Chapter Nine
Nine
September passed, then October, and all that time, Lizbet teetered between panic and hope.
Every night she worried—perhaps a letter would arrive from William the very next day, demanding that Frankie and Jubal be brought or sent to him or, worse yet, that he might come back to Silver Hills to claim them in person.
Every morning, however much she might have wanted to hide under the covers, she rose with the sun, determined not to frighten the children by allowing her own fears to show.
Since the three of them had settled in at Ornetta’s place, Frankie and Jubal were far less anxious than before, and they didn’t cling to Lizbet nearly so much, but she knew they fretted in silence, just the same. And Jubal had occasional nightmares.
Whenever the jitney rolled into town, usually in midafternoon when the school day was over, they hid behind Ornetta’s front room curtains to see who would step down from the noisy vehicle.
On the few days when Lizbet hadn’t been out, scouring and rescouring the town for work—all to no avail—she’d kept a close eye on her brother and sister when the jitney arrived, in order to gauge their reactions.
Each time, the tension in their small, straight shoulders was clearly visible, and both of them stood with their lower lips caught in their teeth. Often they held their breaths as well.
For all that, the children had come to love living in Silver Hills, however cramped the quarters in their attic room, and they liked school—Jubal had entered first grade, though he was a year too young, and so far, he’d been doing well.
Both of them had made friends, and whenever Gabe Whitfield came to town, always on some practical errand, they waited in the yard for the customary exuberant visit from Hector.
They endured John Avery’s long but insightful sermons every Sunday morning in church, though Lizbet had caught them sneaking out more than once, no doubt hoping Gabe’s dog would be waiting in the back of his buckboard so they could play with him until the service ended.
Usually, he was there, eager to play.
She tried not to think about Henry Middlebrook and managed to avoid him, most of the time, though he had a tendency turn up in unexpected places and to hover around her, particularly after church, when the congregation broke into small groups to chat.
Sometimes she felt a prickle along her spine and turned to see him leering at her in a way that made her shudder.
Once, he’d even tried to call on her, appearing at Or netta’s front door with a bright bouquet composed of the season’s late roses, a cluster of fragrant red, yellow and white.
He’d asked after Lizbet, who had seen him coming down Main Street in his chortling automobile and raced upstairs, praying he hadn’t spotted her before she made her getaway.
Ornetta had answered the door herself, and she hadn’t needed to be told that Lizbet wasn’t receiving callers—not that one, anyway—and she’d politely but firmly turned him away. He’d been so furious that he’d hurled the roses at Ornetta’s feet, turned and stormed off.
Since then, he’d kept his distance, though she knew he watched her when the opportunity presented itself.
Lizbet’s first concern, however, was the children.
She was glad they were feeling at home in the community—overall, it was a friendly place—they had adapted quickly, and that made her nervous.
If William took them back to live with him and Marietta in Hollywood, or placed them in some faraway boarding school, leaving would be that much more painful for them.
They’d suffered so much already, losing their mother, leaving St. Louis and all it represented to them.
She was thinking these thoughts on a cold morning in early November, when she left the upstairs bathroom, where she washed and dressed before any of the other boarders were up and about, and nearly collided with a beaming Jubal in the corridor.
He was clad in his long nightshirt, his feet bare, hopping from one to another, since the floor was frosty, despite the stove and fireplace downstairs.
“Lizbet!” he cried, in a breathless burst of pure joy. “It’s snowing!”
Smiling, Lizbet shushed her little brother and steered him gently back toward the three steps leading to the door of their attic room. “Quiet,” she commanded in a whisper. “People are still sleeping!”
“But it’s Saturday !” Jubal practically crowed. “There’s no school! Why would anybody want to sleep ?”
“Jubal Keller, keep your voice down,” Lizbet insisted, hiding a smile, as they entered their room.
Frankie, still in her nightgown, was out of bed and standing at the small window overlooking the blacksmith’s shop, squat and stalwart within its softly glimmering copse of cottonwood trees. Like Jubal, she was thrilled by this change in the weather.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” the child marveled, and, in that moment, Frankie looked so much like their late mother, Gwendolyn, who had loved snow, that Lizbet felt a bittersweet pang.
“It is,” Lizbet confirmed quietly.
Her mind was easing its way toward more practical matters, such as finding work, as fruitless as the search had been, before her funds ran out.
