Chapter Fourteen #2
Jubal burst into the kitchen again, like a cannonball breaching a stone wall. “They’re home! All the ladies and Mr. Ernshaw, too. And they all want cookies and tea.”
“Well, now, that’s fine,” Ornetta said, in the same affable tone she’d used before. “I’ll put the kettle on, and you can take a plate of cookies upstairs for you and your sister to share.” Frankie often stayed in the attic room after school, reading or working on her lessons until supper.
Jubal was thrilled to be the bearer of Ornetta’s baked goods.
The innocent ability to find delight in simple pleasures. When had she, Lizbet, lost that?
Smiling fondly, Ornetta placed six good-sized oatmeal and raison cookies on a plate and handed the plate to the little boy.
“ Share ,” Lizbet reminded her brother, as he started up the rear stairway, yelling, “Frankie! I’ve got cookies!”
Hearing him clattering along the upstairs corridor to the steps leading to their shared room, Lizbet shook her head ruefully.
“I’ll speak to him—again—about running in the house,” she told Ornetta. “He knows Pearl needs to rest a lot, but he forgets. Especially when cookies are part of the equation.”
Ornetta filled the teakettle, but it was Lizbet who began preparing a tray for the other boarders warming up by the parlor fire.
The older woman picked up their earlier conversation right where she’d left off.
“I was fixing to tell you about Gabe. He’s had it hard.
He was shot in the leg while he was training with the Army, and now he’s got that limp.
If that wasn’t enough, well, both his parents drowned crossing the Flathead River when he was still a young bridegroom and about to be a father himself.
Then, like I told you, the Spanish influenza came along, and Gabe lost his wife, Bonnie, and their little girl, Abigail.
It was just awful, I’m telling you. If John Avery and just about everybody else in this community hadn’t stood by him the way they did, I’m not sure he would have bothered to go on living. ”
Lizbet could well imagine the town rallying, with few exceptions, around a young man nearly broken under the weight of his grief. Especially Ornetta and John.
What would it be like to truly belong in a town like Silver Hills, Montana?
Lizbet longed to know.
But first, she needed work. More desperately than ever.
So, without a word of explanation to anyone, Ornetta included, she put on her coat, marched through the front room without looking either to the left or to the right and left the house.
The street was quiet now that evening was approaching, but Lizbet well knew that Henry Middlebrook was still inside the bank building; he was well-known for working late.
And she wanted a word with him.
By the time she’d crossed the street and walked the two blocks to his establishment, she’d worked herself up into a state of high dudgeon.
She stood before the double glass doors for a few moments, then pushed them open with the palms of both hands and stormed inside.
A few customers lingered and, evidently sensing Lizbet’s confrontational attitude, they finished their business quickly and withdrew.
“The bank is closed ,” Henry told her, rounding the counter.
“I didn’t come here to do any banking,” Lizbet replied coldly. “I’m here to tell you that I know what you’ve been doing—undermining my efforts to find honest work—and I will not tolerate this mistreatment another day !”
Middlebrook arched his bushy gray eyebrows. “Is that so? And how do you propose to stop me?”
So, he wasn’t denying his reprehensible behavior. It was probably the closest he’d ever come to honesty.
“If necessary, I will stand up in the next town meeting and tell everyone what you’ve been doing!”
At that, he actually laughed.
It required all Lizbet’s restraint not to slap his fat, smug face with all her strength. And for a moment, she was stuck for an answer.
“All your problems could be solved so easily, Elizabeth. So simply. Finding work would be unnecessary.” He paused and leaned in a little, and his nasty breath struck her face.
“All you need to do is marry me, and you will have everything you could possibly want. You could live in a mansion, instead of the attic of a boarding house.”
“I would sooner die than marry a pompous, hypocritical snake like you!” Lizbet said angrily. “And do not address me by my first name. In fact, do not address me at all. Ever!”
Suddenly Henry Middlebrook was offended, not amused. But, perhaps stunned by Lizbet’s forthright statement, he didn’t offer a reply.
Feeling better for having spoken her mind, even though nothing had really changed, Lizbet turned and walked out onto the snowy sidewalk, warmed through and through by her own anger.
A farmer she recognized from church stepped up beside her, touched her elbow lightly and briefly.
“Good for you, Miss,” he said. “Except for John Avery and Gabe Whitfield, I’ve never seen anybody stand up to that old man quite like you did.”
Lizbet smiled. “Thank you,” she replied.
And then she headed back toward the boarding house.
Supper must be almost ready, and Gabe would be there soon to share the meal.
For the moment, she forgot all about Henry Middlebrook and his mean-spirited lechery—her mind was on Gabe Whitfield.