Beautiful Bad Man (32 page)

Norah crooned to the baby and stroked a soft cheek, keeping her head down and pretending not to notice when Deborah began working her way to the porch.

Once the girl sat beside her, Norah said, “I’m so glad to see you again, Deborah. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Good. You look very pretty. I don’t remember that dress or bonnet. They’re new, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

They sat in silence for a while, watching Emma and Judith playing with Early as if they were both carefree girls. Norah fought the temptation to ask what Deborah thought of Emma, Jason, and Eli.

Finally, Deborah spoke. “She made me the dress and bonnet. She let me help.”

“That’s good,” Norah said. “My mother used to do that with me. Before I knew it, I could do it all myself.”

“My mother made our dresses all herself. Little girls can’t sew well enough to help. I practiced on doll clothes.”

“Everybody has different ways. If that’s how you learned and you helped with your dress, you learned well. It’s a very pretty dress.”

The dress was a pretty pale green, and Norah could see one side seam had the same kind of irregular line to it that she had made in the first dresses she’d helped with. Deborah rubbed the spot. Neither of them said anything.

“She asks me questions,” Deborah said at last. “She keeps asking me questions about bad things. She doesn’t do that to Judith.”

Norah thought carefully before answering. “You know your mother sent your Uncle Jason a letter.”

“Yes.”

“She was most worried about you. Emma only asks questions because she’s worried too. She wants to help you.”

“I want her to stop.”

“Have you told her that?”

“I don’t want a whipping.”

“No one’s going to whip you for being honest. A while ago, your Cousin Caleb and I were sharing secrets. He asked about something I wasn’t ready to tell him, and I told him that, so he waited until I was ready. That’s all you need to do. You just say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that yet.’ That’s not mean or rude. It’s just the truth, and maybe someday you’ll trust her enough that you can tell her.”

Norah felt Deborah’s eyes on her and dared to look up. The girl’s face was twisted with emotions she shouldn’t have.

“What are your secrets?” Deborah whispered.

“My secrets have to do with the children I lost. I had a little girl and a little boy once, and I can’t tell you yet either. Caleb’s secrets are like yours. People hurt him when he was a little boy.”

“Did he tell people not to ask questions?”

“He didn’t get to do that. He didn’t have anyone who cared enough to ask questions until I came along, and he was all grown up then.”

Deborah rubbed the skirt of her dress, smoothing it over her legs again and again. “I like Early too.”

“Why don’t you go give him a pet then? If he isn’t all worn out already, I bet he’d like to have you throw the stick for him a few times.”

Norah watched the girl join Emma, her sister, and the dog and knew how Emma felt. She wanted to erase Deborah’s terrible memories before another day passed, but she also knew about having to find ways to live with memories that could never be erased.

At the sound of more heavy footsteps in the house, Norah jumped up and carried the baby inside. If Deborah saw her having a heart to heart talk with Emma now, the little girl might see it as a betrayal. A word in Jason’s ear would have to suffice for the moment.

After emotional goodbyes to the Suttons and many hugs, Norah went to check on how Cal had handled Jason’s visit and found him asleep.

Brushing his dark blond hair back from his forehead, she curved a hand around his shoulder, feeling strong, solid bone, and leaned down to kiss his cheek. She left as quietly as she’d come.

N
ORAH ESCORTED GRANNY
Johnson to Caleb with no little trepidation. She’d been thinking of him more and more in terms of Granny’s mention of Androcles and the lion ever since Jason and Eli had left yesterday. Because Caleb was acting like a caged lion.

He wanted to go home, and he didn’t think he needed anyone’s permission. In her heart, Norah agreed with him, but she couldn’t bring herself to be unhappy with Archie, who was agreeable as all get out but not going to lend Caleb trousers much less hitch up the wagon and take them home until Granny told him to.

Granny marched up to the bed and put her basket on the table. For an instant Caleb’s eyes widened. Evidently hearing everyone referring to his savior as “granny” hadn’t prepared him for the sight of the wizened little white-haired woman.

His eyes narrowed to a more familiar expression as he glared first at Granny then at Norah. “This is the medicine-woman-better-than-any-doctor who gets to say whether we can go home? I’ll crawl home before I let this old lady touch me.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining when I was up to my elbows in your blood.”

