An Unlikely Mother

by Danica Favorite

  Only the weight of George’s gaze on her didn’t make it feel so perfect at all.

  Chapter Four

  A week later, they hadn’t come any closer to finding Pierre’s father, Henri. It was as though the man had never existed. Except there was a little boy missing him who said otherwise. Today, George found himself walking through the mining area itself, hoping that someone would recognize the little boy happily swinging between him and Flora.

  The mine was no place for a child, but George had no other ideas. They’d walked Pierre through the camp a number of times, hoping the little boy would recognize someone, or at least some of the scenery. The only thing Pierre seemed interested in was going fishing, but George felt guilty at the thought. How could he replace the little boy’s father in what had clearly been an important bonding time between them?

  Flora and Pierre were singing “Frère Jacques,” and George couldn’t help but enjoy Flora’s melodic voice. Though Flora had spoken disdainfully of her feminine accomplishments earlier, George was impressed with how readily she sang with the little boy, a pastime he seemed to enjoy greatly.

  Pierre stopped singing and looked up at him expectantly. “Chante!”

  “He wants me to sing with you, doesn’t he?” George looked over at Flora, who smiled broadly.

  “It would appear so.” She gave the little boy an affectionate look, and once again George was struck by how readily she opened her heart to a child who needed it. It seemed like the other ladies in the camp hadn’t warmed to Flora, and her only friends seemed to be the pastor and Rose. A shame, because from what George could see, Flora had so much to give.

  Pierre tugged at his hand. “J’enseigne!”

  George looked at Flora for translation.

  “He said he will teach you.” Her words came out with a slight giggle, like she found the prospect delightful.

  Delightful, indeed. How could he refuse two such shining faces?

  Fortunately, almost every child probably knew the familiar folk song, or at least that’s what George thought. “I don’t sing as well as you, but I think I can manage.”

  He began to sing the first few bars, then Flora and Pierre joined in.

  Maybe it was wrong of him to think so, but as they strolled through the crowded area of the mine, holding hands with Pierre, who was exuberantly swinging his arms, probably in the hope that they’d pick him up and swing him between them again, this felt like everything he’d always hoped for in a family of his own.

  As they rounded the corner toward the mine office, Flora stopped suddenly, cutting off midsong.

  “What’s wrong?” George asked.

  Flora gave him a shaky smile. “Nothing. I just thought I’d seen my father going into that building, that’s all. Silly, because he wouldn’t be here. Our mines are on the other side of the valley.”

  Then her face fell as she sighed. “Unless he’s checking up on me. I’d hoped I’d earned his trust by now, but he was really disappointed in me when he realized just how badly I’d hurt others with my words.”

  Flora glanced at him with a look of such remorse, George once again wished he could come clean with her about their past, and how he forgave her for the way she’d treated him when they were children.

  “Once everyone got tired of my gossip, it strained my relationship with a lot of people, including friends of my parents. My father had to do a lot of work to repair some of his business interests.”

  The mournful look George had grown to hate seeing on her face reappeared. “I honestly thought I was being helpful, telling people all those things, and that somehow, it raised my own status of being good. How wrong I was. I’d give anything to take my words and actions back.”

  George smiled at her, wishing he could take her hand and give it a squeeze to let her know that it was all right. “We all make mistakes,” he said. “When I was a child, there was one little girl my friends and I used to tease for having a lot of freckles. We hurt her feelings so badly that her mother came to see my mother, and I got in a lot of trouble for it. Even though I could justify it by saying that she deserved it for teasing me, I should have realized that, as deeply as her words hurt me, mine probably hurt her as well.”

  It was the closest to admitting their shared past as George could safely get. But he had to make Flora understand that this was not an unforgiveable sin and that they all made mistakes.

  “Children can be cruel,” Flora admitted. “I was also teased for my freckles. Mother made me a special lotion I wore every night, and I take care to stay out of the sun. It was awful being made fun of, and I, too, should have remembered that when I tormented others. I suppose I thought that if people were making fun of someone else, no one would dare laugh at me.”

  She shook her head. “It’s good that you learned your lesson early. It took me far too long, and I don’t know how to undo the damage. Even when you apologize, it doesn’t erase the hurt others feel.”

  “No, it doesn’t. However, just as we are forgiven, we are called to forgive others, as well. You may have hurt people, but the Bible tells them to be forgiving. It’s my favorite part of the Lord’s Prayer.”

  Flora smiled softly. “‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.’ I find great comfort in that prayer. I have so much that needs to be forgiven, and therefore I’ve worked very hard to forgive others. I didn’t know what I was doing, so how could they?”

  She’d learned. That’s what he saw in her words. Did the people who still shunned her take the time to listen? To hear how she’d allowed God’s word to transform her life? Though George felt he had a good relationship with the Lord, sometimes being around Flora made him want to grow even closer to Him.

  “You make an excellent point,” he told her. “I just hope one day you learn to forgive yourself.”

  Flora groaned. “Now you sound just like Rose and the pastor.”

  “They’re smart people.” He grinned at her.

