Belonging (2 page)

It had been a good year for Murphy’s Mercantile. The previous winter had been mild, and the weather this summer had been perfect. Just enough rain, just enough sun. Barring any natural disasters—God forbid—the ranchers and farmers in the area surrounding Frenchman’s Bluff would enjoy good profits. And when the ranchers and farmers did well, Colin’s business did well too.

When he entered the store a few moments later, Jimmy Bryant, his clerk, was adding the cost of several purchases for Kathleen Summerville. The young man glanced up, nodded, then went right back to his calculations. Kathleen, on the other hand, turned her full attention in Colin’s direction.

“Good day, Mr. Murphy.”

“Mrs. Summerville. How are you?”

“Very well, thank you. But my girls are anxious to meet their new teacher. They’re on your home’s front porch, watching for Mr. Swanson’s wagon to appear around the bend. I saw Charity join them a few moments ago.”

With a nod, Colin moved toward the large window at the front of the mercantile.

Kathleen came to stand beside him, holding her basket of supplies against her chest. “Things will be different this time. I just know they will.”

Colin decided to keep his reservations to himself. Kathleen Summerville must have heard what they were anyway.

“You know,”—her right hand alighted on the back of his wrist—“I’ll miss helping with the children’s instruction.”

He kept his eyes focused on the view outside the window, knowing full well Kathleen wanted him to look at her, wanted him to acknowledge her as something more than a customer in his store. He couldn’t do it. While there was much to admire about this widowed mother of two daughters, that didn’t make him want to marry again.

Thankfully, Walter Swanson drove his buckboard into view just then, giving Colin an excuse to step away, out from under her touch. “Here they are.” He opened the front door, then waited for Kathleen to move outside before him.

“Hellooo!” Walter reined in the team of horses in front of the mercantile. “I said I would bring her back safely, and so I did.”

“So you did.” Colin shaded his eyes against the sun that rode low in the western sky, trying to see the new schoolmarm’s face. He couldn’t. Not yet.

Walter hopped down from the seat and hurried around to the other side, where he offered a hand to his passenger. Dressed all in black, from her hat to her shoes and stockings—which Colin glimpsed as she stepped onto the hub of the wheel—she was slender but with pleasing feminine curves.

He blinked and drew in a quick breath, annoyed at the direction his thoughts had taken.

“Thank you, Mr. Swanson,” the teacher said as one foot alighted on the ground.

Walter drew her toward the boardwalk. “This here’s Mr. Murphy. Owns the little house you’ll be livin’ in. It’s right behind the mercantile. Looks out on First Street. And this here’s Mrs. Summerville.”

Felicia Kristoffersen’s gaze turned to Colin. And a lovely gaze it was. He could see that now, the sun no longer intruding on his view. She had large eyes, the color of the bluebells that grew wild in the high country of Idaho. And she was attractive—one might even say striking—though not in the conventional way; her face had too many sharp angles for that. Her complexion was pale, as if she’d been shut up in a dark room for quite some time, a look exacerbated by the uninterrupted black of her attire.

There’d been a death in her family. Colin remembered something about it in her application. Her parents? That’s what he seemed to recall.

It was Kathleen who broke the momentary silence. “Welcome to Frenchman’s Bluff, Miss Kristoffersen. We’re so glad you’ve come to teach the children.”

“Mrs. Summerville. Mr. Murphy.” Felicia Kristoffersen had a soft, melodic voice. It fit her somehow. “The pleasure is mine. I’m glad to be here at last.”

Having left the front porch, the three girls arrived on the boardwalk in front of the mercantile, giggling and smiling, eager and shy at the same time. Charity joined Colin, slipping her small hand into his, tugging on him.

“Miss Kristoffersen, this is my daughter, Charity. One of your students.”

“How do you do, Charity?” Felicia smiled, and the weariness he’d seen earlier vanished.

“Good, thanks.”

Kathleen drew her own daughters forward. “These are my girls, Suzanne and Phoebe.”

Felicia nodded, still smiling. “Are you looking forward to the start of school?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Suzanne answered with enthusiasm.

“I am too.” Felicia’s gaze returned to Colin, and the smile faded, replaced once again by an expression of fatigue. “If you might be so kind as to show me to my living quarters.”

