A Touch of Forever, page 16
Clay shrugged and flopped on his back again.
“Has someone hurt her before?” asked Roen. Clay’s silence was palpable. “Your father perhaps?”
Clay turned on his side away from Roen and pulled the covers over his bony shoulder.
Roen stood in the doorway a little longer, but when Clay gave him no indication that he intended to answer, he backed out of the room and went downstairs.
He woke when he heard the first footfalls across the ceiling. He assumed they were the first because no one had yet come down the steps. He yawned hard enough to make his jaw crack and then moved it side to side to be sure he still could. After stretching his arms, curling his toes, and rolling his shoulders, Roen rose up on his hands and knees and pushed aside the blankets. He tossed the cushions back on the sofa and chair, fit them snugly like pieces of puzzle, and eventually got to his feet. He folded and stacked the blankets and placed his pillow on top. Not knowing what to do with the linens, he pushed everything under the table beside Lily’s rocker.
When he opened the back door and saw it had snowed at least another inch overnight, he kicked off his slippers and pulled on his boots. Like a courtier of old, Roen made an elegant leg in his nightshirt and robe when he returned from the privy and found everyone was seated at the kitchen table awaiting their turn.
“I’ll get my things and get dressed,” he told Lily as Ham jumped up and rushed past while Hannah looked him over and giggled.
“Not the worst idea you ever had,” she said. “I put the few things you brought with you yesterday in the wardrobe. The items that couldn’t be hung are in the top drawer of the chest.”
“Thank you.” He nodded at the remaining children and left the room only a little less speedily than Ham.
He didn’t think he was gone long, but Clay was tending to the fire in the stove, Hannah had a pot of water on top and a bag of oats under one arm, and Ham was almost done setting the table. Lizzie was in Lily’s lap at the table having her silky hair fashioned into a becoming French braid. Roen didn’t ask what he could do. He located a coffeepot, pumped water into it, and set it on a burner beside the porridge pot.
“Coffee?” he asked hopefully. He could not drink another cup of tea. That would never start his day. He followed Lily’s index finger to where she pointed out the canister. He opened it and breathed deeply. He must have sighed appreciatively because when he turned away from measuring, Lily was smiling in that quietly amused way he found so fascinating. “You’ll have some?”
“Certainly. There will be milk in the cold box on the back porch if Mr. Sanford was able to make his rounds. Would you be good enough to pour a glass for each of the children? If you skim off the cream, we can use it in our coffee.”
Clay stepped away from the stove and said, “I’ll do it, Ma. Anyway, Mr. Shepard takes his coffee black.”
Lily looked quizzically at Roen. She knew her son well enough to know that the offer was not made out of kindness. Clay was stewing. He was the only one who hadn’t acknowledged Roen’s presence.
Roen mouthed the words I’ll tell you later and returned to making coffee. He was adding cream to Lily’s cup at the same time Hannah was doling out large portions of hot oatmeal. Lily stopped her when she had half as much as Hannah had given everyone else. Roen wished he had known he could do the same, but it had seemed impolite. He looked at his bowl and smiled rather grimly at the contents before he tucked in. He thought he heard Lily chuckle, but when he glanced up, her lips were closed over her spoon in a way no sound could escape.
She was a witch, he thought, and not for the first time.
“When are you going to get the rest of your things and bring them here?” she asked.
“I thought I’d begin after breakfast. I’ll stop at the sheriff’s to see if Hitch is really going to help me.” He looked to the end of the table where Clay was sitting. Roen had had no desire to take up that chair. It had been Jeremiah’s and now it was Clay’s. It was not his place to take it away. “You’re going to help, aren’t you?”
Clay only shrugged.
“Clay Salt,” said Lily. “Don’t make me use your middle name. That was rude. You answer with your voice, not a shrug.”
“Clay Bryant Salt,” said Lizzie in singsong tones. “Clay Bryant Salt.”
