Still House Pond (3 page)

He dropped his head and scuffed the toe of his worn boot in the dirt of the yard. “Tillie means the world to me. I sure do thank ye.”

Remembering John's unkind words about Abe, Copper studied him. The young man's head did kindly favor a gourd—a gourd with ears. She touched his shoulder. “You're more than welcome.”

“Hey, Abe,” John called from the barn. A grubbing hoe rested on his shoulder. “Want to earn a few bucks?”

Abe rubbed his palms on the front of his britches. “Sure thing. I reckon I could help you out.”

Copper hid a smile behind her hand and watched as John showed Abe to the lot beside the barn. John had been clearing it of brush and scrub trees. He aimed to start a pear orchard there. John might act tough, but he had a kind heart. Abe would earn his supper and a few bucks besides.

Something glinted at her feet. She bent to retrieve the tea strainer. Why was it in the yard? And there was her favorite pie tin, the one that had belonged to John's mother. “John William Pelfrey!”

Jack struggled through the kitchen door. His arms bowed with a pot, a yellowware bowl, and her glass rolling pin. “Hey, you found my pie pan.”

With a firm hand she guided her son back through the door. “Just why are you taking the kitchen outdoors?”

Red curls tumbled in his eyes as he shook his head. “Just call me Jack, please. My long name sounds like you're on a tear.”

“Be mindful of your words.” She ran her hand through her son's tangled locks. John was always after her to cut it, but she couldn't resist those bright red tresses. “I'm not mad, just perplexed.”

“I was setting up shop. Me and Molly and Mazy are making mud pies today. We're going down to that big flat rock by the creek.”

“That sounds like fun,” she said, “but you can't take our kitchen tools. Maybe Lilly will help you find some other things if you ask her nicely.”

“I'm turning into a prune,” Lilly said, lifting her hands out of the pan where she was washing the breakfast dishes.

“Let me see,” Jack clamored, dumping his load on the table.

“Do I have to wash those?” Lilly whined. “The water's cold already.”

Copper lifted the kettle from the stove and poured more hot water into the granite dishpan. “Just this pie tin and the tea strainer.” She handed Jack a towel. “Help your sister.”

“Then can we make mud pies?” Jack asked, polishing the tines of a fork.

“I was going to take a walk,” Lilly said, “by myself.”

“You can do that after,” Copper replied. “The girls can't go to the creek alone.”

Jack puffed up like a bullfrog. “I can watch the twins.”

“Peep, peep,” came from under the table.

Copper pulled back the red- and white-checked cloth.

The girls were underneath. As soon as they saw their mother, giggles broke out. “We be doodles.” Mazy leaped out, followed by Molly. “Peep, peep.”

“You look more like frogs than chicks,” Lilly said.

Soon the twins and Jack were jumping all over the kitchen. Frog croaks mixed with doodle peeps.

“Has anyone seen Manda?” Copper asked.

Suddenly Lilly Gray was concentrating on the tea strainer. Twirling away from the dishpan, she held the utensil up to the window light and polished it vigorously with the cotton towel Jack had discarded. Something was up. Copper toyed with questioning Lilly further, but Manda was a good girl, and even good girls needed to have a secret now and then.

She'd sure had her share. When she was fifteen, she'd planned to run away from home and live in a cave just to spite her stepmother.
Poor Mam,
Copper thought.
I don't know how she survived raising me.

“Lilly, if you'll take the twins and Jack down to the creek to play, I'll finish the dishes.” She knew Lilly hated washing the heavy cast-iron skillet, where bits of egg clung as stubborn as oak leaves in autumn.

Relief flooded Lilly's face as she hung her apron on a peg behind the door. “Thank you. I'll watch them close.”

“Find your shoes, Jack,” Copper reminded.

“But the grass is green! You said I didn't hafta wear shoes when the grass turned green.”

“Get your shoes on or we're not going,” Lilly said.

Jack scooted under the table and came back with both shoes. It amazed Copper how quickly he would mind his big sister, never putting up an argument like he did with her.

John said she spoiled their son. Maybe so.

