Authors: Ellen O'Connell
When she met him at the back gate less than an hour later, her hair no longer straggled around her face, which shone with recent scrubbing. She didn’t really look better in one of her own old dresses, her colorless scarf, and shabby coat, but at least she looked like Norah Hawkins again. The eager way she’d accompanied him last time was gone though. She all but dragged her feet as they approached the main street of town.
Finally she stopped altogether. “I can’t do this. I can’t go to the stores.”
“So she never paid you.”
“Yes, she paid me. Here, look.”
She dug around in her pocket, brought out a handkerchief bundled around a small object, and untied it to reveal a ten dollar gold piece.
Cal took it from her, gave it a heft and a suspicious look but had to admit it was the real thing.
“You can’t be such a miser you won’t spend any of that for things you need.”
Color rose across her cheeks. He looked around, saw a bench in front of the boot maker’s shop, and pushed her down.
“We know some pretty bad things about each other,” he said. “How can you be too embarrassed to admit why you can’t spend any of that?”
She darted a glance at him, then bowed her head again. “Joe and I got that land from my father, you know.”
“I heard. Van Cleve’s still angry your father didn’t sell to him.”
“Papa wasn’t much of a farmer. Dreaming about it back East was one thing. Being out here.... He was glad to sell out and leave, but he didn’t want Mr. Van Cleve to have it, and Joe couldn’t pay him even as much as Mr. Van Cleve offered. He was offering a dollar an acre in those days.”
“So your father gave it to your husband.”
“No, Joe paid enough cash money so Papa could move on, and he assumed Papa’s debt. Papa owed everyone in town. Everyone agreed to that. Joe was a good farmer, and he did pay down the accounts, but no one would give him credit. He had to pay cash and pay on Papa’s accounts every time.”
Understanding came to Cal. “You’re saying they expect you to pay those accounts now?”
She nodded. “Not all at once, but to buy anything, I have to pay something.” She looked up, her face tight with distress. “I know I owe it. I want to pay it, but it would be like paying double for anything. I only have ten dollars, and it’s the first money I ever had other than a penny for candy from Papa when I was little.”
He pulled her back to her feet. “I’ll buy you a dress so long as it isn’t gray.”
“You can’t do that. People are already talking about us.”
“You can pay me back.”
“No one will know that. My friend Becky will buy me anything I want. I just need to make time to see her.”
“You have time right now. I’ll walk you there, you get her to help, and I’ll meet you later.”
He had to find a way to set her on a better path. With her earnings, what he’d pay for rent, and what Van Cleve would pay for the land, she could get by for a year or more, long enough to find a decent man and marry again, or work that suited where someone appreciated her.
He decided to ponder on it some more in the barber’s chair. If she could buy a new dress, he could sit through a shave and haircut.
B
ECKY’S INITIAL SURPRISE
at finding Norah on her doorstep changed to delight at the prospect of tricking Mr. Lawson and buying Norah something pretty. The two of them pored over Becky’s copies of Harper’s Bazaar until they agreed on a pattern.
“Promise you won’t get anything extravagant,” Norah begged as they hurried to Lawson’s.
“Of course I won’t. Don’t you trust me? I’ll get something you’ll love. I’m so pale I have to wear pastels or I disappear, but with your dark hair, you could wear red. Red with black trim would be perfect.”
Norah had always envied Becky’s pale blonde hair and coloring that allowed her to wear pastels and creamy yellows. Becky glowed with youth and a happy newlywed’s optimism. Would Caleb Sutton consider Becky pretty, or even beautiful?
Catching the drift of her thoughts, Norah jerked them back to the matter at hand. “No! Becky, please. Something with a little color, but not so bold. Blue? I’m sure there will be some practical material in blue, and I can make trim. There’s some of the gray material Mrs. Tindell bought for my dress left. I know she’ll let me use that, and some white from the aprons.”
“Pft.” Becky dismissed thrifty concerns like that with a wave of her hand. “All right. If I can find a blue with a little style, I’ll get that, but you’re getting real trim that suits if I have to buy it for you myself.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. I have the money, and I’m buying my own. You can’t know how good it feels to know I earned it.”
