Walking on Air (33 page)

Again, both children chimed in to volunteer. “It will grow to be a chore,” Nan warned. “On snowy days, I don’t wish to hear any moaning and groaning, not from either of you. Having a pet involves a lot of work, and I shall expect both of you to be responsible, caring, and Johnny-on-the-spot about seeing to his needs. If I find his water dish empty, you shall both do without supper that night, and I will
not
give in if you whine about it.”

Christopher angled a mischievous look at Laney. “Hell, he may not be worth it. Maybe we should take him back to the lean-to.”

“
No!
” Laney shouted.

“You’re yelling!” Christopher accused loudly.

“Language!” Gabriel roared.

Nan had to stifle a laugh. Raised voices were bouncing off all her walls, and she
loved
it. At long last, she and Laney were part of a real family. They even had a dog, which in Nan’s estimation made the picture absolutely complete.

•   •   •

During the shopping trip for the children, Nan and Gabriel split up, each of them taking a child so both youngsters could buy a gift for the absent adult and each other. Nan took Christopher with her first, and then in an hour she met Gabriel in front of the general store to switch kids. Laney’s eyes were sparkling. She’d clearly had a wonderful time touring the stores with Gabriel, who had apparently stopped by Nan’s shop to deposit the fruits of their labor. He reached to take the packages that Nan and Christopher held in their arms, clearly intending to drop them off at home, too.

“Guess what I got you, snot,” Christopher volleyed at the girl.

Laney’s cheek dimpled. When a gift was involved, she could apparently ignore being called a name. “What?” she asked.

“A great big fat cork to stuff in your mouth.” Christopher danced out of the way when Laney tried to smack him.

With the children laughing and racing in circles around them, Nan and Gabriel shared a long look of wordless communication.
I love you.
And,
Isn’t this wonderful?
Nan wished she could give her husband a huge hug, but such shows of affection were unacceptable in public places. So instead she tried to embrace him with her eyes. She could tell by the gleam in his that he was thinking about something far more intimate than a mere hug, and she felt heat rush up her neck to pool in her cheeks.

“Are you too hot, Mama?” Laney asked. “I could hold your coat if you want to take it off.”

“Er, no, I’m fine,” Nan assured her, not daring to look at Gabriel. “Christopher, you go with Gabriel. Laney, it’s your turn to come with me. Where do you want to go first?”

Laney took forever to pick gifts for Gabriel and Christopher. She finally settled on a carved ivory harmonica for each of them. Nan gulped when Mr. Redmond told her the price of each instrument.

As Mr. Redmond walked away to wait on a gentleman in search of slippers for his wife, Laney said in a hushed voice, “I’ll work in the shop for them, Mama.
Please?
They can learn to play music lickety-split, probably within two weeks or less, and then maybe I’ll get to dance sometimes.”

Nan’s heart caught when she searched her little sister’s expression. The child had been told Gabriel’s story about the angels, and she surely understood that there was still a good chance that the substitute father she’d come to love might be gone forever by tomorrow. Nan certainly hoped that they had managed to circumvent fate, but she also realized that her scheme might not work.

“Laney, you haven’t forgotten Gabriel’s appointment tomorrow before dawn, have you?”

The girl’s eyes went bright with tears, and her mouth quivered. “It’s not going to happen that way again,” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t even
think
it, Mama. I love him too much! If he dies, I’ll die, too!”

Nan drew her sister behind the yardage rack, where they were hidden behind upright bolts of cloth. With trembling arms, she held the child close. “Oh, darling. I know, I know, truly I do, but you mustn’t talk that way. We must be strong, you and I. Gabriel needs us to be gay tonight. This is his first
real
Christmas Eve, remember, and just in case it should be his last, we must make it the most wonderful celebration
ever
. That will be our most precious gift to him, smiling even if we can barely hold back our tears.”

Laney’s thin shoulders jerked with sobs. Nan felt her own chest convulse, and her eyes burned with her attempt to keep them dry.

“Now, now,” she whispered, patting her sister’s back.

