Heart and Home(15)

She carried two chairs to her backyard and slung the narrow mattress  over them to air in the sun. She hadn't ever liked the thought of one of  her dinner guests staying to help. Grams would never have allowed it.  Grams would have had a thing or two to say about their friendship,  besides.                       
       
           



       

Jane's main weakness right now was loneliness. Had Adam become aware of  it? Perhaps not or he might have stayed this morning to help with dishes  and talk.

Which brought her back to the question that had plagued her all through  the meal. Why was he so distant? What had happened between the ride to  the Tallon farm and breakfast this morning to change everything?

She stomped back into the house and into the little room. She flung open  the windows and began gathering up the few personal items that had made  their way in from the big bedroom at one time or another. She shouldn't  be worried that she had said something wrong. She shouldn't be  concerned that her realization of the night before might have caused her  to treat him differently, and his behavior had merely been a reaction  to it.

She should be glad that things had stopped before …

Before what? Before he took advantage of her? This was where Grams's  warnings were hard to associate with Adam. Jane couldn't quite picture  Adam seducing her and disappearing. He lived next door.

And there was Doreena. Yet Jane realized that Doreena was protection  only if Adam had a conscience, which Grams said men didn't, except  sometimes when it came to business.

It had all made so much more sense before she actually fell in love.

When that thought surfaced Jane almost dropped the armload of pictures  and books she had gathered. She couldn't be in love. Could she?

If she was, it explained why she wasn't thinking straight, and it meant  she couldn't trust her judgment. What she needed to do, she decided as  she hurried through the house toward the big bedroom, was put some  distance between herself and Adam. This morning had been a good start.

She dumped her burden on the bed and sat down beside it. She also needed  to keep her mind occupied. And she knew just the task. She had done  very little spring housecleaning because of her grandmother's illness,  and had neglected the house almost entirely during the past month. She  would start with the vacant room upstairs, then the parlor, dining room  and kitchen. This room could be made ready to rent once the upstairs  room was occupied.

First, her grandmother's things needed to be moved into the attic.  Surely there was an empty trunk up there. Jane lit a lamp, went upstairs  and then took the steeper, narrow steps into the attic. She hadn't been  up here in this part of the house in a long time.

A few pieces of discarded furniture cluttered the room, decorated with a  fine layer of dust and spiderwebs. Three trunks lined one wall, the  trunks she and Grams had brought with them, filled with all they had  owned.

She moved a wobbly chair aside and opened the first trunk. She had  expected to find it empty, but a faintly familiar dress lay only inches  below the top of the trunk. She pulled out the dress and held it up to  the lamplight. It was a silver blue, and seeing its color clearly  triggered her memory. It was her mother's dress.

Now she remembered watching her grandmother pack away her mother's  things, telling her that when she grew up, she might want to wear her  mother's dresses. The dresses had come west with them, then had been  forgotten.

She would check the other trunks-at least one ought to be empty-but first she wanted to see more of her mother's possessions.

Her mother had led such a short sad life, and Jane had hardly known her.  She didn't know what she hoped to learn, but she pulled the dresses out  one by one and tried to remember her mother wearing them. None of them  seemed like anything she would want to wear herself.

Beneath the dresses were a few personal itemsa hand mirror; a pair of  shoes, the leather stiff and cracked; a Bible in similar condition; a  set of blocks that had been her own. Jane smiled as she lifted one of  the brightly painted pieces. They had been made from scrap lumber by one  of the frequent boarders at Grams's. Each side was part of a picture,  making six different puzzles to be solved with the nine blocks.

There was also a small wooden jewelry box with a string tied around it.  She lifted it out of the trunk and realized the string wasn't holding it  closed, but rather held a little note. She slipped the note out from  under the string and recognized her grandmother's handwriting.

"Hanna's jewelry box. Key lost. Nothing of value inside."                       
       
           



       

Nothing of value to anyone except the daughter who was missing both  women so much. Maybe there was a cheap broach or ring that she could  treasure because it had been her mother's. She carried it to the lamp  and examined the tiny padlock and clasp. It shouldn't take much to pry  it loose.

When the dresses were repacked carefully in the trunk, she carried the  jewelry box down to her kitchen. She was right; it took a simple butter  knife to pry loose the tiny tacks that held the clasp to the wood.

Inside she found a packet of letters, tied with a faded satin ribbon.  The top one was addressed to Mrs. William Sparks, her mother.

Jane left the packet in the box and closed the lid. Sometime soon she  would read the letters. Sometime when her emotions weren't quite so raw.





A young boy came to get Adam shortly after breakfast. The mother of the  house was ill. She had been feeling poorly for some time and was  intending to get into town to see him. That morning she had had barely  enough strength to drag herself out of bed and had sent one of her boys  to town.

Adam made note of the six solemn faces in the outer room before he  slipped behind a curtain to see his patient. When he reached a  diagnosis, he broke the news to her as gently as he could. He left her  crying into her pillow and reported to the family. Only the youngest, a  girl of about six, was happy to hear there was another child on the way.

Adam returned home to find Rose Finley waiting for him. "This is Rosetta," the woman said.

"Another sore throat?" Adam asked.

Rosetta shook her head.

Adam directed her toward the examining room and, while she preceded him  inside, he took a last look at the mother watching proudly from her seat  across the room.

Adam closed the door and turned his attention to Rosetta. "You're younger than Rosalie, aren't you?"

"Only eleven months," she said. "I'm taller, though."

"I see. What seems to be the problem?"

The girl gave him what was probably supposed to be a sultry gaze. "I  don't know what's wrong, Doctor," she said. "That's why I'm here to see  you."

"All right," Adam said, not moving an inch farther into the room. "Describe your symptoms."

"Well, let's see." She began strolling around, running a delicate finger  over this and that. "I feel.lethargic sometimes and nothing can hold my  interest. Other times I feel filled with nervous energy." She brought  her hands together at her breast. "It's simply impossible to sit still  and do my stitching or to concentrate on a book. Do you know what I  mean?"

"Have you tried acting?"

"What?"

"Never mind. Is there more?"

She took a deep breath. "Well. I lose my temper at my sisters, which I never used to do."

Sisters, plural? Oh, wonderful.

"Really, I'm a very even-tempered girl, but lately their childish  arguments and their silly games just irritate me. Mother says I'm not  myself. Do you think I'm ill?"

"No, I think you're young."

She gave him a perturbed scowl.

"I mean, everything you've described is normal for a girl your age."

She took a couple of predatory steps toward him, and he leaned against the door. "You mean a girl who is becoming a woman?"

"Uh, Miss Finley … "

"Can we talk more about that? My becoming a woman, I mean."

"I don't think so. Your father's the one you should talk to." Adam had  the door open before she could protest. He assured the mother that the  daughter was fine, but charged her a dollar anyway, hoping to discourage  her from throwing any more daughters at him.

He saw the ladies to the door and stepped out onto his porch to watch  them stroll down the street, their heads together in whispered  conversation. He turned to look toward the boardinghouse before he went  back inside.

He felt guilty about not staying to help this morning. He had been able  to convince himself that there was nothing inappropriate about his  feelings for Jane until he had written to Doreena last night. Then it  had occurred to him that his feelings for Doreena seemed to be changing,  and his relationship with Jane was probably to blame.