by Merry Farmer
“Take action?” Trey was clearly incredulous.
Talia shrugged. “Dr. Abernathy said something about being burned at the stake, but I doubt he meant it. I’m sure what they both meant was that people would shun me, that I would be ostracized from good society.”
“That’s ridiculous too,” Trey said. “You’ve got your friends, and after this past week, a whole lot more people are grateful to have you around.”
“But threats have a way of causing damage, even if they’re ridiculous.” She blew out a breath and paced to the side, her initial panic waning. “I thought that people back in Nashville would see how ridiculous the accusations were and the woman making them would look like a laughing stock. But even ridiculous accusations can take hold and cause damage when there is an underlying prejudice.” She glanced back to Trey. “I’m a foreigner. I look like a foreigner. People will use anything as an excuse to shun anyone they think is different from them.”
“Well, I won’t let them,” Trey said.
Talia smiled weakly at him. “I’m not sure if you’d be able to stop it. Prejudice isn’t a criminal you can lock up in your jail until it sobers up. It’s an epidemic that seeps into the fiber of people’s souls until they find themselves running someone out of town without a clear idea of why.”
“But after the way you’ve helped so many people this week, the way you’ve cured them,” Trey argued.
A weary smile spread across Talia’s face. “So you support me nursing the sick now?”
Trey returned her teasing for what it was. He stepped toward her, pulling her into his arms again. “All right. I’ll admit that God gave you special skills that are needed in this town. But I’m always going to want to keep you safe.”
In spite of the newness of their marriage and friendship, Talia found herself resting against him, shifting her weight to him and closing her eyes. “I just wish you could keep me safe against stubbornness and mean spirits.”
His hand smoothed across her head a few times before he stopped and tensed. “I’m gonna have to have a word with Dr. Abernathy about the way he’s been treating my wife.”
Talia sighed and leaned back enough to look up at him. “You can if you want to, but I’ve known men like him. He’ll deny everything, say that I was trying to seduce him, and make you doubt my loyalty.”
“I would never doubt your loyalty,” he said, and followed it with a light kiss. As perfect as the gesture was, Talia found herself wanting more. “I don’t care how long you’ve been in my life, you just know when a person is good and true.”
Talia smiled and rested her head against his shoulder. “Thank you for your faith in me. I just hope that others in this town have as big a heart as you do.”
He responded by hugging her closer, resting his cheek against the top of her head. “Don’t worry, honey. I’m sure this whole mess will all blow over.”
Talia hoped from the bottom of her heart that he was right.
Chapter 9
Talia didn’t go back to Dr. Abernathy’s. Even if the epidemic had still been raging instead of dying down, she didn’t think she could face the man’s inappropriate attention or his wife’s threats. She was surprised by the fact that she didn’t really want to go out at all after the scene at the clinic. She went out once to check on Mr. Montgomery and to wish him goodbye when he was well enough to journey on. And Elspeth managed to drag her out to see Miriam Montrose, who was ready to give birth any day. Katie Murphy insisted she visit their family too, but every time Talia set foot out of the house, she felt as though the other shoe would drop on her at any moment.
“Everything will be fine,” Trey continued to insist, even as they climbed the stairs to the church for services that Sunday. “Look how many of the people who were sick just a week ago are here today.”
Talia glanced around the packed church. It was quickly becoming too small for the burgeoning population of Haskell, but that wasn’t what caught her eye. True, a few of the people who had come down with milder cases of influenza—like Mrs. Plover and Olga from the Cattleman Hotel—were there. But what Talia noticed that she was sure Trey didn’t was how many sets of eyes looked at her with wariness or suspicion. One middle-aged woman even turned to whisper something to the woman sitting in the pew behind her, all the while staring at Talia.
“I am happy to see people recovering,” Talia said, squeezing Trey’s hand tighter.
They slipped into one of the pews near the back as Holly began playing the first hymn on the piano. Her small choir stood to sing the first verse of the song on their own. Talia was surprised to find Vivian Bonneville singing in the choir, but not at all surprised by the smug sneer she sent Talia’s way as she sang.