And then Nan sobbed herself. For the first time in her life, she didn’t give a fig if she made a public spectacle of herself. For days, she’d kept her fear and pain at bay with bright smiles, laughter, and a deliberate, self-inflicted case of amnesia. But a person could pretend for only so long.
Gabriel.
In a matter of hours, he would leave her shop to walk to the saloon for a whiskey before he began his fated journey up Main Street.

Until now, Nan had been afraid to pray for a different ending to that stroll, but suddenly that struck her as being pure lunacy. The God she believed in and trusted wasn’t vengeful, and she might as well prostrate herself in prayer for Gabriel, because there was no hiding her thoughts or her actions from Him. He knew of her scheme to save her husband’s life.

Nan hooked an arm around Laney’s shoulders and, with as much composure as she could muster, herded the child out of the store. Once on the boardwalk, they both burst into tears, sobbing, hiccoughing, and snorting. Nan kept her feet moving, forcing Laney to stumble along with her. At the corner, she veered them both left onto Oak, which she immediately regretted, because Doc Peterson’s office lay just ahead. It was on this plank walkway that Gabriel had possibly sacrificed his soul to save a little girl’s life. The thought almost took Nan to her knees.

But she kept walking, picking up her pace. She and Laney had to regain control. If Gabriel found them like this, it would ruin his whole Christmas, and he might get to experience only half of the holiday as it was.

Nan’s frenzy of walking found them at the edge of town, and still Nan kept on. She didn’t stop until she and Laney were well outside the community proper and encountered a split-rail fence. There, Nan held her sister in her arms. Both of them wept until their wells ran dry.

“Oh,
dear
,” Nan said as she shakily dabbed at Laney’s face with a lace-edged handkerchief. “Your eyes are all red and swollen, and your nose looks as if you’ve had it pinched for hours by a brand-new clothespin.”

Laney chuffed and shuddered. “You’re a mess, too.” She snatched away the handkerchief to wipe the wet droplets from Nan’s cheeks and chin. “We’ve got to straighten up. Gabe isn’t sad, Mama. We have to be brave like he is.”

Nan secretly believed that Gabriel
did
feel sad, but that he somehow managed to keep his feelings buried deep within him. Nan couldn’t quite grasp how he did that.

“What on
earth
will we say when he sees our faces?” Nan worried aloud.

Laney never missed a beat. “That Mr. Redmond dropped a sack of pepper at our feet, and it went
poof
, right up our noses. We went to sneezing. Got it in our eyes. It was
horrific
.”

Laney sounded so convincing that Nan could almost believe it herself. “When did you become so proficient at lying?”

“When I was . . . hmm . . .” The girl dimpled a cheek. “I was about five, I think. We were in Random, because I remember our old apartment. I used to hide from you to pick my nose and eat it. And somehow you always suspected I was up to something wrong, so you’d ask what I’d been doing.”

Nan reared back slightly. “Oh,
yuck
!”

Laney giggled. “Well, Mama, what was I supposed to do, tell you the truth?”

Looping her wrists over Laney’s shoulders, Nan pressed her forehead against her sister’s. “You should have asked for a handkerchief, goose.” She sighed. “You’re nearly as tall as I am. When did that happen?”

“Probably when I was hiding and picking my nose.”

They both giggled. When their mirth subsided, Nan felt better, stronger for having cried, somehow. “I love you,” she whispered to Laney. “No matter what may come in the morning, we’ll stand together and be brave. Correct? We owe that to Gabriel.”

“Will you
never
call him Gabe, Mama? It’s the name he prefers.”

Nan considered that for a moment. “I recall him telling me that once, but I was very upset and quickly forgot it.” She chucked Laney under the chin. “I shall endeavor to address him by his preferred name for the remainder of the day. How is that?”

Laney grinned. Her face still looked awful, but there was now sincere amusement flashing in her eyes. “He’ll probably check your forehead to see if you have a fever.”

Laughing, they hooked elbows and retraced their steps to town. As luck would have it, Gabriel and Christopher stood in front of the general store, both of them laden with bundles and looking disgruntled. Nan felt the burn of her husband’s gaze on her face and knew she must look a fright. But she kept a smile on her lips, pretended nothing untoward had occurred, and she managed to address him as Gabe three times during the brief exchange.

