Wings of a Dream (28 page)

“I’m so sorry, Sheriff. I hope I didn’t hurt anything.”

“Only my fence,” Frank grumbled.

I gave him my most coquettish smile. “Nothing that can’t be repaired, right?”

The sheriff cleared his throat. I turned to him. “I do thank you for the ride.” When did I start sounding so much like Mama?

“My . . . pleasure. I’ll see you on Sunday?”

I looked to Frank, then back to the sheriff. “Of course. And I am sorry about your car.”

“No harm done. At least, not much.” He cranked the engine and backed out of the yard. Down the road it rattled. I winced. I didn’t remember that sound from before. Thankfully, the noise faded, leaving only the serenade of night—and Frank’s huffing.

“What were you doing?” Frank asked into the darkness.

“Driving a car. What did it look like?”

“Mayhem. I’ll thank you not to drive near my fences again.” He stalked toward the house, then stopped, turned back. “But I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

I kicked at a tuft of dead grass smashed into the dirt, the corner of my mouth drifting downward of its own accord. Of course he was glad. He needed a nursemaid for his children for a little while longer.

At church that Sunday, I sat between the boys, an arm around each of them. Ollie and Janie flanked their daddy, pink flushing their cheeks at his attention. Worshippers slipped in around us. I craned my neck toward the back, searching for the sheriff. Irene started the opening bars of the hymn on the small organ. Only then did he slip into a back seat and lay his hat in his lap. I turned my attention to the service, satisfied.

After the closing hymn, I buttoned James and Dan into their coats. Frank did the same with the girls. Irene caught my hand, her cheeks glowing red as coals in a stove, her eyes shiny as a clean windowpane.

“I’d like y’all to come for dinner today,” she said.

I remembered the smallness of her house and imagined the meagerness of her cupboard. “There’s no need—”

“We’d love to—” Frank glared at me as our words overlapped each other.

My back stiffened. How could he be so selfish? They didn’t have room for us there. And I’d cooked a chicken potpie for us, its golden dome only wanting to be reheated.

Frank juggled Janie and his big Bible, one in each arm. “Like I said, we’d love to partake of a meal with you and your family.”

I glanced toward the back of the room. The sheriff spoke with the Crenshaw family.

“I’ve invited the sheriff, too,” Irene said.

I pressed my lips into a smile as Irene’s gaze moved from Frank to me to Frank again.

“Come on directly. I have a ham all ready.” Irene gathered her hymnal and Bible and pocketbook.

I sighed and shooed the boys out the door. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the invitation. Or the inclusion of the sheriff. Truth be told, I had no idea why her words stirred my dissatisfaction—other than the fact that my heart refused to follow what my head deemed the most prudent course.

Climbing into the buggy, settling Janie on my lap, I thought of Mama again, of her constant requests that I return home. I imagined Mama would encourage me to stay if she knew of the sheriff and his attentions. But did I want her to know yet?

Frank’s deep voice rumbled in answer to one of the boys’ questions.

No, I couldn’t tell her about any of it. Not yet.

I lowered my head until my cheek pressed against Janie’s. I prayed again that the Lord would show me His way. Not Mama’s. Not mine. Not Irene’s. His.

A terrifying thought. And yet one that stirred the same feeling of freedom I’d felt when I’d steered the sheriff’s car behind the line of light piercing the darkness.

I
rene’s house proved as cramped as I’d imagined it would be, but she didn’t seem daunted. She directed her girls to set the table while she finished cooking. “We’ll serve the children their dinner on the porch,” she told me.

“I’ll make sure they get their coats on, then.” But that task didn’t prove as simple as it sounded.

“I don’t want my coat.” Dan crossed his arms.

“But it’s cold outside.”

“I’m not cold.” He stamped his foot as if to punctuate his sentence.

I took a deep breath. “You will wear your coat or you won’t eat.” I crossed my arms, too.

Frank sauntered in from the porch. “Is there a problem?”

I held out Dan’s coat. “He has to put this on to go outside and eat dinner.”

“Why?”

Now I wanted to stamp
my
foot. “Because it’s cold out there.”

Frank’s shoulder raised and lowered. “If he gets cold, he’ll come put his coat on.” Frank took the coat from my hand and swatted his son gently on the behind. “Go on, now, Dan.”

The boy scampered away, but not before I spied the mocking grin on his face. My fists clenched at my side. “How dare you!” I hissed.

“What?” Frank truly looked confused.

I pulled my shoulders back a bit. Perhaps I didn’t know much about the care of small children, but I knew I didn’t want to care for a passel of sick ones. “I don’t want them to catch cold.”

He grinned as if I’d told a joke instead of put forth my serious opinion on the subject. “They’ll be fine, Rebekah.”

“And I suppose you’ll take care of them if they aren’t?” From the corner of my eye, I spied Sheriff Jeffries and Brother Latham walk through the door. The sheriff’s eyebrows lowered.

“They’ll be fine. They aren’t frail like—” His face crumpled and he turned away.

Like Clara,
he’d almost said. Her children. And his. Part of me wanted to wrap my arms around him. But the other part—

With great effort, I lowered my voice, kept it calm and even. “The children have been my responsibility, and I think I have some say in what happens to them.” I spun around to leave the room, my anger boiling like a kettle left too long on the fire.

