Collision of The Heart (12 page)

Chapter Eleven

B
y Tuesday afternoon, when Mia had heard nothing from the sheriff regarding Jamie or even from Ayden, who had managed to leave earlier than breakfast preparation, Mia decided to take action on her own. It wouldn’t be the first time she had investigated a probable crime after lawmen seemed too slow or altogether disinclined to do so.

Bundled in her hooded coat, boots, and gloves, she told Mrs. Goswell she was going out, then tramped through the frozen slush and biting wind to the telegraph office. Inside, the depot steamed from a kettle whistling atop the stove, and the telegraph machine chattered like a collection of squirrels. At his desk, the telegrapher raised one finger to signal he would be with her in a minute without stopping his continual motion with the key. Instinctively, Mia listened to the dots and dashes coming down the wires. She had learned Morse code when writing about women telegraphers. The messages she managed to decipher sounded like frantic communications to and from passengers stranded there in Hillsdale. One or two sounded angry, a father’s demand for his daughter to come home, as though she could obey without a train to carry her. Another was from a frantic wife, and a third to a husband who seemed not to understand why his wife hadn’t simply gotten on the next train.

She supposed she was as good as eavesdropping, but this was work, grist for her journalistic mill to grind down into a story. Nothing was wrong with seeking information. She didn’t know names to reveal. Yet she turned away from the telegrapher to pretend she was not listening to the messages, as though she were ashamed.

And as her eyes scanned the room, she noticed a man in a railroad uniform tucked in a corner behind the stove, his hands wrapped around a cup. Apparently he had come into the depot to warm himself. Yet something about his appearance, the tilt of his head, the way he raised the cup, struck a note of familiarity.

She took a step back, considering leaving to return at another time, but the telegrapher called to her, and running would have looked more suspicious than staying.

“I have one telegram to send to a number of people.” She pulled a sheet of paper from her portfolio and laid it on the desk. “How soon can you get these out?”

“We get them out immediately, miss.” The telegrapher smiled at her. “But this will cost you.”

“Of course.”

And worth every penny if she got good answers—or any answers. She would make the money back and then some once she sold the article.

She paid the fee. With a surreptitious glance back, she left the depot to return to the Goswell house and her writing. The slush seemed more difficult to navigate on the walk home, the air colder. She tucked her chin into her collar and trudged on. In Boston, she would have been able to stay that way no matter how long her walk. In Hillsdale, half a dozen people called to her. Most simply greeted her. Two wanted to chat. An acquaintance from college expressed delight in seeing her return to Hillsdale, then rushed off to her job inside the stone courthouse collecting documents from attorneys and making certain they reached the right persons for cases to be filed or settled.

As Mia continued toward the church, someone else called to her. She paused and saw the stationer approaching her, a knitted cap low enough on his forehead it nearly covered his gray eyebrows. Mia’s stomach performed a few pirouettes.

“I haven’t been near your shop, Mr. Phelps. Promise.” She grinned at him.

He laughed loudly enough for the bark to echo off the buildings. “You know you’re welcome any time now. But I saw you and thought I’d bring you these to help write those stories I’ve been hearing about.” He fished in the capacious pocket of his overcoat and withdrew a handful of pencils.

Mia’s laugh was the one to ring around the street this time. Passersby stopped to smile or stare, including a man a hundred feet away, whom she swore looked like the railroad worker from the telegraph office, but when she turned her head to get a better look, the man had vanished between two buildings.

She returned her attention to the stationer. “You are so gracious.”

“Well, my dear child, if we don’t forgive people who do wrong, we will lose our humanity.”

“Thank you.” She kissed him on the cheek, tucked the pencils inside her portfolio, and bade him good-bye.

Forgiveness. That was the problem—she could not forgive Ayden for betraying her heart.
If only he would ask for forgiveness instead of acting as though he didn’t need it.

But all those years ago, Mr. Phelps hadn’t said anything about the person asking for mercy. He had urged the lawman to let her go while she was still defiant about her minor theft. That was something to ponder . . . but not now. For now, she wanted to look out for that railroad worker who appeared so familiar.

All the way home, Mia kept glancing over her shoulder. Although she saw no one, she decided to tell Ayden or Fletcher.

Neither Ayden nor Fletcher arrived at the Goswell house before Mia climbed to her room. Neither did she see them the next morning. She thought about paying a call on the sheriff, but considering how he’d dismissed her notions earlier, she suspected he would simply lay her suspicions down to too much imagination.

She holed up in the sitting room instead of worrying about vanishing railroad workers and began to write her articles. By midafternoon, her article on the train wreck and the aftermath of how the town came together to help the stranded passengers was finished. As for her articles on women students, she would finish that the next day, after her meeting with the two students who requested her to interview them. While she awaited information on the abducted child, she began to write the article. By Friday, when she got onto an eastbound train, she could send a telegram to her editor and inform the lady she was returning with three articles in hand.

By Friday, the sheriff could return the child to his family. By Friday, Ayden and Charmaine would be engaged. By Friday, Rosalie and Fletcher would be engaged. By Friday, all would be well.

All would be well with everyone except Mia. Her work in Hillsdale would be done, and she would return to Boston, her heart breaking all over again.

Maybe if she made friends, life would not be so lonely during the few hours she wasn’t working. People at church were friendly enough, but being a single female making her own way in the world was difficult when most ladies lived at home or with husbands.

Being a single female was difficult in Hillsdale. Her college classmates who lived there had all married. Some still worked outside their homes. Others, like Genevieve, had found ways to use their education in their homes. All seemed content with their places in life.

“I thought I was, too.” Mia rubbed her right wrist with her left hand. “I’m getting everything I want.”