There was still a decent sum hidden away in the hem of her special velvet evening coat, but it wouldn’t take long to run through that, with rent to pay, for though Ornetta’s rates were very reasonable, Frankie and Jubal were both growing out of last year’s winter clothes, shoes and boots.
Jubal tugged at the sleeve of Lizbet’s practical gray woolen dress. The sleeves were long and the hem reached to the middle of her shins; the garment was warm and serviceable, though hopelessly out-of-date.
“Pearl has a sled—she told me so,” Jubal put in, almost breathless with excitement. “And she said we could borrow it sometime!”
“All the other kids will be out sledding today,” Frankie added persuasively, probably sensing her older sister’s hesitation. “The hill in back of the schoolhouse is perfect for it, and everybody will be there.”
“The snow may not even be deep enough,” Lizbet said, heading for the window to make her own determination. Both as a child with her father, and as an adult with her students, she’d loved sledding, so she wasn’t averse to the sport.
It would be easy for one or both of them to get hurt, though.
“It’s been snowing all night,” Jubal argued, and a stubborn note had crept into his usually cheerful voice. “It’s got to be deep enough.”
“We’ll see,” Lizbet said. “In the meantime, hurry and wash up, both of you, and don’t forget to clean your teeth. Then get dressed and come downstairs as soon as you can. The kitchen will be warm.”
With that, she turned to the small wall mirror Pearl had left behind when she’d moved in with her grandmother to accommodate Lizbet and the children, and silently assessed herself.
She was presentable, she decided, maybe even pretty on a good day, but no great beauty.
Why was Henry Middlebrook so set on pursuing her?
No answer came, so she sighed and went on with her preparations for the day ahead.
After she’d used and put away the boar-bristle brush, Lizbet braided her red-blond hair into a single long plait, then wound it into a coronet at the nape of her neck and pinned it securely in place.
Like her dress, her hairstyle was out of fashion, but Lizbet couldn’t imagine herself with a bob that barely covered her ears.
It was fine for other women, but Lizbet wasn’t the showy sort, like Marietta and her theater friends. She was, at heart, a schoolteacher, and she preferred to look like one.
Not that she was likely to get a chance to head up a classroom again anytime soon; Helen Denny, the present schoolmarm and Lizbet’s fellow boarder, had made it plain that she wasn’t going anywhere.
The woman had to be nearing seventy, if she hadn’t already arrived there, and she was tiny, with parchment-pale skin, age spots and shaky hands, and she needed thick eyeglasses to read.
What mattered, though, was the fact that Miss Denny was a very good teacher; she walked Frankie and Jubal home from school every afternoon, and many evenings she gave them extra lessons—which, remarkably, they enjoyed.
Once Helen had realized that Lizbet had not come to Silver Hills to replace her, thus taking away her livelihood, she’d been friendlier.
Often, after the supper dishes were done, she sat with Lizbet and Ornetta and sometimes Miss Ellie, the librarian, who was well along in years, too, and they chatted about various goings-on around town.
Ornetta, though a decade older than the two ladies, was spry and mischievous and always busy.
On that snowy morning, when Lizbet entered the kitchen, Frankie and Jubal were already at the table, dutifully eating their oatmeal while Ornetta bustled about, getting breakfast together for everyone else.
She greeted Lizbet with a warm smile. “Hope you’ve got a good sturdy coat,” she said. Her gaze slipped over the plain frock her boarder was wearing, past the wrinkly black stockings to her plain black lace-up shoes. “Boots, too.”
Lizbet smiled. “I do,” she replied. “We used to live in St. Louis, remember?”
Ornetta pointed to the table, an implicit order for Lizbet to sit down.
Lizbet obeyed, though she didn’t like being waited on by an elderly woman, seemingly tireless though she was. Whenever she protested, though, Ornetta bristled like a hen with a flock of chicks tucked under her wings.
Ornetta brought Lizbet a cup of strong, steaming-hot coffee, before ladling thick mush into a bowl for her.
Lizbet thanked her, sipped her coffee with appreciation and lifted her eyes to the ceiling as she heard the others moving about, getting ready for their own days.
“Where’s Pearl?” Lizbet asked presently, curious because Ornetta’s granddaughter was usually up by this time, her chores well underway.