Cinderfella (3 page)

After her father stormed from the room, Charmaine slowly and gracefully took her seat. He'd change his mind in a day or two. After all, she was twenty-one years old, and he couldn't force her to stay here. He couldn't keep her prisoner.

“Well, Charmaine.” The slightly edgy voice reminded Charmaine that she was not alone. Of course, her mother would understand. Her mother wouldn't force her stay here when the time to leave came. “That was a scene I could have done without.”

It
had
turned rather ugly, there at the end. Charmaine hadn't meant to embarrass her father, not really, she'd just said what was on her mind as she usually did. If he would simply accept the fact that she was a grown woman and treat her as such, they wouldn't have a problem at all.

“I did think Daddy was more open-minded than this,” she declared sensibly.

“And whatever gave you that idea?”

There was a sharpness Charmaine had never heard in Maureen Haley's voice, and she realized again that she had not a single ally in this house. Not even her own mother.

 

 

 

 

Two

 

Ash hurried through the morning chores, taking the time to say a few soothing words to the dairy cows and the horses as he saw them fed and watered. It was Elmo's job, supposedly, but Elmo was feeling poorly this morning. Again. Ash was certain that his youngest stepbrother would be feeling fine as soon as the chores were done.

This was a bad morning for Elmo to lie in bed and moan about his aching rounded stomach and his pounding ugly head. It was time to plant the winter wheat, and Ash had his hands full. When the animals were taken care of, he'd grab a bite to eat and a glass of milk and head out to the fields. Oswald was supposed to help, but he'd no doubt have his head stuck in a book and be too engrossed to leave the comfort of the house. It was just as well. Oswald usually ended up making more work for Ash, when he should have been helping.

When he had time to daydream, which wasn't often, Ash wondered what his life would be like if his father had never married Verna March and brought her and her two boys to the farm. It was a nice thought, one that had intruded into his thoughts often in the past two years and with increasing regularity in the ten months since his father's death.

In his daydream he worked the farm alone — though that was pretty much the way it was now. The way things were, Elmo and Oswald were no help at all, and Verna would never get her lily-white hands dirty. But with very little effort, Ash could imagine stepping into the house at the end of the day and finding everything peaceful and quiet.

Without his stepbrothers and stepmother in the house, he could finally think about getting married. As it was, he couldn't imagine bringing any decent woman here to endure life with Verna and Elmo and Oswald.

Ash had very definite ideas about what he wanted in a wife. Someone quiet and even-tempered — a quality his father had evidently forgotten to look for when he'd chosen his wives — someone who could cook and sew and wouldn't mind helping with the animals during planting and harvesting season. Someone who was healthy enough to bear several children. He didn't really care if she was especially pretty. There were other, more important qualities he'd look for in a wife when the time came. A good healthy dose of common sense would be necessary, that and a love of the simple life. Not every woman was cut out to be a farm wife.

He stepped into the house and was assaulted by the pleasant smell of bacon and eggs. A smile crept across his face and his mouth watered as he walked toward the kitchen. Verna must be in one of her rare domestic moods today, and he wasn't going to complain.

The deserted kitchen contained the warmth of the stove on this chilly autumn morning, and the odor of breakfast hung in the air — but there was no food on the table save a few biscuits left over from dinner last night, and the skillet on the stove was empty.

He stroked his thick beard with one thumb and then hooked a long strand of hair behind his ear. When John Coleman had first brought his second wife home, she'd been a fireball. Cooking fairly decent meals, cleaning, doing the laundry. That was the reason, after all, that his father had remarried. A working farm needed a woman's touch, and two hardworking farmers needed someone to take care of the house.

It hadn't lasted long. As soon as Verna had settled in and sent for her grown sons, she had changed. Meals were whatever she could throw together quickly, the laundry was poorly done, if at all, and the house was no cleaner than when John and Ash Coleman had lived there alone. In fact, with three new residents it was often worse.

His father had never complained about the boys. It was a big house, after all, with four bedrooms upstairs and a sitting room downstairs that Verna had converted into a bedroom when John had become ill.

