Her smiling face looked back from her notes, her younger face, her happy face.
Can’t do this right now.
He closed the book and slid it back under the counter.
Bell Whatling waddled up to the front of the counter, arms folded across her fat belly, holding up her huge breasts. Her sad voice sounded well rehearsed, irritating. “Oh, Olen, me and the other girls were talking.”
“Yes, Bell, I could see that you were.”
The other ladies stood at a safe distance, both oozing concern, waiting for Bell to arrange things.
She propped her hands on her hips and leaned forward, determined. “Well, Olen, we’re not going to stand still and let you suffer. No need for you to argue about it. Me and the girls have made up our minds.” She leaned back with a nod toward the others.
Their tight lipped nods confirmed this.
“We’re going to help you around this place. We’ll take turns and be here six days a week.”
“The hell you say.” Olen stepped back and bumped the cash register. It chimed.
“Now, Olen, that’s what good neighbors do. They help out.”
As if prompted by fate, the bell over the entry jingled.
Willis.
Bell gasped, shocked by his brazen appearance.
All three women turned their backs, shunning him.
Willis cared nothing for these ladies. His face showed no sign of sorrow. His smiling eyes fixed on Olen like nothing had happened. He walked straight up to the counter.
The site of Willis filled Olen with an odd combination of rage, fear and love, all strong emotions that are often hard to separate, all slamming into his soul like an anchor, not letting go.
Olen knew what he wanted, that small package from the saddle and tack shop down in Carson City and the other one, the heavy wood box that had come all the way from Germany two days earlier.
He poked a thumb toward the back. “I’ll open the back door.” His voice shook from way down deep, a place Olen had never known before. “I don’t want you in my store no more.”
Olen thought he’d feel better having said this but he didn’t. He felt worse. His love anchor far outweighed all the rest.
Tears welled in Willis’s light blue eyes, coming from somewhere hidden deep inside. His head and shoulders slumped. He turned and obediently walked out. The bell signaling his departure had a distant ring.
The women huddled immediately and resumed their whispering, angry as a nest of hornets, too far away for Olen to hear their words.
Who cares?
He walked through the storeroom and lifted the heavy oak bar from the back door, a Willis Donner door. He opened the heavy oak door and Willis stood waiting. His sad eyes searched Olen, thinking what to say, maybe just now realizing Helfred had been taken. He'd obviously seen the others dressed in black.
How could he know, living way up there on the Perch? Olen stepped back and motioned toward the wooden box on the floor. The smaller cardboard box sat on top. He couldn’t look at Willis anymore.
Not right now.
Wood scraped briefly against the stone floor, Willis picking up the boxes. His boots walked back out to the loading dock.
Tears clouded Olen’s eyes and he closed the door. His knees gave out and he sat on the floor, weeping.
Willis didn’t know anything about what had happened. Olen finally realized, Willis had never known any of what came with the full moon.
“THAT TREE LOOKS LIKE it was made for that corner.” Carolyn Potter had never seen a more beautiful tree.
“Huh.” Jason had earned the right to be proud, having made many suggestions along the way.
The silver spruce filled a large hole in the corner of the living room, the corner nearest that big picture window and the wall that backed against the kitchen. The way the roof timbers rose from the wall toward the fireplace gave the tree added vertical dimension.
“All it needs is this.” She handed Jason a spun glass angel and lifted him toward the top of the tree. “Oh, you’re getting heavy.”
“Huh.” Jason stretched high and positioned the glass angel over the top shoot of the spruce. When they both knew the angel would stay, she lowered Jason and plugged in the lights.
The lights blinked on and they stepped back to admire their work. “You think Grandma will come?”
“You want her to?” Carolyn hoped she might.
Chapter Seventeen
Other folks had cleaned up the mess in Helfred’s house above the bank. Nobody had spoken to Olen about it. Phil Nason and Jim Embry had done the heavy lifting, moving Olen back into the loft above the store. Olen couldn’t sleep in Helfred’s house anyway, hard enough to go there and pack, feeling her presence. He’d only spent half a day there, separating things to take down to the store from things to leave behind.
Funny how things work.
Helfred had been unable to sleep in the loft, why they'd built the house. Now Olen couldn’t sleep in her house. Her good memories resided here in the store, in the loft.
They'd put her in the ground four days ago but he still saw her baking cookies up there in her kitchen. Even here in the store, he saw her up in her kitchen.
Phil Nason strolled into the store from the back rooms, back where the stair went up to the loft. “That should do it for me, Olen. Jim and his old woman are up there putting the last of your kitchen stuff away.”
“Thank you, Phil.” Olen poured them each a fresh cup of coffee from the pot on the potbellied stove. They sat at the round table near the stove and sipped.
Nice and warm.
Nason shook his head. “I miss her coffee.”
“Ya. She made good coffee, by golly.” He wished he'd paid more attention over all their years together.
“About your offer on the house, Nancy and I don’t feel right about it.”
“Got to
