“
I have taken care of you, all of your
life and nearly all of mine. I’ve seen you through those hysterical
tantrums you faked, and I’ve doted on you and tried in every way to
please you and keep you happy. I spoiled you. I’m finished now. For
God’s sake, Olivia, you’re twenty years old! It’s time you grew
up.” As unaccustomed as Allie was to losing control, it felt
wonderful to speak her mind after a lifetime of keeping everything
inside for fear of upsetting her sister, or angering her father.
The blinders had been stripped from her eyes—Allie realized that
Olivia was much stronger that she’d ever guessed.
“
You can’t leave me here!”
“
I can, and I will.”
As Allie started to step around her sister,
Olivia suddenly sank to the floor and her limbs stiffened in the
beginning throes of a spell. For just an instant, Allie’s feet
froze to the boards, and that old sense of panic washed through
her. But then, sanity returned. This wasn’t a spell; it was merely
another attempt on Olivia’s part to bring her to heel.
The anger that had begun simmering in Allie
on the way home now erupted into a full rage in the wake of her
quickly evaporating panic. Uncertain of what possessed her, but
glorying in the heat of it, she snatched up a towel that Olivia had
left lying on the kitchen table. She bent to shove it into her
sister’s clutching fingers.
“
While you’re thrashing around down
there, make yourself useful and dust the bottom of the wainscoting.
Your servant has just quit.”
Olivia’s eyes stopped rolling and she gaped
at Allie in startled amazement. “But I—Altheeah! Come back!”
Miraculously recovered, she twisted onto her knees and made a
frantic grab for Allie’s skirt. “Don’t go! I’m sick. You can’t just
walk off when I’m having a spell!”
Allie jerked her hem from her sister’s
clinging grasp. “I am doing exactly that.”
It was all so clear to her now. She walked
through the kitchen to the hall and climbed the stairs with Olivia
thundering up the treads behind her on legs as sound and sure as
Allie’s own. When Allie reached her room, she pulled an old
carpetbag from beneath her bed. It smelled musty inside. Of course,
it would—when had she ever used it? Musty or not, it would have to
do. She plucked her silver brush and comb from the dresser and
shoved them into the bag. Then, resolutely, she began emptying the
drawers.
“
What are you doing?” Olivia demanded,
wild-haired and pale. She took the underwear that Allie put on the
bed and carried it back to the dresser.
“
I told you. I’m going.”
“
But where? I want to come with you!”
Briefly, the two women struggled over a camisole—Allie tried to
pull it away from Olivia, and Olivia worked to put it back in its
drawer.
With a final yank, Allie captured it and
stuffed it into her bag. “Why?”
Olivia wrung her hands and began crying. “I
don’t want to be alone. I don’t know how to do anything.” She
narrowed her eyes. “You would never teach me about cooking or
sewing.”
“
That isn’t true, and you know it
isn’t. I tried to show you lots of things. You didn’t want to
learn. For heaven’s sake, you won’t even make your own tea. All you
wanted to make were doll clothes.”
Olivia attacked from a different position.
“You stole my mother from me. I never even knew her. Daddy always
said you were supposed to be watching her, but you were off wasting
time while she went to the barn! It’s only right that you take her
place.”
Allie didn’t bother to reply. She couldn’t
respond to that accusation, and nothing she said would make any
difference to her sister. Allie had lost her mother too that day,
and there had been no one who even tried to fill the void. She
packed as much as she could carry and closed clasp on the bag while
her sister stared at her, goggle-eyed.
“
Take me with you!”
“
For the last time, Olivia, no! Don’t
you see I can’t be with you anymore? I can’t. Not after everything
you’ve done, the dummy in the barn, spying on me, bearing false
witness against Jeff—”
Desperately, Olivia smoothed back her hair
and dragged her sleeve across her streaming eyes. “I’m sorry about
everything, Althea, truly I am.”
