by Beverly Long
“I imagine. But now, let’s see about getting some supper on the table. Have a seat. It won’t be fancy.”
Aunt Freida lit the stove. Then she opened a series of glass canning jars. Bella recognized potatoes and corn and she thought the third was some kind of meat—perhaps ham. The jars were all dumped into a cast iron skillet and the combination was heated up, using the big black stove that took up half the small kitchen. When her aunt dipped a spoon into a pan that was resting at the back of the stove and came up with a big glob of white grease, Bella’s stomach turned. Evidently no one in 1877 had heard about heart disease. She hoped her arteries could survive the trip back in time. Bella closed her eyes briefly as her aunt mixed the grease in with the other ingredients.
Aunt Freida untied a bright blue and white cloth and pulled out a loaf of what had to be homemade bread. When she put it on the table, next to a dish of strawberry jam that was already there, Bella decided it was not the time to worry about fats or carbohydrates. Her stomach growled and Aunt Freida smiled. “Traveling always makes a body hungry,” she said.
Bella figured she’d come far enough that the horses should be worried.
When Aunt Freida began clearing dolls and tea cups off the seats of the wooden chairs, Bella helped. She carried them over to the chairs and the sofa and added them to the similar clutter already there. Amazingly, nothing fell off. Bella had just finished cleaning the third chair when there was a solid knock on the front door.
“That’ll be Jedidiah,” Aunt Freida said. “I knew he’d come.”
The way she said it, Bella had a sudden suspicion that her aunt hadn’t been overly confident. Aunt Freida opened the door and a whoosh of cold air blew into the house. The sheriff stood in the doorway. The skin on his face was red from cold, his eyes were stormy-gray, and his arms were full of firewood. He thrust the stack toward Aunt Freida.
She looked over her shoulder. “Jedidiah always brings a gift of some kind when he’s invited for a meal. His momma brought him up right.”
It might have been the cold but she thought his nose got a little pink, as if he was uncomfortable with the praise. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” he said.
“No but I suspect Bella is anxious to have supper and get settled in after her trip.”
He took off his hat and nodded in Bella’s direction. “Mrs. Wainwright,” he said.
She didn’t like Mrs. Wainwright much better than Ma’am. There was no way she’d remember to answer to it. “No need for formality. Just Bella is fine,” she said.
He studied her and she wondered if he’d have been more comfortable with a little formality between the two of them. Finally, he nodded. “Most people call me Jed.” He pulled out a chair.
Aunt Freida wrapped a gray towel around her hand and grabbed the handle of the pan. She didn’t bother emptying it into a bowl. Once she’d placed the pan in the middle of the table, she took her seat.
Bella put a cautious couple of spoonfuls on her plate and worked up her courage to try it while her aunt and the sheriff filled their plates. She took a bite and almost sighed in relief. It was good.
“You better eat more than that,” Aunt Freida said. “You’ve had a long trip, Girl.
She wondered exactly where Mrs. Merribelle Wainwright had hailed from. Then realized, what did it matter where the woman lived? Any amount of travel in one of those boxes-on-wheels, that they called stages, would be a hell of a trip. “Very true,” she said. Her tailbone would never be the same. She leaned forward in her chair.
“Bruised your finer parts, did you?” Aunt Freida asked, sounding amused. “You could probably use some more padding.”
Three days a week she worked out at her health club, hoping to avoid exactly that. “I’m not sure it would have made a difference,” she said.
“In any event, it’s a good thing you came when you did. I smell snow a-coming. A couple of days later and you might have run smack dab into it.”
If she were lucky, the real Mrs. Wainwright would be snowed in somewhere, unable to get to Mantosa. If she showed up before Dec. fifth, Bella was going to have some real fast explaining to do.
“Bella’s going to be helping me at the store,” Aunt Freida explained.
The sheriff didn’t look up from his plate. “I imagine you’ll enjoy that,” he said.
Bella wasn’t sure if he was talking to her aunt or to her. He wasn’t making eye contact with either one of them.