“What put a burr in your drawers?” he demanded. “So far as I recall, you’ve never
once
called me Gabe, and now suddenly you’re saying it over and over, as if it’s a big word you just discovered and are trying to get your tongue wrapped around.” He narrowed his eyes. “And what in the world happened? You both look as if you’ve been crying your eyes out.”

“No!” both Nan and her sister chimed at once. Then Laney launched into her pepper tale, which Nan felt the girl managed with impressive verisimilitude.

Christopher harrumphed. “We was just in the store, lookin’ for you, and I didn’t smell no pepper.”

“Were,” Nan corrected, “and it’s improper English to use a double negative.”

“A double
what
?” both males asked, their voices, one deep and the other a bit higher, so perfectly harmonized that they could have been singing a duet.

“It’s a nonstandard syntactic, the double negative,” Nan explained. “For instance, it is incorrect to say, ‘I didn’t eat nothing.’ The correct syntactic is to say, ‘I didn’t eat anything,’ or, ‘I ate nothing.’” She beamed a bright smile, pleased with herself for having so successfully distracted Gabriel. “I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying that two wrongs never make a right. Well, two negatives in the same sentence are never right, either.”

A brown package poked from Christopher’s jacket pocket, and he held three more to his chest. Gabriel cradled a long and narrow string-tied box in the crook of one arm, with a larger wrapped bundle tucked between his elbow and side. He shifted his hold on the box, parted his lips as if to speak, and fell silent when Nan said, “We’ve still some shopping to do in the general store. Have you fellows finished with all yours?”

“I have,” Christopher said, sounding relieved. “I used to think I’d like shopping, when I didn’t have no money to spend. Now I’m flat tired and don’t wanna do it again anytime soon.”

Gabriel curled his free hand over the boy’s shoulder. “We’ll head back to the shop. Jasper probably needs to go for a walk by now.”

Nan had entirely forgotten about the new member of her household. “Oh, so true. You’d better hurry along.”

A moment later, she released a relieved sigh as she and Laney entered the general store again.

“I don’t think Gabe believed a word of my pepper story,” Laney whispered.

Nan smiled. “Well, it is rather far-fetched, darling. But if I’m asked, I shall swear to it.”

“It’s a lie, and you never lie.”

“I cannot lay claim to
never
. One can lie by omission, and I’ve done that plenty of times.”

As they approached the display of harmonicas, Laney asked, “When did you lie by omission?”

“Oh, let me see.” Nan fingered a particularly lovely harmonica with dark stain in the etchings. “There are many different ways to lie by omission, but I believe I first perfected the art when you were about five.” She lowered her voice a notch. “I
knew
you were hiding to pick your nose. But I pretended that I didn’t know, because had I known, I would have had no choice but to chastise you.”

Laney flicked Nan a startled glance. Then, recovering her composure, she asked, “Why didn’t you chastise me?”

Nan picked up an instrument that she quite liked. It was slightly larger than the rest, a better fit for Gabriel’s big hands. “Because I had vague recollections of hiding from my nurse at about that age to do exactly the same thing.”

“Oh,
yuck
!”

Nan sniggered. A squeak erupted from Laney’s throat. Then they laughed until their knees went weak. Nan knew it wasn’t really all that funny, but she also realized that sometimes if you didn’t laugh, you could only cry.

O
nce back at the shop, Nan laid out a tall stack of yardage scraps, a roll of dark green twine, a pile of ribbon ends, and scissors on her downstairs project table so the gift wrapping could begin. Upstairs under her bed, she’d hidden small gifts that she and Gabriel had purchased to go in the children’s socks. Those could wait for later. But in her armoire, she’d stashed all her main gifts for everyone, along with the things she’d chosen for her husband’s sock: a comb, an ivory-handled razor, and a strop. Gabriel’s big gift from her was a bright red shirt, which she’d worked on in between customers while he’d been gone for afternoon walks over the last month. To Nan, the shirt’s brilliant hue was symbolic of Christmas and salvation, and she hoped he’d wear it tomorrow morning for his walk just before dawn.

