And one particular brick mason had raised a daughter who did not say Thank you when a man replaced his tool belt with an apron. She didn’t even seem to recognize the magnitude of his sacrifice.
He stared, suddenly angry that she was who she was. He’d been a fool to reach above himself and pursue a mason’s daughter. In his world women carried their own weight without complaint. In her world women had time for music and painting lessons and slept past sunrise and maybe learned to be grateful to those who performed the tasks they wouldn’t dream of doing.
“Why are you staring at me?” Angie asked.
“No reason.” He inspected her plate. “What’s the purpose of serving you a perfectly cooked egg with an unbroken yolk when the first thing you do is cut up the eggs?” A mess of white and yellow mixed together on her plate.
“I beg your pardon? You object to the way I eat my eggs?”
She gave him that narrowed look again, the one he didn’t like. “A lot of skill and effort goes into cooking the perfect egg. Those were perfect eggs.”
“At some point,” she said in a steely, level voice, “a person must nick the yolk, and then the yellow and white mix together. So what does it matter if I chose to mix everything immediately by cutting the eggs at once?”
“Well, just look at your plate. That’s disgusting.” He made a stirring motion with his finger. “It’s all mixed together.”
Leaning forward, she examined his plate. He’d eaten the yolks first while they were nice and hot, sopping up the yellow with his bread. Now he was ready to eat the whites.
“Oh oh. You missed a tiny speck of yellow.” She pointed at his eggs. “Right there. Quick, wipe it away with your bread. Heaven knows what might happen if you eat a dot of yolk with the whites. Wouldn’t want to mix the two, now would you?”
If the girls hadn’t giggled, he would have put down his fork and stormed out of the house. Their giggles reminded him that he was straying from his vow of cordiality. But Lord A’mighty. She had more annoying characteristics than any woman he’d ever met.
“Look, eat your eggs any way you want to, all right?”
“Well, thank you.” She beamed at him and then at the girls. “I’m overcome with gratitude that you’ll permit me to eat my breakfast in my own disgusting way.”
He glared at his daughters to silence any giggles that might encourage Angie’s sarcasm. They didn’t giggle, but their eyes danced and sparkled brightly. They gazed at him expectantly, as if it were his turn to say something to further their breakfast-table entertainment. He swore he wouldn’t say a word.
“I didn’t say you were disgusting. I said your plate is disgusting.”
She rolled her eyes. “Then don’t look at my plate.”
So calmly that it infuriated him, she spooned up a revolting mixture of yellow and white and put it in her mouth.
Sam threw down his napkin. Pounding nails was going to feel good today. “Girls, it’s time to go. Don’t forget your books and your tablets. I put your lunch buckets beside the door.” To Angie he said coldly, “They’ll be back about three o’clock. I don’t know what time I’ll get home. If the weather holds, I’ll go up to my claims after work and prospect until dark.”
She nodded and took a sip from her coffee cup, washing down the godawful mess she’d just swallowed.
“Are you going to walk us to the schoolhouse?” Lucy asked.
“Don’t I always?”
“Papa?” Daisy tugged at his belt loops. “Are you mad at us, too?”
That stopped him in his tracks. He drew a breath, then kneeled beside her. “I’m not mad at anyone,” he lied. “I’m sorry if I sound peevish. Sleeping on the ground is something I haven’t done in a long time, and I didn’t sleep well.”
In fact, he hadn’t slept much at all. After Angie went inside, he’d given her an hour in case she needed something and called to him, then he’d walked to town to discover who won the fight of the decade. The way his luck was running, it hadn’t surprised him to learn that he’d lost his five-dollar wager.
So he’d gone to the Gold Slipper for a few beers to lift his spirits, but the mayor asked if it was true that a good-looking lady had flattened him up at the depot. Then Otto Finn said he’d heard Sam had a wife staying at his place. Both men seemed to think his situation was hilarious and the story worth repeating to everyone in the Gold Slipper. Rather than stick around and make himself the butt of embarrassing jokes, Sam came home and crawled inside his tent to brood.