Chapter 8
Emily was hoping to have dinner just with Michael that evening. They were late to the campfire, and she was hoping most of the people who usually sat with them, Troy and Lizzy and now Uncle Felix, might have finished early and gone to bed.
No such luck. Perhaps once the houses across the creek were built, there might be a chance for a more private and romantic dinner.
“So, how was your day?” Uncle Felix asked as he took his usual seat beside her.
“It was fine,” Emily said flatly, not wanting to talk to him. A pang of guilt coursed through her, and she reluctantly added, “And yours?”
“Oh, dull,” he said with a sad nod. “Very, very dull now that I’m only allowed to teach the boys to play poker some afternoons. I was really enjoying their enthusiasm. It’s not every day you get to mold and sculpt the future of a game.”
“Taking that a little seriously, aren’t you?” Michael asked, leaning around Emily with his bowl in his hand. “You were just showing the boys how to play, not shaping their futures.”
“They could become card sharps if they wanted to,” Uncle Felix said. “It’s not as dreadful a profession as my niece would have you think.”
“Isn’t it?” Emily retorted. “What about all those times you came home with a black eye or those times when you lost everything, and it was only because the house didn’t belong to you that we still had a roof over our heads? Was it a good profession, then?”
Uncle Felix’s face dropped, and he stared at his bowl.
Emily instantly felt like a harpy. Why had she spoken to him like that? For all his missteps, he had never let anything truly dreadful happen to her—just made her constantly worry about it happening.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No, no, you’re right,” he said with a sad nod.
“I let my hobby get the better of me. I should never have let it get that far. The moment I started to lose more than I won, I should have walked away. But it was my pride, you know. It’s a terrible thing.
One moment you think you’re the bee’s knees, and the next, you’re an old man with nothing left to give.
” He sighed heavily. “I can never make up for what I did to you.” Placing a hand on Emily’s arm, her uncle continued, “I am deeply sorry.”
How was it possible that he made her feel dreadful when he’d been the one in the wrong? He was the one who had caused all the trouble, yet she felt awful.
Emily sighed. “You’d better eat. Keep up your strength.”
“Felix has been hanging around my forge a lot lately,” Lizzy commented, “and he told me all about what happened.”
“You did?” Emily asked, eyeing her uncle less than happily. “He hasn’t been bothering you, has he? You can tell him to go and bother someone else.”
“No. We’ve had some good talks.” She smiled at Uncle Felix, who grinned brightly.
Emily felt her stomach jolt. For some reason she had thought that just as she had shunned her uncle and treated him like a pariah, others would do the same.
It seemed she had been wrong. Others had reached out to him and found him endearing.
They didn’t know what she knew, and she wondered if she should speak to them about Felix and all that his being in their lives could mean.
What would happen if Felix brought his madness, his version of reckless abandon, to the camp? It could destroy everything they were working for. It could bring things they didn’t need—dangerous things—to their doorstep.
“Don’t look so worried,” Troy said. “He’s been behaving himself. Haven’t you, Felix?”
Felix nodded and made a mock salute at Troy. They laughed.
Emily forced a smile. What else could she do? The food lost some of its flavor, and she had to force herself to keep putting forkfuls into her mouth.
The conversation flowed and rolled around her, but Emily didn’t really participate much. She had nothing to say since her gut was in a knot. Dread had slunk into her heart, and she couldn’t seem to shake it.
Was she being unfair? Was she painting her uncle with a brush that no longer suited him? Could he have changed that much in such a short time? And if he had, what had happened to make such a transformation possible?
“Are you done eating?” Michael asked. “You’re just pushing the food around your plate.”
“I’m done,” Emily said with a nod.
“Then we should go for a walk.”
He put Emily’s and his bowls into the barrel of wash water, gave them a swirl, and was about to take them out when Carl’s mother raised an eyebrow.
“I know you’re not skimping on the cleaning, Michael,” she said sternly.
“He wouldn’t dream of it,” Emily said, hastily washing the bowls and forks. Then she put them on the drying rack. “Thanks for the delicious food.”
“Pleasure,” the woman said with a curt nod.
“Thanks,” Michael said as they walked away from the camp, hand in hand. “I forgot she was on duty today. She’s always such a stickler for things being done well.”