“I hope you won’t be too disappointed if rumors do start to fly,” Talia whispered to Trey as the rest of the congregation stood and joined in the hymn after the first verse.
“Disappointed?” Trey’s wry grin was a dead giveaway that he didn’t realize how serious rumors could become. “Not that I think anything will come of anything, but why would I be disappointed?”
Talia had to lean close to him to be heard over the singing congregation. “Because you like these people, and it’s hard when people you like do something you don’t like.”
The conversation was forced to end there as the hymn went on, finished, and as George Pickering came forward to give his sermon. He read about the miracles of Jesus healing the sick, then went on to lead the congregation in prayers of thanks and praise that the epidemic in Haskell wasn’t serious and had claimed no lives. Talia did her best to listen intently and take the words to heart, but worry continued to follow her through the closing hymns and out into the yard beside the church where the weekly potluck picnic was held.
“See,” Trey told her as they walked out and joined the line of townsfolk waiting to fix a plate for lunch. “George has the whole town feeling grateful for your help with the epidemic.”
“With God’s help, you mean,” Talia corrected him.
“Some might call it ungodly help,” a woman’s voice muttered behind them.
Talia froze as though she’d been hit with an electric current. The last thing she wanted to do was turn around and face the cruel comment and the many more she knew would follow it, but Trey had already whipped around to see who had spoken.
It was, of course, Vivian Bonneville, Melinda right behind her, Bebe trailing, holding three china plates in her hands.
“Would you care to repeat that, Mrs. Bonneville?” Trey asked, as harsh as Talia figured he would be with a woman.
“Yes, I will repeat it,” Vivian said, her nose in the air. “The way the influenza epidemic was cured so quickly in this town seems like ungodly work to me.”
“Like some sort of evil force went against nature,” Melinda added.
Trey shifted his weight. “Are you saying that you think people getting well fast and nobody dying from what can be a deadly disease is the work of evil forces?”
“Yes,” Vivian and Melinda answered together.
The line had moved forward, but their small group hadn’t. That and the raised voices were drawing attention. The Bonneville sisters noticed right away.
“You do know that your pretty little wife has been accused of witchcraft before, don’t you?” Melinda said, far louder than she needed to be.
Talia’s inward cringe was quickly replaced by a sigh and deep, welling sadness. She was back in the same spot that had led her to seek shelter at Hurst Home to begin with. “Let it be,” she whispered to Trey, tugging on his sleeve to get him to move up in line. It felt like half the town moved with them.
“Any fool knows there’s no such thing as witchcraft,” Trey growled. “That’s just some stupid accusation ignorant folks throw at people who are better than them.”
Talia cringed outright at Trey’s statement. He meant well, she knew, but he couldn’t have thought through how women like the Bonneville sisters would react.
Sure enough,
both Vivian and Melinda gasped and squeaked and made a show of being offended.
“Well, clearly she’s put you under her spell and turned you into a villain,” Vivian squawked, mock tears in her voice.
“And you used to be so nice,” Melinda added with a sniff.
“He’s just defending his wife,” Bebe spoke out in a small voice.
“Shut up, Bebe,” Vivian snapped.
The line moved on. Talia reached the table of food, which at least gave her something else to focus on for a few seconds.
“This beet salad looks delicious,” she said to Mrs. Kline, who stood behind the table overseeing and helping to dish out food.
Mrs. Kline instantly picked up the bowl of beet salad and held it out of Talia’s reach. “I just saw a fly land in it. It isn’t fit to eat now.”
Talia met her eyes. She saw the lie there plain as day. Mrs. Kline’s gaze faltered, and her cheeks turned pink. But Talia wasn’t going to argue the point. She moved on, spooning a salad made from potatoes onto her plate instead. As soon as she was several more feet down the table, Mrs. Kline put the bowl of beet salad back in place.
By the time they reached the end of the line, Talia could feel Trey shaking with rage beside her. “I have never in all my days seen women act so mean. They’re the witches.”
