Chapter One
“Rachel! Make sure the study is swept out! There are ashes all over the floor, and I don’t want to come home to a messy house!”
While Nathan Foster’s voice was loud in volume, he didn’t sound angry. It was closer to dispassionate. He yelled at Rachel the way a man might yell at an errant dog, as though he could shock it into behaving. Not as though his emotions had truly been stirred.
Rachel, who had been tending to the fire in the living room, rose to her feet and reached up to straighten her hair, murmuring a soft prayer to God to grant her patience before turning around.
Nathan was standing in the doorway, dressed in trousers she had ironed and a button-down shirt.
Today was the day of the Silverleaf Spring Fair.
There would be music and dancing and socializing into the evening, and he wanted to make a good impression on his neighbors.
She didn’t bother telling him that the only reason there was ash all over his study was that he smoked cigarettes in there and didn’t use an ashtray. It was the truth, but he would only have snapped at her. “I’ll sweep it out,” she agreed.
“Good.” He turned and started to walk out of the room.
Rachel stared down at the worn carpet, doing her best to look cowed. She knew Nathan liked her best when he believed she was intimidated. “Nathan…I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Oh, and what might that be?”
“Can we sit down?”
He stared at her. “You want us to sit down and talk? What, like you’re a business associate of mine? You’re lucky I let you use the furniture at all.”
Rachel glanced around at the furniture in the room.
All of it was older than she was. That would have been charming if the pieces had been heirlooms, perhaps crafted by someone in the family, but that wasn’t the case.
They hadn’t belonged to the Fosters for long.
They had all been purchased or found secondhand, not because Nathan couldn’t afford anything nicer, but because he didn’t want to spend money on things that would benefit anyone other than himself.
So the living room was furnished with a chair whose stuffing was poking out, a garish orange settee, and a rocking chair so uneven that it didn’t even rock back and forth properly.
“All right,” Rachel told her stepfather. “We can talk while standing.” She drew a breath. “I’d like to go to the fair today.”
“You want to go to the Spring Fair?” He snorted, looking her up and down. “You’re not fit for society. Do you even have any appropriate clothes?”
I would if you had ever bought me anything suitable.
She choked down the bitter response. It wouldn’t help her case to be negative like that, and anyway, that wasn’t the kind of person Rachel wanted to be.
She forced softness and patience into her tone.
“I could borrow something from Jennifer.” Her stepsister’s clothes would be a little short on her, but thanks to the fact that Jennifer was spoiled and given everything she wanted to eat, there was no risk they would be too tight. Rachel would be able to fit into them.
Nathan was right that what she was wearing at the moment wasn’t at all suitable.
Rachel hadn’t had new clothes in two years, and although her size hadn’t changed in that time, her dresses had become worn and frayed.
They had never been especially nice to begin with—plain beige shifts that hung on her like sacks.
This one was no different. Even the material was unpleasant—a cheap muslin that Nathan had only paid for because she needed to wear something.
Now he was shaking his head. “You’re not going out in public like that,” he said.
He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and twirled it in his fingers as though debating lighting it.
Rachel simmered. She was going to have enough sweeping to do in his study without him getting ash all over the living room to boot.
“And you’re not going to wear anything of Jennifer’s either.
How would it look to have you prancing around town in Jennifer’s dress?
She would never be able to wear that dress again, because everyone would remember having seen it on you. Absolutely not.”
Rachel bit her lip. It was far too much to suggest that one of Jennifer’s dresses—even an old one—simply be given to her to keep. Her stepfather would never agree to that.
“What if I can find something to wear?” she asked. “If there’s something in my own closet that I can dress up enough to make it respectable…then would you allow me to go?”
Nathan rolled his eyes. Thankfully, he pocketed the cigarette—he must have decided he wasn’t going to be here long enough to smoke it.
“Sure,” he said dryly. “If you can come up with a suitable dress by this afternoon, you can wear it to the fair. But it had better really be suitable—no showing up in some old rag like what you’re wearing right now.
