Yesterday's Magic (5 page)

“I suppose I’ll have to make my way that
direction pretty soon,” she said, offering her aunt a bright smile.
She could do anything for a week—anything and absolutely everything
to save her family from being cursed.

She wanted to ask Aunt Freida about Rantaan
Toomay, whether she knew the man. But she knew she couldn’t just
blurt out the question. Merribelle Wainwright had obviously never
been to visit before, she had no reason to know any of the town’s
inhabitants or regular visitors. But maybe there was a way.

“I’m hoping to find some work while I’m in
town,” Bella said. “I don’t have much money.”

“You’re kin. Don’t be worrying about
that.”

“No, really. You’ve been so wonderful to open
your home to me. I’d feel so useless if I wasn’t paying for my
share.”

Aunt Freida studied her. “I’ve always
appreciated a woman who knew how to work. You can help me at the
store.”

Perfect. A reason to be in town.
Stroganhaufer’s Mercantile had the hotel on one side and the saloon
on the other. She knew Toomay drank. She had to assume he slept as
well. “Can I start tomorrow?”

“I imagine. But now, let’s see about getting
some supper on the table. Have a seat. It won’t be fancy.”

Aunt Freida lit the stove. Then she opened a
series of glass canning jars. Bella recognized potatoes and corn
and she thought the third was some kind of meat—perhaps ham. The
jars were all dumped into a cast iron skillet and the combination
was heated up, using the big black stove that took up half the
small kitchen. When her aunt dipped a spoon into a pan that was
resting at the back of the stove and came up with a big glob of
white grease, Bella’s stomach turned. Evidently no one in 1877 had
heard about heart disease. She hoped her arteries could survive the
trip back in time. Bella closed her eyes briefly as her aunt mixed
the grease in with the other ingredients.

Aunt Freida untied a bright blue and white
cloth and pulled out a loaf of what had to be homemade bread. When
she put it on the table, next to a dish of strawberry jam that was
already there, Bella decided it was not the time to worry about
fats or carbohydrates. Her stomach growled and Aunt Freida smiled.
“Traveling always makes a body hungry,” she said.

Bella figured she’d come far enough that the
horses should be worried.

When Aunt Freida began clearing dolls and tea
cups off the seats of the wooden chairs, Bella helped. She carried
them over to the chairs and the sofa and added them to the similar
clutter already there. Amazingly, nothing fell off. Bella had just
finished cleaning the third chair when there was a solid knock on
the front door.

“That’ll be Jedidiah,” Aunt Freida said. “I
knew he’d come.”

The way she said it, Bella had a sudden
suspicion that her aunt hadn’t been overly confident. Aunt Freida
opened the door and a whoosh of cold air blew into the house. The
sheriff stood in the doorway. The skin on his face was red from
cold, his eyes were stormy-gray, and his arms were full of
firewood. He thrust the stack toward Aunt Freida.

She looked over her shoulder. “Jedidiah
always brings a gift of some kind when he’s invited for a meal. His
momma brought him up right.”

It might have been the cold but she thought
his nose got a little pink, as if he was uncomfortable with the
praise. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” he said.

“No but I suspect Bella is anxious to have
supper and get settled in after her trip.”

He took off his hat and nodded in Bella’s
direction. “Mrs. Wainwright,” he said.

She didn’t like Mrs. Wainwright much better
than Ma’am. There was no way she’d remember to answer to it. “No
need for formality. Just Bella is fine,” she said.

He studied her and she wondered if he’d have
been more comfortable with a little formality between the two of
them. Finally, he nodded. “Most people call me Jed.” He pulled out
a chair.

Aunt Freida wrapped a gray towel around her
hand and grabbed the handle of the pan. She didn’t bother emptying
it into a bowl. Once she’d placed the pan in the middle of the
table, she took her seat.

Bella put a cautious couple of spoonfuls on
her plate and worked up her courage to try it while her aunt and
the sheriff filled their plates. She took a bite and almost sighed
in relief. It was good.

“You better eat more than that,” Aunt Freida
said. “You’ve had a long trip, Girl.