“That’s because I couldn’t see you. Ow! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Norah took a step into the room and stopped. Nothing she could say or do was going to make this easier. She fled to Mabel in the kitchen.

Half an hour later, Norah fidgeted in her chair like a child needing an escort to the privy. “How can it take this long for her to look at his back?”

“I don’t know,” Mabel said. “Maybe they’re.... I don’t know.”

The two of them sat at the table, pretending to drink coffee while actually straining to hear any slight sound from upstairs. Norah’s chair creaked as she shifted again, the small noise loud in the nerve-wracking silence.

Footsteps finally tapped down the bare wood stairs. Norah let out a breath she hadn’t realized she held as Granny walked into the kitchen, dropped her basket on the floor, and helped herself to a cup of coffee. Taking a seat at the table, she reached for one of the gingerbread cookies that sat untouched on a plate between Norah and Mabel.

“That is the meanest, nastiest, most ungrateful man I’ve ever met,” she said without heat. “I had to hurt him some to get him to cooperate, but you can throw him in a wagon and take him anywheres you want. The sooner the better and the farther the better I say.”

“Hurt him?” Norah started to her feet. Granny grabbed her arm and yanked her back down.

“Let him stew in his own bad-tempered juice for a while. I didn’t do any permanent damage. Suppose you tell me about those other ninety-eight things because I don’t believe you can come up with one.”

What could Granny possibly be talking about? The old woman finished her cookie and reached for another.

“Cried all over him and said she loves him,” she said to Mabel. “Told me she has a hundred reasons, not just that mean-handsome face and fine body. It don’t surprise me that she can’t come up with one other reason now that he’s awake and can talk.”

“Oh,” Norah said, remembering. “I can too. He makes me feel safe. In fact he keeps me safe.”

“Who was keeping who safe when you were pointing a rifle at the sheriff a few days ago?”

“He’s the one who taught me to shoot,” Norah said. “He’s generous. He took me to eat at the restaurant in town several times before we were even married. I’d never been in a restaurant before.”

“Probably hungry himself and couldn’t think of where to leave you,” Granny muttered.

“Generous,” Norah repeated, ignoring the rebuttal. “Right after we were married, he bought me a new scarf and boots and yard goods for a coat and three dresses and extras. The next time we were in town he had me get more for summer dresses.”

“Embarrassed to have a wife looking so poorly is all.”

“He paid off not only Joe’s debt but my father’s!”

“Hmph.”

“He makes me feel pretty. He says I’m pretty.”

“You are pretty. That’s nothing.”

“It is too something. You never said so before. No one ever said so before Caleb. Well, my father did when I was a little girl, but that doesn’t count.”

“Hawkins was slower than I thought.”

“He also says nice things about the way I fixed the house, about the curtains I made. He says the way I fixed the soddy makes it the nicest house he’s ever been in.”

“Probably ain’t been in many.”

“He’s been in Van Cleve’s mansion,” Norah said, sure she’d won that one. “He does things for me like digging ditches from the creek to my garden so I can water by just lifting a sluice gate.”

Hah! Granny had no answer to that one. “He didn’t laugh at my idea about raising goats.”

“So he’s as crazy as you are.”

“He shares the stories in his books with me. He reads to me every night after supper.”

Granny didn’t react to that one, but Mabel’s mouth formed a surprised oh.

“He’s a hard worker and smarter about it than Papa or Joe. He loves the land. He’s kind to the animals.”

“Sounds to me like you’re running out of anything important,” Granny said.

“He’s given me a child.”

Mabel had been about to take a swallow of coffee. She put her cup down so fast coffee spilled. “Oh, Norah. I’m so happy for you.”

Granny said, “All right. You win. You can forget the other ninety or so. Since Joe Hawkins took years to do that, I take it this one is more vigorous with his marital duties.”

Heat raced like fire across Norah’s cheeks. Caleb’s teasing about how other places turned color too popped up in her mind, and the heat intensified, the tops of her ears burning.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Granny said. “Old ladies are allowed to say what they think. It’s supposed to make up for seeing a man with a body that fine and knowing it belongs to a young woman like you. Pinching him was a pleasure.”