Nan hid the gifts she needed to wrap in a pillowcase and spirited all of them downstairs to her workroom before she allowed anyone else to have a turn. As the primary cook, she figured she needed to go first. She’d made a nice school frock for Laney, blue with a dainty pattern of pink nosegays and darker blue eyelet ruffles, and a Sunday dress of russet satin with a pin-pleated bodice and dark umber trim. For Christopher, she’d been forced because of time constraints to purchase store-bought garments: two shirts and another pair of britches, plus some house slippers. Gabriel had gotten the boy a copy of
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
, which Nan had promised to read aloud to the child if he hadn’t yet learned his letters. Nan’s husband believed that the wonderful world to be discovered in books would encourage the boy to study. Nan prayed so, but mostly she wanted Christopher to enjoy the magic of this special season. She hoped he liked the sock gifts that she and Gabriel had chosen, for she suspected that Gabriel wasn’t the only one who was about to experience his first
real
Christmas. From Santa the boy would get a block-and-peg puzzle, a hair comb and pomade, a small bottle and an underarm stick of men’s cologne, a hand-tooled leather coin pouch, and a colorful poke of assorted hard candies. Both children’s socks would be filled to the brim.

After finishing up, Nan carried her offerings back upstairs in the pillowcase and then unveiled each gift to place it under the tree. Christopher, who’d never wrapped a present, asked Nan to teach him how, so back down to the shop she went to oversee the boy’s first attempt. When he seemed comfortable with the process, she abandoned him to his own devices to stuff the first turkey she’d purchased in years. When the bird was in the oven, she peeled potatoes and covered them with salted water in a pot. Then she worked on other side dishes. The four desserts—a batch of cinnamon sticky buns, a peach cobbler, an apple pie, and a dried-fruit cake—had been prepared yesterday and the day before that.

Constantly hovering, Gabriel continuously dipped his finger in her mixings. Recalling the morning when she’d caught him and Laney tasting with their stirring spoon, Nan realized just how far she’d come in only a month. What might have raised her eyebrows before Gabriel’s arrival now only made her smile and teasingly scold. Life was about so very much more than observing rules of proper etiquette and practicing good manners. This man had taught her that. True living was about laughing, loving, and enjoying each moment. And, oh, how she did enjoy seeing Gabriel’s pleasure when he snitched samples of the holiday fare.

At some point while Nan bustled about her kitchen, her husband disappeared. The dog had accompanied the children to the sitting room, where a great deal of gift probing and guessing of contents was taking place. With everything at the ready for later, when she would finish preparing the holiday meal, Nan was free until the turkey had baked to a turn. After checking all the upstairs rooms, she slipped down to her shop. Gabriel stood at a window, gazing solemnly out at the street. Now that it was midafternoon, the shops had mostly closed in honor of the holiday, and there were few people on the boardwalks.

“What is it?” Nan stepped close and touched a hand to his arm. She wondered if the reality of what he would face on the morrow had suddenly struck him. “Are you all right?”

Black hair glistening in the winter light that came through the glass, he tucked his chin to give her one of those slanted grins she’d come to love so much, only the warmth of it didn’t reach his coffee-dark eyes. “Just thinking about opportunities missed.”

“Such as?”

He shook his head and went back to street watching. “Remember my story about the three lost souls I could have chosen to save?” He lifted his shoulders in a frustrated shrug. “I totally forgot about the lonely old man, Tyke Byden. Or was it Bayden?”

“Baden,” Nan supplied. “He’s a sad case, angry at the world. He lost his whole family to influenza about fifteen years ago, or so the story goes. I didn’t live in Random then. But folks say he was once a grand, lofty fellow, always jovial and friendly, a very hard worker who did well by his wife and seven children, who were all nearly grown when they died. As I recall, the younger pair of twins, both girls, were thirteen, and the older set, two boys, were eighteen. The other three kids, two girls and a boy, ranged in ages somewhere in between. I’ve been told that all of the Baden youngsters were handsome and trained up right.” Nan sighed. “After losing his family, Mr. Baden took to drink, and now he chases away anyone who dares to darken his doorstep. His wife’s name was Miriam, I believe. He must have loved her dearly, and his children as well.”