“You earned twice that much.”
Sometimes it felt like that, but ten dollars a month plus room and board was generous, and they both knew it.
Norah waited out of sight of Lawson’s windows, fidgeting with nerves. Becky came out of the store with a paper-wrapped package clutched under her arm and wouldn’t release it until they were in her parlor. Norah opened the package with trepidation and stared at yards of fine wool in a deep rose shade and a piece of cream-colored lace.
“See? See. Not red but almost as good. You’ll look wonderful.”
Norah touched the cloth gently, half afraid it would change under her touch. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
Becky threw out her arms and danced around the parlor. “You can stay for supper, and we’ll get started making it up.”
Hating to disappoint the girl, Norah shook her head. “I’m sorry, Becky. I wish I could, but I already promised....”
“Do not tell me you have to go back and make supper for that mean old witch and her family. Do not.”
“No, I promised Caleb Sutton I’d have supper with him at Tommy’s.”
“Oh, he’s courting.”
“He’s not courting. He’s — overseeing.”
“What does that mean?”
“No matter what I tell him, he still feels an obligation, and he’s trying to make me do what he thinks is sensible. Sell the farm, find a different position, like that.”
Becky’s excited expression changed to disapproval. “He’s not looking out for you. He’s working for Mr. Van Cleve. He probably gets a bonus if he gets you to sell. Stay here and eat with us. The sooner you get shut of him the better.”
Norah knew Becky was right, but even so — supper with newlyweds, watching the way they looked at each other, or supper in the restaurant with Caleb Sutton, who said she was pretty, even if he was buttering her up so he could get a bonus. After all, she wasn’t going to sell the farm, no matter who advised it.
“I’m sorry, Becky, but I promised. Next week. Next week we can spend time. There. Now I’ve promised you.”
A
FTER CONSIDERABLE INTERNAL
debate, Norah decided to leave the package with the rose wool material in her room. If Caleb Sutton wanted to see what Becky had purchased, he could just come back once the dress was made up.
Descending the backstairs to the kitchen, she heard the sound of voices and laughter from the parlor and stopped to listen. Mrs. Tindell had dragooned her sons into hanging Christmas decorations.
After a morning spent bringing boxes from the attic, opening each one and setting the decorations out, dusting and washing when necessary, Norah’s melancholy had returned, only to be banished by Caleb Sutton’s appearance. The sounds of the young men teasing each other and their mother didn’t bother her this evening.
I have Christmas presents of my own. I spent time with my friend laughing and teasing too. I have material for the most beautiful dress I’ve ever had, and I still have an evening to spend with a man who says I’m pretty. Even if he is lying, he’s handsome in a scary way, and it’s because of him I have the other things.
His voice came out of the winter night exactly as she expected. “Did your friend get you something not gray?”
“She did. It’s beautiful.”
“So where is it?” Close now, his head dipped as he stared down at the hem of her old dress.
“In my room. I have to make it up.”
“And you’re not going to even tell me the color.”
“No, I’m not.”
“That’ll teach me.”
“No, it won’t, but I don’t care. Are you sure you don’t want to meet the Butlers? They’re young, but they’re good people.”
“You don’t want me around good people.”
“What does that say about me?”
“You lose your way now and then.”
That was so close to what Norah thought about her own behavior it silenced her the rest of the way to Tommy’s. At least before he opened the restaurant door, she remembered to say what she had rehearsed as she got ready to meet him.
“I know you’re going to tell me how I should sell to Mr. Van Cleve, but I’m not going to listen. You can try to scare me or scandalize me, but it’s not going to work. I’m going to have a lovely time, and I’m going to coax you or trick you into telling me about the places you’ve been and things you’ve seen that I never have and never will — things that have nothing to do with killing anyone.”
“And what are you going to tell me?”
“I’ll tell you about Baltimore, what I remember, and neither one of us will say a cross word or be angry with the other.”
“That’ll be a trick all right.”
