Chapter 5
Heather woke to the patter of rain on her room’s window and the steady drip of water coming into the room. It was sliding down the window and plopping onto the wooden floor, making a little pool there.
Tucking her hair behind her ear, she tried to find where exactly the leak was. A quick inspection of the window itself showed where the water had found a way in through a little chink in the wall. She would mention it to the clerk. They were bound to have someone who could fix it.
Smiling, feeling far more at home with the rain than the furnace-like sun, Heather washed and dressed for the day. She took special care to make sure she looked pleasing and competent.
Mr. Miller had drilled that into her and Theresa’s heads when they were little.
He had always said that no one wanted to invest their time and money in someone who couldn’t even dress properly.
That was why having clothing that was not only clean and neat but also fit perfectly was of such importance.
A cheap suit that fit properly was far better than an expensive one that didn’t.
At least in Mr. Miller’s mind, that was the case.
It was advice that had never left Heather.
She chose a light gray suit and a blue blouse. With her hair in a neat bun, she felt she looked the part of a competent business owner. Surely, whoever ran the general store would be happy to meet with her and discuss leasing some space in the store.
Mark had suggested it on the ride to town, and it made good sense. The general store already sold fabric, but since the local seamstress, a woman named Lucy, had joined the sheriff’s department, they had no one to run that part of the store.
Heather took a step back to get a better look at herself in the full-length mirror on the closet door.
Without warning, her foot slipped out from under her, and she went crashing to the ground, pulling the pretty floral curtain from the window with her.
With a crunch and a thud, the whole curtain rod came out of the wall and clattered to the floor, landing beside her with a little splash.
Heather sat up, surveying the damage. She hadn’t hurt herself. Not really. She had knocked her elbow, but that was hardly the end of the world. Her skirt was wet where she had landed in the water.
“Darn!” she said, getting to her feet. “This is bad luck. I was hoping to make a good impression.”
She sighed and bit her inner cheek as she considered her options. She could change out of her skirt and jacket, but that would mean making Mark wait. He had a job to get to and was doing her a favor. She couldn’t make him tardy on top of it all.
Closing her eyes for a moment, Heather took a deep breath and then opened them again. She was fine. The wet fabric would dry, and after all, it was raining. Folks were going to be a little wet.
She was careful to step around the growing puddle this time and headed for the door. Downstairs, she found a new face at the reception desk. The man had red whiskers that were curled and waxed. He smiled at Heather.
“Good morning!”
“Good morning,” she replied. “Would you be the right person to report a problem to?”
The man looked perplexed. Perhaps no one had asked him that before. After a moment, he nodded. “Yes, I believe I am.”
“Oh good,” she said and launched into the story of what had happened that resulted in her breaking the curtain rod.
“Oh no!” the man said, concerned. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, but the rod is on the floor in the puddle, I’m afraid. I’m really sorry.”
He waved her words away. “Mr. Cartwright will want that dealt with straight away.” He leaned over the desk in a conspiratorial manner.
“Between us, we’re finding all kinds of problems with the building.
Word is that Mr. Cartwright pushed too hard to get this place finished fast. He should have taken more time and care.
” He stood up straight again. “I’ll just write it up in this book and then you can sign it and we’ll take care of it. ”
“Great, thanks,” Heather said.
She watched as the clerk neatly wrote what she had told him, and then she signed it.
Behind her the front door opened, and Mark entered. He looked fresh and bright, with his hair even more out of control than it had been the day before. He must have noticed her looking at it and shrugged.
“It’s the weather; makes it hard to stay neat,” he said. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Oh yes,” Heather said as they left the hotel.
Mark had an umbrella, and he held it over both their heads. They ran down the muddy street together, dodging other people in oilskin coats, also carrying umbrellas.
The general store was large, easily twice the size of the stores on either side of it. When Mark pushed the door open, a bell above their heads jingled merrily.
A short, stocky man with brown hair and a bit of a belly stood behind the counter. He smiled in a friendly manner.
“Morning, Mark. And who do you have there?” he asked.
“Leo Di Aventura, this is Heather Barnaby,” Mark said.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Leo said. “Are you the much-anticipated lady from Pennsylvania?”
“I don’t know if I’m much anticipated,” Heather said cautiously. “But I am from Pennsylvania.”
“Welcome!” Leo said. “And what can I do for you today? I have some very nice chocolates that just came in.”
“No thanks,” Heather said. “I understand that you’re in need of someone to run your haberdashery section. I’ve been working in a haberdashery for most of my life and?—”
Leo cut her off by clapping his hands happily. “That’s perfect. My niece, Bonnie, has been running it, and she positively hates it.”
“I don’t hate it,” a woman said from between the shelves. “I’m just not terribly partial to it.”
“I brought a lot of things with me,” Heather said. “Would you mind if I set things up how I like them?”
Leo leaned on the counter, and for a while, they haggled over how things would work.
After all, it was a business discussion, and everything had to be set out fair and square from the start.
Heather was glad that Leo was as open to discussion and negotiation as he was.
Still, he was a shrewd man, and he managed to get a higher rent from her than she wanted to pay, but not so high that she felt cheated.
All in all, it worked out quite well for everyone concerned.
It was agreed that she could move her things in as soon as she liked. Heather took a quick tour of that section of the store and decided to move in straight away.
“I like that,” Bonnie said approvingly. “Making a quick decision and getting things rolling. If you need some help, just yell.”
Mark got Ben to help him bring her crates to the store, and Heather spent a happy few hours rearranging the back end of the general store.
Bonnie was only too happy to help, and Heather soon found her first friend in Unity.
“Yeah, I’ve been here for months,” Bonnie said. “And Jeff has hardly been home enough for us to really even have a good fight. Since Mark’s also a deputy now, you’ll find you have a lot of free time on your hands.”