Her heart swelled with pride as she watched her children cross the yard. Lilly held the twins' hands. Her hair bow bounced as she walked. She liked a freshly ironed ribbon every morning, usually choosing white because she thought it complimented the swath of platinum that emanated from her perfect widow's peak and shot through her shiny black hair like quicksilver. When Lilly was a newborn, women would comment on that unexpected vein of silver saying she was marked by the death of her father. But Copper knew where it came from. Lilly's aunt Alice had that same wayward streak.

Sometimes Copper searched her daughter's face looking for some resemblance to herself, but Lilly was a miniature Alice Corbett Upchurch—same hair, porcelain complexion, arched eyebrows, and expressive eyes. Looks were not the problem, for Alice was very beautiful. It was her exacting manner Copper had to guard against Lilly adopting.

Reaching behind a stack of platters on the bottom shelf of the corner cupboard, she withdrew the letter that had come last week. Lilly would be incensed if she knew her mother was keeping it from her. But in truth, she'd only meant to keep it for an opportune time. Then Tillie's unexpected complications took over her household and the letter had slipped her mind.

Alice's precise cursive in her signature navy blue ink adorned her signature pale gray stationery, intruding into Copper's signature sunny mood. She tapped the edge of the envelope against her chin. Her stomach knotted. She was not ready to share her daughter in such a big way with her former sister-in-law. Though her request was broached in kindness, Copper was not deceived. She felt like a fish on the line—one little nibble and she'd be reeled to shore by the barbed hook of Alice's allure.

Ever since Simon died, Copper had felt Alice biding her time like an eight-day clock—ever ticking off the minutes of the past—hurrying her along to the future. She couldn't blame Alice for wanting more of Lilly. She was her niece after all, and Alice had adored Simon. Copper had adored him too. He was an easy man to love.

Copper stepped outside. A string of clouds the color of gunpowder scuttled across the sky. Grief crept into her heart, marring her spirits in much the same way the clouds blemished the bright June day. It would be summer before they knew it.

Clinching her fists against her sides, she said, “Not now. I don't have time for this.”

She allowed only a short storm of memory. There was work to be done. She needed to take her doctor's bag to the little house and assess Adie, Jumbo should be weighed, the milk needed separating, and she dearly wanted time to scratch around in the garden with her hoe.

When she raised her hand to wipe her eyes, she saw Alice's missive crumpled in her fist. Pressing the stationery added to her list of chores, she went back into the house and retrieved the sadiron from the pantry. She set it on a burner to heat just a smidgen. She didn't want the letter to go up in smoke, did she? Copper smiled as she folded a towel in quarters and laid it on the kitchen table, making a protective surface. As she carefully ran the iron over the expensive stationery, she pictured the paper bursting into flame. The perfect answer to her problem. Oh, sometimes her thoughts were naughty. Alice would be appalled.

Copper put the iron aside to cool, folded the letter, and stuck it back in the cupboard. Time enough to think on that later.

3

Manda Whitt was climbing steadily up the side of Spare Mountain. It was a harder task in her new shoes than she had thought it would be, and now a blister threatened on her right heel. She supposed a trek in her clogging shoes had not been a good idea. But she wanted to break them in before the dance on Saturday night.

She could have picked an easier hike, but she had a special place where she liked to sit and dream, and it was such a pretty day. Her dress for the dance was already pressed and hanging in the chiffonier at home. She could just imagine its skirt flaring out as she twirled around the dance floor. This was no place to practice twirling, however. The narrow trail she climbed was bordered by rugged trees and thick brush on one side and a hundred-foot drop down a sheer sandstone wall on the other. Fall over that and you wouldn't even get a chance to bounce.

Just around the bend was the familiar jutting cliff where she loved to sit and read from the
Woman's Home Companion
magazine Miz Copper received in the post each month. Of course, Miz Copper wouldn't mind if she read at the kitchen table or on the porch, but there were so many distractions in the Pelfrey house.

And then there was Miss Remy always studying her. If Miss Remy caught her with a book in hand, she was sure to find more wash to do or a floor to sweep. Manda's fingertips were still sore from one of Miss Remy's found jobs that had Manda stuffing all the pillow ticks with fresh feathers. Pushing a needle through that thick ticking was hard even with a thimble, and each seam had to be sewn twice over. Miss Remy put that old saw “Idle hands are the devil's workshop” to test. Manda tried to stay out of her way as much as possible.