Embarrassed again at her own shabby clothing, Norah didn’t really look at Caleb until she removed her scarf and coat and he hung them on the pegs by the door alongside his own. When she did, her heart skipped a beat.
Clean-shaven, dark blond hair freshly shorn, if the sight of Caleb Sutton had provoked sly glances from other women the last time they’d been here, those women would be falling off their chairs tonight.
Forgetting all about her old dress, she sailed to the empty table closest to the stove, absolutely certain she was the envy of every female in the room.
H
E HAD COME
to town resolved to tell her he was using her house and to pay her a fair rent. He’d come to take her out, resolved to convince her to sell the land and stop being stubborn.
Watching her now, knowing either subject would spoil the evening for her, Cal decided to wait until next time and knew there would be a next time.
Hard to believe a woman’s eyes could shine like that over eating mediocre food in a small restaurant, and the half-smile playing over her mouth started him thinking thoughts that should be reserved for a different kind of man.
A woman that pretty in an old rag would light up the room in a new dress with some color, although so long as no one else noticed, he enjoyed the private view of the limp cloth clinging to every female curve again.
There had to be a way to help her, and if he wasn’t going to urge her to sell the farm tonight....
“Have you thought of collecting all the Tindell bet money yourself? Collect your next ten dollars, get your friend to bet the next day for you, quit, and even if you split it, it must be hundreds, or would that be the kind of cheat only evil men like me think up?”
“It would be cheating,” she said primly. Then she laughed. “But we did talk about it. The problem is so many people have bet on those days, we wouldn’t win much. Becky’s husband checked for us. Every day has four or five names down, and some have as many as ten.”
“Blue.”
It only took her a moment. “Not blue.”
He answered her questions about places he’d been and listened with half an ear to her memories of Baltimore.
“Yellow.”
“Never yellow. I look sallow.”
Whatever that meant. “Green.”
“Not green.”
He walked her to Tindells’ back door, not sorry he’d listened to her. Why not give her an evening without harsh words. Next time he’d see the new dress and pay her the rent, convince her to sell.
A lamp burned in Tindells’ kitchen, spreading just enough light through the window to see the pale oval of her face. He expected her to thank him the way she had before and disappear through the door. Instead she stayed close.
“You know that Christmas is only a few days away, don’t you?”
He’d never thought about it. Christmas was just another day in his world.
“Thank you for today and this evening. This afternoon and tonight were my Christmas presents, and I know it’s greedy, but I have one more thing to ask.”
He tensed, expecting her to ask him to stay away. He didn’t want to and wasn’t going to.
“Would you hold me? Just for a minute?”
Surprise left him speechless and frozen.
“I’m sorry. I promised myself not to do that. It’s forward and wrong, and I’m so sorry.” She fumbled her key in the lock.
Still without a word, he turned her back around, slid his hands around her waist, and pulled her into his arms. She melted into him, head on his shoulder, her hands slipping round, holding him as he held her.
“I’m sorry, but it feels so good to be held,” she whispered.
“Stop apologizing. You’re not exactly hurting me. With a little more meat on your bones, you’d feel pretty good.” That was as big a lie as he’d told for a while. She felt more than good already, like something a smarter man would keep hold of, like something a man who had lived a different kind of life could keep hold of.
Her appearance had fooled him. She felt fragile, of no more substance than his ghosts. Was that how he had felt to her all those years ago as she kept her hand on his shoulder? Summer then, though, the warmth of her hand comforting through the flimsy rag of his shirt, not like now with the bulk of winter coats between them.
She straightened and stepped away, turned the key, and disappeared.
“Thank you, Caleb. Merry Christmas.”
Merry Christmas, Norah.
W
HEN
M
RS.
T
INDELL
summoned her to the parlor on the last Monday in January, Norah almost groaned out loud.
The parlor was the preferred locale for announcements of new duties or faults found. Whether the next lecture would be about the dangers of letting foreigners touch the linens or a speck of dust found in some obscure corner of the house, it would waste time and make her feel more than ever like a faceless drudge.