The Bridal Veil (22 page)

A cold hand closed around Emily’s
heart, and her throat dried. After what he did, she thought, her
feet pumping the treadle furiously. What could he have done? But
the letter stopped there, unfinished.

When she looked down at her dress
again, she discovered that she’d run the stitching off the seam
line and into the gathered skirt.

“
For heaven’s sake,” she
muttered and removed her feet from the treadle. If she needed more
proof that nosiness was a social sin, she had it here, in twelve
inches of meandering thread that she’d have to tear out.

Carefully she pulled on the tight,
close stitches with a hatpin. If she was too rough, she’d create
runs in the silk so she had to concentrate. But Cora’s cryptic
words remained with her as she corrected her sewing error. She
realized that she had never been told how Belinda died, and it had
never been mentioned in any of Luke’s letters to Alyssa. People
died all the time—illness, accidents, childbirth. It had not
occurred to her nor her sister to wonder about the cause of Luke
Becker’s widowerhood. Of course, it would be too rude to ask.
Cora’s letter to Cousin Eunice implied that he was somehow
responsible for her death.

And that reminded her of how little
she really knew about Luke. He had not been very forthcoming about
his life, and she’d assumed his past was too painful to discuss.
But what if it was too ghastly? For darker reasons?

Emily realized that she had nothing to
base this on except a cranky old woman’s badly-spelled, unfinished
note, and she supposed that it was little better than gossip. But a
cloud of doubt remained. She could ask Rose, but Emily knew she had
no right to make a young girl answer questions that she was afraid
to ask herself.

She tugged out the last bad stitch and
positioned her dress under the presser foot again. The letter sat
on the writing desk, a glaring indictment written in dull pencil.
She kept her eyes on her own business this time—the sewing machine
needle rising and falling with each push of the treadle.

But it wasn’t easy.

~~*~*~*~~

Cora pulled a rag-covered corn broom
over the upstairs hall floor, dragging dust from the corners and
woodwork. Maybe she didn’t have Mrs. Becker’s fine and fancy ways,
but no one could accuse her of being a bad housekeeper. No sirree.
She could cook and clean and wash circles around that high-flown
etiquette teacher, and when people were hungry or dirty, a hot meal
and line-fresh clothes were a lot more important than remembering
which fork to use.

Listen to the racket down there—that
treadle machine was getting a workout, with her sewing away on her
new dress. And what had Luke been thinking of, spending all that
money on a piece of yardage like that, when calico would have done
just as well? A body would think that Emily was the Queen of Araby,
to need such a swanky get-up.

Well, maybe that dummy letter to
Cousin Eunice would open Emily’s eyes about her mail-ordered
husband. Emily would probably think it was none of her business to
read someone else’s mail. But Cora knew human nature, too. She had
left the tablet in a good place, and it wouldn’t be very hard to
read what she’d written there. It might take a while, but
eventually Emily Becker would realize that she’d made a big mistake
and pack herself back to Chicago. They would be done with
her.

She continued her trip
through the hall and into the rooms, dusting as she went. She was
secretly disappointed to find Emily’s bedroom as neat as a pin.
Cora stretched her dust mop to the top of the door
jambs—
no one
dusted the tops of door jambs—but her mop came away clean. She
frowned.

Pushing open the door to Luke’s room,
she looked first for Belinda’s vanity set and their wedding
photograph. There they were, standing in their proper places,
although the silver-backed hand mirror and brush were showing signs
of tarnish. Cora would have to remedy that. At least Luke seemed to
have given up stowing the keepsakes in a bottom bureau drawer.
She’d fished them out often enough to prove that two could play the
game and she had won.

It was a spare-looking room,
but what could a person expect from a man? It was neat enough, so
she supposed she ought to be glad for that. He made his own bed and
hung his clothes on the back of the corner chair. If he was
sneaking around at night to be with his
bride
, she couldn’t tell.