“Don’t let anyone hear you say that,” she hissed as they walked to the side and searched out a place to sit. Trey’s baseball team was playing after the potluck that afternoon, and his teammates and their families beckoned for them to sit with the Westside Wolves’ group. “It will only make things worse. Besides, having unkind words spoken to you does not give you permission to speak unkind words back to someone.”
“Yeah?” Trey said, a spark in his words. “Well how about if they say them to your wife?”
She answered him with a look that was both censorious and mournful. In a way, she was happy that Trey had never experienced the pain of being spoken about unkindly, but it meant that he didn’t know how to handle it.
“What was all that fuss in there with the Bonneville sisters?” Travis Montrose asked as Trey and Talia sat on the blanket Wendy had brought.
“Those two are trying to start a rumor that Talia’s some sort of witch because the epidemic was over so fast,” Trey growled.
“Oh no.” Wendy placed one hand on her heart, her face pinching in shared misery with Talia, as she tried to keep Emanuel still with her other hand. “Not again.”
“Again?” Athos Strong asked. As Trey had explained earlier, Athos usually played for the Eastside Eagles, but since Sam and a few of the other Wolves were still too sick to play, they’d gotten permission from the other team, the Piedmont Panthers, to bring in a few substitute players for the week’s game.
“Talia was accused of being a witch back in Nashville,” Elspeth informed her husband and the other men who didn’t know Talia’s history. “The accusation was uncalled for and based mostly on the fact that Talia’s family was foreign.”
“And because she’s a woman with an exceptional gift for healing,” Wendy added, shaking her head. “I don’t know why so many people find it so hard to believe that women can excel at something like doctoring when they’ve been the tribal healers and wise women of villages going back to before recorded history.”
“But weren’t those women called witches too?” Travis asked. The women glared at him. “Well, weren’t they?”
“It wasn’t an insult back then.” Talia sighed and picked at her food. She’d lost her appetite, in spite of how delicious everything looked.
“Well, I’m not going to let stupid rumors spread by jealous biddies interfere with our lives,” Trey said, pointing his fork in the air. “We’re going to enjoy our lunch, then the Wolves are going to show those Panthers how baseball is played.”
“Hear, hear,” the men agreed.
Talia exchanged looks with Wendy and Elspeth. They all knew too well that once a few mean-spirited women got it in their heads to spread rumors, it was far more of a challenge than a baseball game to stop the rumors from spreading or doing damage.
Even so, Elspeth and Wendy stuck close to Talia’s side as the picnic finished up and the town moved along to the baseball field. To Talia’s worn and weary eyes, it was obvious that the rumor had already taken hold and started to spread. Only a few people, mostly women, looked at her with outright hostility, but many more stared at her with curiosity that couldn’t be explained by the fact that she was new in town. She’d been there a few weeks now and met most of the people staring at her at least in passing.
“Ignore them,” Wendy said as the three of them took their seats on the grandstand near the Wolves’ bench. Little Emanuel and the bulk of the Strong clan jumped and played and scurried along the grandstands near them, gathering their friends and forming a sort of barrier against the stares being sent Talia’s way. “I’ve learned to ignore just about every kind of stare imaginable.”
Talia sent Wendy a weak smile. “I’m sure you have.” It couldn’t have been easy to be a black business-owner in a frontier town.
“Mrs. Knighton?” One of Athos’s boys who seemed to be about ten approached Talia as the game was about to begin.
“Yes?”
“Lael,” Elspeth prompted from Talia’s side.
“Yes, Lael?” Talia smiled at the boy.
Lael scratched his head, dug his toe into the dirt, then asked, “Did you use magic to find Mrs. Garrett’s missing brooch?”
Elspeth sucked in a breath at Talia’s side. Wendy clicked her tongue and looked at Talia with concern.
Talia merely sighed, shoulders drooping over how fast things were getting out of hand. “No, Lael,” she answered with a weak smile. “I was just lucky.”
