Climie had slumped over in the pew where she sat. Fainted from the sheer force of her husband’s hypocrisy?
Lark half rose to go to her.
“Young woman,” Deacon Wiesel fairly roared, “sit down!”
“Your wife, sir.” Lark shook off Forsythia’s restraining hand and stood to her full stature, taller than the deacon himself if he hadn’t been in the pulpit. “She’s fainted.”
“She has merely fallen asleep. You should concern yourself with hearing the word of the Lord and leave my family to me.”
Mrs. Smutly, the woman on the piano bench who thought Deacon Wiesel ordered the sun to rise in the morning, gave a firm nod and cast a disapproving glance at the slender woman collapsed in the front pew.
Lark once again matched Wiesel glare for glare, then pushed past her two sisters and strode up the outside aisle toward the exit as if she were stomping ants. She ignored the scowls she could feel stabbing her and let the outside door click shut behind her. Shaking her head, Larkspur sucked in a deep breath, pausing at the top step to inhale the clean, quiet air.
“‘Onward, Christian soldiers . . .’” The closing hymn floated out through the walls and windows, giving no hint of what had gone on inside.
Or what was going on inside of her.
She had to get away before the congregation was released from the evening service. Deacon Wiesel would make his way up the aisle to stand at the door and greet everyone, and she didn’t want to be here when that happened.
Starting down the walk to the street, she heard her siblings exiting behind her.
“You’ve done it now.” Her brother Anders, the eldest of the Nielsen clan, joined her. “I’m going back to the store. You’re welcome to join me. Dealing with numbers always calms you down.”
Larkspur shook her head. “If someone came in, I might bite their head off.”
“Why can’t you just ignore him? Or stop going to church?”
“That would really do it. Both Pa and Ma would be shuddering in their graves.”
“Wait, Lark,” Delphinium, next in age below Larkspur, called from behind them. “Let’s walk together.”
“I don’t think you want to hear or even feel what I am thinking, Del.”
“We know what you’re thinking, but it doesn’t do any good.”
“Look, several of us from the board have written to the head church office requesting that they send us a new pastor,” Anders said. “Till then, we’ll have to ignore him.”
“Ignore when his poor abused wife keels over in the front pew?” Lark demanded.
Anders stopped at the wooden porch of Nielsen Mercantile, which had been started by their father. “So what are you going to do, then?”
“I’m going home, that’s what I’m doing.” Larkspur turned to her sisters. “You can go back there and make nice with everybody, but I’m finished.” She stomped ahead of them, the other three trailing behind.
“What are we going to do?” Delphinium whispered. “When she gets like this, she won’t back down.”
On the corner of the next block, rowdy piano music poured out of the swinging door of a saloon, inviting passersby to come on in. The sisters automatically stepped off the boardwalk to move to the other side of the street.
“Deacon Wiesel already blames Lark for all his problems. He thinks she influenced Climie and turned her against him. Now he’s going to come after us, and if he doesn’t do that, he’ll at least tell everybody else how horrible we are, and there go our reputations right down the drain.” That was Lilac, the youngest of the sisters at nineteen.
“Reputation isn’t the most important thing here,” Forsythia’s gentle voice cut in. She caught up to Larkspur and put her hand through her sister’s arm. Forsythia said nothing more, just walked quietly with her for a few moments.
A measure of peace seeped into Lark’s bones bit by bit, radiating from her sister’s spirit. She lowered her stiff shoulders with a sigh. “I just couldn’t sit there anymore.”
“I know.”
“When I saw Climie crumple . . . Isn’t there anything else we can do?”
Before Forsythia could respond, someone burst through the saloon doors and charged across the street in the waning light, nearly running into them.
“You gotta help me! I’m in bad trouble.” Their baby brother, seventeen-year-old Jonah, grabbed Larkspur’s hand and tried to drag her across the street.
“Jonah George Nielsen!” Larkspur jerked her hand free. “What in the world do you think you’re doing?”
He fell to his knees, clutching her skirt. “He’s a new man in town, and he’s got all our money, and Bernie gave him a deed, and he’s got that too and . . .” His words tripped over each other, tumbling into a cacophony of sound.
Shaking her head, Lark pulled him back to his feet. “How many times have you promised me you would stay out of that place?”
“Just this once! All I ask is that you come help me. You know cards. We were just playing for a good time, but I think he’s cheating.” He sucked in a deep breath. “You could stop him.”
Lark sighed. “The stupidest thing I ever did was teach you to play cards.”
“He would have learned from someone else.” Delphinium had caught up and rolled her eyes. “Come on, Jonah, just come home with us, and—”
“I can’t. Jasper lost his horse and saddle, and Bernie bet his land.”
“And lost it. Won’t you fellows ever learn?” Del asked.
“He’s cheating, I know he is.”
“Makes no never mind. Had you stayed out of the saloon, you wouldn’t be in this mess.” Larkspur stared at her youngest brother. Were those tears in his eyes? Was he that afraid? She noticed details no one else did, and that tended to help her win at cards, but she’d promised herself not to help him again.
But since, according to Deacon Wiesel, she was a fallen woman anyway—and worthless, at that—she straightened her spine and sucked in a deep breath. Maybe giving someone their comeuppance would be a relief to her feelings right now.
Turning to her sisters, she said
