Is that the end of it?” she asked at last, trying to fill the vacuum of oppressive silence.
“Hallawell would be a fool to cross the sheriff in a town this size.” His voice sounded gritty, defeated.
Jane nodded stiffly.
“Why did you come?” he asked gruffly. “Did Lucy call you?”
Jane pressed her lips together, then tried to lighten the unbearable pall which filled the vehicle. “I felt like asking you those same two questions last Friday night at the Aquabat Show.”
There was a distinct pause.
Cash frowned. “Rona called me that night.”
“Oh. Thanks for coming that night.”
“No problem. Thanks for coming tonight,” Cash said in a subdued voice.
“No problem.”
For a moment a hint of humor trembled in the air. Then it fizzled in the ensuing silence.
Jane sighed. Cash’s proposal had erected an even thicker and icier wall between them. She would come if he needed her, but that was all. That day, on their drive home from Wausau, for a few minutes, there had been a chance for them, just a chance.
As she turned a corner to the right, she glanced over at him. In the reflected light from her dashboard, she could make out his grim profile. She couldn’t make another effort to relieve their gloom. Finally they pulled up beside Cash’s Jeep.
“Thanks again for coming for me.” He stared at her for several moments. She nodded but kept her face impassive. Then he got out, closing the door behind him.
Jane watched him amble over to his Jeep. It tugged at her heart to see him battered and tired. Aching with a devastating loneliness, she blinked back tears and wished she could go after him and put ice on his split lip and give him aspirin for his bruises. Instead, she resolutely turned her car toward home.
The next day Jane took Angie over to Lucy’s house. She found her grandmother in the backyard reclining on a lawn chair.
When Lucy spotted them she said, “At last a sunny day that isn’t in the nineties!”
Jane joined her grandmother under the tall birches. She glanced over the bluff and for a few seconds she lost herself in the dazzling beauty of the scene below. The rippling lake shimmered, making her think of diamonds dancing on sapphire satin.
“It’s such a beautiful day I hate to go inside. Is there anything wrong, Jane?”
“Wrong? What made you ask that?” For the first time she could recall, Jane felt ill at ease in her grandmother’s company. Slowly she made eye contact with Lucy.
“Something in your eyes. It doesn’t matter I suppose. Let’s go in, my dears. I’m all ready to work on that miniature for Cash.”
Jane followed her grandmother’s instructions on posing the baby. Because of Angie’s active age, the miniature of her would be much less ambitious than Jane’s portrait. This posing and one more would do it. Which was just as well. Angie wanted to crawl, climb the couch and play with her blocks. Concentrating on keeping the little girl entertained during the sitting took all of Jane’s energy.
Lucy asked, “So everything’s settled between Hallawell and Cash?”
“Seems to be.”
“I’m so glad your parents and I had gotten home with Angie before the brawling last night.”
“I’ve see a few fights before, but nothing like that,” Jane said.
“And you’ve never seen Cash in one.”
Jane made no answer. She almost broke down and told her grandmother about Cash’s proposal. But some emotion—maybe pride—kept her from revealing it. Cash had shown her how little he respected her, how lightly he regarded the commitment of holy matrimony.
“I just wish this summer would come to an end. Everything’s been so—” Dreading Cash’s first full-day visit with Angie, that wouldn’t include her, was making her miserable. She hated feeling selfish, small. Her prayers seemed to be soap bubbles floating away on an aimless breeze. She needed desperately to feel an assurance that by the time this ordeal arrived, she would have received the grace she needed to accept it. She knew God was able, but how she longed to be rid of this hard lump of dread.
“I understand, my dear. This has been a stressful year for you. Becoming a mother would have been a challenge enough for anyone. But I have faith in Cash to do what is right, not only for Angie, but you, too.”
“Your faith in Cash is misplaced.” The harsh words flew out of Jane’s mouth before she could stop herself. Saying them made her feel sick.
