Mittman, Stephanie (30 page)

"Come
on," he said to Ethan, slapping him on the back and bending to the day's
work. "We've got a lot of work to do before the rain starts."

"And
what about once it does?"

"We're
going to buy a wind wheel," he said in a whisper. He looked over his
shoulder toward the house. "I want a bath room in that house before the
first of the year."

"Does
she know?" Ethan asked, his smile bright enough to light up the dark day.

"Hell,
no! You think I want her marrying me for my bath room? Your Reverend Winestock
might settle for that. But Annie's going to marry me for love."

"And
the bathroom?" Ethan asked. "What's that for?"

"Just
leveling the playing field, son," Noah said.

"Huh?"

"After
the wind wheel we'll stop and take a look at Mrs. Webb's furnace," he
added.

"Won't
be long before people start firin' them things up," Ethan said.

Noah
nodded and put his back into his work. He just hoped he was wrong about the
furnaces.

And
right about Annie.

***

"Tessie
Willis?" Annie nearly shrieked. He had to be joking. He couldn't be
thinking of leaving two helpless children in the care of that hussy.
"Ethan, he isn't really considerin' hirin' her, is he?"

"I've
always kinda liked Tessie myself, Sissy," Ethan said. He was grinning like
a little boy.

The
door swung open and a gust of cold rain entered his house along with Noah. He
was soaked to the bone, just like Ethan, and he shrugged out of his jacket and
headed right for the parlor stove. "Did you tell her?" he asked.

"You're
shiverin', both of you," she said to them with disgust. Would Tessie
Willis even notice? Noah's clothes stuck to him like they'd been painted on,
outlining every muscle and bulge of his body. She'd notice, all right; even
falling down drunk, she'd notice that. "Get out of them wet things. Your
dinner's on the stove. The girls are in bed."

Ethan
and Noah exchanged looks. "So what do you think?" Noah asked Annie.
"Tessie be all right with you? She can start on Monday."

Start
what? Annie wondered. Surely it wouldn't be the girls she planned on watching.
"Does she have any experience?" Annie asked. She didn't remember
hearing of Tessie doing anything that involved children except risking creating
them, though she wasn't one to go spreading rumors herself.

"Oh,
she's got plenty of experience," Ethan said, then guffawed and nudged Noah
with his elbow. "Don't ya think so, Noah? I mean, didn't it seem—"

The
two of them were acting like schoolboys, and Annie wanted none of it. She
crossed her arms over her chest and waited for them to settle down. Noah's eyes
were on her, and it seemed to Annie that he was enjoying every moment of her
discomfort.

***

He
might not have been the most experienced ladies' man, but Noah Eastman had been
studying Annie Morrow for over a month and by now he was able to read her every
expression as easily as any book on his shelves. Clearly she disapproved of
Tessie, as he and Ethan were sure she would. And that disapproval was just what
he was counting on.

He
fought to keep a straight face. It had been a perfect afternoon right down to
the rain, which had let them leave putting up their shocks of corn and head off
toward Bellefontaine. There they'd made a good deal with Warren Stevens for his
old wind wheel, which he assured them had worked just fine before he replaced
it with the latest thing on the market, which gave them running water in every
room of the house. The wind wheel, he said, would supply two rooms if they ran
the pipes the way he diagrammed. Wouldn't a warm bath feel good right now? He
was freezing.

"Tessie's
a warmhearted woman, that's for sure." Noah agreed with Ethan. "And
she says she likes children all right."

"Humph!"
Annie said, bristling around their feet with a mop. "Likes children
all
right,"
she muttered. He raised his foot out of the way just in time
to avoid being swabbed along with the floor.

"Think
it'll take her long to learn to cook?" Ethan asked.

Noah
choked and recovered himself. "Maybe Annie could leave her some recipes to
follow." He turned to her with wide innocent eyes. "Could you? Maybe
for those cookies the children like so much?"

It
was a good thing the mop handle was kiln-fired birch. Anything softer might
have broken under the iron hands of the woman who was taking her anger out on
the floor.

"I
ain't got a recipe for them. It's a handful of this and a pinch of that until
it tastes right."

"Don't
have,"
he
corrected. Let her remember she'd be losing his instruction too. "Haven't
got, or don't have. But it's not really important anymore."

"It's
as important as ever," she snapped. "Maybe more so."

"Really?"
he asked as innocently as he could feign. "How so?"

"So
she can't cook and she tolerates kids all right," Annie said stiffly.
"What are her good points?"

"Well,"
Ethan said before he doubled over laughing, "I can think of two!"

Annie's
face blushed scarlet, but she stood her ground. "Can she take care of
these girls or not? Will she be able to keep them clean, fed, safe? Can you
trust their very lives to her, after all they've been through?"

"I
hadn't thought of that," he said, winking at Ethan while Annie bent to
pick up the leaves that were finally drying and falling from their trouser
legs. "After Mrs. Abernathy, I guess the girls do need an extra dose of
reassurance."

"Of
course they do." She sighed. "And not just reassurance. The woman who
watches them has to be dependable. She has to be reliable. Why, I don't see how
you could think that Tessie Willis—"

"You're
right, naturally. I guess I'll have to spend more time with them while she's
here."

"Well,
I'd be happy to—" Ethan started, but Noah interrupted him.

"No,
I couldn't let you, the girls are mine."

"Oh!"
Annie said with a huff, obviously disgusted with them both.

"So
what did you think about Mrs. Webb's furnace?" Noah asked, knowing it
would frustrate Annie if he simply dismissed the subject of Tessie as if it
were a fait accompli.

Ethan
followed his lead and for a few minutes they discussed the differences as well
as the similarities between the Webbs', the church's, and his own furnace. All
the while Annie made little noises around them, groans and tsks, and mumbled to
herself.