Lily merely looked at her youngest and the little girl’s mouth snapped shut. “Clay?”
“Yes, I’ll help you.” He didn’t meet Roen’s gaze directly but stared sullenly at his oatmeal instead.
Lily’s lips parted as she intended to reprimand him again, but the almost infinitesimal shake of Roen’s head stopped her. She did not know how she felt about him inserting his opinion. He was not exactly interfering, but he had a definite idea about the way she should deal with her son in this moment.
“Thank you, Clay,” said Roen. “So I’m clear about the division of labor, are you still working for me?” Roen watched Clay’s head snap up. This was obviously something the boy hadn’t considered. “I’m not firing you, and I don’t expect you to work for free because there’s been a change in our connection, but there are family chores that you’ll be expected to do for no remuneration, and there are business tasks for which you will continue to be compensated. I think helping me move my things here is a gray area. I’ll give you half pay if you still want to be in my employ. Otherwise, you’ll help and get nothing. Fair?”
Clay stared at him and didn’t answer.
“That’s all right. You think it over and let me know your decision when I’m ready to leave.”
Clay’s eyes swiveled to his mother. “May I be excused?”
“Please.”
The remainder of the meal was eaten in silence. One by one the children asked to be excused, and when it was just Lily and Roen, she stood and began clearing the table.
Roen observed her nervous energy. “Will you sit, Lily?”
“I’d rather not.” She carefully placed the glasses, bowls, and utensils in the sink and removed the oatmeal pot that was soaking there. “We can still talk.”
“Not when I have to speak to your back. No, stay there. I’ll come to you.” He picked up a dishtowel while she pumped cold water into the sink and added soap flakes. When she turned her head to look at him in astonishment, he said, “What? Do you think I’ve never done this before? Once my mother had children old enough to fetch and carry, she didn’t do housework. As the youngest, a lot of it eventually fell to me.”
“You didn’t have help?”
“A housekeeper twice a week and a cook when my parents remembered to pay her.”
Lily was suspicious.
“Truly,” said Roen. “My parents have ideas about money that don’t lend themselves to acting responsibly.” He took the clean glass she handed him, dried it, and put it up on the shelf. “Do you want to hear about Clay?”
“Do I? I don’t know anymore. I thought I understood him. He’s acting in ways that are foreign to me.” She set two more glasses on the towel beside the sink.
“He’s scared.”
“Of what? Of you?”
“Not exactly. It’s more like he’s scared for you.” He told her what transpired when he visited Clay’s room after leaving hers. “He shut me out when I asked him about his father, but before then he already knew he’d said too much. When he heard you scream, why did he think I might have hurt you?”
Lily took a handful of spoons and washed each one individually before she set it aside.
“What secret are you harboring, Lily?” asked Roen. “I can guess, but I’d rather hear it from you. I think Clay wants to tell me, but he won’t because he thinks he’d be betraying you. That’s a lot of weight on a young man’s shoulders.”
“You should have stayed downstairs,” she said quietly. He was a dangerous man, not in the manner her husband had been, but dangerous nonetheless. She pressed her lips together for a moment, holding in what she couldn’t say. “We agreed you would stay downstairs.”
“No, we didn’t. We agreed I would sleep there. Your screaming woke me, and we had no agreement about where I could go when I was awake.”
“Let it be, Roen. You already know the truth. Why must you hear it from me?”
“Because what I’m imagining must be worse than the reality.”
“So I am supposed to humiliate myself so your imagination isn’t troubled? Is that it?” She scrubbed out a bowl and set it down hard. “Have you struck a woman?”
“No.”
“At the zenith of your frustration with Victorine Headley, did you ever once consider banging her head off a wall or wrapping your hands around her neck?”
Roen flinched. “No. Never.”
Lily stopped scrubbing and looked sideways at him. “I believe you, and because I do, I’m telling you that it’s you who are naïve. You don’t have the capacity to imagine the worst.” She tossed her dishcloth into the sink. “Be grateful that you don’t.” With that, she left the room.
