by Delia Parr
She sputtered and spewed and coughed and gasped as she struggled to crawl out of the pit and get herself into a sitting position. With her heart pounding, she clawed the mud from her face. When she decided she could safely open her eyes, she looked straight into the frightened face of the driver who had leaped down from his wagon to assist her.
“Mother!”
“W-Warren? Is that really you?” she managed, only to end up with more mud in her mouth once she opened her lips.
He grimaced. “Yes, Mother, I’m afraid it is. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do to help you.”
Emma stared up from the ground at her eldest son. When mud oozed from the brim of her bonnet into her eyes, she slammed them shut again, yanked off her bonnet, and tossed it away. “I don’t know what to tell you to do, Warren. I’ve never been covered with this much mud before. Not in fifty-one years,” she gritted behind closed teeth, convinced her day could not possibly get any worse.
“I tried to warn you that you were too far out into the roadway, but there wasn’t anything I could do. The brakes barely held in all this mud, and the horses—”
“Don’t worry about blame,” Emma said, grateful she had her eyes closed so she would not notice if anyone passed by. “There’s enough of that to go around. I’m not even certain I care to know why you’re driving a wagon down Main Street when I can’t recall a single time you’ve ever driven a wagon in your life.”
“I went to see Andy Sherling this morning to see about getting some kind of work. He sent me to Dan Haley, who hired me just for the day to haul some freight out to—”
“I don’t care where you were heading or what freight you’re carting about. Not unless you’ve got a barrel of water on board the wagon that you can dump on me before this mud hardens and I end up looking like a cast for a wax figure that’s going to be a permanent fixture on the roadway.”
“No. There’s no water.”
Emma groaned and kept her eyes shut tight. “I’ve got to get this mud off. What about cider or . . . or anything . . . anything wet?” she asked, pausing between words to keep as much mud out of her mouth as she could.
“Wait. There might be something. Don’t move.”
She scowled at him and tried not to think about the mud stuck to her teeth for fear she might gag.
“Sorry. Poor bit of advice,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Beyond being mortified and shivering with cold, she listened to his footsteps fade and then return a few moments later. “Tuck your head down as far as you can and put your hands on top of your head. I’ll try not to let—”
“Stop your hemming and hawing. Just pour whatever it is on top of me,” she snapped, but did as he had told her to do.
“But, Mother—”
“Warren Baxter Garrett, if you don’t do as you’re told this very instant, I’m going to . . . I’m going to write you out of my will!”
“If you insist,” he said.
She tensed, expecting to get drenched, which she did. But she also got pelted on her head and shoulders, again and again, with something solid. She did not have to open her eyes to know what those somethings were, because the taste of vinegar and spices that seeped through her lips and stung her eyes was too distinctive.
“Pickles!” she exclaimed, swiping her hands across her face. “You dumped a barrel of pickles on top of me?”
“I tried not to let all of them fall on you. Now hold still so I can wipe your face with my handkerchief, or your eyes are going to sting even worse when you try to open them,” he insisted.
She dropped her hands to her lap. When she felt a dozen or so pickles lying there, she pursed her lips while he gently mopped her face.
“There. That should do it. You can try opening your eyes now.”
Emma fluttered her lashes and opened her eyes and chanced a quick look at herself. Sure enough, she was rinsed free of mud, at least from the waist up, but her ruined costume reeked of pickles. She was also surrounded by half a barrel of the nasty things. Poor Warren looked so desperately frightened of what he had done, she reacted instinctively, picked up one of the pickles, and tossed it at his feet.
Warren jumped back. “Why did you throw that pickle at me?”
“To get your attention. I would have used a pebble, but I’m afraid I haven’t any in my pocket,” she murmured, saw her son’s gaze soften with his father’s memory, and tossed another pickle at him.
“What’s that for?”
“That’s for driving a wagon when you have no idea what you’re doing.”
“In the first place, I already said I was sorry. In the second place, I tried to warn you about the pickles, but you didn’t want to hear it. At least I got the mud off of you. Well, most of it.”