“It’s a busy time for me,” Aunt Freida said. “With everyone putting away supplies before the weather turns bad.”
Jed took the spoon and dumped another helping of dinner onto his plate. He handed the spoon to Freida. His fingers were long but nicely formed. The skin on his knuckles was chapped. “I suppose Mrs. Bean intends to spend the winter here,” he said.
The tin spoon clattered to the floor. Freida leaned out of her chair to pick it up. She wiped it off with her napkin and put it back in the pan. “I’m not sure. Bella, I suppose the trip allowed you an opportunity to get to know Mrs. Bean?”
Mrs. Bean hadn’t shut up since they’d left Shinoah. “She’s a talker,” Bella agreed.
“I got the impression her companion wasn’t too fond of making the trip,” Jed said.
“Yes, well. I suppose you know,” Bella said, forcing her voice high in imitation of Constance VanHopple, “that you live in a godforsaken wilderness?”
Jed looked up from his plate and she caught the hint of a smile. “I’ve heard that before from city folk.”
Bella knew there was nobody more city than she was, but when she’d looked through the miniscule window on the stage door, she’d marveled at the stark beauty of the rugged land. The quiet had jarred her a little when they’d stopped to water the horses and let the passengers stretch their legs or in other words, let the stage driver and the Bean brothers find a tree to pee behind.
She’d ignored them and focused on what she wasn’t hearing. There were no elevated trains rumbling past or impatient cab drivers honking their horns. There were no planes landing at O’Hare or boats traveling the Chicago River.
She’d actually heard birds chirping.
Bella pushed her plate to the side. She really wanted another piece of the bread and jam but didn’t necessarily want to be back in her own time and have an extra ten pounds as a souvenir from the Old West.
“It takes some people a while but they generally get used to us,” Jed said. “Isn’t that right, Freida?” he asked, sounding almost friendly.
It took Bella a minute to realize that he was still talking about Constance’s comment. It made her remember what the Bean brothers had been telling their mother. “Perhaps that’s true,” Bella said. “I understand that you moved back to Mantosa a few years ago.”
Jed put down his fork. “Who told you that?” he asked, all trace of friendliness gone from his tone.
“Uh…I overheard something the Bean brothers said to their mother.”
Jed pushed his chair back and stood up, his movement’s jerky. “I would think they’d have had better things to talk about than going on and on about me and my family.”
Oh, for goodness sakes. She hadn’t come to start a feud. “It was nothing, really. A brief comment. They weren’t really talking about you.”
He stared at her and then finally nodded once. Then he turned toward Freida. “Supper was good, Freida. Thank you kindly.” He put his hat on, then his coat, and left without another word, shutting the door behind him with a quiet, yet deliberate thud.
Bella looked at her aunt. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to upset him.”
Freida reached for Bella’s dirty plate. “It’s not your fault. Up until about five years ago, Jedidiah had some big job working for the railroad. He moved back here after his father died. J.W. had been the sheriff here for over twenty years and for most of that time, people thought a lot of him. About a year before he died, he turned foolish and left Jedidiah’s mother, who he’d been married to
for almost thirty-five years, for a young woman who’d come to town just months earlier. She was very beautiful.”
“But then he died?” Bella asked.
“No. But his new marriage didn’t pan out either and within six months he was a single man again.”
“Did he go back to Jed’s mother?”
Aunt Freida shook her head. “She’d have taken him. But the man didn’t have the sense of a prairie dog. He was handsome, though, just like his son is. It didn’t take him but a couple months to find and marry another woman, an even younger one. Everybody knew she wasn’t faithful to him. They’d been married just months when he died. Some said it was his heart but I’ve always been inclined to think it was pure embarrassment. Anyway, Jedidiah came home to bury his father. His mother and sister were the only ones crying at J.W.’s gravesite. Neither one of the young wives bothered to come.”
“He took his father’s job?” Bella asked.