So why did she feel like laying her head on the desk and weeping or running through the snow until she no longer possessed the strength to weep?

The answer lay before her in the neatly written pages of her article on the wreck. For eighteen months, she had kept herself too busy to remember the warmth of being part of a family, a community. In less than a week, the warmth of the Goswell family, the generosity of the townspeople, and the realization that she need only be alone because she chose to be had drawn her back to safety like a momma cat shooing her wandering offspring home. For the first time in a year and a half, Mia felt sheltered and loved as she hadn’t felt since Ayden told her he wasn’t going to Boston after all.

Ayden didn’t love her enough. He loved his career more.

Mia glanced at the neatly stacked papers on the secretary and smiled with a twist to her lips. “Nor did you love him enough or you would have stayed.”

For eighteen months, she had blamed Ayden for not going with her. He had blamed her. They had both been wrong, and now the damage was done. Ayden would be engaged in a few days, and she would no longer have to chase story after story to make a respectable living for herself. She would receive a salary. She might even be able to purchase a little house.

A week ago, that idea sounded wonderful. She could have a cat or two, grow flowers, prepare her own meals when she liked—after coming home to a building void of other human voices with which to converse, someone with whom she could share the joys or sorrows of her day.

A knock sounded on the sitting room door, and Rosalie called, “Coming out to sled with us?”

A cottage void of someone asking her to come out and play. She hadn’t played since her last summer in Michigan, when the Goswell family had taken her along to Lake Michigan to sail and fish in the crystal-clear blue water and bask in sunshine on the sugary sand.

“Yes, I’m coming.” Mia set a book on the completed article to keep it from being knocked on the floor and scattered or damaged and opened the door to a sparkling-eyed Rosalie.

Rosalie seized her arms and hugged her. “I’m so glad you’re coming. Remember the last time we went sledding?”

“Didn’t we end up breaking the sled and nearly our necks on a tree?”

“And Pa forbade me to ever go sledding without Ayden again.” Rosalie executed a pirouette in the middle of the hall, nearly knocking down a wall sconce with her outstretched arms. “I wonder if he’ll change his mind about that once I’m married.” She sang the last word, then scampered to the steps. “Come up to our room. I’ve found an old skirt you can wear so you don’t get your good clothes dirty or risk damaging them.”

“Rosalie, you’re at least three inches taller than I am.” Protesting, Mia followed nonetheless.

“I haven’t always been. This is old, but it’s a delicious deep pink, so it will look lovely on you. Ma had it packed in lavender in the attic. I don’t think she gets rid of anything.”

“And a good thing that was with little Jamie here.” Mia hesitated on the landing. “Will he be all right here?”

“Fletcher says we need to carry on as though nothing out of the ordinary is happening.” Rosalie laughed at Mia’s start. “Of course he told me. We don’t have secrets.” She lifted her skirt and charged up the second flight, calling back, “I learned from Ayden that keeping secrets from one’s intended is a terrible idea.”

The crux of the gulf between Mia and Ayden. He hadn’t confided in her that he didn’t want to leave Hillsdale or why. That he hadn’t wanted to leave didn’t matter as much as why he hadn’t told her. Now she would never know.

Ayden, with Charmaine’s assistance, had avoided interacting with her for two days. When he hadn’t been teaching classes or tutoring students at risk of failing his courses, he had been at Charmaine’s house, even assisting in baking pastries to serve hungry college students and children during the sledding party.

“You are so right.” Mia spoke too softly for Rosalie to hear her.

She joined Ayden’s sister in the room they were sharing. Rosalie had laid out a dress with the wide, ruffled skirt from a few years earlier. Although it was heavy cotton instead of wool, the layers of petticoats and ruffles would make it warm.

“Hurry.” Rosalie danced from foot to foot as though she were ten and not nearly twenty. “Fletcher will be here to escort us in just a few minutes.”

Mia began to hurry out of her pretty but practical blue wool dress with its buttons up the front. “He’s going sledding with us?”

“Probably not actually sledding. He’ll be there to see that nothing rough occurs. The college boys can get a bit rowdy at times. Here, let me help.” Rosalie sent the folds of the pink dress billowing over Mia’s head. “I’ll do up the buttons for you. You are so pretty, Mia. Did I tell you Charmaine isn’t coming?”

Mia stiffened her face to keep her expression neutral. “Why not?”

“Her father doesn’t approve.” Rosalie took on an affected tone. “She may go sledding alone with Ayden after he proposes to her. Otherwise, this is too undignified.”

“I see.” Mia’s fingers fumbled with buttons on the dress sleeves. “Then I presume Ayden isn’t either?”

“I hope so. He has the sled. Now hurry, hurry, hurry.”

By the time Fletcher Lambert rang the front bell, Mia and Rosalie were swathing themselves in hats and scarves and mittens.

The deputy glanced from one of them to the other and laughed. “I can’t tell the two of you apart.”

“I’m taller.” Rosalie kissed his cheek.

He turned red and pretended to fend her off. “Bold wench.”

She laughed. He laughed. They looked so happy Mia’s insides cracked like limestone beneath a hammer’s blow. The suggestion that perhaps she should stay home hovered on her lips. As though she read that thought, Rosalie grasped Mia’s hand and dragged her outside.

It was a cold, clear afternoon with an inch or two of new snow from the night before turning everything a sparkling white. The snowman Rosalie had built with the Herring children had lost his hat to a burden of snow. Mia paused to pick up the battered felt hat and placed it atop the sculpture’s pate. When she straightened, she caught sight of Rosalie and Fletcher stealing a quick kiss beside a massive maple tree in the front yard, and from the corner of her eye, she noticed a shadow flickering around the end of the house.