Family of Convenience

by Victoria W. Austin

  He went through the events that had led to his second marriage to a second city woman. He had been a fool yet again. And he was trapped, yet again. But, just because Millie was not familiar with farm life did not mean she would hate it like Sarah had. He just needed to show Millie all the farm had to offer. He could still have a full partner in the day-to-day activities of farm life.

  “Did you like where you were staying at before you came here?”

  Millie’s smile was small but it was there. “I did. I mean, I didn’t really get out much. I spent a lot of the time alone in my room, thinking. But I liked what I did see. It was so different at first from what I was used to, but it was really nice. Almost soothing.”

  Adam could work with that. “Then I think you’ll like our home, too.”

  “I’m sure I will. I’ve been looking forward to the peace and quiet, to be honest.”

  Millie sounded sincere. Almost eager to prove that statement correct. She was trying. Millie had come into this marriage with the same goals as Adam. A good future for their children. And Millie was obviously trying to hold up her end of the bargain. That was all Adam could hope for.

  Surely this could work if they both tried. “There’s plenty of quiet. But, there’s also a whole lot of not quiet. Between the children and the animals, sometimes I think the country is noisier than the city.”

  “You’ve lived in a city before?”

  “Yes. But, not for too long. It never felt like home.”

  That was an understatement. Adam had been miserable in the city. He had hated the way it felt. The way it smelled. The way it seemed to settle on his skin like a coating he could never completely wash off. Having gone through that feeling of not fitting and not belonging, having fled that, how had he not understood what Sarah was going through?

  “So you came back here?”

  Adam nodded. “I wanted to settle down. Have children. And I wanted my children to grow up in the country, with fresh air and room to be.”

  “Children.” This time, Adam didn’t have a bit of trouble picking out the fear in Millie’s voice. “Will you tell me about them? Please? I remember everything you told me in the letter. What Mrs. Thompson told me. But, I’d like to hear more. I need to be as prepared as possible before meeting them in person.”

  This was safe territory. His marriage to Sarah might have ended in disaster, but his children were nothing but joy. “They’re great kids. I know I told you that in the letter, and I’m definitely biased, but they are. Catherine, the five-year-old, has such a kind heart. She always wants to be helpful.”

  Adam’s throat tightened, but he continued. He wanted Millie to give his children what they needed. “Caty just wants to be loved. She spends a lot of time doing things to please people so they will like her. Love her.”

  Adam looked at Millie, to see if he could tell what she was thinking. She was staring at her hands, and her profile wasn’t giving him any hints. “Genie—Eugene—is three. He’s happy so long as he has two things to bang together. It doesn’t matter at all what they are. Two forks. Two blocks. Two of anything so long as he can crash them into one another and make noise.”

  Millie’s hands moved from her lap to her mouth. She turned and looked at him. There was definitely a smile under there. Adam couldn’t stop his own grin. He wasn’t exaggerating his little boy’s love of crashing and making noise. Though it could become aggravating, it was mainly adorable.

  “They sound wonderful.”

  “They are. Don’t misunderstand me, they are children. They can be cross and demanding and ungrateful. And, don’t ever try to reason with them because I promise you you’ll lose your mind before they understand your point. Even if it is eminently logical.”

  Millie laughed out loud at that. Hearing the sound made the embarrassment of admitting his parenting failure completely worth it.

  “What did you try to reason with them about?”

  “Oh, too many things to count. You’d think I would learn, but I just keep hoping that they’ll see my point. Eventually.”

  “I think you might have a long wait. I’m not an expert when it comes to children, but I have a feeling that logic is one of the last things to develop.”

  Adam told her more about the kids, enjoying both reliving the memories and sharing them with someone else. It was such a shame that the happiness Caty and Genie brought to the world was shared only with him. But, that would change now that Millie was here.

  “Will you tell me about the routine?” Millie’s question was almost abrupt.

  “Routine?”

  “Yes. How does the day go where you live? I want to know what to expect. Make sure I do the right thing in the right order.”

  Adam looked at Millie, trying yet again to read her face.

  There was nothing he could decipher, though her face was lovely, as it had been from the moment he first saw her. Framed by dark brown hair with a slight wave. Brown eyes. Fair complexion with a trail of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her cheeks had been slightly pink since yesterday. Adam didn’t know if that was from nerves or excitement or if her cheeks usually had that tint. Regardless, she was a beautiful woman.

  But not exactly readable. She might come in a pretty package, but it didn’t take a genius to see that a beautiful, collected facade was exactly what Millie Steele—now Beale—presented to the world. She sure kept everything else locked down tight.

  Except when Adam moved his gaze from her face down to her hands, he saw that they were clenched tight. Her fingers were white around the edges from the pressure. That was not a casual question.

  Lord, I feel like I’m trying to walk through mud here. I can’t find solid ground. I just want to cross this passage and get to the good land on the other side. Help me say the right things, be the right thing. Please.