“He did. Two years after that his mother died and I thought Jedidiah might leave then. But his older sister was here and maybe that’s why he stayed. Good thing, too. She’s had her own troubles recently and has needed him.”
Freida’s explanation made it hard to question the man’s commitment to his family. But what about his commitment to his job? Weren’t sheriffs sworn in or something like that? Hadn’t he promised to protect the citizens?
So just where the hell had he been the night her father had run into Toomay? Was he at home, yearning for his old life, his old job? If he’d been at the saloon, watching out for trouble, her father would have never needed to follow Toomay up those steps. The curse would never have been made.
Maybe if he’d done his job, she wouldn’t have had to leave her own family, her own job, her own time.
CHAPTER THREE
Aunt Freida woke Bella up in the middle of the night. She seemed to not only expect her to get up but to also be cheerful about it. She set a lantern down onto the table next to Bella’s bed. “It’s six o’clock, Girl. Time to get up.”
“Six a.m.? Bella asked, her eyes still closed.
“Well, it sure as heck isn’t six p.m.,” Aunt Freida replied, sounding amused.
There was nothing remotely funny about this situation. Especially since Bella had managed to put off a trip outside the night before which now caused her bladder to feel like it was about to burst. “I have to…use the…uh…privy.”
“I imagine you do. Once you get back inside and get washed up, I’ll have ham and eggs ready for you.”
No one had cooked her breakfast for the last ten years. Neither Averil nor her father ever ate breakfast. But it had always been Bella and her mother’s favorite meal together. Once her mother had died, she’d stopped eating it and had started up the practice of having a donut or a muffin mid-morning.
Suddenly going outside to pee didn’t seem all that horrible. Bella threw back her covers. “Give me ten minutes.”
Aunt Freida nodded and backed out of the room. Bella swung her legs over the bed and gasped when her bare feet hit the cold wood floor. She reached for her suitcase and pulled out the dress on top. It was pale yellow with long puffy sleeves. The waist was cinched tight and there was a ten inch ruffle around the bottom of the long skirt.
She stared at it, thinking it looked sort of familiar. She held it up against her body and it suddenly came to her. Averil regularly had her nose in a romance novel and this dress was an exact replica of one that the heroine wore on the cover of the book that was currently on Averil’s bedside table.
Oh good grief. Averil had been desperate enough to use magic but not confident enough to act without props. Bella reached inside the case again and grabbed a bra and panties. Averil had done her best to convince her to wear some kind of loose cotton panties and a corset but Bella had drawn the line. There was no way she was leaving her new Victoria Secret purchases at home. Averil had been worried that her underwear would give her away but Bella wasn’t worried about that—nobody was getting close enough to see her underwear on this trip.
Bradley had liked her underwear. Maybe even loved it. After all, he’d said he loved her—that probably included her underwear.
She hadn’t loved him. Not his red silk bikini briefs or his hand-sewn leather briefcase or his shiny Mercedes. She’d tried. Bradley was responsible. He was a vice president at one of the largest banks in Chicago. Averil had introduced them after she’d done some management consulting work for his company.
He’d done everything right. Flowers, candlelight dinners, long weekends at the ski chalet. Most any woman would have been thrilled. Bella had been bored out of her mind.
Finally, when she hadn’t been able to stand another fancy bottle of wine, she’d called it quits. He’d asked for an explanation and she’d given him the best one she could.
Bradley, you make me laugh but never hard enough that I fall on the floor and pee my pants. You make me cry but never hard enough that I lose my breath and get the hiccups.
She could have added You make me come but never hard enough that I forget that’s what I’m supposed to do. After all, she didn’t think she needed to be deliberately cruel.
He’d left more confused that ever. She hadn’t really blamed him. And she had missed him. Even though the sex hadn’t been great, she had missed the intimacy of sleeping with a man, of holding him close, of feeling him inside of her.
A woman should have a lover.
And he should look a whole lot like Jedidiah McNeil.
