After he made sure the girls were outside and out of earshot, he leaned back into the house. “Are you going to be here when I get home?”
She had her back to him, her coffee cup halfway to her lips. “I don’t have anyplace to go. I’ll be here.”
“I was afraid of that,” he said, banging the door shut behind him. Wishful thinking had prompted him to hope that she’d come up with a different solution to their problem.
He wondered how long it would take before Laura’s parents learned that Angie was living in his house. Damn it anyway.
After Sam ducked outside, Lucy rushed back into the house to fetch the pencils she’d left on the table. Before she ran back to the door, she leaned close to Angie’s ear and said, “My mama never came to the table in her nightclothes!”
Angie waited until she heard the door slam before she sighed, then swallowed another taste of coffee and scanned the table. Already smears of egg were drying on the plates. Spilled milk soaked into the tablecloth in front of Daisy’s place. Bread crumbs and scattered bits of bacon marked where Lucy had sat. In the end, Sam hadn’t eaten the whites of his eggs. And she decided her own plate of uneaten breakfast did indeed look disgusting.
Rather than stare at the table, Angie sipped her coffee and gazed out the back door, which Sam had left open to clear the bacon smoke.
The scent of other breakfasts infused the morning air. Angie could identify scorched oatmeal, ham, bacon, the scent of bread fried in grease. From where she sat, she could see the top of Sam’s tent and a clear, cloudless spring blue sky.
At home on a fine day like this, she might have donned her floppy gardening hat and an old dress and worked in the vegetable garden out behind the kitchen. Or maybe she would have gone downtown to shop and enjoy luncheon at the Victoria Tearoom. Or perhaps she would have felt like dressing up in a light-colored spring ensemble and repaying a few calls.
Her reverie was so complete that she was startled to abruptly realize she’d been staring for a full minute at a woman peering inside the back door.
“I know it’s early,” the woman said uncertainly, pointedly noting Angie’s wrapper and undressed hair. “I’ll just come back later.” She glanced down at a covered pan in her hand. “I’ll leave this and be on my way.”
“No, no. Please.”
Eyebrows rising, the woman straightened from bending to set the pan in the doorway. “It’s just bread. I thought you might not feel up to baking, this being your first day and all.”
“I didn’t mean that I didn’t want the bread. I meant, please don’t go.” Standing, Angie ran her hands over her wrapper and sighed. Her state of dishabille couldn’t be helped. She was making a bad impression on everyone today. “I’m Mrs. Sam Holland. And I’d guess you are Mrs. Molly.”
The woman smiled. “The very same. Mrs. Cannady Johnson.”
Molly Johnson looked to be in her early forties. As Lucy and Daisy had agreed, Molly was no beauty, but she was handsome in a way that drew attention. Lively, intelligent eyes were her best feature, Angie decided. She also had an erect carriage, well-shaped brows, and a wide smiling mouth. Anywhere else Molly’s cropped silver hair would have provoked a scandal, but the short no-nonsense style seemed to suit her.
“I apologize for still being in my wrapper, and the table . . .” Angie waved a hand. “And I apologize for daydreaming and not inviting you inside at once. The truth is, I’m not making a good beginning at much of anything.”
Molly laughed. “You don’t need to apologize on my account. I’m not one to stand on ceremony. I came over to say welcome and to help myself to a cup of your coffee if there’s any left. Now don’t trouble yourself, I know where the cups are.”
Quickly, Angie stacked the plates and put them in the sink. She would have pulled off the crumb-and-milk-stained cloth, but she couldn’t guess what shape the actual table was in. Meeting Molly flustered her because everything felt upside down. Molly should have called at the front door, and Angie should have had a parlor in which to receive her. Sitting at the family table with Angie in her bedclothes was excruciatingly improper and uncomfortable. But she noticed immediately that the situation also created a strange and immediate sense of intimacy.
Molly reinforced the feeling when she insisted that Angie call her by her first name rather than address her as Mrs. Johnson. As Angie could do no less, she, too, offered her first name. In a leap of etiquette that took her breath away, they jumped instantly from being strangers to being intimates.
“We’re neighbors,” Molly said, dismissing Angie’s discomfort. “Have been for a long time and will be for a long time more. So, the way I see it, there’s no sense being formal. That doesn’t fit my notion of neighborliness.” Molly dropped three lumps of sugar into her coffee cup. “Now. Here’s what I know already. Sam said you two ran off and got married ten years ago, but your father objected, didn’t think a carpenter was good enough for you, so Sam begged you to come west with him and make a fresh start, but you wouldn’t do it because you were young and under your father’s thumb. Do I have it right so far?”