Her Patchwork Family, page 16
Puzzles, secrets and plots. These were not what she had expected in this new place. But since no one would tell her what they knew, she had to make do with what she had and start unraveling the mysteries. Or the children might suffer. Or Vista.
That afternoon she sat at the kitchen table with Tucker and a pile of books. A savory stew simmered in two large pots on the nearby wood stove. Tucker was reading aloud about the writing of the Declaration of Independence. Usually Vista would have been there, busy making cookies or something else for the children for after school. Her absence was louder, more prominent than her presence had been.
Tucker stopped, looked up at her and muttered, “Is Vista going to be all right?”
His question took her by surprise. She took a chance and laid her hand on his sleeve. “I hope so.”
“What upset her?” he asked, still keeping his voice low.
“I don’t know. Sometimes people have…secrets, troubles from the past. And sometimes something happens to stir everything up.” A totally inept reply.
Tucker nodded solemnly. “I like Vista.”
Felicity smiled. “I do, too. Now let’s discuss what thee has just read.”
The boy made a face. “What do I need to know this stuff for?”
“Someday thee will be a grown man and thee will vote. Thee must know the history of how our nation was established.”
Tucker began punching the point of his pencil through the paper he had been practicing his penmanship on. “You should send me away.”
This pronouncement shocked Felicity into gaping silence.
Tucker looked up. “More trouble will come. As long as I’m here.”
“Will thee tell me what thee means?” she said.
He shook his head and began reading aloud about Thomas Jefferson.
Secrets, troubles from the past, puzzles and plots. Her mind hummed like a beehive in spring. She placed a hand on each side of her head as if holding in all the questions, buzzing within. Lord, reveal whatever I need to know for the safety of the children Thee has put into my care.
As Ty left the courthouse, he noted it was one of those austere November days. He had stayed away from Felicity for a few days—since the kiss. As much as he tried to put it behind him, he couldn’t. Thoughts of Felicity plagued him in every undisciplined moment. Though he knew it impossible, he wanted her to be closer. But he wasn’t a good candidate for marriage. And she had made it plain by her reaction that she was not going to kiss him again.
Still, when court had adjourned early, he hadn’t been able to keep his feet from heading straight for her door. Around her large yard, the maple trees were already bare. Fragile bronze leaves flew from oak trees with every gust of wind. The harvest had been nearly finished outside of town. Wagons rumbled into town every day carrying grain in fifty-pound bags to be shipped south on barges.
At the Barney house, the children were playing in their new winter coats. Soon, snow would come and the baseball games would turn to sledding parties and snowball fights.
He approached the back door. Nearby, his mother was teaching three girls a rhyme while they swung a long rope in circles. Dee Dee was jumping. The neighborhood girls chanted, “Mabel, Mabel, set the table. Do it fast as you are able.”
He paused, watching the children, looking for his daughter. He found Camie with Tucker, who was evidently helping her practice swinging the bat. He had his arms around her and was helping her hold up the heavy bat. Tucker glanced around and saw him. “Hey, Judge, come here.”
Ty didn’t appreciate the less than respectful tone, but decided not to take offense. Tucker had shown his true colors the night Camie had nearly been abducted. “What can I do for you, son?”
“These bats are too heavy for the little kids,” Tucker said.
Ty nodded. “I’ve noticed that, too.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Tuck asked.
“What do you think I should do?” Ty countered.
“Get one of those carpenters—” Tucker pointed toward the workman busy at the side of the house “—to make us a few lighter, shorter ones.”
“Yes, please,” Camie added.
Once again, Camie had spoken to him. This still had the power to stop him. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. “I’ll do that, children.”
He turned and walked toward the carpenters. His little girl was speaking to him. He snapped a tight control on his emotions. He couldn’t let on that inside, he was dancing a highland jig. And Felicity Gabriel was the one who’d brought about this change. How could he not want to be near her?
