Yesterday's Magic (20 page)

Ten minutes later, Bella barely remembered to
move the dolls and teacups before she collapsed into a chair. It
hadn’t been fast or pretty or graceful, but they’d somehow managed
to scoot Aunt Freida out of the wagon and help her hobble inside.
She was lying on her bed with her clothes still on.

Jed was building a fire. He still had on his
thick coat and from behind, his shoulders looked incredibly broad.
Bella knew first hand how strong he was. He’d handled most of Aunt
Freida’s weight, hardly letting her bear any.

He stood up and stretched his big body and
all she could think about was how she’d been plastered up against
him earlier in the day. It made her cheeks feel hot which was
ridiculous because the cabin was freezing.

“Thank you, Jedidiah,” Aunt Freida said. Her
eyes remained closed.

“Yes, thank you,” Bella echoed. She really
did appreciate his help. She would not have been able to do it on
her own.

He patted the end of Freida’s bed. “Just get
some sleep,” he said.

“I will,” Freida said. “It’s good to be in my
own bed.”

He walked over toward Bella. “Maybe I should
stay,” he offered, his voice low, so that her aunt couldn’t hear
him. The message was clear. He’d rather be anywhere else but he
wasn’t sure she was going to be able to cope.

“We’ll be fine,” she whispered back. She
could talk a good game. “I’m going to fix us some dinner and then I
suspect Aunt Freida will sleep most of the night.” Out of her
pocket, she pulled the big brown medicine bottle that Dr. Winder
had given her. She set it down on the table with a quiet thud.

It matched the sound her heart was making.
She was nervous as hell but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let
him know that.

“I’ll bring my sister by in the morning,” he
said. “We’ll get here in plenty of time for you to open the
store.”

“Perfect.”

He jerked back and she realized, rather
belatedly, that that was exactly what she’d said earlier that day,
at the store, right before she leaned in and planted the big one on
him.

“I mean, fine. That’s fine.”

“That’s what I thought you meant,” he said.
He opened the door and left.

Bella sat down and put her hand in her
pocket. She fingered the edges of the white handkerchief that he’d
left with her. He was getting to her. Badly.

Bella figured it took her twice as long as it
would have taken her aunt to fix them both a ham sandwich and a cup
of hot tea for dinner but at least it happened. And she hadn’t let
the fire die out. And her aunt was resting comfortably.

Bella ticked the items off as she sat in the
chair and watched her aunt sleep. She’d felt a little bad about
impersonating the niece before but now she felt really bad. Freida
deserved to have family with her at a time like this.

Those thoughts caused her to think about her
own family. She could not let Father and Averil down. Would
tomorrow be the day that Rantaan Toomay came to town?

As she rocked in the chair, she could feel
her eyelids grow heavier and knew she was drifting off to sleep.
She gave her aunt one more look and was satisfied that all was
well. She pulled the blanket closer around her and tried to get her
neck at a somewhat comfortable angle.

Sometime later, she woke up. Her first
thought was that the cabin was colder. She looked at the fire and
saw that it was almost burned out. Then she heard a noise and
realized it was a moan coming from the bed.

She threw off her blanket and grabbed for the
lantern. She hurriedly lit the wick. Her aunt had thrown her covers
off and she was turning her head from side to side. Another soft
moan escaped.

“Oh Aunt Freida.” Bella moved quickly to the
woman’s side. She placed a hand on her forehead and was shocked
that her aunt’s skin was so warm.

She grabbed the cloth napkin that Freida had
used at dinner and dunked it into the water pitcher that sat on the
table near Freida’s bad.

What the hell was she supposed to do now?

“Fuck.” She said it loudly, letting the whole
place know she was seriously pissed. She wanted to kick something,
to pound a hole in a wall, to dent a car hood.

Anything to avoid having to admit how scared
she was. “Oh, Aunt Freida. Don’t do this. Please, please, don’t do
this.”

Her aunt opened her eyes, licked her dry lips
and tried to smile. “Don’t fret, Bella.”