“Oh, Mark and I are taking things slowly,” Heather said, so that there was no misunderstanding. “We want to see if we’re really compatible or not.”
Bonnie grinned as she helped Heather to stack some printed bolts of cotton fabric in the bins attached to the wall. “That’s what we all say when we get here. We want to see if this is really for us, and we think maybe we’ll change our minds, but we never do.”
“Never?” Heather asked.
“Never,” Bonnie said. “It’s too far to have come to go back to anywhere else. Hey, tomorrow afternoon I’m joining a group of people who are going outside the fence to clear the bushes and grass from around the fence. You want to come? Jeff and Mark will be supervising.”
There was still a lot to do in the store, but finding ways to spend time with Mark seemed like a wise idea.
Heather wanted to get to know him better.
She couldn’t help but feel that they had gotten off to a bit of a rocky start and that she might have some work to do to really get into his good books.
“Sure,” she said. “I would like that.”
Bonnie beamed. “Oh good. I really hate doing those things on my own.”
For the rest of the day, she and Bonnie worked hard to make the haberdashery perfect. By closing time, Heather already had two sales under her belt and an order for a pair of tailored trousers for Michael Wellan, which Bonnie said was a big deal.
“He’s like the town mayor,” Bonnie said. “Except, of course, we don’t have an actual mayor.”
“Why not?”
Shrugging, Bonnie walked her to the door. “I don’t know. I think it’s probably because no one has gotten around to creating that office.”
The rain had stopped, and the hot sun was out, making the last drops sparkle on the leaves of the trees and grasses that grew all over the town.
A rainbow sprang up, arching over the far side of the town, and Heather smiled to herself.
If ever she needed to know she had made the right choice, a rainbow certainly would do it.
Thank you, Lord, she whispered.
That evening, Mark came around to the hotel and they had dinner together. He was in a much better mood until she said she would be joining Bonnie on the clean-up crew.
“Heather,” he said over his chicken and rice. “It’s going to be a lot of hard work in the sun. Are you sure you want to do that?”
His tone, so sure that he was right, was annoying. “Yes, I want to do this. I want to fit in here and meet the people. Getting involved in community projects is a good way to do that.”
He sighed. “You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?”
She nodded. “I have.”
“You’re stubborn, you know that?”
“Yes, and it’s a good thing. I wouldn’t have done anything with my life if I wasn’t at least a little bit.” She grinned at him. “Anyway, it’s a way to see more of you. Your boss has you very busy, from what Bonnie tells me.”
Mark nodded. “Yes. I suppose she would know, being Jeff’s wife and all.
Look, I’m hoping this big case, dealing with the bandits, will end soon and then things will calm down.
Unity is a sleepy little town when it’s not being attacked.
You’ll see so much of me you’ll want me to find something else to do. ”
Heather shrugged. “I don’t know. I like the idea of spending time together. How else are we going to really get to know each other? That’s part of why I came here, for you.”
“But we’re taking it slow, remember?” Mark asked.
“I know. But seeing each other is part of the deal. Even if I have to do garden work to get some time by your side.”
He grinned. “Okay then.”
The next morning, the store was busy. Heather soon had a lot of orders and a healthy number of sales chalked up.
After lunch, Bonnie came to her with a pair of thick leather gloves and gardening shears in hand. “You ready to go?”
“Yes,” Heather said. Donning her hat, she took the gloves and shears that Bonnie offered and they headed out into the sunshine.
The people gathered at the gate were soon split into groups by the sheriff and his wife Lucy.
“We need about five feet clear from the wall,” Sheriff Hayes said. “So, keep that in mind while you clear a path.”
“Also, keep your eyes open for any sign of bandits,” Lucy added, which made Heather nervous.
They set off walking out into the hot summer afternoon. There were a couple of large gray and white clouds, but nothing that looked like more rain. Which was good, Heather thought; it was already humid enough so that her skin felt slick with sweat.
Soon, Heather and Bonnie were working hard. They had been handed sickles at the gate, and they used them to cut the thick tangles of grass away. It was slow going. The only good thing about it was that Heather and Bonnie were working together and Mark and Jeff kept checking up on them.
“Why are we doing this?” Heather asked. “I mean, why does it need to be done?”
“Didn’t Mark tell you? The bandits were hiding in the brush,” Bonnie explained.
“Here? Why?” Heather asked.
Bonnie shrugged. “Who knows? They do strange things like that. They’re very unpredictable. We never know what to expect.”
That wasn’t comforting. When Mark had explained about the bandits in the coach on the way to Unity, he had made it seem like they were a nuisance more than a danger.
Then again, he had also said that they were vicious and unpredictable and warned Heather to be vigilant.
She hadn’t taken him seriously, thinking he was just exaggerating.
To hear Bonnie tell her the same things made Heather think maybe she should have paid a little more attention to what Mark was saying.
She swung her sickle, and the grass came away. As it did, it made a strange rattling sound. Heather frowned and turned to Bonnie to say something.
Bonnie stared at Heather, her mouth open, her eyes wide in shock.
“Bonnie? What is it?” Heather asked.
“Don’t move, Heather!” Bonnie gasped, staring at Heather’s feet.
Following Bonnie’s gaze and looking down at her left boot, Heather saw a large brown and gold snake coiled there. The rattling sound was coming from the snake’s tail, which it was holding up and shaking.
“Oh …” Heather said, filled with fear. She swayed a little. All she wanted to do was run, but Bonnie was holding up her hand in a stop gesture.
Heather stared at her, wide-eyed, heart pounding, hardly breathing. She hoped that this wouldn’t be the end of her adventure. All this way only to die by rattlesnake bite? That wouldn’t be a good story to tell anyone. Then again, who would even tell the story if she died?