Lucy stepped around her easel and stared at Jane. “What brought that on?”
Jane pressed her lips together, frantically trying to think of ways to deflect her grandmother’s curiosity.
“Does this have anything to do with your trip to Wausau last weekend?” Lucy asked shrewdly.
Jane’s mouth opened momentarily, then shut.
Lucy, holding her palette and brush, stared at Jane. “You might as well tell me now. I’ll find out eventually.”
Angie began fretting in Jane’s arms. “It’s time for her bottle and nap.”
“All right. But while you’re doing that there’s no reason you can’t tell me what Cash has done now.”
Jane stood up and carried Angie to the kitchen. While she went through the routine of preparing a bottle, she let Angie down to crawl on the floor by her feet.
“Well?” Lucy said, leaning in the kitchen doorway.
Jane felt an echo of her initial fury at Cash bubble up. “Cash proposed to me,” she said tersely.
Lucy stood up straight. “Cash proposed? In Wausau? But why haven’t you two said anything?”
“It wasn’t a real marriage proposal.” Jane lifted Angie from the floor and carried her back to the living room. On the way Angie grabbed the bottle, and Jane stuck its nipple in her mouth. Jane sat down in the corner of the sofa and let Angie lie back in her arms.
Lucy followed her and sat in the chair opposite. “How can a man propose marriage without it being a real proposal?”
“He said he thought Angie needed a father and a mother, not an uncle and a guardian.”
“Oh,” Lucy said quietly. “I suppose he said it just like that?”
“Yes, he did. I was never so insulted in my life. He called it a marriage of convenience. I told him I wasn’t interested in being a convenience to anyone. After knowing the kind of marriage my parents have, the one you had, I can’t believe he could show so little understanding of how Everetts view marriage.”
“You turned him down.”
“Of course I turned him down. He insulted the sanctity of marriage. He insulted me and my whole family!”
Lucy sat with her hands folded in her lap. “You still love him.”
“Love him! I’d like to strangle him!”
Lucy sighed. “That’s a sure sign you still love him.”
Her grandmother’s words left Jane struggling with a new rush of anger.
“If you didn’t love him, you wouldn’t be this angry.” Lucy glanced toward Jane.
“Grandmother, I told you. I had a schoolgirl crush on him. He never even knew.”
Lucy didn’t take her eyes off her granddaughter’s face. “I know. You fell in love with Cash on your sixteenth birthday and nothing’s changed. Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?” Angie’s sucking slowed as she began to fall asleep. Looking down at the angelic face surrounded by the wispy, dark hair, Jane brushed back the little girl’s bangs.
“Yes, unfortunately you still love him the way you did when you were sixteen.”
“Grandmother—”
“Don’t go on denying you love Cash.
I know it’s the truth.”
Jane fell silent. She didn’t want to admit it, but she couldn’t lie, either.
Lucy said sternly, “It’s time your love grew up.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re still loving Cash, but with an immature love. You’ve never been allowed to show it, so it’s stunted.”
“I’m going to stop loving Cash,” Jane insisted.
“Oh, how do you propose to do that?” Lucy put one hand on her hip.
Again Jane had no answer.
“It’s time you began to love Cash with a love that is patient, kind, keeps no record of wrongs. A love that hopes all things, believes all things. A love that will never fail.”
Jane recognized the verses Lucy quoted from First Corinthians 13. Lucy herself had taught them to Jane when she was very young. “But Cash doesn’t want my love.”
“That has nothing to do with how to love him. Christian love only demands things from the one who loves, never from the one who is loved. You love Cash, so you should love him with the best that’s within you!”
“I do. I mean, I did.”
Lucy shook her head ruefully. “No, if you did, his cold proposal wouldn’t have made you angry, it would have made you sad.”
“Why sad?”
“Because it’s sad when a grown man knows so little about love.”
Jane avoided her grandmother’s piercing gaze. Angie slept soundly in her lap now. Tears tried to form in Jane’s eyes, but she forced them back. “There isn’t any future in loving Cash.”