That evening, Ty had been invited to stay for dinner on the chilly back porch along with his mother. The canvas curtains had been pulled down and tied. Though the night wind had calmed, it reminded Ty that the dining room must be finished soon, before the harsher winds of early winter blew in. After serving the two little boys on either side of him, he helped himself and then passed the heaping bowl of mashed potatoes to Felicity. He took special care not to touch her hand.
“I like mashed potatoes,” Johnny told him.
“I must agree,” Ty said. Johnny and his friend Donnie always made their preference for his company clear. They liked to sit one on either side of him. After months of feeling as if he were a monster in the eyes of his daughter and other children, this was healing something raw inside him. Of course, he would never admit it aloud but the admiration and approval in their eyes was a rare blessing.
Camie had taken to sitting near his mother and he could see that this was lifting her spirits, too. Was it possible that his child would soon be healed and come home?
He owed such a debt to Felicity. He tried to keep his eyes from drifting toward her, but he might as well try to change the way the wind chose to blow. He made himself look down at his plate.
“Ty,” Felicity addressed him, “has thee made any progress in persuading more influential men to write about changing laws governing juveniles?”
He turned to her. “Yes, the mayor and several on the town council will write letters. Also several other attorneys around the state.”
“Excellent.” She beamed at him.
He nodded and looked away from her vivid smile, afraid he might express more than he wished with his eyes. This woman didn’t miss much.
“What kind of laws?” Tucker asked.
“Ty, why doesn’t thee answer that?” Felicity said.
“Tucker, Miss Gabriel and I agree that children under the age of reason should not be held to the same standard and suffer the same punishments as adults.” Ty kept his gaze on the boy, not letting it drift to Felicity.
“What would that mean? Kids could do anything and not be put in jail?” Tucker asked.
“No, but if a child fell afoul of the law, he wouldn’t be sent to an adult prison. There should be a place where the young have a chance to change for the better.”
“You mean like this place?” the boy asked.
“Yes, something like this,” Ty replied, helping Donnie to another biscuit. “According to Miss Gabriel, they are called reformatories.”
Eyes downcast, Tucker stirred his mashed potatoes. “That’s a good idea. Is there one of those places anywhere close?”
“Why do you ask that?” Ty paused with his fork in midair.
“I think that’s where I should go,” Tucker said. “You know, a place like that. Away from here.”
“No, Tucker, I don’t want you to go,” Camie objected.
Tucker reached over and tugged one of her braids. “Don’t get excited, Braids.” Camie appeared pleased by his teasing.
Ty looked to Felicity.
She mouthed, “Later.”
He nodded and asked Eugene what he’d learned in school that day, though what he really wanted to do was press Tucker for more. Ty suspected Tucker thought he should leave because he was attracting danger. And if that was the case, Ty was no longer sure he wanted the boy anywhere near his daughter, yet how to protect the boy from himself?
Felicity led Ty to her den that evening after supper. She knew she should not be bringing him back to the very place where they had kissed. But she did want to discuss the letters to legislators and the hope of a reformatory in Illinois.
I will keep a polite distance.
“What is behind Tucker Stout wanting to leave this place?” Ty asked without any preamble.
She stared into Tyrone’s dark eyes. A mistake. She sat down behind her desk, making sure that her spine did not touch the chair. “I don’t know. This is the second time that he has said that he should go somewhere else.”
Ty sat down. “Do you think it has something to do with that night?”
She knew exactly what he meant. “He has said that we would be safer if he weren’t here.”
“Troubling,” Ty said.
“I think—I may be wrong, but I think he knew the man who broke in.” Felicity straightened the papers on her desk.
Ty captured her attention with his fierce stare. “Why do you say that?”
“Just a feeling. But I know children and I’ve gotten to know Tucker. He’s carrying some heavy load, some burden.” She shook her head, dissatisfied with her own reply.
“I don’t discount your intuition. You’ve shown great insight and wisdom, especially with Camie. Did you hear her talk to me tonight?” Ty’s faced glowed with happiness.