She threw another one at him. “And before you ask, that’s for being rude to me and for being disrespectful and always acting like you’re being persecuted . . . and for saying those awful, hurtful things to me last night.”
He drooped his shoulders. “I’m sorry. Truly I am.”
She threw another pickle at him, which landed on his foot. “That’s for being afraid to come to me when you needed help and waiting until you were so desperate you nearly ruined our family reunion and my birthday.”
“I wasn’t afraid,” he replied and held up his hands when she picked up another pickle. “Fine. I admit it. I was . . . I was embarrassed by my failure and I feared that after you married again, you wouldn’t want to help me or your new husband wouldn’t let you.”
She cocked a brow and quickly wiped away a bit of pickle juice that threatened to run into her eyes. “And?”
“And . . . and I let my pride get the best of me. I’d already disappointed Anna and my girls. I . . . I didn’t want to disappoint you, too.”
She set the pickle back down. “It wouldn’t be the first time any one of my sons disappointed me, but nothing you could ever do would make me stop loving you. And that goes for your brothers, too. And I would never, ever marry a man I thought wouldn’t come to love you. We’ll work things out, Warren,” she reassured him, hesitated for a single heartbeat, then tossed one last pickle at him.
Startled, he threw up his hands. “Now what? Am I supposed to confess to everything I ever did wrong in my entire life before you’ll forgive me?”
She chuckled. “No, I’ve already forgiven you. I just want you to think twice before you utter a single word of what just happened here to your grams. Now, unless you want to disappoint me again today, you’ll help me up out of this mud before anyone comes along and sees me sitting here taking a pickle and mud bath right in the center of Main Street.”
He let out a long sigh of relief, smiled, and bent down close to scoop the pickles off her lap. “You know, Father never had to throw more than two pebbles at me.”
She kissed his cheek. “Since I intend to keep a few pebbles in my apron pocket while you’re all home, I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”
“Emma! Wh-what are you doing sitting there with all those pickles!” Mother Garrett exclaimed.
“Don’t be a goose, Mercy,” Aunt Frances said. “You make it sound like Emma decided to sit in the middle of Main Street in the midst of a barrel of spilled pickles. I wonder where the driver got to,” she wondered as the two women hurried toward her as fast as their aged legs and the slippery roadway allowed.
“It’s too late to worry about Grams,” Warren whispered as he helped Emma to her feet.
Weighted down by mud, as well as pickle juice, Emma held on to Warren for support and attempted a smile.
Until she heard yet another voice behind her.
“Is that you, Widow Garrett?”
Emma slammed her eyes shut, as if she could make Wryn disappear by simply refusing to turn around and look at her.
“I do believe it is you!” Wryn exclaimed. “If you’d told me how much you favored pickles, I would have bought some for you. Oh dear. Isn’t that your bonnet l
ying there in the mud? That’s the second bonnet you’ve ruined since I met you.”
When Emma snapped her eyes open again, all three of the new arrivals were standing in front of her. She gave them all a good solid glare.
Warren chuckled. “Better stand back. My mother’s well armed with pickles, and she’s got a fair aim, too.”
Wryn pointed toward the hill. “Look! Here come Uncle Benjamin and Uncle Mark. See? That’s Uncle Mark’s covered wagon that just drove down from Hill House. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got the rest of the family with them, too. All we’d need now is Reverend Glenn and Mr. Breckenwith. Rather than wait any longer, you could ask Reverend Glenn to perform the marriage ceremony right here and now.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Emma grumbled, too cold and too miserable to even think about telling the little snip that she might not be getting married at all.
“The girl’s got a point. You might want to consider it,” Mother Garrett offered.
“Maybe you should,” Warren concurred, offering a backhanded approval of her plans.
Emma ignored her mother-in-law’s comment and turned her attention to Warren. “If I were you, I’d be more concerned about how you’re going to explain to everyone why you were driving that wagon over there than I’d be about my plans to do anything other than find my way to a good, hot bath.”