“Of course.” He glanced at Walter.

“You go on ahead,” the man said. “I’ll bring her trunk around in the wagon.”

Colin nodded, then motioned with his head. “Just follow me, miss.”

“Thank you.”

Charity released his hand and fell back to walk beside the new schoolmistress while he led the way around the east side of the mercantile. “We got new readers for the school,” his daughter said. “They came this summer. Did Mr. Swanson tell you that?”

“No, he didn’t mention it.”

“Well, we did. A big box of new McGuffey’s. We didn’t use to have enough for everybody, but now we do.”

“How wonderful. Every student should have their own reader.”

“I like the stories in ‘em, but I think reading’s hard.”

Colin tensed. His daughter’s struggle with reading was a sore point—perhaps because he was unable to help her as he wished he could—but also because of Miss Lucas’s harsh assessment of Charity’s learning abilities.

“It can be,” Felicia answered. “But we can find ways to make it easier for you.”

He released a breath he hadn’t known he held, and the tension eased from his shoulders.

“I like history best,” Charity continued.

“Do you? That’s good. It’s very important to know history. It helps us understand the present better if we know and understand the past.”

“Ask me something, Miss Kristoffersen. See if I know it. Go on, ask me.”

“Charity,” Colin warned softly.

He heard his daughter sigh.

They arrived at the cottage, and he opened the door, then stepped back to allow the schoolteacher and his daughter to enter first. But it wasn’t merely because he was acting the gentleman, doing the polite thing. The truth was, he always needed an extra moment to steel himself before he passed through this doorway. The small house held bittersweet memories for him.

He’d built the home for Margaret. His wife hadn’t wanted to continue residing in the other half of the mercantile building. So he’d built this cottage for her, exactly as she’d wanted, with the parlor and the larger bedroom facing First Street, giving a view of the mountains to the north, and a porch that wrapped around from the front to one side where another door opened into the kitchen. He’d hoped it would bring her some happiness, hoped it would bring them closer together. Only she’d died before they could move into it.

“This is where I’m to live?”

Felicia’s question pulled Colin’s attention to the present.

“I hadn’t anticipated anything so lovely as this,” she said, looking at him.

The new schoolteacher was past the age at which most members of the fair sex married. In fact, his late wife had given birth
once and miscarried three times before she was as old as Miss Kristoffersen. Colin had buried Margaret on her twenty-sixth birthday, which, according to the information the school board received, was the present age of the new teacher. Some would call Miss Kristoffersen an old maid, but that would be an unjust description of someone with such a smile. A smile that would draw single men to her as surely as bees are drawn to honey.

The school board would rue the day they hired her. Colin thought it as certain as the rising of the sun on the morrow.

TWO

Kathleen’s daughters skipped along the sidewalk ahead of her as the threesome made their way home. Neither of the girls seemed to have been disappointed by their brief introduction to the new schoolteacher. Kathleen should have known it would be that way. Between the heat and the trip in Walter Swanson’s buckboard from Boise City, she wouldn’t have wanted to spend any length of time with strangers either.

Still, she dreaded going home with so little to report to Mother Summerville. Her mother-in-law would have many questions, and Kathleen would have few answers.

Suzanne stopped in front of the post office and turned around. “May I get the mail, Mama?”

Kathleen nodded.

Suzanne went into the building, Phoebe on her heels. A few seconds later, the door opened again and two men stepped outside. When they saw Kathleen, they both bent their hat brims in greeting.

She recognized them, of course. They were cowhands who worked for Glen Gilchrist on the Double G, a ranch about fifteen miles east of Frenchman’s Bluff. The younger of the two, Oscar Jacobson, remained on the boardwalk while the other, Nate Evans, walked on across the street to the livery and blacksmith.

“Afternoon, Miz Summerville,” Oscar said with his familiar crooked grin.

There was something about Oscar Jacobson that always made her feel happy and lighthearted. He was a tall drink of water—thin as a rail, with cheeks as smooth as a young boy’s and a smile that never seemed far from his lips.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Jacobson.”

“Another hot day.” He bumped his hat back on his forehead.

“Yes.”

“I hear tell the new schoolmarm came in today.”