Don’t fret.
Oh, she was fretting all
right. She was one big fret right now. “I don’t know what to do for
you, Aunt Freida. You’re burning up. I think you might have some
kind of infection.”

“I’ll be fine. Just need some sleep. And my
medicine.”

Bella’s hands shook when she measured out the
medicine. She helped Aunt Freida sit up and then she wrapped an arm
around the woman’s back to keep her steady while she drank the
dose. Once she got her aunt settled back onto the pillows, Bella
again dunked the cloth napkin into water, wrung out the excess,
quickly folded it, and laid it across her aunt’s temple.

She did that six more times before she sat
back in the chair that she’d pulled close to her aunt’s bed. She
was wide awake now and so cold. She walked over to the fireplace,
carefully added another big log and a few smaller ones, and stood
close while the fire roared back to life. It cracked and sizzled
and all Bella heard was
Bessy Forth.

That poor woman had died after her leg had
gotten infected. This was serious business and unfortunately for
Aunt Freida, Bella had slept through her science classes.

Bella felt very cold even though the fire was
burning strong. She didn’t know how much time had passed when her
aunt stirred again, but she didn’t think it had been more than a
half hour. “Go back to sleep,” she urged her aunt.

Her aunt moaned and tossed her head on the
thin pillow. “Herbert…”

Oh boy. Her aunt was calling out for her dead
husband. Bella gently shook her aunt’s shoulder. “It’s Bella,” she
said. “You’re going to be all right.”

Who was she trying to kid?

Her aunt needed a doctor. And there was only
one person in the room who could make that happen.

How tough could it be? She’d gotten them home
tonight, hadn’t she? The horses knew the way—all she had to do was
keep the reins a little loose and she’d be knocking on Dr. Winder’s
door in fifteen minutes. Well, make that thirty. It was probably
going to take her fifteen minutes to figure out how to attach said
horses to the wagon.

“Hang in there, Aunt Freida,” she said. “I’m
going to get you some help.”

Her aunt mumbled something that sounded very
much like “there’s pizza in the oven” but Bella figured that was
just wishful thinking on her part. She walked over to the chest
where Aunt Freida kept her clothes. She would swim in them but she
figured there might be something she could borrow that would
provide a little extra warmth on the ride to town.

She found a loosely-knitted sweater in a pale
yellow with what looked like pearl buttons. She buttoned every one
of the buttons and then pulled it over her head. It was too loose
at the collar, too long in the sleeves, and it hung down past her
hips. She rolled up the sleeves and forgot about the rest. Then she
found some thick socks that she pulled on under her long skirt.

However, her silly shoes wouldn’t fit so that
sent her looking for a pair of Freida’s. The woman didn’t seem to
have another pair besides the ones she’d worn that day. “It’s not
like you’re going to need them soon,” Bella said, as she slipped
her feet inside. They were still way too big so she pulled a second
pair of socks out of Aunt Freida’s drawer and put them on. The
shoes were still loose but she figured they’d do.

She spied Aunt Freida’s hat hanging on the
hook by the door. “Not all that worried about hat hair,” she said.
She pulled it on, grabbed her cloak, and once it was all buttoned
up, she wrapped her scarf around her neck. She yanked on gloves,
checked Freida one last time, opened the door, and stepped
outside.

The snow had gotten angry. What had earlier
been soft kisses against her cheeks were now hard bites. The wind
whipped the snow around and when she took another step, she sunk
into a drift that came up past her knee.

She hated Kansas.

She hated snow.

She plowed forward and found a strange
comfort in the sound of her own huffing and puffing as she made her
way to the barn. “I’m telling you,” she said, “Dorothy was taking
some serious drugs if she couldn’t wait to get back to Kansas. She
should have been clicking her heels and saying there’s no place
like Jamaica, there’s no place like Jamaica.”

She opened the barn door and heard the horses
snort and move around. She played blind girl until she came to the
lantern and managed to get it lit with the second strike of a
match.

The horses were staring at her. “We’re going
into town,” she told them.