“As you should be too,” Emily said, poking him in the arm with a finger. “You’re a scientist. You shouldn’t be lackadaisical about doing things properly the first time.”
“I know, but you looked so upset that I wasn’t sure what to do.
Is it just your uncle bothering you?” he asked as they walked away from the campfire, along the perimeter.
She suspected that Michael liked to do this little walk after dinner to make sure that all the bandit traps were in working order.
“It’s mostly my uncle, yes,” Emily admitted. “He’s been such a problem in my life that I can’t seem to come to terms with the idea that he’s not a problem now. How can changing his location change who he is?”
“It doesn’t,” Michael said. “But you have to remember that now he doesn’t have access to everything he used to have access to.
There are no serious poker games here, no card sharps, no betting, no gambling in general.
We don’t have hardened criminals with whom he can go into debt.
It’s probably one of the safest places he can be. ”
It was true. Emily knew it in her mind, but her heart wasn’t listening.
Michael turned and drew her close to him. Putting his arms around her, he held her tight. “You’ll be fine here. He can’t have your tent repossessed or anything like that. Okay? And if he does something and gets out of hand, I will be happy to step in.”
“Thanks,” she said, hugging him back. It felt wonderful to have her arms around him. It felt right, like this was where God had led her.
Emily raised her chin and looked into Michael’s eyes. They were warm and filled with tenderness. He leaned in close, and a moment later, his lips brushed hers. The touch sent delight flooding through her and she leaned into the kiss, allowing the happiness and love to carry her away.
“Emily? Are you out here?”
It was Uncle Felix’s voice. What was he doing?
“Emily? Emily!”
“He is persistent,” Michael said as he drew back from her.
The cloud of happiness she’d been floating on for a few seconds deposited her back to Earth with an emotional and mental thump, and Emily sighed.
“Emily!”
“What?” she demanded, looking in the direction of her uncle’s voice. “What is it, Uncle Felix?”
“Oh, there you are,” he said and rounded the corner of the nearest tent. He came trotting over to them. “Sorry, did I interrupt?”
“It’s okay,” Michael said. “What can we do for you?”
Felix’s cheeks were pink, and his eyes were bright. “I was just putting out some feelers in the community to see who might want to play a game of gin rummy, and I thought that you might enjoy that. I mean, we used to play. Do you remember, Em, when you were a little girl?”
“You interrupted my walk with Michael, which is pretty much the only time we get to spend alone together, to ask about gin rummy?” Emily asked, speaking slowly.
The gall of the man. Surely even Felix understood that a question like that could have waited until Emily and Michael returned to the campfire.
“I thought you wouldn’t want to miss out,” Felix said, sounding hurt.
Emily ground her teeth. “You do this every time! You act all wounded, as though you had no idea that you were doing anything wrong, and you make me look like I’m overreacting and being a bully.
I don’t want to play gin rummy, patience, or poker.
I don’t like card games, Uncle Felix; you did a fantastic job of making me hate them.
So, well done!” Taking Michael’s hand, she stormed off.
When they were a little way off, Michael said, “I don’t think he meant any harm.”
“No one ever does,” she snapped. “No one sees the danger in his suggestions until they’re rolling the furniture out the door and there’s nothing left in the house to sit on except the floor.
No one sees it coming until Uncle Felix’s little suggestion turns into this writhing, eating monster that consumes their lives.
“It will start innocently enough, a little game here, a wager there,” Emily said, her anger heating up in her veins.
“And soon it’s midnight meetings with shady fellows, black eyes, and then broken bones.
And before you know it, your mother’s jewels and father’s pocket watch are gone and you have nothing to remember them by. And it’s all his fault!”
She was breathing hard, as though she had run a marathon.
“And to make things worse, he always tries to get others to join in the insanity!”
Michael nodded and took her hands in his.
“I understand. That’s why we’re going to be keeping an eye on him.
Right? But you can’t really have a new start in your life if you’re not going to let go of the old one.
They can’t both exist at the same time. So, come on, let’s go back to the campfire and make sure that nothing underhanded is taking place.
That way we can keep your uncle from being his usual self, and it won’t deteriorate into bad things happening. ”
Emily wanted Michael to be right. She wanted her uncle’s habit of being deceitful and underhanded to be a thing of the past, but she was so afraid it would never be.