If only they would occasionally make themselves useful. If only they would pitch in and do their share — a child's share — anything.

Verna stepped into the kitchen with a tarnished silver tray and two plates that looked as if they'd been licked clean. “Oh, Ash, you're still here,” she said, placing the tray on the table that sat in the middle of the large, square room.

Verna March Coleman had probably once been a real beauty and she was still attractive, for an older woman. She was tall and trim, and had very little gray in her dark hair, even though she had to be approaching fifty. She refused to reveal her age to anyone, but Oswald was twenty-six and Elmo was twenty-one.

Attractive or not she was, to Ash, the ugliest woman on earth. He was sure she'd made his father miserable in his last year of life, with her nagging and her barbs, and she'd always treated Ash as if he were less than nothing. As a farmhand, at best; as a nuisance, most of the time. Never mind that she and her boys would likely starve without him.

“Just grabbing some breakfast,” he said simply, “before I head out to the fields.”

Verna flashed a smile that was so cold it made the hairs on the back of Ash's neck stand up. “I made bacon and scrambled eggs, but Elmo was so hungry I'm afraid he ate it all. Since he's not feeling well, I thought it might help. There are biscuits.”

Ash grabbed a couple of the cold biscuits and poured himself a glass of milk.

If he could leave this place, he would be tempted. If he could throw Verna and her good-for-nothing boys out of this house and off this farm, he would do it in a heartbeat and without regret. But the woman had been his father's wife, and when the pneumonia that had taken John Coleman's life had taken a turn for the worse, he'd made Ash promise to take care of this woman he had, for some reason Ash couldn't fathom, come to care for.

Oswald came into the kitchen with a book in one hand and a strip of crispy bacon in the other. The book was held high, shielding his face, and he moved the nearly black bacon before him as if it were a schoolmaster's baton.

“We've got to finish planting the wheat today,” Ash said as he finished off his cold breakfast.

Oswald lowered his book slowly, revealing a face that was clean shaven, well formed, and almost pretty. Pale hair, more blond than brown, had been slicked straight back. “I must finish this chapter before I even think about
work.
This is the most mesmerizing novel I have ever read, and I can't possibly put it down now.”

Just as well. “I thought that book you read last week was the most mesmerizing.”

Oswald raised a finely shaped eyebrow. It was the left one, arching up in a way he had surely studied before the mirror. “I shouldn't expect
you
to understand. Have you ever read a novel? A book of any kind? Have you ever read anything but the Farmer's Almanac?” He shared an amused smile with his mother. “Can you even imagine it, Ash Coleman reading a
book?
”

Ash was certain that this was an insult, but he let it slide by without comment. He'd rather work alone, anyway, than listen to Oswald's inane chatter all day. And no matter what Oswald said about finishing a chapter, Ash knew that if he walked out of here alone he'd not see Oswald again until dinnertime. He pocketed two more of the cold biscuits and an apple so that he wouldn't have to return for the noontime meal.

 

* * *

 

Stuart stared at the figures scribbled in the accounting books that lay open on the desk before him, but he didn't see the numbers. They blurred and ran together, danced before his eyes.

Howard Stillwell, that worthless son-in-law of his, had ruined his youngest daughter. Marital continence. Physical servitude! What had happened to Charmaine's common sense? Howard had filled her head with nonsense, and she believed it.
She believed it!

He'd made his ranch a success, he had more money than he would ever need, but it was Maureen and their daughters who made his life worthwhile. He didn't want Charmaine to become an old maid, to live her life without knowing the joys of love and a family, but that's where she was headed. Thanks to Howard.

Maureen came into the room so quietly, he didn't know she was there until she placed a hand on his shoulder. The touch was familiar, gentle, and soothing. Even though she surprised him, he didn't so much as flinch.

“Worrying about Charmaine again?” she asked, and the fingers of that hand began to knead his tense muscles.

“Of course,” he muttered.

