“Mac McMurphy told me when I pointed you out once. That girl your daughter?”
“No.” Imogene closed her mouth behind the word with a finality that would have daunted even an only slightly more sensitive individual.
“She’s a looker, in a hoity-toity kind of way,” Harland went on.
“The young lady is married.”
“Yeah? I seen her out riding today with Nate Weldrick and that half-breed kid of his.” The sneering insinuation brought Imogene up short, and he stumbled to avoid bumping into her. They were several hundred feet from Addie’s house.
“Thank you, Mr. Maydley, that will be all.” She dug in her purse, took out a nickel, and tipped him. “Just set the boxes down. I can take them the rest of the way without your assistance.”
He looked her up and down impertinently in an attempt to regain face, but she was too tall, too unbending. He dropped the boxes in the dirt.
“You tell that
Imogene watched him go, her lips compressed, two white dents on either side of her nose appearing and disappearing as she breathed. “I so detest little men,” she muttered, and without taking her eyes from Maydley’s back, she bent down to grasp the twine of the boxes, clenched her teeth against the bite of it, and carried them the rest of the way home.
The smell of cornbread baking and beans simmering on the stove met her at the door. She shouldered her way in and set down her burden.
“That you?” Sarah called from the kitchen.
“It’s me.” Taking the chair by the stove, Imogene pulled off her gloves. Dark red creases marked the places where the twine had bitten into her fingers. Across one palm, the scar from the burn she’d received in her confrontation with Sam Ebbitt showed ridged and redder than usual. Imogene made a fist and then slowly spread her fingers; the hand no longer opened completely. She turned her hands palms down so she needn’t look at them, and held them near the stove.
Sarah came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. The heat from the stove pinked her cheeks prettily. “Look what Wolf and I did,” she said, pointing to a small feathery wreath over the bookcase. It was of pine, and the long needles thrust out in all directions, making it far from round. Nestled in the needles were bright scraps of fabric sewn into fat butterfly bows.
“You’ve had quite a busy day, haven’t you?”
Sarah ignored the edge in Imogene’s voice. “I asked Mrs. Glass, and she said that big old pine would never know me and Wolf had taken anything.”
“Wolf and I.”
Sarah looked dubious. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Anyway, do you like it?”
“It’s lovely,” Imogene said without much enthusiasm.
“You don’t like it.”
The schoolteacher heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry, my dear. I’m just tired, I suppose. I like it.”
Sarah walked to the window, rubbing her already dry hands with the towel. The sky was the clear gray of winter twilight, the bare elms etching it with black. Through the dark branches an early star twinkled. The yard had already gone into night, and Addie’s Victorian home loomed up out of the darkness like a lighthouse on the shore of a dark sea.
“It gets dark so early now.”
Imogene didn’t reply.
“Nate Weldrick came by to see Wolf today.”
“Ah. How paternal. Where is Wolf now?”
“Napping.” Sarah came over to perch on one of the boxes beside Imogene. “We went out for a ride with him. He gave me those.”
Imogene glanced at the bowl of dried apricots on the table. “Did you have a nice time?”
“I’m scared of horses, I didn’t want to ride it. It was one of those big ones that rolls its eyes at you.” Sarah stared out the window as she talked.
“Do you like Mr. Weldrick?”
Sarah pulled her thoughts back from the riverbank to look at her companion. The teacher’s face was carefully composed and gave no clue to her thoughts. Sarah picked up Imogene’s hand and pressed the scarred palm to her cheek.
“You’re so cool. It feels good.”
“Are you feverish?” Imogene asked in alarm.
“No, it’s from the stove. I don’t think I like Mr. Weldrick,” she went on, to answer Imogene’s original question. “He was nice, though. Not to Wolf. If I didn’t know already, I’d never guess he was Wolf’s pa by the way they act around each other. But maybe I like him okay. He’s a man.” Sarah waved her hand as if this explained all.
“Your brother and Mac are men; Lutie’s Fred is a man too,” Imogene reminded her. “If Mr. Weldrick is boorish, his sex is no excuse.”
“I don’t know.” Sarah played with Imogene’s fingers, arranging them, crablike, on her knee. “He said it was unnatural, two women alone with nobody to talk to-you know.”
“Yes. I do know. No man to talk to. How empty our lives must be without the intellectual stimulation that the likes of Mr. Weldrick could provide. I suppose his sparkling wit and fascinating manner kept you spellbound?” Imogene had risen to stalk about the room; she snapped a picture book shut and turned to Sarah.
“No-o,” Sarah said carefully, choosing her words, “but I know what he meant. We’re just women.”
Imogene said nothing.
“It’s unnatural.”
Imogene forced herself to be still and returned to the chair beside Sarah. “Do you like him?” she asked gently. “Being with him, does it make you happy?”
“No,” Sarah said.
“Then there’s an end to it.”
Sarah bit her lip and gazed out through the dying light to the river.
24
SNOW WAS FALLING IN TINY DRY FLAKES, A DUSTING OF WHITE already on the ground. The wind swooped down from the mountain slopes in sudden gusts, sending the snow into white whorls and pushing wavelets of white across the frozen lawn. Slate-colored clouds hid the mountain peaks, and the Truckee River ran gray in sympathy.
Sarah watched out the window, the snow quietly cloaking the brown grass and leaving a white tracery on the tree branches.
Wolf pushed up beside her, nudging under her arm. “Can we play at Mrs. Whitaker’s today?”
She stroked the coarse black hair. “Not today, today is for staying indoors. Home.” She looked around, eyes soft with contentment. The bare makeshift look of the rooms was gone, and homely touches warmed the house: a rag rug on the floor, crocheted doilies on the chair arms, white-and-blue sprigged curtains in the windows. “I like being inside when it snows; I always have, even when I was a little girl. I could be warm and snug and look out the window and watch the snow come down.”
“Can I go outside?”
“A little later. Imogene has half-day on Saturdays, maybe she’ll take you out when she gets home. If the snow gets deep enough, maybe we’ll make a snowman.”
The snow was ankle-deep by the time Imogene, red-nosed and smiling at an all-white world, came home from school. She and Sarah bundled Wolf in sweaters, coats, and scarves until he could scarcely move, took him
