Chapter 8 #2
“I appreciate that, missus.” Silas drawled as he replaced his hat. His gaze stayed on Martha a moment longer than necessary before he turned away.
Jonas followed him toward the lobby, wishing he had turned this man away at the door after all.
“I hope I didn’t overstep,” he said quietly, thinking he could get a bit of information from the man himself. “Suggesting the job.”
Silas glanced back at Martha with another smile. “Seems like you did me a favor.”
That was not the answer Jonas wanted.
Percy came through the side passage carrying an empty coal bucket. Jonas stopped him.
“This is Silas Mercer. Martha hired him to help in the stable.”
Percy looked Silas over with open curiosity.
“You know horses?”
Silas smiled. “Enough.”
“That’s what Jonas said, too.”
“Percy,” Jonas warned.
The boy shifted the bucket to his other hand. “Come on. I’ll show you the loft.”
Silas collected his bedroll and followed him outside.
Jonas remained near the door. Through the dining-room entrance, he could see Martha standing exactly where they had left her.
The ledger remained closed beneath one hand as she stared out at nothing. Then Eliza called her from the kitchen, and Martha moved at once, shaking her head.
The rest of the afternoon passed beneath the usual demands of the inn.
Silas worked in the stable.
Jonas saw him twice through the window carrying hay and once leading a guest’s horse toward the watering trough. Percy followed him everywhere, talking a mile a minute.
Martha did not go outside, moving from room to room with her usual energy and focus, but noticeably avoiding the outdoors.
By evening, Silas had eaten in the kitchen and left again, saying he intended to visit the saloon before turning in. Martha barely looked at him when he went.
Jonas waited until the dinner dishes had been cleared and then decided to try again to figure out what that little conversation had really been about.
He did not know Martha well, but he owed her a debt. If she needed help or protection, he would do what he could for her.
If she’d let him, that is.
He found Martha at the front desk adding figures beneath the light of an oil lamp. The lobby had quieted. Most guests had gone upstairs or settled in the common room, where a low murmur of conversation mixed with the crackle of the fire.
Jonas stopped across from her and leaned heavily on his cane. He’d done more walking that day than he should have and had found it impossible to relax even when he had been sitting down. He got right to the point. “You know him.”
Martha’s pencil paused. “No.” The answer was immediate, but not defensive.
Jonas leaned one forearm against the desk to take weight from his injured leg.
“It sure looked like you did.”
Martha rubbed tiredly at her forehead. “It has been a difficult day.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
Martha returned to the ledger. “I know.” She added another number beneath the column, though Jonas noticed she had written it twice.
He kept his voice quiet as he asked, “Did Silas frighten you?”
The pencil stopped again and Martha looked up. For a moment, something hard flashed behind her eyes. “No.”
Jonas wished he believed the answer as easily as she seemed to expect him to.
People carried histories that did not belong to strangers. Martha had shown him more kindness in one week than most people in Willow Crossing had shown his family in years.
If she said there was nothing to explain, he had no right to demand otherwise.
Still, he could not forget the way she had gone pale when Silas mentioned Sheriff Crane.
“I’ve been told I listen reasonably well,” he said. “If there is something you want to say.”
Martha stared at him, and her hands clenched and opened at her side, once, twice.
Then her patience broke.
“I have fifteen occupied rooms, a damaged west wing, laundry that is still being done partly by hand, and more bills than I know how to pay. I do not have time to sit here discussing what you think you saw on my face.”
Her voice remained low enough not to carry into the common room, but the anger in it struck cleanly between them.
Jonas straightened. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.” She closed the ledger harder than necessary. “And I’m sorry,” she added, though she did not sound sorry. “But I have work to do.”
Jonas felt foolish. He had known her barely a week and had begun asking questions as though saving his life granted him access to hers. He stepped back from the desk. “You’re right, I apologize.”
Martha’s expression softened almost immediately, which somehow made him feel worse.
Her gaze dropped toward the walking stick. “How is your leg?” she asked, an olive branch.
“Fine.”
She raised one eyebrow.
Jonas considered the lie. The wound had begun aching after dinner. Not sharply, but enough that every step pulled along the stitches. “It hurts a little,” he conceded.
Martha pushed the ledger aside. “Go on, then. Let me take a look. Sit.”
“I can manage.”
“That was not a request.”
Jonas almost objected, then saw that some of the tension had left her face, a little warmth in its place instead now.
He lowered himself into the chair beside the desk.
Martha disappeared toward the kitchen and returned with clean linen, warm water, and the small jar Dr. Keller had left behind.
Guests passed through the lobby while she worked, but Martha positioned the chair partly behind the desk where they had some privacy. The inn was quieter now, with only a few guests still out and about.
Jonas loosened the bandage himself.
The wound looked better than it had two days earlier, though the skin around the stitches had reddened slightly.
Martha frowned.
“You’ve walked too much.”
“I’ve barely gone farther than the common room.”
“You are not supposed to be testing what ‘barely’ means.” She cleaned around the wound with careful strokes.
Jonas watched her hands as she worked. The rest of her earlier anger had vanished into concentration. She leaned closer when she examined the deepest part of the cut, one hand resting lightly above his knee to steady his leg.
Her fingers lingered there.
Only for a moment, but Jonas could feel the warmth of them through the fabric of his trousers.
He wished she would not move them.
The thought came with an ache unrelated to the injury.
He had spent most of his adult life surrounded by his brothers, cattle, work, and the occasional settlers who hired him. Touch belonged to emergencies or brief embraces when Reuben forgot himself.
He had not realized how much he missed simple closeness until Martha’s hand rested against him.
She withdrew it to reach for clean linen, and Jonas looked quickly away.
Percy crossed the lobby carrying a broom almost as tall as he was then, breaking the last piece of tension between them, and nodded seriously toward Jonas.
“Keeping off the leg?”
“No.”
“Martha told you that you better,” he said reproachfully.
“I’m aware.”
Percy disappeared toward the dining room, unmoved, and Jonas watched him go.
“He watches you,” Jonas said.
Martha tied the new bandage.
“I suppose we both look out for each other.”
Jonas looked at her. She sat back on her heels and gathered the used cloths.
“I found him in the cemetery not long after Amos died,” she said. “He had been sleeping wherever he could and eating very little.”
Jonas thought about the boy’s narrow shoulders, his slight height, even now.
“How old was he?”
“Eleven.”
“And no one would take him in?”
Martha gave him a look that answered the question.
“One morning I found him behind the chapel wall trying to eat an apple that had gone half rotten. I brought him to the inn for breakfast.”
“What happened after breakfast?”
“He stayed for supper.”
Jonas smiled.
Martha did too, though hers faded quickly.
“Then another night. And another. Eventually Eliza moved some things into the attic room, and we stopped pretending he was leaving.”
Jonas glanced toward the dining room where the broom scraped against the floorboards.
“You needed him.”
Martha looked down at the basin.
“I think we needed each other.”
The answer carried more weight than she seemed willing to explain.
Jonas thought about asking what those months after Amos’s death had been like. He wanted to know why Martha recognized loneliness so quickly in a boy no one else had bothered to see.
He wanted to know why Silas Mercer could walk through the door and turn her face white with a single mention of the sheriff.
Instead, Jonas adjusted the blanket over his leg and let the questions remain where they belonged.
For now.