“I should have rapped on his door,” Gabriel said, his voice husky with regret. “Somehow I didn’t think about it until now, when it’s too late.”

“It’s not too late,” Nan replied. “My goodness, our table sits six, and I’ve fixed enough food to feed half of Random.”

“The angels told me he curses a blue streak, Nan. I can’t go fetch him and bring him here to eat. Even if you are willing to put up with his language, I have to think of Laney. Besides, Tyke needs more than I can offer in a night. The angels said he needs to love and be loved again. You can’t serve that up on a supper plate.”

“Who says I cannot?” Nan hugged her husband’s arm. “What you’re saying is that Mr. Baden needs a family, and in my estimation, the feeling of family begins at a supper table.”

She felt Gabriel stiffen. “He needs people who’ll include him for longer than an evening.” His lashes drifted down to rest like black etchings against his bronze skin. When he met Nan’s gaze again, his eyes fairly ached with sadness. “From what I saw, he lives in a trash pile. The smell alone nearly took my breath away. If we invited him to our table, the stench of him would probably spoil our appetites.”

“I could douse him with vanilla extract.”

Gabriel laughed and shook his head.

“Gabriel, I’m willing to take him in if that will make you happy. No, forget that. I think we
should
take him in, because it’s the right thing to do.”

He arched an ebon brow at her. “And what, hang him on a cloak hook? You don’t have sleeping room for another person upstairs.”

“True, but once my workroom is emptied out, there will be room for two comfortable cots. It will be close quarters but doable. And the shelving can be used for garments and footwear. Mr. Redmond has cots in stock at the general store. He’ll be closed until the day after Christmas, but you and I can empty the storage room tomorrow evening, and we can set up the cots on Saturday. Heaven knows I’ve plenty of quilts, and we can purchase some bed linens and pillows.”

“I won’t be here tomorrow night to help you empty the storage room.”

Nan felt as if a fist had connected with her chest and pushed all the breath from her lungs. For her husband’s sake, she managed to recover her composure quickly, though she felt certain he’d seen her flinch at his words. “Then I shall call upon Christopher and Laney to assist me. As for the cots, Mr. Wilson earns extra coin by helping customers with heavy items, and he is happy to assemble purchases for those who aren’t able. He’ll come right in and do the work for me.”

“And where will you and I sleep tonight? We can’t put Christopher on the floor and an old man on the settee. We’d have to give Baden your bed.”

Nan gestured toward her downstairs workroom. “We can move the table aside and make ourselves a pallet on the floor.”

“What about customers of a morning?”

“By the time the shop reopens on Monday, the sleeping arrangements will be in place.”

He searched her gaze, looking a bit stupefied. “You’re serious.”

“Of course I’m serious, Gabriel. I’m getting the hang of this adoption business. First a boy, then a dog, and tonight a lonely old fellow who needs a family.” Nan placed a palm against his cheek. “We’re a bit tight on room, but we’ve plenty of love to go around, and feeding another mouth isn’t a problem. We have a great deal of money in the bank, as I recall.”

“What if Tyke Baden is an irascible, coarse, foulmouthed old codger, and you end up sorely sorry that you ever invited him here?”

“I do not countenance coarse behavior. He’ll be served a bar of soap for breakfast.”

Gabriel guffawed. When his mirth subsided, he trailed a warm gaze over Nan’s face. “You are a priceless gift. Do you know that? I honestly think you can take Tyke Baden on with one hand tied behind your back.”

Nan dimpled a cheek at him. “Stand aside, sir, and observe me in action. If Mr. Baden needs a few reminders of how to properly comport himself, I shall be most generous with them.”

Nan turned for the stairs.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Gabe called.

“Upstairs to collect the rest of our brood. If we’re going calling to adopt a grandfather, we shall do it together, so the poor old fellow can see what he’s getting into before he accepts the supper invitation.”

