Guilt seized Annabelle by the throat. Meg was right. Had being cooped up with her sisters warped her mind? Their papa lay in the next room ill, and she’d been dreaming of her forever-after, instead of thinking about how to take care of their father.
Meg gazed at them, her green eyes flashing with outrage, a look that Annabelle recognized from past experiences never meant well. “I’m going to go sit with Papa this morning, and then after lunch, Ruby you’ll take over. Annabelle, you wash the dishes with Ruby. Plus, there are the animals to see to.”
Things seemed so unsettled. When her father’s broken body had come into the house, the air of change had swept through, tossing all of them about, leaving their futures unsettled.
Annabelle turned and made a face at Ruby, who rolled her eyes back at her. Annabelle started clearing the dishes off the table and putting them in the washtub. Most of the time, Annabelle kept Meg and Ruby from fighting, but today, Annabelle didn’t want to get along with Ruby. Today, she ached with the need to put her younger sister in her place. To remind her that she had no business chasing after a man that much older than her.
Yes, their father lay in the next room, broken, battered, and she prayed unceasingly for his quick recovery. She wanted him to find her a husband, to walk her down the aisle. She needed her sisters by her side, but most of all, she longed for her papa to heal all the uncertainty.
“He’s mine,” Ruby whispered.
Annabelle cringed inside, knowing she should not respond, but unable to stop herself—not even really wanting this man, but somehow not wanting her sister to have him. Ruby was too young.
“I don’t see a ring on his finger, so he belongs to no woman yet,” Annabelle responded, her voice still its nice gentle tone with a current of steel running through it.
Ruby glanced at her. “Afraid of being an old maid like Miss Anderson?”
“No fears whatsoever,
child
.” She reminded her sister, knowing Ruby thought she was a full-grown woman.
“I’m not a child.”
“Just because you’ve grown breasts in the last six months, doesn’t make you a woman,” Annabelle whispered as she sank the dishes into the tub of soapy warm water.
“Not yet anyway,” Ruby declared. “But I’m looking for a man to turn me into a woman, and Deke Culver looks like just the right sort of man.”
Annabelle began to respond, but she heard a sob come from the bedroom. She listened for a moment and thought she heard it again. “Meg? Are you okay?”
Her older sister didn’t answer.
An icy cold shiver traveled down Annabelle’s spine, and her heart rushed up into her throat. She grabbed a dishtowel, rubbing her hands dry as she ran toward the bedroom. Time seemed to stop as she heard the sound of Meg sobbing. Meg never cried.
Fear gripping her, she reached the bedroom door with Ruby on her heels. Meg lay on the bed weeping. Annabelle glanced over and saw her father’s eyes stared into some unknown world.
Her heart shattered as tears filled her throat with the realization that no longer would his Irish brogue fill the house with love and laughter. Never would he approve of her future husband or walk her down the aisle. Just that quickly, he was gone.
*
A week later, Meg drove the buggy into the yard of the farmhouse. She’d been to the bank to visit Mr. Clark and moved all the money from her father’s account into her own. The money wasn’t hers; it was for the farm.
She climbed out of the buggy and tied the horse to the hitching post outside the house. There were chores to do, supper to cook, and bad news to deliver.
Walking into the house, she glanced over at Annabelle and Ruby cooking supper over the potbelly stove. Since the day of her father’s passing, as long as Deke’s name had not been mentioned, they’d been civil to one another. If Deke’s name came up in conversation, the claws were unsheathed and the fight was on. Yet, an uneasy silence permeated the house and left Meg longing to throw open the doors, open the windows, and air the place out.
“How did it go?” Annabelle asked, a black ribbon tied around her long curls in honor of their father.
They couldn’t afford the proper grieving material, so the thin strips of satin in their hair had to do. Meg knew they all lamented the loss of their father and feared the future, but still it couldn’t be healthy for the sad environment to continue.
“Have the animals been fed?” Meg asked, ignoring Annabelle’s question.
In the strained atmosphere of the house, there was no laughter, no smiles, not even loud talking. They tiptoed around, as if they were too noisy, they’d wake up the dead. Almost as if they couldn’t continue to live without being disrespectful to their father. She knew he wanted them to go on with their lives, but they had to learn how without him.