Felicity had to repress the inclination to reach for his hand. This man is dangerous to me, dangerous to my calling.
He glanced away and reached into his pocket. “Here is the list of men. I sent each a letter, outlining what the problem is as we see it and the advances being made elsewhere, and appealed for their support.”
She took the list and read the dozen names there. “Thank thee, Tyrone Hawkins. Thee is a good man.” He smiled at her and before she could do a thing to stop it, her attraction to him overpowered her.
As if drawn by an unseen string, she rose and moved toward him. He rose also. Both of them moved forward inch by inch. Felicity couldn’t deny the thrumming of her pulse. He was going to kiss her again. And she was going to let him. But at the last minute, he stepped back, breaking their connection. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go spend time with Camie. I can never thank you enough for all you have done for her.”
She hid her chagrin—chagrin at herself and him. “It has been my joy to help Camie. I hope that someday she will wish to go home and just visit here.”
He bowed and left her so quickly that she stood where she was, pondering what had just happened.
She had intended to stick to their easy friendship. What had that to do with her wanting to hold his hand and moving toward him? For what? An embrace, a second kiss? What’s happening to me? I’ve never felt this pull toward a man before.
Then she heard the door open and rapid footsteps coming up the hallway toward her. She pulled herself together. To her immense surprise and dismay, Alice Crandall appeared in her doorway.
“Good evening, Miss Gabriel. I saw through the window that you were here in your office. I didn’t want to disturb your staff so I let myself in.”
Felicity tried to read the woman’s elegant face. All she gleaned was a smooth façade. Felicity was certain Alice had come up with another ploy to get her own way. Suddenly she felt so very tired. But politeness dictated her response. “Won’t thee have a seat and tell me what has brought thee here tonight?”
Ty came back from supervising the children washing up in the kitchen, and headed for Felicity’s office. He wanted to take leave of her. It was a school night and Midge was getting the children to bed. As he came up the hall, he heard a familiar and unpleasant voice in the den.
“I think it’s time you heard my side of the story, my late daughter’s side of the story.”
He stopped at the bottom of the staircase in the foyer. Her side? He almost turned away, not wanting to eavesdrop. But then he thought Felicity might be glad to have someone help her show Alice to the door.
“What story is thee talking about, Alice?”
“My daughter Virginia was a beautiful girl and she had the most delicate nature. I always took great pains to shelter her from the storms of life. She wasn’t strong, you see.”
If Virginia didn’t get her way, she was strong enough to throw tantrums for hours that could be heard a block away. Ty fumed in silence.
“So many men courted her. She could have married ten times over, but she chose Tyrone Hawkins, her one true love.”
Virginia’s one true love was herself. Ty began chewing the inside of his cheek, a habit that living with Virginia had caused.
“Alas, she chose the wrong man,” Alice complained.
“Indeed?” Felicity commented, sounding unconvinced.
Just try to pull black wool over this woman’s eyes, Alice. Ty rested a hand on the staircase railing.
“Tyrone didn’t seem to understand my daughter’s fragile condition. Then the war started. Virginia had just miscarried. I nearly lost her that time.”
“I am very sorry to hear that,” Felicity said sincerely.
“Tyrone didn’t care at all,” Alice moaned. “He enlisted as soon as she was able to leave her bed. Virginia begged him on her knees not to leave her when she needed him so.”
Ty remembered that awful scene. Virginia had enacted it in front of a roomful of Alice’s cronies. In steamy waves, anger began rising in him.
“As a Friend, I do not participate in or support any war. But this war had a moral aspect. Slavery was what broke our nation apart—”
“I have no interest in politics,” Alice interrupted. “I only know that my frail daughter needed her husband and he left her. She wept for weeks and would barely eat a morsel. And then Virginia found herself with child. She wrote to Tyrone telling him he must come home or she might not make it through the pregnancy.”