  “They are, indeed.” Flora glanced again at the mining office. “Would you mind terribly if we crossed over and went to a different area? If I did see my father, I’m not particularly interested in speaking with him. I know he cares about me, and I adore him. But I hate feeling so much like a disappointment when I’m around him.”

  One more thing George hated seeing in this delightful young woman. Surely her sense of her father’s disappointment in her was part of her inability to forgive herself for her past mistakes. But he wouldn’t argue this point with her. Though he was reasonably sure Mr. Montgomery wouldn’t recognize him, it was better not to take chances.

  Still, it seemed interesting and, if George were to speculate, a bit funny that Flora’s father would show up at the mine when it was having so many problems. Could George’s father’s rants about not trusting the Montgomerys have been a foreshadowing of their current troubles?

  They turned the corner in the opposite direction and began singing their song again. George noticed that some of the men would briefly stop what they were doing and smile, then go back to work. But no one approached them or even commented on how it was good to hear their native language.

  The good thing about being here, in the guise of a miner, was that people talked more freely around him than if he were to have been here as a gentleman. The miners poked fun at the men in suits who frequented the office, and when those men tried talking to the miners, they all clammed up. Since George was a newcomer, and learning the ropes, some of the men had taken him under their wings, telling him details about the mine he’d have never learned otherwise.

  The men had told him what they knew of the troubles at the mine, the cave-ins, the practices that seemed shady to them. All of which were helpful to George, in that he now knew that things were far worse than he’d imagined when he’d first learned of the situation here. And, all ri
ght, he’d own that Lance Dougherty, the mine manager, likely did not live on whiskey alone, but George found it troubling that the man often smelled of drink.

  George intended to use everything he learned to make things better at the mine and prevent future accidents from occurring. George had come because of one cave-in that had nearly cost them several workers’ lives. But he’d learned that just before he’d arrived there was another odd explosion, one that none of the miners understood, since no one was supposed to be working in the area. Mr. Dougherty had supposedly investigated it and said that it was an old piece of dynamite that had gone off by itself, and no one was in the area, but George couldn’t help wondering if it was true.

  The men all said Dougherty was a liar, and though George hadn’t let it be known yet, he’d noticed that when Dougherty hired him, he’d verbally told George one rate of pay but written a larger number in his ledger. George had listened to the men talk, grumbling about the lower wages at Pudgy Boy and saying that as soon as they found better jobs at other mines that paid more, they were leaving. George’s father had always prided himself on treating his workers fairly, so it seemed odd that now the mine had the reputation of having the lowest-paying jobs in Leadville.

  Unless Dougherty’s mistake in writing down George’s pay wasn’t a mistake, and it was part of a larger scheme to embezzle money from the mine.

  “Howdy, George!” Peanut McGee, one of the men who worked with him on the mining crew, tipped his hat at him, so George led his merry band over to greet his friend.

  “Hello there.” George returned the greeting, then indicated Flora and Pierre. “May I present Miss Flora Montgomery? And this is Pierre, the little boy I was telling you about. Flora, this is one of the men I work with...” George paused for a moment, realizing he didn’t know Peanut’s real name. “Uh, Peanut McGee.”

  Peanut tipped his hat at Flora. “Right pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  “It’s my pleasure, Mr. McGee.”

  She treated him with all the courtesy she would have offered in the finest parlors in the state. Peanut noted it, too, and he blushed.

  “None of that, ma’am. It’s just Peanut. Can I just say what an honor it is to know such a fine lady willing to take on a child like this? I do feel for the lad, and I’ve been asking everyone I know if they have any idea where his father might be.”

  It was Flora’s turn to blush, and George liked the way the pink in her cheeks lit up her eyes.

  “Anyone would be fortunate to have the opportunity to spend time with such a darling boy.” Flora ruffled Pierre’s hair and smiled, then bent down to whisper something in his ear.

  “Please to meet you,” Pierre said haltingly.

  George grinned. “Already teaching him his manners, I see.”

  “A little.” Flora smiled. “Just as I am helping you with a few words to communicate with Pierre, I’m also giving him the skills to talk to others. When we find his father, I’m sure he’ll be pleased at how much Pierre has learned.”

  Peanut shifted, looking uncomfortable. “Ma’am, I mean no disrespect, but none of us have heard of anyone who’s lost a boy. And we ain’t heard no one using them fancy words like what you said to the child. I suppose it might be one of them fellows who keep to themselves, but why wouldn’t he also be looking?”

  George hated to admit that Peanut was onto something. Why couldn’t they find any trace of Pierre’s father?

  The disappointment on Flora’s face was almost too much to bear.

  “I’d like to find a way to get into the office and look at Dougherty’s ledger. See if there’s a record of anyone named Henri working in the mine.”

  Peanut’s eyes widened. “You can read?”

  “Of course I can,” George said. As the words came out of his mouth, he realized that his confusion about Dougherty’s mistake was probably not a mistake at all, and that he’d been on to something in suspecting embezzlement.

  Most of these men were illiterate. The ones who could read probably noticed when Dougherty wrote down the wrong number, and were paid accordingly. But men like Peanut...