“Then let your heart give up.”
“I thought you just said that wasn’t possible.”
“You have to make a choice. Either love Cash with all that’s within you and wait and pray he’ll someday return your love, or give up on him. Close the book on loving him. Look for another chance. Start fresh with someone else. It’s not that you stop loving Cash. You just stop hoping he’ll love you in return.”
Jane kept her gaze on Angie. Close the book. A sensation like a rock-hard hand pressed down on her, crushing her breast.
Poised over the sweater display, Jane experienced a now-familiar flash of helpless dismay. The sweater, which had been missing at the beginning of the week, was back. Today was Friday afternoon. Yesterday Mel had shared the day with Tish, so either girl could have surreptitiously slipped the sweater back among the others. The cotton sweater was an ivory pullover with a delicate design of leaves and flowers around the neck and wrist. As she examined the band around its neck closely, she stopped. A trace of pink lipstick lingered on the inside.
She turned to Mel who was standing nearby. Keeping her voice casual, she said, “A customer has gotten lipstick on this sweater. Would you take it down to the cleaner?”
“Now?”
“Yes, I can handle things till you get back. Tell Doreen to put it on my account. Let her decide whether it should be dry-cleaned or hand washed and blocked.”
“Sure. Be right back.” The brunette teen took the folded sweater and walked out.
Jane had detected no alarm or guilt in the girl’s eyes. Mel’s lipstick was a pink similar to the trace, but so what? It proved nothing. Tish usually didn’t wear lipstick at the shop, but she might elsewhere. Jane sighed loudly. Enough was enough. When would she solve this mystery? Or would she ever find the culprit? That thought was too vexing to be tolerated.
The bell jingled. She turned to greet the customer.
“I haven’t seen you all summer,” Del Ray Martin complained as a greeting.
“I’ve been awfully busy with Angie,” Jane replied, neatening a scarf display on one of her glass cases.
“Are your parents going to be able to spend August up here like usual?”
“They arrive this afternoon.”
“Good. Anyway, I’m looking for another new skirt to coordinate with that black sweater I bought here last fall.”
Jane was relieved to get down to business. She led Del Ray over to one of the fall skirt racks. “The black sweater with the shawl collar?”
“Yes, my husband told me to get something that will show off my legs.” Del Ray giggled like a teenager.
Jane didn’t approve of Del Ray’s desire to dress younger and flashier than her two teenage daughters. But Jane went carefully through the skirts, trying to find one that would please Del Ray while still flattering her. A size-eight, black gauze skirt almost leaped off its hanger at her. It was the one that had been missing for over a week!
Before Jane could collect her thoughts, Del Ray, who was standing at her elbow, spoke up, “Oh, that’s just like the one I saw your cousin, Tish, wear. It’s a little longer than I like, but do you have it in my size?”
Your cousin, Tish! Jane wanted to scream it out and hear it echo off the ceiling. Tish! Her heart pounded. At last one knot of this perplexing summer slid apart like satin against satin.
“No, I only have this one left,” she heard her own voice, saying calmly. “How about something more seasonal for fall like this one?” Her arm held out a nubby knit in gray and black that would be knee length on Del Ray.
“I’ll try it,” the customer said reluctantly.
“Good.” Jane turned, and through the front window, she saw Tish’s long, blond mane. Until that moment Jane had forgotten Tish was due to come in later today for her check. The bell rang as the girl opened the front door.
“Hello, Tish, what are you doing here early?” Was that really her own voice so smooth as though another person were saying the words?
“Is it ready?”
“Of course. I have it at my desk. Come down. We’ll get it together.” She turned to Mel, who was back and busy rearranging a small display of turquoise-and-silver jewelry done by a local Indian artist. “Would you help Mrs. Martin?”
She ignored Mel’s agreement and Del Ray’s objection. Without a backward glance, Jane marched to the rear of the store and down the basement steps.
