Carla Kelly (12 page)

“I hope you're right. I think—not certain, mind you—that all McAtee knows for sure is that I'm a liar, and a bad one, at that.”

Julia read to James that night from one of the many books Mama had given him for Christmas. At her request, one of the books Mama had purchased was
The Children of the New Forest
. As James settled himself in Iris's bed, she glanced through the pages, nodding.

“James, we've struck gold,” she said, aware in the deepest part of her heart how much she loved this boy that Paul was going to have to give away, for his own safety. “I had my suspicions, and now I know it: This is that whole book that Mr. Otto used to read to you and then make up endings, because so many pages were missing.” She turned to the last page. “Look. There's the ending. What do you say we start at the beginning?”

The wary look returned, but she knew his natural curiosity would triumph. James nodded and made himself more comfortable, snuggling down in the quilt Mama had made years ago. “Do it, Mr. Darling.”

She kissed him. “I'll read a chapter, and then Mr. Otto will read to you tomorrow night on the train.”
And after that, it might be Cora Shumway
, she thought.
Comfort me, Jesus
.

She put her finger in the book. “One thing more, James. I think you understand that Mr. Otto is going to marry me.”

“High time.” He grinned. “That's what Doc says.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Surprised, Julia looked around to see Paul standing in the door, holding a tape measure. “Mine too,” she told the boy. “If you call him Mr. Otto, maybe you could call me Julia, instead of Mr. Darling. Will you do that for me?”

James nodded. “He'll still be Mr. Otto?”

“Always and forever,” she said, opening the book again. “Cross my heart.”

“So that's the book,” Paul said, after she finished reading, knelt for James's prayer, and turned off the light.

“The very one.” Julia closed the door to James's room and took the tape measure from Paul. “What's this for?”

“Your mother says you are to measure me for temple clothes and garments, which she and you will make during the next few months.” He handed her a piece of paper. “Here are the measurements she needs.” He nudged her shoulder and pointed. “I'm really looking forward to the measurement from my crotch to my ankle.”

“Slow down, cowboy,” Julia said. “
You're
going to hold that tape measure at your crotch and I'll handle the ankle part! Mama didn't raise silly women.”

“I had to try,” he joked. “And I suppose you'll want to do the chest measurements and neck to waist measurements in a well-lighted place like the dining room, where your father is still making that elevator?”

“You are smart, for a cowpuncher.”

Keep it light, keep it light
, Julia thought, after family prayers, with all of them kneeling in the parlor.
I'll miss you dreadfully, Mr. Otto
.

“We'll be going early to catch that short line to Ogden,” he said. “I've been on the Overland Express so much in the past year that I think I'll be a conductor, if ranching ever gets boring.”

“You'd have to go through Rock Springs several times a week,” Julia pointed out, not wanting him to go upstairs to bed.

“That's a scary thought,” he said. He hesitated, then looked at Papa. “Jed, would you give me a blessing? I'm just not easy about James, or leaving Julia, or thinking about that house that isn't going anywhere.”

“I'd be honored. Kneel down, son.” He rested his hands on Paul's shoulders. “When Julia left here a year ago, I blessed her to look at people different from her in new ways.”

“And you blessed me to be kept safe from storm and fire too,” Julia said softly, kneeling beside Mama.

“So I did,” Papa said, his voice thoughtful. “Paul, I know it says Hixon in your family Bible, but we know it's Hickman now. Any preferences?”

“The Bible burned up. I lost everything except my father's medicine bag and Julia, which means I lost exactly nothing. Make it Hickman. We're starting over.”

Julia didn't even try to swallow the lump in her throat. Tears coursed down her cheeks as her father blessed Paul with peace of mind and heart and told him not to worry about the house. “The Lord generally provides,” he concluded, “even if not in ways we imagine, because His ways are most certainly not ours.”

When Paul rose, Julia stayed on her knees. “My turn, Paul,” she said simply. “You speak, and Papa, your hands too.”

“Walk with me, Darling,” he said, when he finished and lifted her to her feet. “We'll be back in a little while.”

