Promise of Yesterday (16 page)

He realized it meant he wouldn’t see Marylu in the mornings.

“Sure do have a way with furniture,” Marylu said. “The way you got those repairs done at the hotel. Mr. Shillito was impressed, too. He won’t be happy to lose you. Cooper will be glad to see you. And Miss Jenny.”

Chester looked hard at her profile.

“Zedikiah would be missing you, too.”

When she turned her head, he sent her a knowing smile, and the way she jerked her head forward again, intent on the horse’s head and then the scenery that surrounded them, only confirmed that Marylu spoke for everyone but herself. It amused him that she found it so difficult to express her own wants.

He chuckled and stretched his arms up in the air. Then, as casually as possible, he settled his left arm on the back of the wagon. Her back brushed up against him with the swaying of the wagon. If she noticed, she didn’t let on a mite.

Chester insisted on walking to the hotel from Jenny’s house since it was dark when they got back to Greencastle, and Marylu finally agreed. From her place at the window, she watched him rub down the horse and give it grain, his body nothing more than flashes of white from his shirt and the horse’s white stockings and blaze face glowing in the night. She pressed her forehead against the cool glass, surprised and pleased at the swiftness of the change in him. The Lord’s doing, she knew. Change always came about easiest when the soil of a heart is tilled and loosened for planting.

She pressed her hands to her cheek at the memory of his kiss on her palm and the way he’d planted his arm on the wagon bench behind her. She could not deny the protective feeling she received by his gesture. She had savored every moment of the ride home, quiet talk of nothing more than sunsets and mountains, crops and farmers.

When he came close to the window where she stood and raised his hand, she sighed and blew out the lantern, then crept through the house to her room. It didn’t take long before she heard a light knock. She smiled. Miss Jenny would have heard her and want to know everything. She answered as the second knock echoed around the room.

Jenny raised her lantern. “A smile is what I’d hoped to see on your face.”

Marylu stepped back, and Jenny squeezed by her and set her lantern on the table before sliding into the chair. Marylu turned to her friend, hands on hips. “Can’t a body get some sleep before doing the talking?”

Jenny laughed. “You wouldn’t sleep a wink, and you know it.”

Marylu settled herself on the foot of her bed. “It’s true enough.”

“So you found him?”

“On the road from Mercersburg. He was walking.” Jenny tilted her head. “And?”

Marylu savored the story, as much to privately relive the surge of hope as to tease her friend. “We talked, and he told me about the murder he was rumored to have committed.”

Jenny listened to the entire story without interrupting. When Marylu mentioned the kiss, her friend’s eyes rounded in excitement.

Marylu hid a yawn, but Jenny caught the action and matched it with a yawn of her own. They shared a giggle.

Jenny got to her feet and reclaimed the lantern. “I’m so happy for you.”

Marylu’s mind went back to her conversation with Aaron Walck, and something else, too. “Tomorrow night is the show.” She needed to get Jenny’s new dress finished up, which meant she would need to work extra hard at the hotel to gain enough time to get the sewing done.

Jenny nodded. “It will be fun.”

There lacked the ring of conviction in her voice, and Marylu knew her friend both dreaded the night and looked forward to it. For herself, she had hoped that Aaron Walck would break off with Sally Worth and run to the dress shop to ask Miss Jenny, but Marylu realized he would probably be too much of a gentleman for such a thing.

She allowed her friend to leave with a whispered, “Sweet dreams,” before she remembered Zedikiah.

“Jenny,” her whisper shot through the dark. “Is Zedikiah with Cooper?”

The lantern in Jenny’s hand cast dancing shadows across her face. She raised it. “No. He left right after you took the wagon to go after Chester.”

Marylu thought on that as she settled down for the evening. The news took the edge of joy from her day as she imagined the boy back out on a drinking binge.

Chester’s feet protested the walk down Carlisle toward the center square of Greencastle, where he turned left. Antrim House seemed a long way up Baltimore Street to his tired body. The ride from Mercersburg had been worth it, though, not only to spare his body the walk but also for the promise his conversation with Marylu held. She thought him brave and courageous. It brought peace to his troubled mind.

And when he had kissed her palm …

She’d been pleased. He was sure of it.

When he finally pushed open the door to his old room, he was relieved to find it empty of Zedikiah. Surely the boy wouldn’t deny him a couple of nights on the floor, since he’d done the same thing for him. Chester removed his shirt and stretched out on the floor, leaving the bed for its rightful owner. He released a deep, satisfied sigh.

In the dark he smiled. Then frowned as a scratching sound caught his ear. He stilled. Silence ensued. He curled on his side and closed his eyes again.

Another scrape, louder than the last, jerked him upright. Dread churned deep in his stomach. Zedikiah’s face filled his mind and with it a sense of guilt. He should have known as soon as he found the room empty that the boy would be out doing something he shouldn’t. Being a hotel, though, it could be nothing more than a restless guest. Chester strained his ear in an effort to pinpoint the direction from which the sound originated.

Out in the hallway, he slipped the door to the outside open a crack. The sound of ragged breathing came to him. He could make out the outline of someone. “Zedikiah?”

The image jerked in answer to the whispered question.

Chester swung the door wider. “Who’s there?”

“Mr. Chester, that you?”

Chester’s heart raced. “Scare me.”

“I thought you were going to be gone longer,” Zedikiah whispered.