Roen stared after her until she’d disappeared into the front room to be with her children. He dropped the dishtowel and picked up the cloth, then he stood at the sink and finished the work that she could not.
Chapter Seventeen
Hitch was waiting for Roen outside the office when he caught sight of Fedora Chen coming out of Maxwell Wayne’s bakery. He rarely saw her outside the hotel. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of her returning to her boardinghouse room after work. She always had an escort if it was dark. Usually it was Mr. Butterworth, and that was Ellie’s doing. Fedora was under Ellie’s protection almost from the first. Hitch thought it was a good idea since some folks had prejudices and suspicions about Fedora and weren’t above taunting her, but all that protection sure was an impediment to striking up a conversation or just mooning after her.
Hitch looked down the boardwalk, and when he didn’t see Roen coming, he decided he would cross the street and see what came of it. Fedora had a brisk walk so he had to cross on the diagonal to meet up with her. She also walked everywhere with her head slightly bent, something she did to avoid catching anyone’s eyes. This morning there was the wind to consider so she dropped her head forward more than usual.
“Can I help you carry those?” he asked when he was beside her. “Those” were at least a dozen loaves of bread each wrapped in brown paper tied off with a string. The aroma of warm bread might have been tantalizing if it weren’t for the fragrance that Hitch identified solely with Fedora. It was a fragrance unfamiliar to him. Something exotic, he was sure, like her.
Hitch stumbled a bit when Fedora stopped in her tracks. Momentum carried him ahead a couple of steps before he caught himself. He smiled a little crookedly as he backed up and held out his arms. She was looking at him now. He couldn’t tell if she was smiling because the lower half of her face was hidden behind a thick woolen scarf. He saw she was undecided about taking him up on his offer, and he couldn’t blame her. She’d just witnessed him stumble and then there was the time he pitched forward on his face in the hotel kitchen. Remembering that graceless fall made his face flush. He hoped she would think his cheeks were bitten by the wind.
“Really,” he said. “I want to help.” She was difficult to understand behind that scarf, but he saw her head bob and took it as a yes. He began plucking the loaves from her arms and transferring them to his. When he had eight, she told him it was enough and began walking again. It seemed to him that she failed to reestablish the pace she had set before, and he interpreted that as her wanting to draw out the trek back to the hotel so she could spend more time in his company. It might have been a flight of fancy on his part, but it put a bounce in his step. He searched for something to say to her.
“I thought Mrs. Vandergrift made all her own bread,” he said, nodding to Mrs. Palmer as she passed them going in the other direction. He noticed that Fedora gave no indication that she had seen the milliner.
Fedora tugged at her scarf until it was snug under her chin. “Mrs. Vandergrift complained of feeling poorly so Ellie sent her home. Louella Fuller is working in her place, but she can’t manage all the baking.”
Two full sentences, Hitch thought. It was the most she’d ever said to him. She had a sweet voice. She spoke words as if they were musical notes. He wondered if anyone else noticed or if narrow-mindedness made one person deaf to another. Mrs. Palmer hadn’t acknowledged Fedora either.
“I suppose Louella will need help in the kitchen,” he said. “Will that be you?” He asked because no one was occupying a cell, which meant he’d have no reason to visit the kitchen. He’d see Fedora again only if he took a meal in the dining room.
“No. Ellie asked Annie Fish not to wait tables so she could help Mrs. Fuller. Ellie and I will take care of the diners.” She hesitated while she gave him a sidelong look. “I’m not permitted to prepare food. I only carry it out.”
Surprise made Hitch’s next step awkward, but he caught himself before he tripped over his own feet. “Ellie doesn’t allow you to cook?”
“For myself, yes. Not for others.”
“Why in the world not? Unless you don’t want to cook, of course. That’d be different.”