It was a Christmas world outside, she decided, with snow gently falling, as it had all season; today it was Christmas snow. They strolled arm in arm, taking little glances inside the houses on the block, with Christmas trees and people gathered around them. It was late enough that some guests were leaving, with laughter and arms full of presents or carrying sleepy children.

“You've had Christmases like this all your life,” Paul commented. “Going to miss them?”

She shook her head, remembering last year's belated Christmas at the Double Tipi. “Maybe not too much, if you're there.”

“I'll be there. No more separations like this one, please. My hands in the bunkhouse are really getting tired of my foul mood. They were all hoping we'd get married at Christmas, but they just don't quite understand that we can't, until March.”

“Try not to be crabby,” she told him. “Mama is going to keep me very busy sewing!”

“I may be crabby, but I pay their salaries. They'll suffer me.”

They came to the elementary school, where the swings were gathering snow, as they had gathered snow a month ago, when she sat there and thought about Uncle Albert. “It's nice here,” she said, dumping out the snow and sitting down.

Paul did the same and sat in the swing next to hers. “I don't know, Julia,” he said, shaking his head. “Where is there a school like this one anywhere near the Double Tipi?”

“We'll leave it in the Lord's hands,” she said, thinking about the fire and the cut bank, and held out her hand to him.

Holding hands, they moved together in rhythm, enjoying the quiet and the relief from overheated rooms and worries that would press around again on some day other than Christmas.

“I have to ask you something,” Paul said finally, and she heard the hesitation in his voice. “It's a personal question, but we need this conversation.” He stopped their swinging with his foot. “Julia, I know there are ways to prevent children, at least right away.”

She nodded, glad there was only a streetlight to illuminate her rosy face.

“I don't really hold with that, especially since I'm approaching the dread thirty-seven this year, come August.” He started them moving again. “I'd like to be able to teach a son to ride and work cattle, before I'm too decrepit.”

“And I'll be twenty-nine in January,” Julia said. She chuckled, thinking about a similar conversation with Ezra Quayle. “Paul, last year, I scandalized Ezra by assuring him that all my parts would work just as well at twenty-eight as they did at twenty-seven.”

“You
are
a rascal,” he agreed. “Unlike your former fiancé, I have no doubts that all your parts will work just as well. Are we in agreement on this matter?”

“Most definitely,” she assured him. Her embarrassment passed and was replaced by gratitude that her fiancé wasn't one to tiptoe around the delicacies. “One of my recently married friends told me all the reasons why she and her husband were going to postpone a family for a few years. It sounded to me like she was trying to convince herself.”

“What did she say?”

“Something like, ‘This will give us a chance to get to know each other,’ ” Julia said. She stopped them both and turned her swing toward Paul. “I think we know each other pretty well.”

Paul nodded. “Amazing what a year on the Double Tipi did, eh?”

“Maybe not so amazing.” She bumped his swing with hers and he laughed.

He grew serious immediately. “Darling, have I changed much?”

It was a good question, and she thought about it, letting go of his hand and swinging herself back and forth a few times. She stopped the swing. “No, not in those particulars that make you Paul Otto. What you are is wider and deeper.” She leaned her head against the chain. “I hope I am too.”

“You are, madam,” he said. “I'm so much in love I would almost enjoy warm liver salad now.”

Julia bent down quickly, gathering a handful of snow into a ball and pelted him, which earned her a snowball too. She shrieked with laughter, which turned into a giggle and then silence when he kissed her.

“Your parts work fine,” he said, his lips against hers. He sat down again and started the swing in motion. “One more thing. It's awfully private, but I need to know.”

“There isn't anything you can't ask me,” she said quietly.

“Same here. It's this: I've already told you about my experience with Katherine. She knew absolutely nothing about what goes on between husbands and wives.” He shook his head, as though to banish a bad memory. “Our married life was purgatory. I can't go through that again; I simply can't. If you have any intimate questions, ask me, ask your mother, ask your doctor. I don't care. Just—”

Julia took off her glove and put her fingers to his lips. “Mama gave me the mother talk when I was twelve and becoming a woman.” She looked down, shy. “And lately, she's been augmenting the basic discussion.” She heard him chuckle and looked up, quite serious, which took the smile off his face. “All I ask is that you be gentle with me.”