“Because Percy Kline’s mom says you used magic, that you’re a witch,” Lael went on.
“Lael,” Elspeth scolded the boy with a look.
Talia raised a hand, letting her friends know it was all right. She met Lael’s eyes. “What do you think?”
Lael furrowed his brow as if thinking the question over with all the seriousness the accusation demanded. “Well—” He continued to scuff his boot in the dirt, betraying a little bit of nervousness at being put on the spot. “—I think that if you are a witch, you must be a good witch.”
A relieved smile played at the corners of Talia’s mouth. “What makes you say that?”
Lael shrugged. “You cured all those people of influenza, after all. Plus, Shannon Murphy says you’re real nice, and I like Shannon.” His boyish cheeks flushed deep red at the statement.
Talia couldn’t help but grin over that, no matter what her troubles were. “Shannon Murphy is a good judge of character,” she whispered, adding a wink.
That seemed to be enough to satisfy Lael. One of his friends called for him to join the game of catch they were playing beside the grandstands, so he ran off.
“Well,” Wendy exclaimed. “I suppose young love trumps old bigotry in the end.”
Talia let out a breath, her thoughts suddenly flying to Trey. She glanced out over the baseball field to where he was practicing his pitches. “It certainly does.”
The rest of the game would have been delightful if the same mood of cheerfulness had prevailed, but all too soon, things switched back in favor of the rumor-mongers.
“Don’t sit there, Leonard.” Mrs. Abernathy’s high-pitched shout distracted everyone on Talia’s side of the grandstand as the crowd settled into their spots. The umpire had called for the game to begin, and the players were taking their places on the field. Dr. Abernathy sent his wife a frown, then glanced past her to where Talia sat with her hands folded in her lap. “There’s no telling what spell that siren will cast on you if you do.”
“Jill,” he muttered, but moved to the far end of the stand anyhow—possibly to avoid his wife and Talia both.
“Isn’t a siren one of those creatures from Greek mythology that sang to Odysseus?” Ivy Strong asked from where she sat
with a row of her friends near the top of the stand. She and her twin sister, Heather, wore the kind of superior expressions that only girls close to womanhood who thought they were being righteous could manage. Talia couldn’t help but feel secretly grateful to her.
Mrs. Abernathy glared at Ivy. “Yes. They were the ones who tried to lure Odysseus to his death.”
“I thought that Mrs. Knighton brought several people back to life. She didn’t lure anyone to death,” Heather said.
Talia closed her eyes and clenched her jaw. The girl was trying to help her, she was certain, but…
“She brought someone back to life?” Mrs. Jamison said a few rows up from where Mrs. Abernathy had taken a seat. “Land-a-Goshen, that is witchcraft.”
“And she tried to seduce my husband too,” Mrs. Abernathy added, with a smug nod. “Isn’t that right, Leonard?” She swatted Dr. Abernathy’s arm, but he was very deliberately paying attention to the players on the field and not the women in the stands.
“She did not.” Wendy spoke up on Talia’s behalf. “Talia is fiercely loyal to Sheriff Knighton.”
“A man she met two minutes ago?” Mrs. Abernathy snorted.
It didn’t seem to be a coincidence that Vivian and Melinda traipsed past at that moment, Vivian saying, “Well, I for one would be suspicious of any woman who was so loyal to a man she’d just met. Especially one who has such a dastardly scar on his face.”
“I’d be suspicious of a woman who liked a man at all,” Melinda added, half to herself.
“Just because Mrs. Knighton isn’t a sour old spinster like you doesn’t mean she’s a witch,” Ivy called down from the top of the stands. Her sister gasped, and the two of them burst into giggles.
Melinda snapped back to them. “How dare you?”
When Ivy stuck her tongue out at her, Melinda shrieked. She lunged for the bottom bench of the stands as if she had plans to climb up and sock Ivy in the nose, but Vivian held her back.
“See? It’s the devilish presence of the witch that is causing my dear sister to lose her temper,” she said with theatrical passion.