Rain tossed her head wildly before settling
her glossy black eyes on Bella. Her look said it all.
Give me a
break.

“You wish,” Bella mumbled. She led them out
of their stalls and then proceeded to replicate what she’d seen
Aunt Freida do to hitch them up to the wagon. It took her twice as
long as it would have Freida because she fumbled around with it but
finally she thought she had it.

By the time she was sitting on the wagon
seat, she was sweating. She jiggled the reins the way she’d seen
Aunt Freida do but the horses didn’t move.

No way. If she’d managed to figure out how to
hook them up, these two were not going to refuse to cooperate. She
let out a hiss of air. She shook the reins again and clicked her
tongue.

And halleluiah, they put their heads down and
plowed forward. It might not have been cinematically beautiful but
when they got to the end of Aunt Freida’s lane and turned right,
toward town, Bella let out a breath. They were going to make it.
Aunt Freida was going to make it.

There was a sliver of a moon. That, combined
with the blanket of white snow, gave the night an eerie glow. It
was light enough that she could see the snow swirling around, like
the winds couldn’t decide which way to blow.

It was impossible to see where the road ended
and the countryside started. She tried to stay oriented by looking
at the trees but everything looked different. The tree that earlier
that day had looked welcoming, like it was stretching it’s snow
covered branches up to embrace the sky, now looked threatening,
like it was poised to snatch her up in its twisted and snarled
branches.

“Sunshine. Rain. Good job. I’ve got a lot of
faith in you,” she yelled. She could do this. She wasn’t going to
screw it up.

Minutes later she realized her confidence
might have been a bit premature when the horses suddenly stopped.
Rain reared back on his hind legs causing the tension between the
wagon and the horses to lessen. Of course, when he came down on all
fours again, the tension suddenly increased and Bella was
practically thrown off the wagon.

Which would have been a big problem because,
unless she was crazy, there was a bear less than twenty feet
away.

***

Jed sat at his desk, feeling uneasy. He tried
to tell himself that the storm was the cause of it but he knew he’d
spent many a winter nights in similar conditions and had not been
bothered. It snowed in Kansas. Sometimes more than other times. And
in the more times, it was a pain in the ass to contend with. But it
wasn’t something that couldn’t be managed.

Most everybody, even the boys that were
accustomed to drinking well into the night, had taken a look at the
late afternoon blue-gray horizon and headed for home. There was
livestock to see to, families to tend. His town was quiet. That
should have been a comfort. If he was so inclined, he could get
comfortable on the cot in the empty cell and get in a good nap.

He hadn’t been comfortable since
she’d
come to town. He couldn’t figure her out. By the way Doc had
described it, she had no intention of staying around to help
Freida. That had caused Jed to see red when he’d heard about it.
He’d spent most of the afternoon wondering exactly what it was that
the woman had waiting for her in Ohio that was so all important to
get back to, especially since Freida was going to need some
help?

He’d managed to work himself into quite a
state by the time he’d walked over to the livery and got her horses
ready. He was confident that her willingness to leave Freida at a
time of need was a direct reflection of her character.

He’d stood outside the store and convinced
himself that he wasn’t going to bother himself about it. She could
go and he and his sister and probably a line of others would take
care of Freida. They didn’t need her.

Then when he’d looked inside the window and
had seen her going about her tasks of closing up, looking so
concerned about taking the proper care of Freida’s store, he’d been
a mix of emotions. She’d come out, gotten her pretty little bottom
on the seat of the wagon, and, God help him, he hadn’t been able to
not
ask the question.

She hadn’t really given him an answer but
he’d been less angry with her because it had seemed as if she was
truly sorrowful about her need to leave. Then an ugly thought had
occurred. Did the widow have a prospective new husband waiting at
home for her?

He’d practically fallen off his horse and
since he hadn’t done that since he was eight, he had to admit that
he was more than a little bothered about the notion. The woman had
kissed the breath out of him. She’d rubbed up against him and he’d
have been a blind man not to notice that the nipples of her breasts
had been hard, fairly begging for attention.