Yet, Meg didn’t know if things would ever return to normal.
“I fed them,” Ruby said, laying out the dishes and silverware on the table. “I even went ahead and put them up, since I thought you’d be tired when you came home.”
“Thanks, Ruby, that was thoughtful.” Meg stood, watching her sisters work together preparing supper, weariness overwhelming her.
She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t even stand the smell of food they were cooking.
This new world they found themselves in was different without their father here to oversee everything. Always before they’d been waiting for his return. No longer would he walk through the door, his boisterous laugh filling the house with love.
Now it was all up to Meg, and she didn’t know what to do.
“We need to talk.” She sank down onto a chair at the table and let the fatigue seep from her bones. She felt like she was a hundred years old, and yet she wouldn’t be twenty for several more months.
Quickly, her sisters joined Meg around the table where the family had gathered for years to make decisions.
Meg took a deep breath. “Today at the bank, I moved the money out of Papa’s account and into one with my name on it. That doesn’t mean the money is mine, but ours. It was a total of one hundred and fifty dollars.”
The girls smiled.
“Thank God,” Ruby said, “I feared we would go hungry.”
“Me too,” Annabelle replied.
Meg shook her head. “It’s not good news. The balloon payment on the house and land is due in less than thirty days. We need double that amount to make the payment and buy food.”
“What did Papa do with his money?” Ruby asked.
Meg shrugged, times had always been tough, but in the last year a blown away barn and a late freeze had hurt their crops. Like a tide, money seemed to flow out, but never come back in.
“Papa spent more time around the farm and hadn’t worked as much. That’s why he went on this last trip. He needed money for the mortgage.”
“How are we going to make that kind of cash in the next thirty days?” Annabelle asked, her face white as she grasped the reality of their situation.
“I don’t have a clue,” Meg responded, wondering if her own face had gone white when the banker had delivered the news. “And the bank is refusing to loan us more money or give us an extension. We must pay the loan in the next thirty days or lose our home.”
Never one to sit still during a crisis, Annabelle jumped up and came back with a piece of clean paper and an ink quill.
“What are you doing?” Ruby asked, frowning at her sister like she’d lost her mind.
“I’m making a list of jobs for us to consider,” Annabelle replied, gazing at her younger sister like she was a fool. “We can either lose the farm or go to work.”
“Oh,” Ruby said, and Meg could almost see the wheels of her mind working as she sat with her chin in her hands gazing at her two sisters. “We could sell baked goods to wranglers passing through town.”
“Like we’re letting you anywhere near those men,” Annabelle replied, shaking her head but writing down the suggestion. “You’d be selling other goods.”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” Ruby responded.
Meg held up her hand to silence the outburst. “This will mean not only working in town, but also our normal chores here at the farm.”
As if there wasn’t enough to do around the farm already, now they would be working in town for eight to ten hours. But if they lost the farm, Meg didn’t know what they’d do.
Ruby frowned and glanced around the table at her sisters. “What kind of jobs can we get?”
“That’s why we’re making a list,” Annabelle responded quietly.
“Everyone give me ideas for a job,” Meg said, trying to keep them centered around how they could earn more money and not about the hopelessness of their situation.
“Saloon girl,” Ruby said with a giggle.
“Do you know the duties of a saloon girl?” Meg asked. She knew Ruby said it in jest, but still it was time this girl got the fantasies out of her head and faced the realities of the situation. Being a calico queen could only be a harsh life. She didn’t want her sisters in that situation.
Ruby stopped, her innocent eyes glancing at each of her sisters. “Not really. I think she just hangs out with the cowboys who come in, and they buy her a drink or dinner.”
Annabelle shook her head in disbelief and rolled her eyes.
Meg gazed at her youngest sister, who thought of herself as a woman but had no clue about real life. “It’s time you knew the truth. A saloon girl does exactly what you said, but her wage is paid by the cowboys who take her upstairs and have sex with her. She is paid every time she allows some man to crawl between her legs and fornicate with her. She’s subjected to disease and pregnancy. Is that the kind of life you want?”
“Ewww. No, that sounds dirty.”