  George shook his head. These men were probably being taken advantage of in other ways, as well, and it made him sick. His father used to say that business ownership carried with it a great deal of responsibility, and first and foremost, that responsibility was to take care of one’s workers because without them they would have nothing.

  Peanut shook his head slowly. “You are one odd gent. We been thinking a lot about where you come from, why you have fancy manners, and now, come to find, you can even read. What are you doing here?”

  George had expected this question. And hated that he had to mislead another person. Peanut was a good man, a hard worker, and it seemed unfair to deceive him. But George still didn’t have the answers he needed.

  “Like everyone else here. Trying to build a better life for myself. My family hit on some hard times, and I’m doing what I can to make things better.”

  All true. But at Peanut’s sympathetic nod, George couldn’t help but feel like a fraud.

  “I s’pose we’ve all been there. You know Reg? He was some fancy lord back in England until his father gambled it all away. He don’t talk about it much, but I know he’d give just about anything to strike it rich and restore his family’s good name.”

  George nodded. He’d heard Reg’s story before, and at times, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d end up the same way.

  Then Peanut looked down at the little boy, smiling as he pulled a piece of candy out of his pocket. “I been saving this for a special occasion, and I think this might be it. A boy, missing his daddy, well, that sounds to me like good use of my treat.”

  He held it out to Pierre, who looked up at Flora. As she translated Peanut’s words, Pierre’s eyes lit up.

  “Merci, monsieur,” he said, smiling. Then Flora bent down and whispered in his ear again.

  Pierre nodded, then looked at Peanut. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Sir...” Peanut waved his hand. “You get on now. Teaching that boy to act like a gent. Miss Montgomery, ’cause of you, this boy just might have a chance at a better life, instead of wasting away in one of these mines.”

  Flora blushed again, and as George considered the man’s words, he realized that they were likely true. Once Pierre got to be a little older, he’d probably be helping in the mine, making pennies a day. At least that seemed to be the way for many of the boys he saw here. That didn’t seem to be much of a life for a child. Perhaps, once George got to the bottom of the bad dealings here, he could also find a way to help his miners better themselves.

  Working with Pastor Lassiter had opened George’s eyes to a lot of things that were wrong at the mine. Not just in terms of the odd explosions and dwindling money, but even the fact that many of these men couldn’t read well enough to know whether or not they’d been cheated. Suddenly, what had seemed like a simple issue had grown more complicated.

  Peanut turned his attention back on George. “I can’t imagine the boy’s father not coming forward, not with everyone here knowing you’ve been looking for him. But I’m friends with the night watchman, Stumpy, and I think he can get you into the office. I’m sure that no-account Dougherty hasn’t been any help.”

  George shook his head. “No, he told me that personnel issues were confidential, and he couldn’t give me any information.”

  Peanut made a disgusting noise. “You’d think a man would do more to help a boy.”

  One of the reasons George didn’t like the mine manager. He could understand the desire to keep certain personnel records private, but Dougherty had literally shut the door in George’s face and told him he couldn’t give him any information. Had George been in charge, he would have done whatever he could to help. Not just because this was the closest mine to where Pierre had been foun
d, and therefore the most likely place where his father worked, but because it was the right thing to do. All of the other neighboring mines, including ones several miles from here and completely out of the way, had joined in the effort to find Pierre’s father.

  So what, really, was going on?

  George smiled at his friend. “Well, I appreciate you being able to get me into the office so I can take a look. I just don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”

  But if someone did get in trouble, George would find a way to secretly make it right. This was still his mine, after all, and while it seemed like the most expedient thing to do would be to let Dougherty go, George couldn’t rightly say that would fix the problem. He didn’t have enough information.

  Right now, with no real evidence, he wasn’t acting on anything. Still, it would be nice to have some answers. Thankfully, Peanut was willing to have his friend help him get them.

  * * *

  Flora was touched by George’s discussion with Peanut. Clearly the men cared about what happened to a little boy who’d lost his father. George could have easily left Pierre with her and gone about his business, but when he wasn’t working in the mine, he was spending time with them and doing what he could to help Pierre. And, based on this conversation, George spent a good amount of time while he was working trying to find answers about Pierre’s father, too.

  As they walked back to the camp, the men discussed their plan to get into the office later that night. It amazed Flora how naturally Pierre grabbed both Flora’s and George’s hands and walked between the two of them. While the men talked, Flora and Pierre sang a few of the songs they both knew. Flora had forgotten how much a simple tune meant to her, and how song lifted people’s spirits. She’d sung in many of the finest parlors in Leadville, even sometimes in Denver when they’d go to visit her aunt, but here, in the midst of God’s creation, the joy of music made her heart feel even lighter.

  As they sang the final verse of “Au clair de la lune,” Pierre looked up at her with longing. The poor little boy missed his family dreadfully, and though Flora tried her best to make him comfortable, sometimes it seemed like her heart would break for him. How a man could simply abandon a child like Pierre, she didn’t know. But based on what Peanut said, and the responses of others, Flora could only think that something dreadful must have happened to Pierre’s father.