Allie wanted to believe her. Oh, how she
wanted to. But her abrupt switch was so obviously meant to sway
her, Allie resisted. “You’re not sorry. Olivia, you need to find
out what it means to be a responsible adult. A lot of women your
age are already wives and mothers. You can’t go on pretending that
you’re twelve years old. At least, I’m not going to help you
pretend any longer.” She looked around her bedroom, the one she had
slept in since her girlhood, making sure she’d taken everything she
would need. “I’m going to get a room at the hotel and wait for
Jeff’s trial. You can have the farm and everything on it.” She
added, “I’m sure Father would want it that way.”
Olivia’s face crumpled again. “I think you’re
just being hateful!”
“
No, I’m saving myself. And I’ll do
whatever I can to save Jeff.”
Allie turned and walked out to the hallway
and down the stairs, wondering what it would be like to have a
grown-up relationship with her sister. She supposed that she’d
never know.
As she crossed through the parlor and the
kitchen again, she glanced at the rooms where she had spent her
entire life. Again, Olivia was fast on her heels.
“
I’ll fix it so that Jefferson man
never sees daylight again,” she shouted after Allie. “They’ll hang
him and you’ll be back here. You’ll see!”
Allie tugged on the hem of her light jacket
and adjusted her grip on the carpetbag. She was filled with
uncertainty and fear for the future. Like Olivia, she’d never been
on her own. But she walked away from the house in the waning
daylight without once looking back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“
It’s true that Floyd Endicott’s
involvement in the vandalism potentially weakens his testimony. But
I have spoken with Olivia Ford and I found her to be a charming
young lady. Her sweet innocence will make her a credible,
sympathetic witness. I think a jury would believe her.”
Jeff stared at Royal Purdy, the nervous,
pencil-necked lawyer on the other side of the bars, who spoke so
dryly of what would be a life-or-death event for him. Purdy was a
shirttail relative of Will Mason’s wife and he looked as if he’d
never seen a day of physical labor in his life, or spent more than
a minute in the sun. Hardly more than a wet-nosed kid in a boiled
shirt, he was pale and slight, with light hair and eyes. Jeff got
the impression that this was the lawyer’s first case. He’d agreed
to let the young man represent him because his price was
right—free. But every minute spent in his company convinced Jeff
that he might be better off defending himself.
He took to pacing the limited floor space of
his cell. “Olivia Ford could make some people believe that the sun
rises in the west, but that wouldn’t make it true.”
“
Hmm, well, I’m afraid, Mr. Hicks, that
your case doesn’t look very good. There are two people who don’t
know each other, both claiming to have seen you sink a pick into
Mr. Matthews’ head. Miss Ford even says she saw you carry it to the
field.”
“
I didn’t kill Cooper Matthews. Hell, I
never even saw a pick on that farm. There must be some way to prove
that she’s lying.”
Plainly, Royal Purdy believed them as well.
“It would be extremely difficult.”
“
What are you saying, then, Mr. Purdy?
That you’ve changed your mind about representing me?”
“
Oh, my, no. Every accused man deserves
legal representation, and I’ll do the best I can considering the
adverse circumstances. I’ll come to court with you and intercede if
the prosecution steps beyond the bounds of its rightful
authority.”
Such as organizing a lynching, Jeff thought
darkly. Purdy gathered up his papers, none of which appeared to
pertain to Jeff’s case, and called for Will to let him out.
Left alone with his thoughts again, Jeff
stopped his pacing and rested his forehead on one of the cold iron
bars while he considered his situation. He’d been in jail for three
days and with each sunset, his hope for deliverance dwindled a
little more.
Allie—God, it hurt just to think her name,
much less to envision her beautiful face. But he did it anyway, the
way a person might keep touching his tongue to an aching tooth.
He closed his eyes. If he was very careful,
if he thought only of Allie, he could imagine her without the
interference of her bitchy sister, and before the awful morning
that had landed him in here. He could see her lying in his arms in
the moonlight, her lips trembling slightly just as he bent his head
to touch them with his own. He could feel her warm body, smooth and
finely made, writhing beneath him, joining his very spirit to
hers.