“Stay away from the saloon, Ruby. I know you’re an innocent, but those men would take advantage of a young girl like you,” Annabelle said quietly.
“I will. So that leaves us with, waitress, cook, housekeeper, and dressmaker,” Ruby said, a frown on her beautiful face. “Like someone is going to hire us. We’re the trouble making McKenzie girls.”
So they were known around town as being unique—Meg because she wore men’s clothing, Annabelle because she never let the mercantile man overcharge them, and Ruby because she liked to kiss boys. They each dealt with the realities of life the best way they could.
“Speak for yourself,” Annabelle replied.
“Your turn, Annabelle,” Meg said, ignoring them. Ever since Deke brought their father home, they had fought like two cats in a hen house. Never before had they sparred quite so much.
“She took all the jobs. The only thing I can think of is accountant—like the bank would hire one of us to take care of their books,” Annabelle said.
“There’s always marriage,” Meg acknowledged, watching the expressions on her sisters’ faces. They often dreamed of a man who would sweep them off their feet, professing his love for them. But did life really happen like that? “Who are the eligible bachelors in the area? I know it doesn’t sound ideal, but we’re not bad looking. We don’t have a dowry, but we’ve got a nice little farm. Surely some man would want to marry one of us.”
“That’s not going to get us a husband,” Ruby replied. “They want a pretty woman who makes them feel like a man. Someone dependent on him for her every need.”
Meg didn’t know where Ruby got her ideas about what men wanted. She refused to believe that was what a man wanted in a woman. She wanted to think there was more, so much more, that a man looked for in his wife. “Well, I’m not donning a fancy dress or going to a saloon or batting my eyes at anyone.”
“Who are the available bachelors?” Annabelle asked, twirling the quill in her fingers as she thought. “Ugh, there’s Jimmy Brown, the hog farmer. I’d rather starve. He can’t seem to quite get the pig smell off him.”
Annabelle was ever the practical one. She always wanted a list to see what her options were before she made her decision. Yet, Meg feared the men that were here were slim pickings and a girl could do better looking outside of town.
Ruby smiled, “Don’t forget Bill and Bobby Saunders, the twins.”
“Oh, please, they aren’t men. They’re Mama’s boys. I wouldn’t marry them if they were the last available men in the state of Texas,” Meg assured, shaking her head and gazing at Ruby like she’d lost her mind. “I can out shoot, out ride, and out smart them anytime.”
Ruby shrugged. “Maybe that’s a good thing.”
“I refuse to take care of any man. He is either my equal, or he’s not my husband,” Meg replied. She’d raised two sisters; she wasn’t raising a husband. She wanted a man who would treat her like an equal and was a man’s man. Not a sissy. Someone like…Sheriff Zach Gillepsie.
“Who else,” Annabelle asked. “Who’s available that we would
want
to marry?”
“The banker’s son, Joseph Clark,” Meg said.
“He’s a dandy.” Annabelle quivered with revulsion, a grimace on her beautiful face.
“But you’d have
money
,” Ruby responded, drawing out the last word. “I’ll check him out.”
“I just bet you will,” Annabelle said softly.
“Hey, I’m your sister. You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“Yeah, I know,” Annabelle mocked. “And you’re crazy about boys. Don’t you dream about love? About a man courting you and professing his undying love for you?”
“That’s why I want a man. Not boys,” Ruby snapped, her blue eyes flashing daggers at Annabelle. “And good luck finding any sod buster from around here that would profess his undying love for you.”
“Stick to the plan,” Meg reminded them, not really wanting to share the one name she’d thought about. She’d been thinking about him for a while now, but she seldom went into town, and when she did, she looked more like a man than a woman. Why would he be interested in her?
Annabelle looked down at the list. “I’m like Meg. I don’t want any man I have to defend if there was a problem. Joey, as they call him, couldn’t shoot to save his life.”
“But his money could buy you security.”
“I’d also have to sleep with him, and I’m not marrying a yellow belly,” Annabelle said, giving Ruby a quelling look.
“Come on, girls, isn’t there anything else we can do or someone we can marry?” Meg asked. “Is there no one on that list that interests either of you?”
Not that she wanted to marry them off, but they were down to the blanket in money, and she’d rather they had husbands than become a painted cat.