Olivia's Mine (20 page)

“If I’m not at work tomorrow McMichael will
make you let me out,” Frank said.

“Give your head a shake, Frank. You’re not
that important to him.”

“I’d never really do anything to Olivia. I
love her. I was just mad at her since she ran off.”

“Well that’s a start,” the officer said.
“Just be thankful it appears she has just run off for the wedding.
Keep acting the way you’re acting and she’ll be going away for
good. I speak from experience. I was terribly jealous of my wife,
with no reason. I kept pushing her. It was just one more thing she
didn’t want to deal with. She had more on her plate than I knew.
She eventually had enough of it and left for good. It wasn’t
pretty. It was a hard lesson to learn. I’m trying to give you some
advice. Whether you take it or not is up to you. The time you have
with your wife is precious. In the brief time I have known you, I
have seen a change in you, a change in who your friends are. You
might want to turn yourself around and go back on that path you
first came here on. I believe you when you say you won’t harm her.
I think it was the drink talking. I don’t know if I believe you
when you say you love her. I don’t even know if you respect her
right now. You’re certainly not acting like it. I’ll be watching
you, all the same. Now about the other one...”

“I don’t know if I can make the same promise
about her father. I hate him.”

“Well, I don’t know if I can let you out
then. You think about that. Remember, I know about that too.”

Frank spent three nights in jail before the
sergeant relented and let him out. He had a lot of time to think.
He thought about what Rudy had said, but while the officer’s
intentions were virtuous, Frank did not take his advice.

McMichael had said no foreman of his should
be spending time in jail and that while Frank was going to be lucky
enough to be able to keep his job this time, there would be no next
time and any thoughts of a promotion were out of the question.

Frank began to simmer on the boil once
again.

“So tell me again about this store you want
to open,” William Bower said, “and why you can’t do it? Is there a
need for one? Have you done your homework?”

The wedding reception for Emily was in full
swing. It had been a beautiful wedding, and Emily had been
absolutely thrilled to see Olivia. There had been over two hundred
guests invited. Olivia looked almost as radiant as the bride in a
new blue taffeta bridesmaid dress, stylishly cut, that her parents
had surprised her with. Feeling a draft, she adjusted the matching
shawl across her shoulders. When she first saw the dress, she was
concerned that it might be too small, but the stress of the past
couple of months had actually brought her back down to her normal
weight. Lucy had commented that she wasn’t eating enough, and now
Olivia saw that her friend had been right. If she had dropped that
much weight unconsciously, she thought, she had better pay better
attention to her diet when she returned. She patted the back of her
newly coiffed hair. She still couldn’t believe she had actually
been to the beauty parlour earlier that morning. What a treat! Of
course there was a salon back at the Beach, but she never had the
money to go on a whim.

“The problem is Mr. McMichael. He owns
everything. He controls everything. There are a lot of things we
can’t get at the store, that the people could really use, but he
won’t bring them in.”

“Like what?”

“Like the Eaton's catalogue. It’s a catalogue
that’s available across Canada. He had it for a while, but he
couldn’t fix the prices, so he stopped carrying it. There were a
lot of items available in it that the women wanted but couldn’t get
in town. Household furnishings, all the modern appliances and lots
of clothes for the whole family. If I had a store I’d definitely
offer it to the customers. The best part about it is you have this
wonderful inventory and don’t have to carry the stock. The
customers order it through the store, and when it arrives, they pay
for it. Eaton's has a full return policy. It’s true the margins are
small, but there’s really not much risk involved. It takes a while
to get here, but at least it’s a possibility for everyone.

“What else?” William asked.

“Well, we’re pretty much held hostage as far
as food supplies go because there’s only one place to shop, so to
speak. Take for instance the Oriental community. They would like to
see more spices brought in. By the time McMichael brings them up
from Vancouver, the prices are so inflated they can’t afford them.
But there’s no where else to go unless they want the expense of
visiting the city. They wish he’d stock more dried goods,
particularly dried fish.”

“Bit of a monopoly is it? I thought that was
illegal,” William replied. “Do you think you could run it, and
staff it, and keep the customers happy? Seriously?”