“Done, sport,” he said simply. “I just wish I had a bedroom for that brass bed in storage in Cheyenne.”

“The Lord will provide.” She made a face at him. “O ye of crabby temperament and little faith, obviously!”

“He might provide the tack room.”

“So? Are you going to be in it?”

“Wherever you are, there I'll be.” He took her hand and pulled her up. “But right now, my a… backside is freezing to this swing. You know you don't want anything to happen to—”

“Paul, it's Christmas!”

“I love your logic,” he said. “It gets better every time I kiss you.”

Saying good-bye was hard, but not as hard as before, not with Mama and Papa both at the depot with her. Julia hugged James, thinking of their year together on the Double Tipi and her fierce desire to see him safe. For a long moment, all she could do was cup her hands around Paul's face and look into his eyes.

“Don't worry about the house. I mean it,” Julia told him. “I know you want the house to be done, but you have so much to do.”

“I do, indeed,” he said.

“Let me at least be one thing you don't have to worry about!”
Worry about James
, she thought, with a sidelong look at the boy.

Paul's eyes followed the direction of her gaze. “I'll keep him safe, Darling, I promise.”

“I never doubted it,” she said quietly. “The conductor is giving you the fish eye. Better get aboard.”

He nodded and took something out of his overcoat pocket. “I forgot all about this.” He handed her a little glass jar, decorated with beads and feathers. “I was supposed to tell you from Doc that if you haven't already tried it, to buy some, um, what was it? Something to do with softening agent…”

“Dr. Blair's Softening Agent,” Julia said promptly. “You can tell Doc that my doctor recommended it and I have been using it faithfully. But what's this?”

She took it from him and unscrewed the lid, gasping at the odor that rolled up from the jar like swamp gas. “It's vile!”

“My cousin Dan Who Counts—he's Charlotte's brother—sent that to me and said for you to dab it on your scars.”

“Only if I had no sense of smell!” Her eyes watered before she had time to screw the lid back on. “What on earth is in it?”

“Julia, I never ask.”

The conductor cleared his throat loudly, and Paul glared at him but took the hint. He kissed Julia and whispered, “Just dab a little of that behind each ear to repel any possible Romeos who don't know the fearsome Mr. Otto.”

“Absolutely,” she said and tucked the jar in her pocket. She stepped back then. “I'll see you in March, darling.”

“That's
your
name,” he said, but the worried look was gone.

“Yours, too.” She surprised herself and him too by grabbing the lapels of his overcoat. “Don't worry! Do I have to get rough with you?”

He kissed her once more, elaborately pried her fingers from his overcoat, and took James's hand, to the obvious relief of the conductor. Julia noticed with a laugh that it was the same conductor who had given them five extra minutes a few months ago when Paul left.

“Won't you be happy when I marry that man and get on the train with him?” she asked him, when Paul and James went aboard and the conductor pulled up the step.

“Lady, I live in hopes of that,” the conductor said, which meant she was smiling and waving as the train pulled out of the depot.

She kept a smile on her face all the way home, trying to ignore Mama's anxious glances in her direction. She went into the house with considerable dignity, head high, then announced, “I am going upstairs, but don't worry. I'm not going to cry.”

In the quiet of her room, she got Paul's suit out of the closet again and put it back where it belonged at the foot of her bed. She cried until there wasn't a tear left, then dried her face. She felt scooped out and hollow inside and equally determined not to show that face downstairs. In the parlor, where Papa was already removing ornaments from the tree, Julia announced that she wanted to go to ZCMI and buy wedding dress material.

“Hold on, anxious one,” Mama said. “Nothing's open today and tomorrow is Sunday. Monday will have to do.”

“How on earth does ZCMI make any money, being closed on the Saturday after Christmas?” Julia groused.

Mama accepted the ornaments from Papa and wrapped them in tissue paper. “Jed, this is a far cry from the Jules I took to ZCMI more than a year ago to buy wedding material. You know, when she wasn't interested.”

“I want something simple—I like tight skirts—but it should be silk, with a soft pleat in the back.”