Mabel slapped a hand over her mouth, but a sliver of laughter slipped through. Granny gave such a wicked-sounding chortle Norah would have laughed at that alone. All three of them laughed until they cried.

When her laughter quieted to hiccups, Norah wiped her face, gave Granny a kiss, wrapped a cookie for Caleb and another for herself in a napkin, and went to find out where exactly he’d been pinched.

C
ONSIDERING THE PACE
Archie believed appropriate for transporting a healing gunshot victim, Caleb really could have crawled home as quickly.

Or maybe not. Her pigheaded husband had insisted on sitting up in the wagon at the start of the trip. Norah watched him sink back down on Becky’s mattress and close his eyes and couldn’t keep from asking, “Are you all right?”

“Norah.”

“I’m sorry.”

The wagon rattled over a rough spot on the road, and she bit her tongue to keep from asking again. Without opening his eyes, he reached out and gave her a small, reassuring squeeze on the leg, leaving his hand there, curved around her knee. She pressed both hands over his.

“I’m saving my strength for the sight of the place.”

She didn’t say anything. With all the time in the world to do as much damage as possible, Van Cleve’s men might even have ruined the soddy, collapsed the roof, smashed holes through the walls.

Caleb had promised her they’d leave, but what could they do until he was ready to travel? Impose on Mabel and Archie for more weeks?

As if he heard her thoughts, Caleb gave her leg a gentle shake. “We’ll be fine. Everything that was alive is still alive.”

That’s one hundred and one, Granny, except I wouldn’t know how to describe it to you.

Archie turned off the town road, the wagon rattling louder over the miles of seldom-used tracks between the road and home. Norah hung onto Caleb with one hand and the side of the wagon with the other as they forded the creek.

“Caleb,” Norah whispered.

He didn’t open his eyes. “How bad is it?”

“Sit up and look.” She shook him and forgot to make it gentle.

The wagon stopped. Caleb pulled himself upright, and they all stared at fields green with corn and golden with wheat, the house looking small and lonely amid all the luxuriant growth.

Ben said, “It looks the same as when we came and got you, Mrs. Sutton. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“It’s — unexpected,” Archie said. “What do you think, Cal? A trap?”

“Where’s Early?”

“Sniffing around the house, no sign he’s worried.”

“Why don’t you and the boy get back here behind the seat and drive up the rest of the way like that.” Caleb handed Norah her rifle and picked up his own.

After driving as close to the front door as he could, Archie jumped down and opened the door, standing cautiously to one side. Nothing happened. He disappeared inside, came out shaking his head.

“The dog could miss signs of a sharpshooter who set up days ago and isn’t moving around,” Archie said.

“He could,” Caleb agreed, “but even if someone’s staked out by the creek again, why is every cornstalk standing?”

“Someone else could have shot Van Cleve after he left our house,” Ben said. “Er, I mean....”

“We know what you mean,” his father said. “We’d have heard unless it happened yesterday.”

“Even so, by the time he brought the sheriff after me, he had days to burn every acre,” Caleb said. “It’s not as if he’d do it himself. He’d just give the order.”

“Maybe Preston’s men all quit after he....” Norah couldn’t think of an acceptable way to finish that sentence.

“Got a hole blown in his chest big enough for Early to run through,” Caleb finished for her. “Drag my sorry carcass out of here,” he said to Archie, “and you can turn the horses out and be done with us. If bounty hunters are lying in wait out there, Norah’s going to have to hunt them down.”

“Maybe I’ll shoot you myself, collect, and start looking for a third husband.”

She left it to Archie and Ben to lift Caleb down and help him inside and went to straighten the bed. The house was exactly as she’d left it, the clothes she’d strewn around in her frantic last minute search still where they had fallen.

The Carburys brought Caleb inside, eased him down on the bed, and left before anyone could embarrass them with emotional thanks. Norah felt a tide of relief sweep through her.

Alone. The two of them. They’d manage somehow, and tonight she could sleep beside him, and if he could only hold her hand, it would be enough for now.