Finally,
he acknowledged her presence and the fact that she had stayed late so that he
and Ethan could run their errands. She had no way of knowing they were for her,
that everything he did had come to revolve around her.

"I'm
sorry we were gone so long," he began.

"Yes,"
Ethan chimed in. "But when Tessie starts going—"

He
shot Ethan a look. He didn't want Annie to think he was interested in Tessie,
just that he would let her watch his children. But it occurred to him that if
she thought that not only was she risking Hannah's and Julia's well-being by
allowing Tessie to take over the role of caretaker, but Ethan's as well, it
might just push her over the edge here and now and he could stop the silly
charade.

"Seems,"
he said to Annie as if Ethan wasn't in the room, "that your brother has
taken a bit of a fancy to Miss Willis."

"Well,"
Annie said, "I always thought Ma's brains got used up on the first four of
us and she saved Pa's brains for Francie. That left old Ethan here with only my
cookin' between his ears. Made him sweet but not too much else."

It
was the closest he had ever heard her come to criticizing her siblings, and he
knew that though it was couched in jest, she had to be pretty upset to say
something that might hurt her baby brother.

"Truth
is, Sissy," Ethan said as though he meant it, "I always have liked
Tessie Willis. I think people are damn unfair to her and I don't believe them
rumors, either."

"Rumors
don't hatch themselves," Annie snapped back, her hands on her rounded
hips. "Scratch a rumor and you'll find a grain of truth somewheres
inside."

Noah
wasn't a fan of rumors, but he wished he'd believed the ones about Wylene. If
he could save Ethan the pain he'd been through, at least it wouldn't have been
for nothing. "I don't like casting aspersions." He caught himself and
tried to explain. "That is, I think it's wrong to hint around and ruin a
person's good name, but sometimes, just sometimes, you have to take those
rumors as a kind of warning."

"Warning?"
Ethan asked.

"You
ever seen a mine, Ethan?" he asked.

Ethan
shook his head. "I ain't never seen nothin' that ain't within thirty miles
of Van Wert. Don't mean I won't, though."

"Well,"
Noah said slowly, searching for the right way to explain what he wanted to say.
"At the front of a mine there'll be a sign. It'll say caution, or blasting
today, or enter at your own risk. Now there might be coal in the mine, or gold,
or silver, or there might be nothing to gain and just plenty to lose. And there
are those who will go in, damn the signs, and come out with their pockets
full."

Annie
huffed and he put his hand up.

"I'm
not finished. There will be others, lots of others, who'll risk it all, go into
that mine and never come out alive. And there are those who'll come out with
nothing more than their lives, and they'll have to be grateful for that."

"Are
you telling me that Tessie's got dynamite in her corset?" Ethan laughed.

"I'm
telling you those rumors are danger signs that say keep out or, at the least,
CAUTION, and if you go in anyway, there's no telling what you'll come away
with."
Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get two beautiful girls and a
broken heart.

The
shock on Annie's face was something to see. When he realized what it must have
sounded like he meant, comparing a woman to a mine and advising Ethan about
going in, he felt the heat rise in his face.

"I
didn't mean—" he began, but Annie had turned her back and was headed for
her coat, which hung from a hook by the front door. She waved her hand to cut
off his words and turned around with the iciest stare he had ever seen. And
he'd seen some pretty cold ones.

"Tell
the girls I'll see them in church on Sunday," she said as she wrapped
herself in her two-cape covert-cloth macintosh and opened the door.

"Please,"
Noah said quietly, coming quickly behind her and shutting the door. "Give
me a few minutes. I'll hitch up the buggy and take you home. I can't let you go
in the wagon. You'll be soaked right through to your skin."

He
stood too close to her, he knew. And he knew he shouldn't have brought up her
skin, especially the image of her clothing wet and stuck to her. And he should
have suggested that Ethan see her home. The plan was to give her enough
distance from his attentions to make her miss them.

But
it was dark. And cold. And rainy.

And
she was soft. And small. And beautiful. Very beautiful.

And
she was also too darn stubborn for her own good, he thought as he watched her
pull away from the house in her wagon despite the many tragedies he warned her
could befall a woman alone on a night like this.

Now
he had Ethan and the images of Annie lying in a ditch, rain soaked and
unconscious, to keep him company for the night.

And
not a drop of liquor in the house, either.

***

Miller
Winestock had heard the rumors before services began on Sunday. Mrs. Webb, a
reliable source, had told him that Sissy Morrow had been watching the Eastman
girls. It seemed Mr. Eastman had been out to check her furnace on Friday and
admitted that Annie had been out at his place all week.

"We
begin our readings on page eighteen," he said as people took their seats.
He was not waiting for stragglers today.

Working
at Mr. Eastman's was certainly a subject they would have to discuss over Sunday
supper. Sissy was too full of the milk of human kindness for her own good. A
man like Noah Eastman would suck that milk dry before she knew what was
happening. His allusion caught him off guard.

"Uh
..." He fumbled with his prayer book and knocked it from its perch on the
lectern. As he bent to retrieve it, he heard the back door open and knew the
Eastmans had arrived. "Where was I?" he asked Dr. Morgan, who sat in
the front row.

"Are
you quite all right?" Morgan asked.

It
was extraordinary. He'd never lost his place before.

"Certainly,"
he replied and carried on as best he could.

Well,
if she was out at the Eastman farm it explained why she hadn't shown up on
Tuesday, as she always did with a little fresh butter and usually a pie. If he
was totally honest with himself, and he prided himself on being just that, he
had been disappointed when darkness fell and it was clear that she would not be
visiting that day.