  “There’s not too much of right and wrong out on the farm. A lot of what gets done is determined by the weather and current status of crops and livestock.”

  “Farm? I thought you lived on a ranch?”

  “Well, it’s a bit of both. I grew up on a ranch, so I consider myself a born-and-raised rancher. And, we have quite a bit of livestock. Cattle and horses. But, it’s also a nice little farm. I have a variety of crops planted. Plus, we have chickens, hogs and a couple of dairy cattle.”

  Adam knew he had failed as a husband the first time around. Sometimes, he questioned whether he was a good enough father to his children. But, he was proud of what he had accomplished with his land. It had taken years, but he finally felt like he was established. His cattle and horses had a growing reputation and provided enough income to live on. The amount of land planted in crops was also expanding.

  “I barely know anything about living on a ranch. Or a farm.”

  Millie’s mask was good, but her hands were still clenched. He had not managed to put her at ease at all. Adam fought the urge to touch her. Reassure her.

  Then he stopped fighting. He was determined that this was going to be a good marriage. He might not want the intimate aspects of having a wife, but he did want a friendship. He wanted his children to be surrounded by love. Companionship. Adam transferred the reins to one hand and used the other to reach out and touch Millie’s arm. He tried to make his touch safe and comforting.

  “I can teach you anything you need to know. I told you I lived in the city for a bit. I have a good understanding of what you’re used to. The farm won’t be that different. Day-to-day life inside a home is pretty much the same everywhere.”

  Millie nodded her head and smiled. But, her hands were still clenched like she was clinging on to something for dear life.

  Adam drew his hand back, unsure yet again whether he had helped at all. He sure didn’t feel like he had lessened her fears.

  Chapter Two

  To Do:


  Breathe

  Get to know the children

  Learn about farms—Livestock? Crops?

  Is it better to live on a farm or a ranch?

  Millie needed her notebook. Her pencil. And fifteen minutes alone to lose her composure without an audience. But, she was not going to get any of those things, so she concentrated on the scenery. It was, well, beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking in fact.

  Funny, when she made her long list of pros and cons for marrying a total stranger, the place where he lived did not ever cross her mind. She was looking for security. Safety. To feel like she could breathe again. She’d have been willing to take up residence at the bottom of a coal mine as long as she could have those things. Millie would never, ever forget what it felt like when she realized that she was, indeed, pregnant and homeless. And without the skills to find a job. Dependent on the kindness of strangers in a world that had never been very full of kind strangers to Millie’s eye.

  She tried to suppress a shiver, tightening her muscles viciously. She didn’t want Adam to see and ask if she was okay. And he would. She had already learned some things about her new husband.

  Millie slowly relaxed her muscles, and refocused her eyes on the scene in front of her. Beautiful was still the primary word she could find to describe it. Yes, it was the same blue sky that had been above her in Saint Louis. But, the rest was revelation.

  Gold-and-green grass, at least four feet tall, swayed in the wind. She was looking at a never-ending golden-green sea, in fact. There were waves. Honest-to-goodness waves. In grass. The ground was so straight here that the dark spots on the horizon could well be hundreds of miles away.

  Her first impression off the train was that Marrison was small and remote and quaint. A little settling trying to be a town. And now she was going to live almost an hour away from even that small civilization. It didn’t seem possible, but the landscape just got more and more remote the farther they went.

  Millie was used to being on her own. However, she wasn’t used to being in a place that felt so foreign. The Keller ranch had been right outside Saint Louis. Knowing she was near the city had made the location feel close. Familiar.

  Not now, though. Millie was far from the rivers and bluffs and the buzz of the city that she’d known all her life. A whole new start in a whole new land. It was both one of the scariest and one of the most comforting things Millie had ever seen.

  Her plan for how she would act in this new marriage had not accounted for all the details of her new reality. How could it, though? She’d never been to Kansas. Never lived on a farm.

  But, she would figure it out. She always figured it out. Millie just needed to gather as much information as possible. She would ask questions. Pay attention to what everyone else was doing. Take notes. And then, she could make her plan.

  Millie sat up straighter as Adam turned the wagon off the worn trail of dirt that she assumed counted as a main road out here. The new path they had turned onto barely looked like a path at all. Instead of a solid width of light brown dirt, the way was designated by yet more grass. The grass was just shorter than the golden-green ocean surrounding them.

  There was also a parting of the waves, so to speak. The moving grass gave way to rectangles of what had to be crops. Millie didn’t know what was growing, but she saw the neat rows of dark earth and the green plants seemingly shooting up out of the ground. She also saw cattle and horses.