•   •   •

Gabe wasn’t any too worried about Tyke Baden’s reaction to Nan and the kids. Oh, no. It was Nan and the kids’ reaction to Baden that concerned him. He’d seen Tyke through a parting in the clouds, and he wasn’t exactly the grandfatherly image that Nan clearly pictured. He rushed up the stairs behind his wife and caught her three steps below the door. In the semidark, her fair skin and golden hair fairly glowed when she swung around to face him. He stood two levels below her. It was the first time in Gabe’s memory that he’d been eye-to-eye with her—unless, of course, he counted when they’d been making love.

“Nan, I appreciate your generous intent, but I can’t allow you to—”

“You were
wrong
about Christopher. He
is
rough at the edges, but so are diamonds before they are refined and polished. I think, considering the short amount of time he has been here, that he has fitted in beautifully.”

“He still lets loose with cusswords, Nan. At the table he pokes out his elbows like a bird trying to take flight. He chews with his mouth open. I doubt he can put his own name to paper. I admit he’s a lovable kid, and I don’t regret bringing him home. He needed rescuing, and he’s young enough to change. Tyke Baden is old and set in his ways. I can’t let you—”

“
Let
me?”

Gabe was so taken aback by her sudden frosty tone that he went speechless for a moment. And while he groped for words, his diminutive wife drilled his chest with her fingertip to emphasize each utterance. “
You
do
not
rule me, Mr. Valance. Not now, not
ever
. This ring on my hand is not a deed of ownership. I am my own person, and I make my own choices. Is that
clear
?”

Gabe thought she’d made it pretty damned clear. He was just startled by her sudden assertiveness. This wasn’t
his
Nan. Only how could he say that for certain? He hadn’t exactly been domineering in this relationship thus far, so maybe he’d just never pushed her to a point that she’d revealed this stubborn, stiff-spined side of herself. “I never meant to imply—”

“Champion. I shall ignore your poor choice of words and pretend they were never spoken.” She gathered her skirts to resume the ascent. “Come along. We’ve a family to collect, an old man to fetch, a turkey in the oven, and when we return, we must finish fixing our holiday supper.”

•   •   •

Tyke Baden lived two streets over from Main on Second Street. Nan led the way, cutting behind Lizzy’s Café to shorten the distance. When Jasper saw the lean-to, he let out a mournful whine.

“Don’t be sad,” Laney said, reaching out to pat the dog’s head. “You shall never again live
there
. You’re a proper fellow now and have a home!”

“He don’t understand a word you say,” Christopher observed.

Laney popped back, “You talk to him, too. Under your breath, mostly, but I’ve heard you. So don’t make jest of me for doing the same.”

Nan, two steps ahead of Gabriel, stopped so suddenly to whirl around that he nearly barreled right over the top of her. The light was fading suddenly. Snow clouds, blocking the sun, Gabe guessed, and in the gloaming, Nan’s eyes sparkled with perturbed impatience. “Shush, the both of you! I will
not
have you bickering. It is to be a holy night for only love, laughter, and kindly exchanges. If you don’t curb your tongues, I shall rap each of you on the noggin with one of my wooden spoons the moment we get home.”

Gabe fleetingly wondered how kindly exchanges and head knocking went hand in hand, but he wasn’t about to voice the question aloud. His spouse wasn’t very tall, and she’d have a hell of a time reaching his high end with a stirring stick, but he wouldn’t put it past Nan to climb on a chair to get the job done. And Gabe knew, deep down, that he’d just stand there and take the thumping.

The children stared at his wife with wide eyes. Nan turned to resume her pace. Gabe winked at the kids and fell in behind their leader again. He felt like a duckling in a queue.

In the gathering twilight, the sprawling Baden home didn’t look too bad from a distance, but as they neared the dooryard, Gabe saw that the two-level residence was in horrible disrepair. The picket fence no longer sported a chip of paint, and lay on the ground in sections. Loose shingles had worked their way down the pitched roof to dangle over the edge of the eaves. The porch overhang sagged. The stoop itself had broken boards and steps that looked too rotten to bear weight. All in all, the structure reminded Gabe of a house of cards that would collapse if you breathed too hard on it.