“Yes. Just a short while ago.”

“Miz Carpenter said there’s gonna be a potluck after church this Sunday in order for folks to meet her.”

Kathleen imagined that all the single men in the area would be eager to make Miss Kristoffersen’s acquaintance as soon as they heard how lovely she was. But perhaps the new schoolteacher wouldn’t welcome their attentions since she was in mourning.

Her chest tightened, remembering her own loss. It had been more than two years since her husband passed, but the ache in her heart hadn’t gone away the instant custom said it was permissible to stop wearing black. And there were times when Harold’s mother made her feel guilty that she wasn’t still draped in heavy crape with a veil over her face. A confusing circumstance since Mother Summerville also seemed eager for her to marry again.

“You all right, ma’am?” Oscar asked, his grin slipping a little.

How long had she been standing there, her thoughts wandering? How much had the young cowboy seen written on her face? Before she could answer him, Suzanne and Phoebe spilled out of the post office. Relieved, she turned her full attention upon her daughters.

“Mr. Reynolds had
four
letters for us,” Suzanne said.

“Four of them.” Phoebe held up her right hand, her fingers splayed.

“They’re all for Grandmother,” Suzanne added.

“Then we had better take them home.” Kathleen looked at Oscar again. “Please excuse us, Mr. Jacobson.”

“Of course, ma’am.” He bent his hat brim a second time. “You take care now.”

She hurried after her daughters, turning the corner onto Shoshone Street and following the sidewalk the rest of the way home, entering the house through the kitchen door in the back.

Victoria Hasting, the Summerville cook, glanced up from the vegetables she was chopping on the large table in the indent of the room, gave an abrupt nod, and went straight back to work. After setting down her shopping basket, Kathleen continued through the kitchen, across the hall, and into the private sitting room where her mother-in-law spent most of her time when she wasn’t entertaining guests or out on social calls.

“We brought the mail,” Kathleen heard Suzanne announce.

“Ah. At last.” Seated at her writing desk, Helen Summerville looked at Kathleen, who had stopped just inside the doorway. “I wondered what was keeping you.”

Phoebe said, “We got to meet the new teacher. She’s real pretty.”

“Is she now?” Mother Summerville motioned for Kathleen to sit on the nearby sofa. Then she looked at her granddaughters. “You two go on up to your room and play. Your mother and I wish to have a talk.” She leaned forward and turned her cheek for the expected kisses. Once the children had gone, she addressed Kathleen once again. “So tell me about her.” Displeasure laced her words.

Kathleen knew why she sounded that way, of course. Helen Summerville had voted with Colin Murphy, the two negative votes
against offering the position to Miss Kristoffersen. Kathleen suspected Helen had voted with Colin because she wanted the town’s leading merchant to be obliged to her in the future; she liked people to be obliged to do her bidding. She especially seemed to enjoy that her daughter-in-law was obliged to her. Without the generosity of the Summervilles, Kathleen wouldn’t be able to provide for her daughters. She had no money of her own, no home of her own. So she obediently followed along, doing as she was told, performing as she was expected.

Perhaps that was the reason she’d taken perverse pleasure when the other members of the school board didn’t blindly follow Helen’s example and vote against Miss Kristoffersen’s hiring. Her mother-in-law was not used to being on the losing side of anything and had been infuriated from that day to this. She expected to lead the way and have others follow, and most often that was the way it worked. But not this time. Mother Summerville and Colin had been overruled.

“Kathleen, didn’t you hear me? Tell me about Miss Kristoffersen.”

“I liked her.”

Helen’s nostrils flared, and a shiver of dread went down Kathleen’s spine. Mother Summerville had a notorious temper and could slay a lesser being with her icy gaze. Or at least it felt that way.

Kathleen hurried to add a few details. “She was polite and very warm with the children. Naturally, she was tired from her journey, so Mr. Murphy showed her to the cottage soon after she arrived. We had little time to visit.”

“And
is
she pretty?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Hmm.”

“Did you know she’s in mourning?”

Mother Summerville held her head a little higher. “Of course I knew. That information was in her letter of introduction.” She shook her head slowly. “I suppose if I want to know anything of value, I shall have to make a point of meeting her myself.”