  Millie couldn’t contain her excitement. Though the large animals frightened her, they also thrilled her. She had never seen such creatures up close before. Sure, there were horses in the city, not to mention plenty of them at the Keller ranch, but these horses looked bigger. Rougher. More fitting to the wild frontier she’d been told existed once a person traveled past Saint Louis. She could hear them. And, though it was strange and perhaps unpleasant, she could smell them—a stronger odor than she’d noted at the Kellers’ home, where she’d rarely been outside. Instead of being a picture through a frame, they were very much real.

  “This is our land. We’re only about ten minutes from the house.”

  Our land. He’d done that earlier today, too. Millie wondered at how Adam seemed to have no problem moving from being a widower to being completely married. He acted as though he was pleased to share everything he had worked for with her.

  Or else, he was very good at pretending. Millie had known more than one man who could put on a grand show of being generous and kind in public while being secretly stingy or cruel behind closed doors.

  You’re too cynical, Millie. There are good people in this world, who genuinely want to help others without any strings attached. You need to have a little faith.

  Mrs. Thompson’s words echoed through Millie’s head. It wasn’t the first time they had made an appearance. It seemed as though they had done nothing but ricochet around since the pastor’s wife had said them.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  Millie realized that she could see buildings now. A small house. A barn. A couple of other structures whose function she couldn’t place. The house looked sturdy. There was a porch and couple of windows out front. Millie saw two rocking chairs, and the whole scene reminded her of a picture she had seen in a book about life on the prairie. Seeing essentially the same picture now, in living color, with sunshine and a breeze on her face, and the ambient noise of animals was nicer.

  She had a place to live. Food. Her baby would not be born fatherless and on the streets. No. He or she would have a home and a family and would never know the experiences that plagued Millie’s own youth. That was what she had wanted. What she had planned for. And what she had accomplished. For uneducated street trash, Millie had done just fine for herself.

  “Millie?”

  Again, Adam touched her arm. Again, it struck her as shockingly gentle and overly familiar. Again, Millie found that she really liked it. A lot. That touch was dangerously appealing, making her head spin when she needed to be calm and rational.

  “It looks nice. Really nice.”

  “It’s bigger than it looks.”

  Did he think she found his home to be too small?

  “It looks like the perfect size. I don’t know what some of those buildings are.” Millie hated her ignorance. It seemed she had spent the entirety of her life in situations where she did not know what she needed to know. What she should have been taught as a child.

  “That’s okay. I know it’s a change from the city.” Adam did not sound concerned that he had married a woman unfit to survive out here.

  “I mean, I recognize the house. And the barn. But what are the others?”

  “The long one behind the barn is the bunkhouse. It’s where the hired hands live. I only have a couple right now, but I built it big enough to house ten or so. I’ll need them someday.”

  He sounded so confident. It soothed the edge of the fear Millie had been shoving down into her belly for the past few months. If he planned on hiring several hands, then he planned on paying them. And, if he planned on paying them, that meant he had money. And if he had money, then he had security.

  “What about the others? The smaller ones?”

  “One is a root cellar, for storing food. The other is a meat house.”

  “I do know what those are, so don’t be too scared. I’ve been told I’m an excellent cook.” She had tried to play up her assets in her letter to him, but it never hurt to reiterate them. Besides, that part was the absolute truth.

  “I’ll give you a tour once we say hello to the children.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Probably inside. Napping I’d guess, based on the time. Edith, a neighbor, is watching them for me. You’ll be a bit of a change, so we wanted to leave everything else as familiar as possible.”

  “Are they going to be upset?” Millie had not really worried too
much about that. They were so young, and she had every intention of being a good change. Millie might not know about men like Adam Beale, but she knew about children. She had never met a child that she couldn’t eventually win over. In fact, more than one matron in The Home had put her in charge of the younger kids because of her way with them.

  “I told them where I was going, so they know that I am getting married and bringing home a wife. A mother.”

  “A mother.” Millie’s voice was soft as reverence washed across her heart. She knew she would be a mother, but it had always felt like some future event. Even with the life growing in her womb, the reality of actually being a mother had always been in the category of someday.

  Someday had come. She was a mother now. Right now.

  Help me, Lord. Help.

  She still felt silly talking in her head to God, but it was becoming increasingly instinctual. Millie’s faith was getting stronger every single day, no matter how much she tried to reason herself out of it. It had already saved her. Literally.

  Millie had walked into a church a year ago out of some kind of curiosity she couldn’t contain. After making her list and determining it couldn’t do any harm to just see what the church looked like on the inside, she’d forced her legs to go up those steps and walk through the doorway. Mrs. Thompson had been inside. That action had put into motion a chain of events that had led to Millie being in Kansas about to face her new children for the first time. The Lord sure had a way of doing things.

  “This is still what you want, isn’t it? It will be much harder to change your mind once you meet the children. I—”

  “No, Adam. Don’t.” It was hard to speak past the panic that put spots in her vision. He thought she had changed her mind? He was going to take her back. But, back to what? She was so close to having a steady, stable home, and now it was all going to disappear. Like the mirages she had read about.