Her other hand fell upon his other shoulder, and the long fingers massaged.

“It is distressing,” she said softly.

“Distressing! That's an understatement. It's downright terrifying.”

If he wasn't mistaken, she laughed lightly. “She'll come around.”

“I wish I could be sure.” He grabbed the wrist of one of those gentle hands, and pulled his wife to his side and then onto his lap. Immediately, he felt better, soothed somehow because Maureen was with him. “Did you hear her last night? Good God.”

Maureen perched on his thigh, and the comfort he'd thought impossible a few minutes ago grew and settled in his heart. She always did this to him.

Her hands settled gently on his shoulders. “You needn't worry, darling. Charmaine's our daughter,” Maureen said sensibly. “She's smart and pretty and still so very young. I'll agree that Boston and its modern ways have had a disturbing influence on her, but when the right man comes along, she'll change her mind about all that nonsense.”

“Do you really think so?”

After all these years, his wife's smile still had the power to soothe him, to make him forget, for a while, about bad market prices, rustlers, storms, and even, she proved to him now, a disobedient and disgustingly
modern
daughter.

“I do.”

The right man.

 

* * *

 

Ash sat by the fire, his back to Verna and the boys. A dinner of burnt steak and nearly raw potatoes sat heavy in his stomach, and his muscles — every muscle in his body — ached. It was a good ache, one that confirmed a hard day's work.

Elmo was complaining about his neurasthenia, an invisible ailment he blamed for everything from exhaustion and headaches to bad dreams, regaling his mother with the details of his aches and pains. Truth of the matter was, Elmo March was a lazy bum, a big baby, and the king of whiners. If he'd move that fat behind of his a little more often, he'd likely not be so troubled by this malady. He was telling Verna about some electric treatments he'd read about, and he was just sure that if he had sufficient funds, those treatments would cure him.

There was a moment of silence as they waited — Ash was certain — for him to offer to raise the cash to send Elmo to Kansas City.

Only if he'd stay there.

Ash said nothing, and eventually the conversation resumed.

Oswald had his nose in a book, as usual, there in a rocking chair very near the brightest kerosene lantern in the room. At least Oswald was quiet, when he was reading. He lived in his own world, a world of fiction that didn't include anything so common as milking cows or feeding chickens or working in the fields.

Why didn't they just leave? Oswald and Elmo didn't want to be farmers, why the hell were they still here? There was an entire world out there, full of possibilities. Didn't they want lives of their own? Were they truly so lazy that they wanted nothing more than to be taken care of? Ash shook his head. He didn't understand these stepbrothers of his at all.

Ash wondered if he'd rest tonight. He should sleep like the dead every night the way he worked, but he usually slept only a few hours, and that came in bits and pieces. He closed his eyes at night but his mind wouldn't be still. Even in the softest bed he couldn't quite get comfortable; the dreams that came were usually unremembered and never restful.

“You know her, don't you, Ash?”

It was the sound of his name that grabbed his attention. Verna chose to ignore him, whenever possible, especially in the evenings. Ash was never a part of the conversation, and didn't want to be.

“I know who?” He twisted to face his stepmother.

“Charmaine Haley,” Verna snapped. “Haven't you been paying attention to a word I say?”

“What about her?”

Verna rolled her eyes and clasped her hands in her lap. “I saw her in town today. Eula Markam at the mercantile pointed her out to me, but she was headed home and we weren't introduced.”

The Runt was home. Charmaine Haley had always been a little bundle of energy, a nervy kid who had said exactly what was on her mind. He'd watched Mrs. Haley cringe when Charmaine, all of six years old, had asked the preacher how he knew God was real. He'd been there a year or so later, in the old general store with his father, when she'd told old Mr. Whitman that he needed a bath. It was the truth, but everyone else had simply turned their heads or held their breath. She'd eventually learned to be more tactful, but she had always been an insistent and frequent voice in school, questioning everything from literature to history, and asking aloud what every other kid wanted to know. Exactly why did they need to be proficient in arithmetic?