Her legs suddenly feeling like spaghetti, she fell back onto the bed. Jeez, Louise. Where had that thought come from?
She propped herself up on her elbows and vowed to stop having ridiculous thoughts. She’d come back to this time for a reason. A serious one. She needed to stay on task.
But if she had any extra time, well, then, maybe?
Oh, get a grip. She should be pissed at the man—after all, it was partly his fault she was even here. She stood up and then bent her arms to button up the back of her dress. Then she tried to run a brush through her hair. It was wild as usual and she settled with just gathering it up in one hand and wrapping a ponytail holder around it. Even pulled up, it was long enough that the ends hit below her shoulders.
She opened her bedroom door and Aunt Freida was standing next to the black stove. Bella smiled at her and with what she hoped looked like confidence, opened the cabin door.
The cold was so fierce that it stole her breath and made her knees buckle. And as uncomfortable as that was, the only word that she could think of was fabulous.
Night had faded, leaving a soft, bluish dawn, made lighter by fresh snow, perhaps an inch or two, that clung to the branches of the evergreen trees. Sunshine and Rain, hitched to a wagon, stood outside, their warm breath turning to steam. Twenty feet out, four red birds set on the top rail of her Aunt’s wooden fence.
She’d freakin’ stepped into the middle of a Christmas card. She could practically hear the carolers and wasn’t the pungent smell of freshly cut wood burning in the fireplace just hanging in the air?
Her stomach growled when she thought about cranberry and walnut stuffing. And the turkey and the potatoes. It was perfect.
Except, she realized, as she lifted her gaze to see another hundred yards out, her little pretend winter wonderland didn’t include an outhouse. Or a thirty-yard sprint in subzero temperatures.
“Best take your cloak,” Aunt Freida said.
Bella turned. Aunt Freida stood behind her, holding Bella’s cloak. Bella reached for it and was halfway through the doorway when her aunt cleared her throat. “You’ll want a lantern, too,” she said.
Of course. Her new bathroom didn’t come equipped with electricity. Any moron would know to take a lantern with her. She really needed to be more careful or her aunt was going to be either very suspicious or very sad that she had such an idiot for a niece.
She grabbed the lantern’s handle and kept her arm extended. She didn’t want it too close. Knowing her luck, she�
��d slip, break the glass, and catch herself on fire. She gathered her skirt up with her other hand, hoping to keep it from dragging in the fresh snow. But that allowed a blast of cold air in and up and she immediately dropped her hold. Who cared if her hem was wet? Better that than other, more delicate parts, be frozen.
“Gives a whole new meaning to the word frigid,” Bella mumbled as she made her way. She grabbed the heavy door of the unpainted privy and it opened with a loud creak, evidently startling the birds. There was a sudden flutter of activity from the fence and when she looked that direction, she saw two large deer, with widespread antlers. Their heads were up, as if they were watching her, judging.
The last deer she’d seen had been dead along the highway after some unsuspecting motorist had hit it.
She went inside, took care of business, and got out fast. As promised, her aunt had breakfast on the table. Bella quickly washed her hands in the water her aunt had warmed on the stove and sat down to eat.
“This is so good,” she said sometime later after she’d plowed her way through two eggs, a thick slice of ham, and two pieces of bread.
“It’s nice to have someone to cook for again,” Aunt Freida said. “Your Uncle Herbert loved a big breakfast.”
Aunt Freida had said her husband died around the same time as the Sheriff's father. That meant she’d been alone for about five years. “Have you ever thought about marrying again?” Bella asked. She’d had this same conversation with her father on several occasions. He always said that he couldn’t imagine finding a woman who could compare to Bella’s mother.
Aunt Freida tapped her fork on the table. “Well, you being family and all, I guess I can talk to you about this. I don’t really have anybody else I feel I can tell,” she added, almost sounding embarrassed.
The voice matched her cheeks, which had turned pink. Bella’s curiosity ratcheted up a notch. “Tell what?” Bella demanded.