She wondered exactly where Mrs. Merribelle
Wainwright had hailed from. Then realized, what did it matter where
the woman lived? Any amount of travel in one of those
boxes-on-wheels, that they called stages, would be a hell of a
trip. “Very true,” she said. Her tailbone would never be the same.
She leaned forward in her chair.

“Bruised your finer parts, did you?” Aunt
Freida asked, sounding amused. “You could probably use some more
padding.”

Three days a week she worked out at her
health club, hoping to avoid exactly that. “I’m not sure it would
have made a difference,” she said.

“In any event, it’s a good thing you came
when you did. I smell snow a-coming. A couple of days later and you
might have run smack dab into it.”

If she were lucky, the real Mrs. Wainwright
would be snowed in somewhere, unable to get to Mantosa. If she
showed up before Dec. fifth, Bella was going to have some real fast
explaining to do.

“Bella’s going to be helping me at the
store,” Aunt Freida explained.

The sheriff didn’t look up from his plate. “I
imagine you’ll enjoy that,” he said.

Bella wasn’t sure if he was talking to her
aunt or to her. He wasn’t making eye contact with either one of
them.

“It’s a busy time for me,” Aunt Freida said.
“With everyone putting away supplies before the weather turns
bad.”

Jed took the spoon and dumped another helping
of dinner onto his plate. He handed the spoon to Freida. His
fingers were long but nicely formed. The skin on his knuckles was
chapped. “I suppose Mrs. Bean intends to spend the winter here,” he
said.

The tin spoon clattered to the floor. Freida
leaned out of her chair to pick it up. She wiped it off with her
napkin and put it back in the pan. “I’m not sure. Bella, I suppose
the trip allowed you an opportunity to get to know Mrs. Bean?”

Mrs. Bean hadn’t shut up since they’d left
Shinoah. “She’s a talker,” Bella agreed.

“I got the impression her companion wasn’t
too fond of making the trip,” Jed said.

“Yes, well. I suppose you know,” Bella said,
forcing her voice high in imitation of Constance VanHopple, “that
you live in a godforsaken wilderness?”

Jed looked up from his plate and she caught
the hint of a smile. “I’ve heard that before from city folk.”

Bella knew there was nobody more
city
than she was, but when she’d looked through the miniscule window on
the stage door, she’d marveled at the stark beauty of the rugged
land. The quiet had jarred her a little when they’d stopped to
water the horses and let the passengers
stretch their legs
or in other words, let the stage driver and the Bean brothers find
a tree to pee behind.

She’d ignored them and focused on what she
wasn’t hearing. There were no elevated trains rumbling past or
impatient cab drivers honking their horns. There were no planes
landing at O’Hare or boats traveling the Chicago River.

She’d actually heard birds chirping.

Bella pushed her plate to the side. She
really wanted another piece of the bread and jam but didn’t
necessarily want to be back in her own time and have an extra ten
pounds as a souvenir from the Old West.

“It takes some people a while but they
generally get used to us,” Jed said. “Isn’t that right, Freida?” he
asked, sounding almost friendly.

It took Bella a minute to realize that he was
still talking about Constance’s comment. It made her remember what
the Bean brothers had been telling their mother. “Perhaps that’s
true,” Bella said. “I understand that you moved back to Mantosa a
few years ago.”

Jed put down his fork. “Who told you that?”
he asked, all trace of friendliness gone from his tone.

“Uh…I overheard something the Bean brothers
said to their mother.”

Jed pushed his chair back and stood up, his
movement’s jerky. “I would think they’d have had better things to
talk about than going on and on about me and my family.”

Oh, for goodness sakes. She hadn’t come to
start a feud. “It was nothing, really. A brief comment. They
weren’t really
talking
about you.”

He stared at her and then finally nodded
once. Then he turned toward Freida. “Supper was good, Freida. Thank
you kindly.” He put his hat on, then his coat, and left without
another word, shutting the door behind him with a quiet, yet
deliberate thud.

Bella looked at her aunt. “I’m sorry,” she
said. “I didn’t mean to upset him.”