“Yes, Lucy will help me, she needs a
job.”

Olivia explained to her father the events
that had transpired in Lucy’s life.

“Everyone loves her; she’ll make a wonderful
clerk. I could start her part-time if I had to, until things got
going.”

“And McMichael, he won’t give her a job?”

“He thinks she’s too fragile.”

“And is she?” he asked.

“What do you think?”

William looked across the room and saw Lucy
deep in conversation with his brother Aaron. Since Aaron had little
time for silly people, no matter how beautiful they may be, and he
seemed to be deeply engrossed, William assumed she wasn’t at all
fragile. The fact that she was drinking scotch one for one with
Aaron and seemed no worse for her efforts, also didn’t go without
notice.

“And what about the bookkeeping?”

“I thought I’d do that.”

William laughed heartily.

“I don’t recall math being your strong suit
Olivia. You’re more the creative type. Oh don’t pout, it’s much
more lucrative being the entrepreneur. What about that Sarah girl?
Isn’t she a bookkeeper?”

“Yes, but she’s McMichael’s bookkeeper.”

“Ah, I see. Well you never know, maybe she’s
ready for a change. He doesn’t actually own the town Olivia. He
just likes to control it. I think your idea has merit. Let me have
a quiet conversation with your Uncle Aaron and see what we can do.
He mentioned he was looking for a new venture up north. Maybe this
would be the thing for him to get his feet wet, you never
know.”

“But McMichael wouldn’t rent me the property
so I could go into competition with him, and he controls
everything, just like you said. And then there’s Frank’s job to
consider. Perhaps I’m not being realistic here.”

“I gather Frank doesn’t have the desire to
enter into this business with you?” her father asked.

“No, he’d probably divorce me. He’s afraid
McMichael would fire him.”

William forced himself to remain
expressionless. The worst of that outcome, he thought to himself,
would be that Olivia would have to return to Seattle.

“But it’s something you’d really like to
do?”

“Yes father,” Olivia admitted. “It is. I know
I can do it.”

“He’s not going to be happy about it.”

“Frank?” Olivia said. “I know. But I need to
do something for myself.”

“I meant McMichael. How to you plan to handle
that?”

“With my head held high, like a Bower always
does. I learned a lot from you, from the conversations at the
dinner table over the years. I know I need to be determined. I know
I need to be tough. I just don’t have the money to do it. Frank’s
got me on an allowance that barely buys groceries.”

“You don’t have a joint bank account?” her
father asked. “Your mother and I have one, that way she can get
what she needs when she needs it. He doesn’t trust you enough for
that?”

“No,” Olivia said. “I don’t have a bank
account at all.”

William Bower held the rage he was feeling
deep inside. His daughter was being treated in a manner unbecoming
a Bower by that husband of hers, and he wasn’t going to stand for
it. He hadn’t liked Frank much before the wedding, and now he liked
him even less.

“Well then maybe we should send your brother
Jason back with you to take a look around. Since he came back from
the war he’s been dabbling in real estate for your Uncle Aaron.
He’s good at it too. He wants to get into developments with your
brother Billy, on the land acquisitions side. I think they’ll make
quite the go of it. He’s a changed man since he returned, Jason is.
He has a totally different outlook, a different value of life.”

Olivia looked over at her brother Jason who
was attempting to dance with Sarah. He had lost a lot of the extra
weight he had been carrying around since his teenaged years, and
for the first time in her life, she noticed that her oldest brother
was really quite handsome. Since his leg had been injured during
the war (he really had run away and joined the army), his mobility
was somewhat challenged. He needed to use a cane to steady his
walk. But there he was, making a brave attempt at dancing with
Sarah, who of course was quite smitten with him. The unusual thing
was, this time the object of her desire seemed to be equally
enamoured with Sarah.

“I take it McMichael has no idea you are my
daughter yet?”

“None that I know of.”

“Well then, let’s try to keep it that way. I
want you to pretend your brother is just an acquaintance you ran
into on the boat, nothing more. Do you think you can convince your
gang of merry kidnappers to keep to the story?”