In her own bedroom, she dusted her way
in, stopping once to turn the cloth. Then she stretched a chapped
hand toward Belinda’s porcelain doll that sat on top of the bureau
and tweaked a flounce on its dress. Luke had wanted to give the
doll to Rose, but Cora had known it would just get dirty. This was
a nice doll, not one made of rags or old socks that a child could
drag around by its neck. Belinda’s father had brought it home to
her for her tenth birthday, which, in Cora’s opinion, was the least
he could do after he’d dragged them out here, away from family and
friends.

A paradise, he’d promised her. A
fool’s paradise, more like it. She’d buried her only boy on the
trip out, after he fell out of the wagon and got run over by the
wheels. One of the iron rims had cut his arm clean off. She never
forgave Wendell for that, and she never let him forget it, either,
by God. She’d put all of her hope in Belinda after that. Belinda
would find a good husband and not end up being just a farmer’s
wife.

Then Belinda had married Luke Becker.
And now she was gone too. Cora sighed heavily.

But she still had Rose, who
was the spitting image of her mama. She left her own room and went
to finish her dusting chore in Rose’s bedroom. It looked as if a
cyclone had been through here, with socks and underwear falling out
of the dresser drawers and the good Lord knew what-all under the
bed. One side of the pink gingham curtains was pulled askew, as if
Rose had been trying to see to the pasture where her sheep grazed.
Cora indulged her, though, because she knew that Rose loved her,
even if
they
were
trying to weaken the girl’s loyalty.

She set the broom against the wall and
went to the bed to pull the covers into place. How one small girl
could make such a whirlwind out of a bed—and, God, now what was she
sleeping with? She heard a crinkle of paper and searched the quilt
and top sheet until she ferreted out a rolled tube of brown
wrapping. Pulling it open like a scroll, she saw more of Rose’s
silly scribbling. How could Mrs. Becker believe that this was a
worthy pursuit, this waste of time? It didn’t teach the girl a
thing about how to get a cow milked, or supper cooked, or floors
mopped. Bah.

Holding the brown paper at arm’s
length, Cora studied the sketched figures more carefully. The
drawing began on the left side of the roll and seemed to progress
like the traveling pan-o-rama that came through town one time. That
one had shown the story of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, an
amazing and gruesome display.

She stretched her arms a bit more,
trying to identify the pictures. Oh, that was better. There were
Belinda, Luke, and Rose, all together in front of the farmhouse.
Then she’d drawn in a picture of Fairdale Cemetery with Belinda’s
headstone, complete with a tree and flowers. That gave way to a
drawing of Luke, Rose, and Cora at the farm. She smiled at the
image of the girl holding only her hand and not Luke’s. Then Cora’s
smile faded. There was an unmistakable rendering of the boat dock
in town, and a tall, skinny woman in a black dress. In the next
image, only partly finished, Rose was holding Emily’s
hand.

With her jaws clamped, Cora rolled the
paper into a tight tube and jammed it behind Rose’s feather
pillow.

~~*~*~*~~

That evening after dinner, Luke
lingered at the table, trying to decide if he would take his
whiskey bottle with him when he went to the barn. The lamb he’d
brought home from Chester’s had turned sickly, and he’d put both of
the sheep in a back stall where it was warm and dry. Since Rose was
out there now, sitting with them, Luke figured he’d better leave
the bottle here.

He saw Emily pass through the hallway,
her shawl around her shoulders. The front door opened and closed.
He couldn’t imagine what she’d want to do out there on the porch,
except it was probably far enough away to escape the stink of the
boiled cabbage that Cora had served for dinner. Luke grew the
stuff, but he didn’t like it at all. At least not the way that Cora
cooked it.

He wanted to follow Emily and reassure
her somehow. He’d sensed a coolness in her. She hadn’t been any
less polite or proper. He didn’t believe that her notions of
gentility would let her behave otherwise. But something about her
was different. If the aloofness was there, he was responsible for
it. He might have hurt her, and in doing so, had hurt himself
too.