If you do that, I’ll drag you right back home. ”
Rachel’s heart raced. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. Was she really going to get the chance to attend the fair? “No, it will be appropriate,” she promised him.
“And one other thing,” Nathan said, taking a step into the room and pointing a finger squarely in Rachel’s face.
“You had better finish all your chores first. Not just sweeping out the study. I want the kitchen scrubbed top to bottom so that it sparkles. I want the button sewn back on that shirt of mine that I gave you last night. I want the garden tended to. All of it. If you don’t get everything done then you don’t have time to waste at a fair, and I won’t have you spending your day there. Is that understood?”
Rachel’s heart sank.
She looked down at the floor. Of course it had all been too good to be true.
There was no way she was going to be able to accomplish all those chores in time to go to the fair. That was a full day’s worth of work. Even if she could get it all done in the time before the fair started, she would never have time to modify one of her dresses to be right for today.
It had all been a trap the whole time, she realized. Nathan had never had any intention of allowing her to go to the fair.
He watched her realize it, and an evil grin spread across his face, narrowing his black eyes to a squint and making his ruddy cheeks even redder.
It had always sickened Rachel the way Nathan looked happiest when he was inflicting cruelty.
His eyes lit up with it. “You’d better get to work,” he said.
Turning on his heel, he strode out of the room, leaving her on her own.
Rachel swallowed hard.
Tears threatened at the corners of her eyes.
The Spring Fair was one of the most exciting events of the year in Silverleaf.
Everyone looked forward to it. Most women had new dresses—Jennifer had been talking for weeks about the pink one she planned to wear, with lace on the collar and a ruffle on the hem.
Even her mother would have something new, because Nathan would want everyone to look admiringly at his wife.
She longed to forget the drudgery of her life, if only for one day.
She wanted to join in on the dancing and the laughter.
She wanted to eat freshly baked goods and admire the fresh fruits the farmers had grown and would have on display.
She wanted a cup of hot chocolate, and to talk to the people of Silverleaf.
For one day, she wanted to feel like a part of the community, and not an outcast.
But it had always been a foolish dream. Although she’d prayed for it nightly, it had never been something that was really going to happen.
Remember what Edith said. God has His own plan.
With a sigh, she turned and made her way toward the study. She might as well start her chores. It didn’t seem as though anything else was going to be happening today.
But the moment she stepped out of the living room and into the hall, Edith appeared. “Rachel,” she said, her voice a low hiss. “Come with me. Quickly.”
“Is something wrong?” Worry spiked through Rachel. She hurried over to Edith and grabbed her arm. “What’s the matter? Did we misplace one of Jennifer’s stockings again?”
“No, honey. Come in here.” She opened the door to her bedroom, ushered Rachel inside, and closed the door quickly behind the pair of them.
Rachel looked around, frowning. “Edith, what’s going on?”
Edith didn’t answer. She just beamed. It was clear that she was waiting for something.
Rachel turned slowly. She had been in Edith’s room many times. It was larger than her own. She and Edith had speculated that Edith had been given the bigger room to entice her not to quit her job. Rachel couldn’t quit, so there was no need to make sure she was content with what she got.
More than once, Edith had offered to exchange rooms. But Rachel wouldn’t have allowed it.
Her own room was little more than a box, barely large enough to contain her bed.
Edith’s room had a window and a wardrobe, and Edith had managed to make it homey with a woven carpet of many pastel colors and a painting she had made herself of a sunset hung on the wall.
Above her bed was a simple wooden cross.
The only thing that had made Rachel’s room a bit of a home was the patchwork quilt Edith had made for her birthday a few years ago, currently folded up on the foot of her bed. Edith had a matching quilt herself…
As Rachel’s eyes moved over the patchwork, she saw what was different in the room at last.
There was a dress here. Beautiful. Brand-new. Spring green with ribbons to tie in a bow at the back. And just looking at it, Rachel could see that it wasn’t made to fit Edith—the waist was too narrow, the skirt too long.
It’s for me. Her knees went weak. When had she last had a new dress, to say nothing of such a beautiful one? It was like magic.
She stared at the dress for a moment, then looked up at Edith.