Ty was blazing now. He remembered those tactics all too well. If Virginia didn’t get her way, she’d starve herself and then go out in public and faint. She should have taken to the stage.
“Then Ty finally came home on furlough,” Alice said. “I thought he’d see the state Virginia was in, but no, he did not. He went back to war.”
“I don’t believe that soldiers are allowed to quit the army for that reason,” Felicity said, sounding unimpressed.
“We have friends in the state house and the U.S. Congress. We could have arranged an honorable discharge for him,” Alice insisted.
Both Alice and Virginia had lived in a dream world of their own. Facts and reality were not allowed. Facts and reality were expected to obey their whims. Ty gripped the carved walnut finial on the railing until his knuckles were white.
“I sincerely doubt that,” Felicity said, putting his thoughts into words. “And I doubt that any man would want one under those circumstances.”
“You are a cold woman,” Alice snapped. “I saw that from the first time we met. No one will ever make me believe that Tyrone Hawkins’s callousness wasn’t the cause of my daughter’s decline. I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Tyrone Hawkins killed my daughter.”
“That is a serious charge,” Felicity said. “What I want to know is why Camie is so afraid of the night. Can thee tell me?”
“It doesn’t lie with me,” Alice said. “She was never pampered and spoiled at my house. After her mother died, I put her in the care of a nurse. And I told her not to coddle the child. That only feeds a child’s disobedient nature.” Alice huffed loudly. “If Camille wanted to cry herself to sleep every night, that was her choice. In time, she would have learned that those tactics don’t work in my house. So I’ve come tonight to appeal to your better nature. My granddaughter needs discipline and I can give her that. Her father killed my daughter, and he and his mother have ruined that child.”
Ty realized he was gripping the finial so tightly that soon he would snap it from the railing. He heard a chair pushed back in haste.
“I am very glad that thee has come to give me thy side of the story, Alice Crandall,” Felicity said, her voice loud and firm. “It is plain to me that thee would do anything, say anything, to get what thee wants. And from what thee has said, thy daughter was the same. I am very sorry that thee lost thy daughter. Nevertheless, no power on earth would prompt me to give even a stray cat into your care.”
A second chair was shoved back and hit the den wall. Ty took a step forward, then halted.
“You are a woman without conduct,” Alice accused. “I will do whatever I can to ruin you and this orphanage. I will have my granddaughter back.”
“No, thee will not,” Felicity said.
His mother-in-law shouted a vile epithet and then charged out of the den. She saw him in the foyer and cursed him, too. “You killed my daughter!” Then she stepped out and slammed the door so hard that the glass in the windows rattled.
Ty hurried into the den. Felicity was flushed and shaking with obvious outrage. He threw his arms around her and pulled her to him. “There, there, don’t let her upset you.”
“That woman,” she said. She shuddered in his arms. “I’m so sorry for you, Ty, and for Camie. That awful woman.”
Her warm sympathy and outrage on his family’s behalf overwhelmed his good sense. He stroked her hair and cradled her in his arms. “Alice is not important. And Virginia is gone.”
“Someone like Alice Crandall, entrenched in her own self will, can be dangerous.” Felicity lay her head in the crook of his neck. “I couldn’t believe what she was saying to me, obviously misrepresenting the facts. She must have no conscience left.”
She doesn’t. Ty kissed Felicity’s cheek.
“I can’t imagine living with someone like Virginia.” Felicity looked into his eyes. “I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but how could she torture thee just because there was a war on?”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Because you are here. And you are nothing like Virginia. He tucked her closer within his embrace.
Felicity suddenly broke from his arms. “Thee shouldn’t be holding me.”
Had she even noticed he had kissed her? Part of him wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her until she could think of nothing but kissing him back. Another part ordered him to stand back. Alice Crandall’s visit had not changed their circumstances. Just because Felicity turned to him and he had turned to her in a moment of stress meant nothing.
