When they finished breakfast and stood to go, she caught him studying her waist. She wore a tan skirt and matching blouse that was tucked in. She knew from looking intently in her mirror before she came down for breakfast, that her pregnancy still didn’t show in her waist and that her stomach was as flat as ever.
His gaze flew up to meet hers. “You don’t look it,” he said quietly.
“Not yet. I will,” she replied, and he nodded.
They walked out together and climbed into Aaron’s car. He dropped her off at the temporary headquarters for town hall and drove away to go to the Cattleman’s Club. Today she would be overseeing the effort to sort records that had been scattered by the storm. She wondered how many months—or worse, years—of vital records they would find. She hoped no one’s life changed for the worse because of these lost records.
Stella entered the makeshift office that had been set up for recovered documents. The room held long tables covered with boxes labeled for various types of documents. As Stella put her purse away, Polly Hadley appeared with a box filled with papers that she placed on a cleared space on a desk.
“Good morning, Stella. You’re just in time,” her fellow administrative assistant said. “Here’s another box of papers to sort through. I glanced at a few of these when I found them. What I saw was important,” Polly said.
“I’m thankful for each record we find.”
“Most of these papers were beneath part of a stockade fence.”
“Heaven knows where the fence came from,” Stella said.
“I don’t want to think about how long we’ll be searching for files, papers, records. Some of these were never stored electronically.”
“Some records that were stored electronically are destroyed now,” Stella stated as she pulled the box closer. “We’ll just do the best we can. Thank goodness so many people are helping us.”
“I’ll be back with more.” Polly smiled as she left the makeshift office.
Stella picked up a smudged stack of stapled papers from the top of the pile and looked at them, sighing when she saw they were adoption papers. A chill slithered down her spine as she thought again of important documents they might not ever find. She smoothed the wrinkled papers and placed them in a box of other papers relating to adoptions. She picked up the next set of papers and brushed away smudges of dirt as she read, her thoughts momentarily jumping back to breakfast with Aaron. In some ways it was a relief to have him know the truth. If only he would give her room to make decisions—that was a big worry. As for dinner with him tonight—she just hoped he didn’t persist about marriage.
* * *
That evening as they ate, she made plans with Aaron to go to Lubbock the next day. She tried to be positive about it, but she had butterflies in her stomach just thinking about it.
She had finished eating and sat talking to Aaron while he sipped a beer when her phone rang. She listened to the caller, then stood up and gave instructions. When she hung up, she turned to Aaron.
“I heard some of that call. Your part,” he said.
“We can talk as we walk to the car. That was Leonard Sherman. He’s fallen and his daughter is out of town. He can’t get up and he needs someone to help him. He hit his head. I told him that I would call an ambulance.”
Aaron waited quietly while she made the call. As soon as she finished, she turned to him. “I need to go to his house to lock up for him when the ambulance picks him up. He lives alone near his daughter. He said his neighbor isn’t home, either.”