Luke had allowed Cora to shame him
into retreating to his memory of Belinda, which had become more of
a curse than a bitter-sweetness. Trying to force himself to ignore
Emily, to forget the feel of her soft lips under his own was stupid
and destructive—it made him miserable and discontented, and served
no good purpose. At night he lay in his cold bed, married but not,
knowing that she was on the other side of the wall, and wondered if
she was thinking about him, too. Or he’d wake up in the darkness,
sweaty and restless, dreaming of a blond woman with a willowy grace
and long legs, which she wrapped around his waist as he took her
with heat and tenderness. Luke had never been shy around women but
the image in his head brought heat to his face even as it heated
his groin.

His gaze strayed to Cora’s broad back
and the knot of faded red hair on her head. She stood at the sink
pouring a kettle of boiling water over the washed dinner dishes.
Watching her, resentment welled up in him, as bitter and dark as
gall. She’d probably be content—at least as content as that woman
could be—to keep the three of them, Rose, Luke, and herself, here,
frozen in place until they died, one by one. He pictured their
headstones, all lined up next to each other at Fairdale Cemetery,
and a chill flew down his back. Cora was a peevish old bag, but she
wasn’t in charge here. He was.

Goddamn it, he’d told Rose that life
was for the living. It was time that he started following his own
advice. He pushed his chair away from the table.

“
Where are you off to now?”
Cora demanded.

“
I’m going to find my wife,”
he said. Her pinched expression gave him great satisfaction. He
pulled open the back door and bounded down the steps.

When he came around the house, he
found Emily sitting on an old stool on the side porch. He’d have to
see about getting her a better chair, and maybe one for himself. It
might be nice to sit out here on summer evenings and watch the
twilight come on. The low evening sun fell on her fine features and
made them as warmly luminous as an eggshell held before a candle.
She was a very handsome woman, and she seemed more so with every
passing day, he realized.

Her gaze dropped to him as he
approached the bottom step. “Would you mind some company?” he
asked.

“
Um, no, not at all.
Please—sit.” She wasn’t very convincing. She rounded her shoulders
and glanced away. He sat on the step below her feet and leaned
against the newel post. The pointed toes of her black shoes peeked
out from beneath her black hem. “Is Rose still in the
barn?”

“
I think so. She’s been
nursing that lamb as if she were its mother.” He tipped back his
head to watch a pair of geese fly over, honking as they went. It
was quiet here, and the smell of spring and new hope filled his
head and soothed his spirit.

“
I hope the poor little
thing survives.”

He shrugged. “It’s not really a pet.
Rose understands that animals die.”

“
But she’s lost so much—I
mean, her mother and all.”

Even now, the pale ghost of Belinda’s
memory insinuated itself between them. Would it ever rest in peace?
“Yes, I suppose she has.”

Between twiddling with the ends of her
shawl, Emily folded and unfolded her hands in her lap. From what
he’d noticed about her, she didn’t usually fidget like this. “Mr.
Becker—I mean, Luke—”

He waited. She seemed to be struggling
with a big request. God, he hoped she wasn’t going to ask for more
cash. After he’d bought the silk and given her money to order
Rose’s dress patterns and material, there just wasn’t enough right
now. He wouldn’t see good income again until harvest.

“
This is rather awkward, and
ordinarily I would not ask such a question—” Color filled her
cheeks and she entwined her fingers again.

Awkward. Damn, it had to be
about money, he thought. In his experience, that was
always
an awkward
subject. He and Belinda had often disagreed about money, usually
after she’d been talking to Cora. Emily was reasonable, though. She
had to understand his circumstances. If she didn’t, he’d be obliged
to explain what a farmer’s year—

“
Forgive me for asking, but
how did the first Mrs. Becker pass away?”

If she had kicked him in the chest
with her pointy-toed shoes, he couldn’t have been more surprised.
The call of frogs croaking down by the stream seemed as loud as
thunder. “I thought you knew. Didn’t Cora tell you?”