15

Tori pulled her wool scarf tighter around her head as she walked toward the store. The wind spit snowy ice in her face. February had to be the longest month of the year. It didn’t matter if the calendar did count fewer days. Those days stretched out and mocked them by piling more freezing weather down on the winter weary. Now and again, the sun appeared, but not with any warmth before the clouds blew back in, darker than ever, to dash hope of an early spring.

She’d caught a cold. She always had a cold in February. Her nose was rubbed raw from constant wiping, and she and her father had kept up a duet of coughing all through the night. Daddy’s cough was no better in spite of trips to the doctor and Aunt Hattie’s potions.

“Spring will be here soon,” he told Mama when she worried over him. “Warm weather is the best cure.”

But the sound of his coughs hung a pall over the house and made February even darker. This very morning he looked so tired at breakfast that Mama talked him into not going to his shop until later. Mama told Tori to stay home too and keep Samantha in out of the weather, but Tori couldn’t stay home every day. It was her job to help her mother at the store even if she hated waiting on people and listening to their complaints about every livelong thing from the price of coffee to the bananas being too ripe. Or not ripe enough. Still it was her job. A job she needed. She was an adult. An adult with a child. So she left Samantha with her father and headed to the store.

At least it was her job now. Kate was moving back to Rosey Corner. She and Jay had found a house to rent. Jay got a job at the feed store over in Edgeville where he’d worked before the war. Kate had lost her job at the newspaper. Kate said she didn’t care, but Tori wasn’t sure she meant it.

Once Kate was back in Rosey Corner, she could work at the store again. “And give you more time with Samantha,” she’d told Tori. Trying to help. That was Kate. Always trying to make things right. She knew Tori hated working at the store. But what would Tori do instead?

She’d asked Kate that. “If I don’t work at the store, what am I going to do?”

“I don’t know. Why do you have to do something? Can’t you just be a mama?”

“That’s the problem. I am a mother. A single mother. I can’t expect Mama and Daddy to take care of me forever.”

“Are you tired of living here?” Kate had looked around the bedroom where they were changing clothes after church on Sunday.

“I don’t know that I’d say tired, exactly.” Tori peeled off her good dress and reached for a skirt and sweater. Lorena had already grabbed up Samantha and headed back out to the stove where Jay and Daddy were talking. Pans rattling meant Mama was finishing up dinner.

Evie and Mike weren’t coming. They hadn’t been home on Sunday but twice since Christmas. Evie claimed there were just so many times a day a person could upchuck, and riding all the way to Rosey Corner from Louisville put that number over the top.

It was chilly back in the bedroom they had once all shared and that Tori and Samantha still shared with Lorena. Even though the house was small, the stove in the sitting room couldn’t put out enough heat to warm every corner when winter winds pushed at the walls. This time of the year they missed the old woodstove in the kitchen. A shiny electric range had replaced it, but unless they left the oven on with the door open, that stove didn’t do much to keep a person warm on a cold winter day.

“Do you wish you had your own house?” Kate didn’t wait for an answer. “But of course you do.”

Tori wasn’t sure whether she did or didn’t. It might be nice to have a house, but what would she do without her parents helping her with Samantha? “I don’t know. Samantha and I might be lonely rattling around in a house by ourselves.”

“Maybe you could move into one of Aunt Hattie’s spare bedrooms.”

“And live with Fern giving me those stares?” Tori shuddered at the thought. “No, thank you. Samantha doesn’t need that. And neither do I.”

Kate laughed. “Fern’s not so bad.”

“Would you want to look at her every morning at breakfast?” She was sorry for the words as soon as they were out. They echoed back to that Sunday before Christmas when Evie had asked if Clay Weber was someone she could look at across the breakfast table.

“Maybe not.” Kate hung her suit up on a hanger hooked to the back of the bedroom door. She smoothed out the skirt for a long moment. “I see Samantha is still carrying around that doll the Weber girls gave her. Mrs. Weber should sell those dolls.”

“I think she does.” Tori slid off her stockings and pulled on wool socks. She hated being cold. She rolled her stockings into a ball and kept her eyes away from Kate. She knew what Kate wanted to ask, but it was a question she didn’t want to answer.

“I didn’t know that. I could have taken some to Lexington and sold them for her.”

“That would have been nice.” Tori kept her voice carefully neutral. Mrs. Weber was a wizard with her needle, but Tori didn’t want to talk about her. She didn’t want to talk about any of the Weber family, especially the one Kate was edging toward talking about.

“I remember when Mr. Weber died. So hard for Mrs. Weber to lose her husband with all those children and one on the way.”

“You don’t have to tell me how hard it is to lose a husband.” Tori’s voice sounded tight even to her own ears as her insides clenched like a fist. Why couldn’t people just leave her alone? If she wanted to grieve for Sammy the rest of her life, what was wrong with that? It was her life. She shoved her stockings down into the toes of her Sunday shoes and put them in the bottom of the wardrobe. She could feel Kate watching her.

