Chapter 2 #2
“Langley place is two streets east.” His voice was low, quiet, the kind of voice that did not waste words. He lifted his chin toward the far end of the main street. “Turn right at the church. Follow the road past the cemetery. White fence, cedar tree in the front yard. You’ll see it.”
“Thank you.” Clara meant it. She shifted her grip on the trunk and winced. The handle was digging into her palm.
He glanced at the trunk, then at her small frame, and a quiet understanding moved through his blue eyes, the recognition of someone who knew what it meant to carry more than a body could comfortably hold.
For a moment Clara thought he might offer to help, but he gave a curt nod, adjusted the sack on his shoulder, and continued up the street without looking back.
Clara watched him go. His limp made his shadow lurch along the storefronts. The people he passed gave him room, stepping aside or turning away. No one greeted him or met his eyes. He moved through Redstone like a man walking through a town that had decided he did not exist.
She wondered what had happened to him.
The trunk was no lighter for wondering. Clara dragged it east, following his directions. Right at the church, a small white building with a crooked steeple. Past the cemetery, where wooden crosses stood in uneven rows behind a low stone wall.
The road narrowed to a rutted track, and the houses grew smaller and farther apart. She was breathing hard by the time she spotted the white fence and the cedar tree, its branches dark green against the gray October sky.
The house was modest, as Edward had promised.
One story, plank siding, a covered porch with a rocking chair and a pair of boots set neatly beside the door.
A garden plot along the south side had gone to seed, but Clara could see where someone had once grown squash and beans and perhaps tomatoes.
The white fence needed paint. The gate hung crooked on its hinge.
She left her trunk at the gate and walked up the path. Her heart hammered so hard she could feel it in her fingertips. She raised her hand and knocked.
Footsteps sounded inside, followed by the scrape of a chair. A moment later, the door opened, and a woman stood in the frame.
She was older than Clara by several years, maybe in her late twenties, with sharp features and dark hair pulled back so tight it stretched the skin at her temples. Her eyes were red-rimmed, the lids swollen.
She wore a black dress, plain and unadorned, and the fabric hung loose on her frame as though she had stopped eating or the dress had belonged to someone larger. A mourning dress. Clara’s rehearsed smile faltered.
“Good afternoon.” Clara’s voice came out higher than she intended. She steadied it. “I’m Clara Whitford. I’ve come from back East. I’m Edward’s …” She hesitated on the word, then pushed through. “I’m his bride-to-be. We’ve been corresponding, and he asked me to come west to meet him.”
The woman in the doorway did not move. Her red-rimmed eyes traveled over Clara’s calico dress, her dust-covered boots, the auburn hair escaping its pins after hours in the coach.
Her face changed, but not with surprise.
Pity appeared first, then resentment, the uneasy expression of a woman forced to deliver news she wished she could keep to herself.
“I’m Harriet.” The woman’s voice was flat. “Edward’s sister.”
“Of course. He wrote about you. He said you’d be glad for company.
” Clara heard herself talking too fast, filling the silence the way she used to fill silences at the orphanage, chattering to keep the quiet from settling in.
“I know I’m a bit early. The stage made better time than I expected. I hope that’s all right.”
Harriet’s hand tightened on the door frame. Her knuckles whitened. “Miss Whitford. Edward is dead.”
The words reached Clara’s ears but refused to enter her mind. She stood on the porch with the October wind pulling at her skirts and the cedar tree creaking overhead, and she waited for the woman to correct herself. To say she misspoke. To say Edward was away on business, or ill, or delayed.
“He died three weeks ago. A logging accident.” Harriet’s voice did not soften. “A support beam gave way at the timber site. They brought him home but there was nothing the doctor could do.”
Clara’s hand found the porch railing. The wood was rough under her fingers, splintered and cold.
Three weeks. Edward had been dead for three weeks.
She had been on a stagecoach for five days, clutching his letters and practicing her smile, and the man who wrote them had already been in the ground before she left Helena.
“The funeral was two weeks past,” Harriet continued.
“His affairs are settled. This house belongs to me as his only living relative.” She paused, and Clara saw the effort it cost her to say the next part.
“There’s no place for you here, Miss Whitford.
I’m sorry you came all this way, but Edward is gone and this arrangement died with him. ”
“I’m so sorry for your loss, I …” Clara did not understand. Her mind was still three minutes behind, still standing on the porch of a house that belonged to a living man with a timber business and a good roof and a sound chimney. “I didn’t know. I had no way of knowing. His last letter was …”
Clara stopped and drew a breath that shook on the way in. “Could I stay just a night or two? Until I can make arrangements? I don’t know anyone in town, and I haven’t anywhere to go.”
Harriet’s jaw tightened. She glanced back into the house, then at the floor, then at some point past Clara’s shoulder.
“I can’t. I’m sorry, I just …” She pressed her fingers to her temple.
“Edward’s things are still in boxes. I haven’t even sorted through his clothes.
I can barely keep myself fed, let alone a guest, and I wouldn’t be fit company for anyone right now.
” Her voice dropped to almost nothing. “I’m sorry you came all this way. I truly am.”
The door closed and the latch fell into place behind it, a small, final sound that said everything Harriet’s words had not. Clara stood on the porch and listened to the footsteps retreat inside the house. The rocking chair beside her moved in the wind, a slow, empty creak.
She walked back to the gate where her trunk sat in the dirt.
She picked up the handle. The cedar tree swayed above her, dropping a single brown needle onto the lid of the trunk.
The sky to the west had gone the color of a bruise, dark purple and yellow at the edges, and the first cold breath of evening moved through the grass.
Clara had no money for a return ticket, no references to offer in exchange for work, and no family waiting anywhere with help to send. All she had was a dead man’s letter, a town full of strangers, and a box of belongings too heavy to carry any farther.
She picked up the trunk and started walking.
She did not know where. That was a problem for the next few minutes.
Right now, the only thing that mattered was moving, because if she stood still, the weight of what had just happened would settle onto her shoulders and she was not sure she could bear it.
The sky darkened above Redstone. Clara dragged her trunk through the empty street, and no one came to help.