At the bottom she turned and watched Tish descend elegantly. The girl stopped on the bottom step and looked at Jane, tilting her head as though asking a question.
“You’ve been taking clothing, wearing it and bringing it back,” Jane said flatly.
Tish’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second. Then she tossed her head. “So?”
The girl’s brazenness fanned Jane’s indignation. “It is sneaky. It is dishonest. Don’t you have any idea what a reputation is? If I told this—in a town this size—no one would ever hire you again.”
“You won’t tell anyone,” Tish answered in a cool voice, and crossed her arms over her breast.
“What makes you so sure?”
“My parents. If you talk about me, they’ll be humiliated.” Tish stared narrowly into Jane’s face, seeming to dare her.
The girl’s audacity momentarily robbed Jane of speech.
“You won’t hurt my parents,” Tish explained in a sickly sweet tone. “So you won’t tell them. I didn’t steal anything, anyway. It was just a little borrowing.”
Jane found her voice. “You’re fired.”
This time Tish’s face did register surprise, but she regained control quickly. “I quit.”
“I said you’re fired.”
“I’m going to tell my parents that I needed to do more reading before the school year, so I decided to quit. May I have my last check please?” Tish held out her hand.
Jane reached back without looking, picked up the lone envelope and threw it at Tish.
Tish smirked, picked it up off the basement floor and exited elegantly up the steps.
When the girl was gone, Jane sank onto the edge of her desk. Several minutes passed while the confrontation played over and over in her mind: “You won’t hurt my parents.” How could she tell Uncle Henry and Aunt Claire the kind of emotional extortion their daughter was guilty of? Tish had attended church faithfully all her life. Hadn’t anything sunk in?
Jane had wanted the size-eight mystery solved. But where c
ould she go from here?
Chapter Eleven
Jane carefully wiped all inner frustration from her features and lifted her face into position for Lucy. She was still angry with Cash, and Lucy’s scolding still stung.
Just a few feet away to Jane’s right, Cash played with Angie. Her only success at distancing Cash had been that instead of letting him pick Angie and her up as usual, Jane had arranged to drive to Lucy’s on her own. All the progress she had made in sharing Angie with Cash had been reversed. The thought of seeing Cash take Angie away for a day on their own made Jane ill.
Cash’s playful teasing made Angie giggle. Jane’s neck tightened. She cleared her throat. “I can’t believe this is the last sitting and I’m still having a hard time posing.”
Lucy nodded, but it was obvious that she was fully involved in finishing the portrait.
“This little girl is unstoppable.” Shuffling behind Angie, Cash came into view. He was holding the child’s hands above her head, helping her walk.
“She’ll be walking by herself soon,” Lucy murmured, then paused and stood, gazing at Jane.
Cash said, “One of my carpenters said his little girl walked at nine months—”
“That was his little girl,” Jane snapped.
Cash looked up at her, showing his surprise. “I didn’t mean anything against you—”
“Of course not,” Lucy said soothingly. “Jane, let that frown go. I need your face…Yes, that’s it.”
While Lucy worked intensely on the portrait, Jane could hear her grandmother muttering to herself. Out of the corner of her eye, Jane kept tabs on Cash and Angie as they made their circuit around the room. Angie was endlessly intrigued by all the small sculptures and fine china on the low maple tables and shelves. Jane tried to keep her focus on the toddler.
Cash could feel Jane’s attention on him…not on Angie’s halting progress. He was also gripped, dominated by an awareness of her. Ever since that day they drove home from Wausau, every time he detected her cinnamon fragrance or saw sunlight touch her hair, he thought of the feel of her skin against his cheek, on his lips.
He knew that her response to him that day had been more warm and enticing than he’d ever imagined. But after his proposal, she had turned into a sharp, abrasive ice maiden. Now every time he encountered her he felt waves of frigid animosity flowing from her, warning him away.