“I know.” Kate hesitated. “Maybe if you talked with her it would help you. It sometimes helps to talk to people who have experienced the same troubles you have.”

Tori took her time getting her everyday shoes out of the wardrobe. She had the feeling Kate had more to say and she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it. One thing was certain. She wasn’t going to go to Clay Weber’s house to talk to his mother. Seeing him at the store was trial enough.

That wasn’t exactly fair. Clay had brought Samantha the cutest sled. He’d fashioned the wooden part himself and asked Tori’s father to make the runners. Samantha had been thrilled. Daddy had been thrilled. Tori’s challenge was finding a way to thank Clay without encouraging him. And to keep everybody else from deciding what was best for her.

She couldn’t keep staring at her shoes forever. Besides, that didn’t keep Kate from saying what she was thinking anyway. “Why don’t you let him take you to the movies? It would be good for you to get out.”

Tori pulled on her shoes. Without looking up, she said, “I don’t want to encourage Clay, Kate. He wants more than I can give.”

“Going to the movies doesn’t mean you’re getting married or anything.”

“But don’t you see? That might be what Clay thinks. I have the feeling that’s what he wants.”

“Well, tell him you’re not ready for that. If you’re not.” There was a question in Kate’s words.

“I’m not,” Tori looked up at Kate to make sure she knew she meant what she said.

Kate didn’t quite hide her sigh as she pulled on her sweater. “Then tell him you just want to be friends. Buddies. Somebody to get out with and do something different. You can’t go fishing in February.”

“I don’t need a buddy,” Tori said firmly as she stood up. “I’ve got sisters. And you can go fishing in February if you want to. You just won’t catch anything.”

“Except a cold, and you’ve already caught that. And some sisters don’t like to go fishing any month of the year.”

“But Lorena likes to fish. And then there’s Graham.”

“Okay.” Kate hugged Tori’s shoulders. “I’ll let you pick your own buddies. But don’t slam the door too fast on Clay. He seems quite smitten with you. As he should be. You’re smart and beautiful. Even with that poor red nose.”

Right on cue, Tori had started sneezing. It was one time she had welcomed the need to blow her nose. Anything to stop Kate from talking about Clay Weber. Once she moved back to Rosey Corner, Tori would simply have to tell her to mind her own business.

Now Tori hurried past the gas pumps and into the store out of the wind. The warmth rushed out to meet her when she opened the door. They’d put in a furnace that kept the store warm, but they still kept a fire in the potbelly stove in the back corner where some of the folks liked to gather and catch up on the news. That’s where Clay Weber sometimes stood and watched her while she waited on customers. At times she could almost hear him thinking up new things to ask her to do.

But nobody was there now. Not even Graham. Her mother looked up from her account books to smile at Tori. “Go warm up.”

Tori held her hands out toward the stove, letting the heat embrace her. She was glad nobody else was in the store. Mondays were always slow, but they could count on Graham coming by. Then at noon, the men from over at the garage generally showed up for sandwiches and sodas. Clay was sometimes with them since he was friends with the owner.

He didn’t usually buy anything to eat, but more often than not, he’d buy some penny candy for his little sisters and then give Samantha a piece. Even when he didn’t buy the candy, Samantha still reached her little hands up to him. He looked comfortable as anything carrying her around the store, talking with her as though he understood her every jabbered word. He’d miss Samantha if he came in today.

But when she thought about it, Clay hadn’t been to the store for a while. She frowned and tried to remember how long. Not that it mattered. The bad weather could be keeping him away from Rosey Corner. Or maybe Clay had simply gotten the message. Finally. Maybe he was visiting Paulette again. Paulette had been dating a boy from Frankfort, but she made no secret of the fact she wouldn’t mind Clay pulling up to her house again.

That would be good. Good for all of them. But then all day long, Tori looked up every time the bell over the door jingled, wondering if it would be Clay coming in.

When the day passed without him showing up, a little finger of disappointment wiggled awake inside her. No, not disappointment, she told herself quickly. Worry. That was all it was. While she’d been pushing him away, they had been friends since school days. A person should be worried about a friend when he didn’t show up in his usual places.

At closing time, Tori cleaned out the onion bin and then went into the small water closet to wash her hands. When her eyes caught on her reflection in the mirror over the sink, she hooked her hair back behind her ears. It could be she should try to curl her hair. Maybe powder her nose.

What was she thinking? She stared at her face in the mirror. “Victoria Gale Harper, you have got to be out of your mind,” she whispered.

She jerked the string to turn off the light, glad for the dark that wrapped around her before she opened the door back out into the store. It made no difference how she looked. No difference at all. Or whether Clay Weber showed up at the store. She didn’t care. Not at all. That funny feeling in her stomach was simply because she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.