“. . . only a child herself.” Frank’s mumbled words sent me flying back.

“We were doing just fine before you came home.”

His eyebrows shot up and his mouth dropped open. I didn’t wait to measure his response beyond shock. My skirt swirled around my legs as I turned away.

His tone softened, and his words stopped my flight. “I think you need to trust me in this, Rebekah. I wouldn’t suggest anything that would harm my children.”

I knew that. I really did. I pressed my lips together, determined to keep tears from falling. Only then did I notice Ollie in the corner, her bottom lip trembling. She bit it still.

My heart seemed to sink into my toes. Why did caring so much seem to bring out the worst in me?

Sheriff Jeffries slapped his hat on his head and put his hand on my elbow. “Why don’t we take a quick walk before dinner?”

I nodded and let him lead me away. Ollie’s lips puckered and her face flushed as I passed by, stinging me like a slap of wet rain on a cold day. Sheriff Jeffries urged me forward. I stumbled. He righted me. Again. Like on the train platform the day I arrived. Always right where I needed him. So why couldn’t my heart leap in his direction?

We walked all the way to the shallow creek, without our coats. Frank had been right. The afternoon had warmed more than I’d thought. This time I talked. And Sheriff Jeffries listened. But instead of recounting my dreams of adventure, I found myself rattling on about the children.

He didn’t seem to mind. The very antithesis of Arthur. In fact, if Frank had wanted to find a new wife and leave his children with me, I was pretty sure the sheriff wouldn’t object. So I smiled up at him as we walked, trying to make myself feel the wild ecstasy I’d always felt in Arthur’s presence. But my heart didn’t pound harder, and my chest didn’t ache with longing for his touch.

As we neared the house again, I noticed his gun belt peeking out from beneath his suit coat. “Do you always wear your guns?” I asked.

“Mostly. You never know what will happen.”

“You might have to run down a bank robber or cattle rustler?”

He grinned. “Something like that.”

I’d read a story once about Pearl Hart, the famous lady stagecoach robber. How would it feel to wear the heavy pistols slung low on the hips?

“May I try it on?”

“My gun belt?”

I nodded, Christmas morning excitement bursting through me.

“Well, I guess it’d be all right.” He unbuckled his belt and handed it to me. “Be careful, though.”

More weight than I expected filled my hands, but not more than I could handle. A lifetime of wielding cast-iron pots and pans made a girl’s arms strong. I strapped the belt around my waist, undecided as to whether I imagined myself a bandit or a law enforcer.

“I see you’ve found your way back.” Frank’s clipped words.

I ducked my head to hide my smirk, wondering why annoying this man brought such delight. Was it because he seemed to think he had some kind of authority over me? Maybe I wanted him to know I didn’t need another mother.

“Dinner’s on,” Irene called from the porch.

I unbuckled the holster that crushed against the pleats in my dress. Sheriff Jeffries took it from my hands and strapped it on his waist, his cheeks pink as a summer sunset as we made our way inside.

Seated around the dining table, the sheriff to my right, Frank across from us, I relaxed as Nola Jean asked unending questions about Oklahoma.

“You mean there’s no cotton?”

“Yes, there’s cotton. But we don’t grow any. Daddy grows mostly corn.”

She looked sideways at her mother. “Corn’s easier to harvest than cotton.”

“I expect so,” I said, “although I’ve never picked cotton myself. I can see y’all grow a lot of it around here.”

Nola Jean snorted, then apologized. “Too much, if you ask me.”

“Be thankful for cotton crops, Nola Jean.” Irene slid her knife into the butter and slathered it on a square of cornbread. “They clothe and shelter you.”

Nola Jean sighed. “If only it wasn’t so much work.”

Frank ducked his head to hide a smile.

“Maybe you won’t always live on a cotton farm, Nola Jean.” I stared at Frank as I said it. I didn’t know why. Maybe because I couldn’t look at the sheriff, since he sat beside me. Maybe because I wanted Frank to know I didn’t intend to stay here forever. Maybe I just wanted to say it out loud, to remind myself. “You could marry a man who will take you somewhere else. Somewhere new and exciting.”

Nola Jean pushed potatoes around her plate with her fork. “That don’t seem likely, Miss Rebekah.”

“What brought y’all to this place, anyway?” I directed the question to Irene, but I knew the answer would come from Brother Latham. And maybe Frank would reveal a bit of his history on that, as well.

Brother Latham took another bite of ham and chewed it down before he answered. “Blackland Prairie’s good for growing things. Especially cotton.”

“Blackland? Because of that awful black mud?”

He chuckled. “Pretty much. But it’s fertile ground. Hard on man and mule, but you have to take the hard with the pleasant in this life. We don’t live in the Garden of Eden any longer.”

The contrast struck me funny—the Garden of Eden compared to the Blackland Prairie. One lush and green and full. One flat and almost barren, and so far as I’d seen, almost colorless. Was that why Clara and Aunt Adabelle had cultivated such a profusion of flowers around the house? To bring a reminder of Eden?