Wryn untied her bonnet and handed it to Emma. “Here. You can wear this for the ceremony. You can’t get married with your hair so mussed up. I’ll go get Reverend Glenn and Mr. Breckenwith.”
Emma handed it right back to her. “I can’t possibly get married today. And I most certainly wouldn’t get married here in the middle of Main Street looking like this!”
Mother Garrett nodded. “Of course you wouldn’t, but you’ve got to get back to Hill House to scrub up real good to get rid of all that mud anyway. There’s no sense doing it twice in as many days,” she argued. “That makes it nearly unanimous. Get married today.”
Emma dismissed her mother-in-law’s words as ludicrous and sighed, wondering if there had ever been a woman who had been bullied by her entire family into getting married by taking a vote. Convinced they were all a bit loony, she glanced down at her canvas bag, which was still lying in the mud, tilted up her chin, and used the one argument she could think of that would not force her to admit that she might not be getting married at all. “I can’t get married today. I haven’t been to see my lawyer, Mr. Larimore. I have some important documents in that canvas bag that he has to review before I can sign them. I can’t get married until I do that, and I’m quite certain Mr. Breckenwith would agree with me. In fact, if they have as much mud on them as I do, he may very well have to redraft them,” she insisted.
When she saw the look of pure disappointment on the faces of everyone surrounding her, she tucked it away as one memory she would one day treasure—but not before she washed up and no longer smelled like a mud-covered pickle.
28
THREE DAYS AFTER her muddy disaster on Main Street, Emma slipped through the dining room into the kitchen, anxious to go into town to see if she could gather any information for Miss Burns at the courthouse.
Losing herself in endless work seemed like the easiest way to avoid facing the fact that Zachary had probably changed his mind about marrying her, seeing as he had not shown up for a single meal since she had given him her demands.
She found Warren raiding the larder and chuckled. “Hungry again?”
He slammed the larder shut, then had to chew furiously before he could respond. “Grams makes the best pretzels,” he explained, along with an uncustomary blush. “I thought I’d sample a few before I head out to look for another position, preferably one indoors,” he added defensively. “Grams gave me a few ideas about where I should look.”
“I thought you might be up to something like that.”
He shot a curious look her way.
“You’re wearing your suit,” she said before brushing pretzel crumbs off his jacket. “Let me know if I can be of any help, too. What did Mr. Haley say about the barrel of pickles you weren’t able to deliver?”
His blush deepened. “He was pretty decent about it and probably grateful he didn’t lose more. Since I wouldn’t let him pay me for making the rest of the deliveries, he said that was payment enough for the pickles.”
Deborah skipped into the room, interrupting them, and tugged at Emma’s skirts just as Anna and Grace followed her into the kitchen. “When are we going to look for my new dolly?”
Emma scrunched down until she was at eye level with the five-year-old. “I have plans for this morning, but what if we go into town right after dinner?” she asked and looked up at her son and his wife. “Would that be all right? I promised Deborah I would show her a few dolls and let her pick out a new one for herself. I offered to take Teddy and Sally with me, too, but they weren’t interested.”
“It’s fine with me,” Anna replied. “Warren?”
He swallowed hard. “Deborah would love a new dolly. Thank you.”
Deborah’s eyes twinkled. “Are you gonna get all muddy and smell like pickles again?”
Emma laughed as she straightened back up again. “I hope not.”
Mother Garrett edged her way into the kitchen. “I’m all set to go into town to check on Wryn. If you’re ready now, I’ll go with you, Emma. I have a mind to stop at Mr. Breckenwith’s while I’m in town to find out why he’s been so scarce at my table these past few days.”
A knock at the kitchen door kept Emma from responding, and Warren waved them off from answering the door. “I’ll get that. You two go ahead, unless you can wait a few moments so I can walk into town with you.”
“I wanna go, too,” Deborah whined.