“Well,” Olivia sighed, “Sarah might be a
problem, she’ll want to tell everyone about Jason. The rest will
think it a great adventure. Lucy will love the intrigue of it all
and Frenchie’s a pirate at heart.”

William laughed heartily as he saw Lucy
getting more drinks for herself and Aaron. “I think you might have
that observation backwards, my dear.”

“Thank you for allowing them to come and
enjoy the wedding,” Olivia said. “It was kind of you to invite
them.”

“Not at all,” William said. “Without them,
there would have been a very important person missing from the
wedding party. I am eternally grateful to all of them. Now if you
will excuse me, I see Frenchie wants to dance with your
mother...again. I’d better go help her out, or I’ll never hear the
end of it.”

Olivia had a truly wonderful time with her
family and her friends. When she came home four days later, she
found Frank acting quite sheepish. She eventually learned about the
letter he received from her father, but not the contents of it.
Whatever it said, it seemed to have put the fear of God into Frank.
It also unfortunately widened the distance between her and her
husband. He was cold and distant, and began spending more and more
time at work, preferring to spend his nights there, or alone on the
couch.

“Well,” Olivia thought pragmatically, “if I’m
going to be on my own, then at least I will have a job to keep me
busy. And I’ll be able to afford a lawyer, should it come to
that.”

William had indeed sent Jason along to scout
out the possibilities of a store, and Olivia’s dream was becoming a
reality in a series of clandestine manoeuvres.

McMichael was away in Vancouver, taking a
look at private schools for his daughter. He was still determined
she was going to one despite Maggie’s efforts to convince him
otherwise. It was a stroke of luck that he was out of town, but out
of town he was.

Jason, upon his arrival, had said to anyone
who asked that he was a war vet just taking a little time to
recuperate from his injuries. Aside from spending some time at the
café with Sarah, who everyone knew chased after every new man in
town, he kept a low profile. He took a look around, found an old
building that was vacant and quite suitable and took note of it. He
did not make contact with Olivia. He never ran into Frank, not that
Frank would have recognized the skinny man he had become,
particularly with his beard and moustache that he sported pre-war
now shaven clean. Frank had never paid much attention to him back
in Seattle. He thought Jason was a bad seed. Jason returned to
Seattle within a couple of days, slipping out with the same lack of
fanfare that had greeted him. Sarah had decided that if keeping
Olivia’s secret meant she could see Jason again, then that was what
she would do.

William and Aaron had decided between them to
put up the money for the store, and leased the property directly
from the government, who of course, were always more than willing
to help out the Bower brothers of Seattle any way they could. There
was a lot of ore moving across the U.S.A. on the railroad William
had been instrumental in building. The facility they rented was
technically owned by the post office, not the mine. The paperwork
would not fly by McMichael. The space had been used as a storage
facility before the new post office was built.

Next, the brothers arranged for a line of
credit between the store and the Eaton's Company, and copies of the
fall and winter catalogue were to arrive as soon as Frenchie could
get down to Vancouver to pick them up.

This would all have been impossible to do had
McMichael not been away for quite some time. All Olivia knew from
Sarah was that he had originally taken Christina down to her new
school and that something had come up, causing him to be away
indefinitely.

Although excited by the prospect of running
her own store, Olivia was nervous about what to tell Frank. Her
feelings ran from great excitement to absolute dread and back again
as she saw the store taking shape. It had been almost impossible to
keep the opening of the store a secret from him, but with McMichael
away he had been even busier at the mine and hadn’t been paying her
all that much attention. Frank had noticed the premises rented but
assumed that his boss knew all about it. Now however, there was no
getting around it, he was going to find out. Tomorrow. Jason had
assured Olivia that it would all be taken care of, but Olivia was
nervous all the same. Lucy had decided she wasn’t leaving Olivia
alone, and moved in, taking over the couch and claiming she had
“internal women’s problems” and couldn’t possibly be left alone for
a few days since Frenchie had taken Maggie down to the city. This
also forced Frank back into the marital bed, his back icily turned
to Olivia's.