Chester inhaled the air around the young man, gratified that it didn’t reek of alcohol. He reached out to grab the boy’s arm and ended up with a fistful of his shirt. Didn’t matter though. With a sharp jerk, he hauled Zedikiah into the hallway, then his room, and shut the door. “Where been?”

Zedikiah slumped into the chair and leaned forward. Chester left the boy to his silence to strike a match and light the lantern. When he faced him again, Zedikiah held his head in his hands and was rocking silently back and forth.

The sight caught at Chester, and he pressed his hand onto the boy’s shoulder. “Zed?”

He stopped his rocking and turned puffy eyes on Chester. “I was over at the cemetery.”

Chester raised his eyebrows in silent question.

“Wanted to get a drink. Needed one real bad. So I went to the only place I knew I’d be safe. Knew Mama would be there, somehow, telling me to be strong.”

A shiver went through Zedikiah, and Chester tightened his hold on the boy’s shoulder. Instinctively, he knew the tremor was not from cold but from his determination not to drink.

“You tired?”

“Came back here so I’d be ready to work as soon as I got up.”

Chester nodded at the news and motioned to the floor.

Zedikiah shook his head. “You sleep on the bed. Wouldn’t be right having you sleep on the floor. Mama would haunt me for sure.”

Chester tried to protest, but Zedikiah dived down on the floor and shot him a grin.

Chester shrugged and threw him the blanket, wishing he had a pillow to offer. He’d get one tomorrow. “You sleep. Work hard.”

Zedikiah blinked up at him, his puffy eyes screaming that part of the story that his lips did not form.

Chester felt the depth of the boy’s struggle for sobriety as much as he did his grief for a mama that loved him.

Sunlight swept across his closed lids and stirred him to wakefulness. Chester cast an eye over the floor, relieved to see Zedikiah still asleep. His grief must have drained him, just as it had drained Chester the previous day.

After pulling on his shirt, Chester toed Zedikiah’s side until the young man stirred and opened his eyes. “Clean up,” he admonished the boy.

Zedikiah blinked and sat up. He smoothed a hand down his shirt then over his hair.

“Mr. Shillito want good work,” he suggested to the boy.

“You back now. Are you going to take over your job?”

Chester shook his head. “I find other job. Work make strong. You man now.”

Marylu didn’t see Chester at all that morning. But the Zedikiah she saw swelled her heart. Though still a bit scruffy and definitely scrawny looking, he wore a keen expression that Marylu had not witnessed in the boy since before his mother’s death. “You didn’t come home last night,” she grunted to him as he worked to patch a hole in the ceiling. “I got worried.”

“You thought I was out drinking.”

Taken back by his bluntness, she nodded. “I hoped not.”

His chuckle came out dry and mirthless. “Guess I have a long way to go.”

She didn’t answer, the words sucked away by the change in his attitude. “Chester here?”

“Yup.” He braced himself on the ladder and pounded a few nails into a board. “And nope.”

“You aim to drive me crazy, don’t you?”

Zedikiah’s smile was wide. “No, just trying to get this done fast. Mr. Shillito’s got a mess of chairs that need repairs. Chester stayed long enough to show me what to do to repair this hole and make it good with Mr. Shillito. He said he’d let me stay so long as Chester agreed to help me know how to make the repairs.”

“Well, you come on over for supper tonight. You’re going to need your strength to fight the demons at your heels.”

Zedikiah frowned down at Marylu. “You gonna help me?”

The fact that he questioned for one minute her willingness to help smote her. With renewed conviction she vowed to pay closer attention to the boy’s problems. Drawn to the need in his eyes, she nodded. “I am. Cooper and Miss Jenny, too. We’ll all help you. Your mama would want it.”

“I know. Chester says the same thing.”

It pleased Marylu that Chester wanted to help Zedikiah as much as she did. She missed the idea that she worked in the same building as Chester, but Zedikiah’s diligence at the job showed such great promise, not to mention a natural talent with wood.

At the dress shop that afternoon, she worked the pedal of the Singer until Miss Jenny’s dress was complete. She took out scissors and began to clip stray threads from the seams.

“Got your dress done for tonight,” she hollered toward the back room into which Jenny had disappeared minutes ago.

Between taking orders and trying to keep up with cutting out patterns and sewing, Jenny’d barely had time to sit down. Marylu grinned. Probably so excited about the show that evening that Jenny couldn’t sit still if she tried.

Jenny appeared, cheeks rosy with color.

Marylu held up the finished product. “Let’s get it on you. Tell me, too, what it is that has you so tickled.”

Jenny took the dress and held it up to herself. She stared at it in the mirror for a full minute. Her eyes finally locked on Marylu’s. “I saw Aaron today. At Ziegler’s.”

“Eyeing those new shoes?”

“I was.”

“Did you get them?”

“He didn’t have my size.”

Marylu shook her head. “I told you you should have gotten them last week in time for tonight.”

Jenny turned from the mirror and shrugged. “It’s too late now.” She set the gown aside and picked up an old rag. Maybe she had read her friend wrong after all. That she set aside the gown with such ease and the fact that her expression became pinched did not bode well.

“I can do that,” Marylu offered. “You just keep talking about your visit with Aaron Walck.”

Jenny swept the cloth down the length of the display case with its pretty assortment of buttons and trims tucked inside. “There’s nothing to tell.”

Marylu hesitated. Jenny’s sharp tone held rebuke. She raised her eyes to look at her friend and wondered what was causing such turmoil that Jenny would be so sharp.