“Ellie would permit it if the customers wouldn’t complain, but some people don’t even like me serving them. If they knew I was cooking, they’d stay away altogether.”
“Maybe they should. Who complains? Give me a name.”
Fedora shook her head. “Ellie won’t tell her son for the same reason I won’t tell you.”
“Now, see, that doesn’t make sense. We’re the law.”
“That would be the reason.”
“Oh. I guess you don’t want interference.”
“We don’t want trouble. Ellie says you can’t reason with stupid.”
Hitch chuckled. “That sounds just like her.” He tried to shorten his long-legged stride and slow his steps as they approached the hotel. It required only a few moments to realize that Fedora wasn’t going to go slower than she already was. Surrendering to the inevitable parting of their ways, he said, “We should cross the street here. Watch your step.” He managed to thrust an elbow toward her without dropping a single loaf. “Here. Take it.”
Fedora shook her head with unmistakable vehemence.
“It probably seems ironic, me trying to help you, you bein’ so full of grace that you put me in mind of an angel, and me fallin’ all over myself when I’m around you.” He pulled in his elbow and stepped off the boardwalk. When she didn’t follow, he turned to see what was holding her back. Apparently it was because she was staring at him so hard that he flushed for the second time in her presence. “What?”
“Don’t you know people are watching us?”
What was he supposed to say? That he didn’t know because he was oblivious to everyone except her? He turned back to face the opposite side of the street. Dolly Mangold was standing by the large plate glass window at the front of her store, looking in his direction. Farther down the street, Buzz Winegarten was leaning on his broom at the entrance to the Songbird. He’d stopped sweeping to take measure of what was going on. There were folks going in and out of the butcher’s and the mercantile who paused when they saw him and a few passersby who openly stared.
“They’re looking this way because they know me.” He made sure the bread was secure before he raised a hand to recognize Dolly Mangold. “See? She waved back.” He watched Dolly turn away from the window and move out of his sight. “And she’s gone. Folks are friendly here.”
Fedora stepped down from the boardwalk. “These people have known you all your life. Of course they’re friendly.”
“And I’m a deputy,” he said with mocking conceit.
She waited for a wagon carrying dry goods to pass and then started to cross to the hotel. “More importantly, you’re Amanda Springer’s son.”
“Why do people say that? I’m my father’s son, too.” But he knew why and didn’t expect an answer. His mother was practically a force of nature. Not only did she operate her own business, she had a leadership role in a half-dozen charitable, political, or social causes. She also had definite opinions and was not shy about sharing them. He wondered which of the people who had seen him offer help to Fedora would be the first to tell his mother and how long it would be before she showed up at the jail to confront him.
“We should go in the back,” Fedora said when he started to take the stairs to the hotel’s large porch.
“Right.” Hitch backed down and followed her around the building to the trade entrance. She was at the point of juggling her loaves to open the door when he stopped her. There was a lump in his throat that made speaking difficult. He cleared it twice and pushed on. “I was thinking . . . wondering, actually . . . if you’d allow me to call on you.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. For once, her dark eyes were not unfathomable. They hinted at sadness, at regret. Still, she did not say no outright. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
Hitch had given it some thought and now he didn’t hesitate. “I can walk you from the hotel to the boardinghouse. Not every night because sometimes I’ll be working, but there are plenty of nights when I’m not. I could talk to Ellie and Abe Butterworth about it. They’d give me their blessing.”
“They’d give you their concerns. A list of them, I suspect.”
“Then they’d give me their blessing.”
Fedora regarded him doubtfully. “It will cause trouble for you.”
“I only care if it causes trouble for you.”
She nodded once before she opened the door and led him into the kitchen.
* * *
• • •
Roen and Clay arrived at the sheriff’s office without having exchanged more than a score of words. Ben was cleaning his Colt at his desk when they went in. He paused long enough to tell them he’d seen Hitch dash across the street to lend assistance to Fedora Chen.