Like it had happened yesterday, he saw her
standing in the orchard that afternoon he’d come back from town,
the breeze tugging at the strands of her hair while she fed those
little birds from her hand. She’d had her back to him and the wind
had molded her skirts to her shape, revealing a nicely rounded
bottom and slender legs.
He remembered her tending the scratches on
his arms when he’d crossed paths with her climbing rose on the
front porch. Her touch had been infinitely tender and soothing—he’d
wished he could lay his head in her lap while she stroked his
hair.
He still wished that.
Allie had tried to visit him every day, and
every day he’d refused to see her. Originally, he’d thought that
he’d get out of here after the details of the murder had been
sorted out, and they could go on about their lives as they’d
planned.
Now, he wasn’t nearly as certain. In fact,
left alone with this much time on his hands, there was nothing to
do but think. And in the thinking, he was reaching some
conclusions.
One such conclusion was that he would see
Allie the next time she came to visit, if there was a next time.
He’d turned her away so often, he wouldn’t blame her for not coming
back. But he’d like to look at her one more time.
He had the feeling it might be the last
time.
~~*~*~*~~
Allie looked out the window of her hotel
room, twisting the corners of her handkerchief into points. Dark
clouds gathered in the southern sky. The air was heavy and
threatening—rain was coming. It matched her mood.
What a curious experience it had been,
staying in the hotel. While checking in, she’d spoken very quietly
to draw less attention to herself. Allie was not unaware that a
lone woman renting a hotel room might set tongues to wagging. And
if the woman was a Ford sister, it was guaranteed. The clerk,
however, apparently had no sense of discretion, and had bugled her
name in a voice loud enough to carry through the lobby. Every neck
in the vicinity had craned in her direction. And when the clerk had
turned the register around for her to sign, there had been a space
on the page that asked for an address—she’d almost laughed. After
all, she really had no address, did she?
The room was surprisingly homey, with
pleasing, flowered wallpaper and a desk and chair by the window.
She ordered her meals sent up to her room, to avoid the curious
stares of other diners at Elmira’s Café, and too, because it seemed
so very lonely to eat in a restaurant by herself. Up here, Allie
had a view of the street below, which bustled with more activity
than she was used to in the pastoral quiet of the farm.
At night, she’d lie in bed and listen to the
rowdy voices and clanking piano coming from the Liberal Saloon,
down the street. The sounds, though muted by distance and walls,
carried easily in the summer darkness. In the morning, shortly
after sunup, shopkeepers up and down both sides of the thoroughfare
emerged to sweep their stoops and wash the dust from their
sidewalks to get ready for the day’s business. It was all much
different from the country hush and solitude.
She wasn’t sorry about her decision to leave
Olivia and the farm. But the novelties of having no one to answer
to, no chores to do, no meals to cook, were luxuries she could
scarcely enjoy when the circumstances were so dire. With nothing to
do but think and worry, she spent most of her time staving off
tears.
Oh, dear God, how she longed for Jeff. She
missed him more than she thought it possible to miss another human
being.
He had still refused to see her when she went
to the sheriff’s office. Although she hadn’t told Will Mason any
personal details, she suspected that he knew her interest in Jeff
was more than that of a concerned employer. He’d considered her
with a searching, empathetic gaze every time he returned from the
cell holding Jeff. Oh, Lord, he probably thought she was an
unwanted female admirer Jeff wished would just quit pestering him.
And maybe that’s how Jeff really felt.
Allie’s stomach clenched at the idea. She
didn’t want to flog herself with self-doubts but what else could
she think?
I can’t leave
you . . . You made me remember what it means to
be a man.
Had it really been just a few days ago that
he’d held her in his arms and told her that? It had been one thing
for him to ignore Olivia’s previous attempts to run him off, but
this—God in heaven, this robbed him of his freedom and threatened
his very life.
Well, Allie wouldn’t give up. Jeff’s trial
was tomorrow—the constitution guaranteed a speedy trial, didn’t it?
Judge Cavanaugh and a prosecutor would be here and set up their
courtroom in the Liberal Saloon.
She would see him before then. She must.