“You and your sister need to come with me. There’s some explaining to be done about the mess I found in the front parlor,” Anna insisted, leading both girls out of the kitchen.
“We’ll wait for you in the parlor,” Mother Garrett said.
Consumed with finding a way to keep Mother Garrett from visiting Zachary, Emma followed her into the dining room, but before she reached the hallway, Warren called out to her.
“Mother? Would you mind stepping back here for a moment? There’s someone here who needs to speak to you.”
“I’ll wait for you in the front parlor, too,” Mother Garrett added.
Her heart leapt with hope until she realized Zachary would not have come to the back door to seek her out. Intrigued by the possibility that yet another woman might have come to seek her, Emma retraced her steps. But when she entered the kitchen, she found Warren standing by the back door, which was closed. “He’s outside.”
Perplexed that Warren did not allow the man to come inside, she hurried toward the door. Warren opened it for her and followed her outside.
The moment she saw not one man, but two, waiting for her, she realized she had jumped to a hasty conclusion. Zachary was indeed standing there, but there was also a man she had never met standing next to him.
The stranger was about the same age as Emma, and his frame was as straight and thin as his beard, which drooped long enough to touch the middle of his chest.
Finally, she realized the reason Warren had not invited the two men into the house had nothing to do with his manners at all. The reason—in reality, two very familiar reasons—now made perfect sense.
Her heart sank, but she kept a smile on her lips. She was close enough to Zachary to catch the absolute merriment in his gaze and decided he was enjoying too much pleasure at her expense, especially when she suspected there was one very familiar reason still missing.
Warren held on to her elbow, as if she might need his support.
“This is Mr. Fellows,” Zachary explained.
The man tipped his hat. “Ma’am.”
Zachary continued. “We were having a discussion at my home about words, which I thought you might find interesting, so I convinced Mr. Fellows to come here to Hill House so you cou
ld be part of it.”
“Words,” she repeated, unable to take her eyes off the two nanny goats Mr. Fellows held tethered together by a bit of rope he held in his hands.
“Would you mind telling Widow Garrett where you found those two nanny goats and why you brought them to my office?”
“They were nibblin’ every bit of green out of my wife’s garden. We’ve got a little place at the end of Main Street, just outta the town limits,” Mr. Fellows explained. “Before I took ’em both to Sheriff North to investigate, I thought I should stop by a lawyer’s to see what I could do about suin’ the owner, ’cause there won’t be much growin’ in that garden now that these two critters had their fill. Some animals best belong on a farm, where they don’t bother nobody,” he grumbled.
“Exactly my thoughts,” Emma whispered. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted to strangle Mr. Kirk for bringing those goats to Hill House in the first place, or kick herself for allowing the goats to stay.
Zachary nodded. “I told Mr. Fellows we first had to determine whether the goats were mavericks or renegades before he could entertain filing any sort of lawsuit to recoup his losses.”
“A maverick’s a critter roamin’ round without no owner, which means I got no lawsuit. That much I got before comin’ up to your house, which means I’m gonna ask the sheriff if I can just keep the goats. Seems fair enough to me, considerin’ what it already cost me,” Mr. Fellows offered.
Zachary nodded to Emma. “As your lawyer, as well, I thought you should be here when I told Mr. Fellows that unlike mavericks, renegade goats have a proper owner who bears responsibility for any damage the animals might have done,” he said. “Would you please tell us whether or not those are your goats?”
Warren continued to hold on to her as she pointed one at a time to the goats. “That’s Ridiculous. That’s Outrageous.”
Mr. Fellows looked confused. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. Did you say—”
“Those are my goats. The darker one with the odd spots is named Ridiculous. The other one with the overly long coat is called Outrageous,” she said, using the names she had given them in jest, since no one had come up with new names for them. “I only got the goats recently and I keep them up at Hill House, which is why my—my lawyer didn’t recognize them,” she added quickly. “I’m so very sorry, but they must have escaped. My sons were planning to build a stronger pen, but—”
