Josiah would pit Corra Jameson against any horse trader any day and take her side in the deal. His pulse hammered as he climbed to the wagon seat, and he checked the peppermints to make sure they hadn’t shattered. She’d turned him down flat on coming with him today, but she hadn’t thrown him out. Or come after him with the fire poker. He collected the reins and clucked Rena down Main Street.
Miss Jameson was the one he’d wanted all along. For Jess, of course. He just wished he’d worn his spurs to hold on to those fancy chair legs with.
Rena took the bend at a quick pace, and he let her have her head. The woman was right to insist he take her and the children to church. They hadn’t been since Maisie passed. The mare clopped sharp and quick along the road, as did thoughts of another woman in his home. But he had no option. Jess needed help, and he wouldn’t farm her out to live in town.
The sun bore straight down as he drove into the empty yard. Pop slouched in the porch rocker, chin on his chest. Fear shot Josiah off the wagon seat, and his boots pounded the steps. The old man drew up, blinking and palming his beard. Another scare like that and Josiah wouldn’t be fit for fiddlin’. His hands burned and flexed with the tension. The memory of Corra Jameson’s soft fingers fired up through his arms, and a jump in the creek became an unquenchable longing.
He looked around for Jess and Joe.
“Fishin’.” Pop jerked his chin toward the creek. “Joe wanted fried fish for supper. I agreed if he caught ’em.”
“Rusty with them?”
The shaggy head bobbed. Josiah wasn’t the only man on the place who needed shearing. A bushy brow arched over twinkling eyes. “You catch anything in town?”
The spark caught Josiah in the funny bone. Just like his pa to look like he’s dying one minute and make a joke the next. “Corra Jameson agreed to come. The boardinghouse owner’s sister-in-law.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I hauled the wagon all the way in for nothing. She wouldn’t come today.”
His pa huffed and toed the rocker. “That’d be asking too much.”
“She said something like that. I go back for her on Monday.”
The old rocker croaked like a toad. “You gonna tell ’em tonight?”
Josiah pulled the wrapped peppermint sticks from his vest pocket. “At supper.”
Leaving his pa to nap on the porch, he unhitched the mare and turned her out then hung the harness on the barn wall and peered into the first stall. He and Joe could each bed down in a corner. Wasn’t like they hadn’t slept out under the stars before. Pop, too. Depended on Corra Jameson and what she wanted. He’d haul Pop’s bed out so he wouldn’t have to sleep on the ground, if need be.
Josiah headed out through the back of the barn and cut across the meadow for the aspen grove. When he reached its dappled shade, he slowed until he came to the small whitewashed cross. Removing his hat, he took a knee. Scooped his hair from his eyes. Maisie would have had him trimmed up and presentable by now. His throat swelled, cutting off the words.
The wild rose he’d planted the first spring draped a pink bud over the crossbar. He rolled the brim of his hat and looked toward the creek where childish laughter rang through the scrub oak. “Jess looks just like you. But she’s comin’ a woman, and I can’t help her much beyond riding and roping and helping Pop cook when I can corral her long enough.” A chuckle stuck in his chest, unable to escape.
“I’ve hired someone to come and help us this summer.” He wouldn’t desecrate the place by mentioning Beatrice and her threats. “Help Jess be a lady and wear dresses and fix her hair and such.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I hope you don’t mind, but she’ll be takin’ our room and I’ll sleep in the barn while she’s here. Just for the summer. So Jess is ready come fall.”
He reached for the rosebud and lifted it with a calloused finger. “I love you, Maze. I’ll always love you.” He shoved his hat on and scrubbed a sleeve across his face then started back through the pasture.
That evening, Jess and Joe sat at the supper table like two stumps. Not a mumble or question between them over Aunt Beatrice’s threat and Miss Jameson’s arrival.
“She’s just here for the summer to help out. She’ll teach you things, Jess, and I need you to learn them.” He reached for her shoulder. “She’s not going to be your and Joe’s ma.” His daughter shoved up from her seat, her blue eye brimming like a flood pool in spring.
“You got that right, Pa. She ain’t gonna be our ma.”
The door to her room hit hard against the frame and he flinched.
Sunday evening, Corra calmly emptied the chest of drawers and packed her trunk while Letty tossed accusations across the room like stoneware. Mad. Ill. Taken leave of her senses. Pushing up from her knees, Corra gathered books and magazines from the nightstand. Letty snatched one and raised it in the air. The Last of the Mohicans.
“This is to blame. These novels have fired your imagination with fanciful tales of adventure and romantic nonsense, and now you’re off to the wilderness with a wild cowboy, of all things.”
Corra turned a steady eye on her younger sister. “Who said Josiah Hanacker was a good man with two children to raise and a crippled father?”
Letty puckered her lips until they turned white then tossed the book on the bed. Her flushed cheeks shone with tears. Corra came round the end of the bed and took her sister’s hands in her own. “The children’s aunt has threatened to take Mr. Hanacker’s daughter if he doesn’t raise her like a proper young lady.” Squeezing Letty’s fingers, Corra tugged, forcing Letty to look her in the eye. “If you were to take ill, would you ever have peace knowing Ali could be torn from the arms of her loving father?”
Letty blanched, her red-rimmed eyes staring as the question hit its mark.
“I will be only five miles away, and Mr. Hanacker has agreed to drive me and the children to church each Sunday.”
Letty sniffed and pulled a hand free to press her eyes with her apron.
Corra softened her voice. “Give me one week. If all is not as it should be by next Sunday, I will return to the boardinghouse.”
In spite of Letty’s twenty-six years, she looked like the frightened child she was the night their father died, leaving his wife and two daughters to manage alone. The memory tore at Corra’s heart, and she pulled Letty into her arms, fighting off her own last-minute misgivings. Was she doing the right thing, offering to help a motherless child? Or, as Letty feared, was she dashing off after a fancy of her own foolish heart?