Miz Copper took pity sometimes, though. She would breeze by and see Manda bent over some job. “Go do something fun for a while,” she'd say. Or she might take time to help Manda peel potatoes or wash a window. It gave them a chance to talk. Manda loved that.

Manda rounded a curve in the cow path and dusted leaves and twigs from the wide ledge that provided a fine seat on the safe side of the cliff. From where she sat, she could look across the narrow trail to the top of Devil's Eyebrow, so named for what it put you in mind of if you stood at the foot of Spare Mountain and looked upward. The overhang was bare save for a few scraggly cedars seeking nourishment in the scant film of soil atop the solid rock. A breeze always wafted across the stone plate as if a giant hand brandished a pasteboard fan across its surface.

Manda untied her bonnet strings and set the bonnet on the ledge beside her. With a contented sigh she twisted the top off a jug she'd stopped at Sweetwater Creek to fill on her way up the mountain. She was thirsty as a lizard in a dry creek bed, and the cold, pure water sure hit the spot.

With her thirst slaked, she took a magazine from the linen bag she carried over her shoulder and quickly found her place. Oh, what had happened to the willful Rose Feathergay since last month's serial chapter ended? Rose had fled her home after a dreadful argument with her mother over Rose's broken engagement to Laurence Shallow, the town's most eligible bachelor.

Cracking the spine of the magazine, Manda read breathlessly as Rose, heiress to the Feathergay estate, granddaughter of a governor, wheeled a bicycle through the bustling streets of Boston.

A bicycle! Manda couldn't get her mind around that. She couldn't figure how Rose kept it going fast as the wind. And what did she do with her skirts? What kept them from catching in the spokes and tipping the beautiful, misunderstood Rose headfirst over the handlebars? Perhaps she wore a split skirt like Miz Copper did when she rode Chessie. Manda thumbed back through the magazine to the pattern section, but she didn't find any pictures of riding habits. Still puzzled, she returned to the story, underlining each typed word with one finger.

In a flush of anger, the headstrong Rose cycled through the city and was soon out of town, bumping along on an unfamiliar road. She would not be forced into marriage just to please her parents, Rose vowed, while dashing hot tears from her porcelain cheeks. She would not. As if in punctuation to her mood, the skies darkened threateningly and the road turned desolate.

Manda shivered. She hoped it didn't rain and ruin Rose's straw hat. Rose had grabbed the newly fashionable boater when she fled out the door of her father's three-story mansion.

The wind picked up, whipping like a gale. She should turn back. It was not too late to make amends, though her mother would have to accept that Rose was an enlightened woman. She would live her own life and not bow to the dictates of old-fashioned society. Rose turned her conveyance and pedaled hard against the wind. Rain stung her eyes as a sudden gust jerked her hat and sailed it into the trees that lined the uneven roadway. She could barely see, and pedaling became more and more difficult. Suddenly the bike careened into a bank. Rose could hear the hiss of the punctured tire even over the howling wind. She was stranded miles and miles from civilization.

Manda glanced about. She could hardly believe it was still sunny here on the side of the mountain, for she could fairly feel the raindrops that wet Rose's heart-shaped face. Whatever would happen next?

The daring Rose had thought to carry a patching kit and a tire pump in her handlebar basket, and now she proceeded to change her own tire.

As luck would have it, a handsome young man appeared from the forest with the straw boater clutched in his workingman's hands. “Can I help you with that, miss?”

Rose looked him over from his wide shoulders and narrow waist to his tightly laced logging boots. She liked what she saw. As her eyes met his, sparks flew. Easily, Rose handed over the patching kit. What began as a punctured tire on a rough road paved the way for a new adventure as the thoroughly modern Rose Feathergay met the old impasse of love.

Manda closed the magazine. Her shoulders slumped. Why couldn't she find romance like the fetching Rose Feathergay? Gurney Jasper was her sort-of boyfriend, she supposed. He was meeting her at the dance, after all, and everybody teased her about him. But he wasn't one bit stirring. Gurney didn't move quick enough to strike sparks.