Freida reached for Bella’s dirty plate. “It’s
not your fault. Up until about five years ago, Jedidiah had some
big job working for the railroad. He moved back here after his
father died. J.W. had been the sheriff here for over twenty years
and for most of that time, people thought a lot of him. About a
year before he died, he turned foolish and left Jedidiah’s mother,
who he’d been married to for almost thirty-five years, for a young
woman who’d come to town just months earlier. She was very
beautiful.”

“But then he died?” Bella asked.

“No. But his new marriage didn’t pan out
either and within six months he was a single man again.”

“Did he go back to Jed’s mother?”

Aunt Freida shook her head. “She’d have taken
him. But the man didn’t have the sense of a prairie dog. He was
handsome, though, just like his son is. It didn’t take him but a
couple months to find and marry another woman, an even younger one.
Everybody knew she wasn’t faithful to him. They’d been married just
months when he died. Some said it was his heart but I’ve always
been inclined to think it was pure embarrassment. Anyway, Jedidiah
came home to bury his father. His mother and sister were the only
ones crying at J.W.’s gravesite. Neither one of the young wives
bothered to come.”

“He took his father’s job?” Bella asked.

“He did. Two years after that his mother died
and I thought Jedidiah might leave then. But his older sister was
here and maybe that’s why he stayed. Good thing, too. She’s had her
own troubles recently and has needed him.”

Freida’s explanation made it hard to question
the man’s commitment to his family. But what about his commitment
to his job? Weren’t sheriffs sworn in or something like that?
Hadn’t he promised to protect the citizens?

So just where the hell had he been the night
her father had run into Toomay? Was he at home, yearning for his
old life, his old job? If he’d been at the saloon, watching out for
trouble, her father would have never needed to follow Toomay up
those steps. The curse would never have been made.

Maybe if he’d done his job, she wouldn’t have
had to leave her own family, her own job, her own time.

Aunt Freida woke Bella up in the middle of
the night. She seemed to not only expect her to get up but to also
be cheerful about it. She set a lantern down onto the table next to
Bella’s bed. “It’s six o’clock, Girl. Time to get up.”

“Six
a.m.
? Bella asked, her eyes still
closed.

“Well, it sure as heck isn’t six
p.m.
,” Aunt Freida replied, sounding amused.

There was nothing remotely funny about this
situation. Especially since Bella had managed to put off a trip
outside the night before which now caused her bladder to feel like
it was about to burst. “I have to…use the…uh…privy.”

“I imagine you do. Once you get back inside
and get washed up, I’ll have ham and eggs ready for you.”

No one had cooked her breakfast for the last
ten years. Neither Averil nor her father ever ate breakfast. But it
had always been Bella and her mother’s favorite meal together. Once
her mother had died, she’d stopped eating it and had started up the
practice of having a donut or a muffin mid-morning.

Suddenly going outside to pee didn’t seem all
that horrible. Bella threw back her covers. “Give me ten
minutes.”

Aunt Freida nodded and backed out of the
room. Bella swung her legs over the bed and gasped when her bare
feet hit the cold wood floor. She reached for her suitcase and
pulled out the dress on top. It was pale yellow with long puffy
sleeves. The waist was cinched tight and there was a ten inch
ruffle around the bottom of the long skirt.

She stared at it, thinking it looked sort of
familiar. She held it up against her body and it suddenly came to
her. Averil regularly had her nose in a romance novel and this
dress was an exact replica of one that the heroine wore on the
cover of the book that was currently on Averil’s bedside table.

Oh good grief. Averil had been desperate
enough to use magic but not confident enough to act without props.
Bella reached inside the case again and grabbed a bra and panties.
Averil had done her best to convince her to wear some kind of loose
cotton panties and a corset but Bella had drawn the line. There was
no way she was leaving her new Victoria Secret purchases at home.
Averil had been worried that her underwear would give her away but
Bella wasn’t worried about that—nobody was getting close enough to
see her underwear on this trip.

Bradley had liked her underwear. Maybe even
loved it. After all, he’d said he loved her—that probably included
her underwear.

She hadn’t loved him. Not his red silk bikini
briefs or his hand-sewn leather briefcase or his shiny Mercedes.
She’d tried. Bradley was responsible. He was a vice president at
one of the largest banks in Chicago. Averil had introduced them
after she’d done some management consulting work for his
company.