California Romance (44 page)

Timmy scrambled under the blanket and snuggled close. “Make them stop, Ellie.”

“I can’t.” A pang went through her. Years of neglect and lack of love had toughened her, but her little brother shouldn’t have to live with the likes of Gus and Agatha.
It’s bad enough for me
, her heart protested,
but Timmy’s only eight
.

A loud crash from below brought her bolt upright. Timmy’s fingers dug into her arm. “What’s that, Ellie?”

“Probably a chair turning over.” She loosened his death grip. “Stay here. I’ll find out.” She slid to the floor, crept over to the opening at the top of the rickety ladder, and peered down. Agatha was shaking her fist in Pa’s face.

Ellie sneered. When Pa had married Agatha two years earlier, the woman had been all smiles. “My name means ‘kind and good,’ ” she’d gushed. “I just know we are all going to be a wonderful, happy family.”

Ellie felt like throwing up. A few weeks after the honeymoon,
kind
and
good
gave way to screaming and stinging blows for the two youngest Stoddards. Agatha didn’t dare hit Ian or Peter. At twelve and fourteen they were already nearly as tall as their father. Instead, Agatha made up lies about them that earned beatings from Gus. A few months ago, the boys had disappeared. Agatha pretended to be sorry, but Ellie overheard her mutter, “Good riddance.”

Now Ellie held her breath and watched an ugly scowl cover her stepmother’s face. “I’ve put up with your brats long enough,” Agatha shrilled. “It’s time for them to go.”

Pa’s black eyes narrowed to slits.
“Go?
You already drove Ian and Peter away.”

Agatha snorted. “Gus Stoddard, you are such a hypocrite! If you cared one whit about your family, you wouldn’t have left them to shift for themselves all those months while you were out West, trying to make your stepdaughter marry a gambler to pay your debts. If neighbors hadn’t lent a hand, they’d have starved.”

“And you’ve never let me forget it!” Gus spit out, his face an angry red. “Lay off me. It’s none of your business how I handle my kids!”

Her raucous laugh brought him a step nearer, but she wasn’t through. “It is my business. I got taken in with your butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-your-mouth ways, just like your other two wives. They up and died on you, but I’ve no intention of dying. I’ve had enough of living in this shack with two worthless brats. You’re going to get rid of them, stop drinking, get a job, and be respectable.”

Not likely
. Ellie covered her mouth to keep back a laugh that turned into a silent sob. Childish voices, taunting and cruel, pounded in her brain:
“You ain’t nothing, Ellianna Stoddard. Neither’s your Pa. Trash, that’s what you are—and you ain’t never gonna be nothin’ else.”

Ellie cringed. Resentment toward her father, who had made her the target of jeering schoolmates, swelled until she found it hard to breathe. Then Agatha’s voice sliced into her consciousness, cold and hard as an ice-covered rock:

“I mean it, Gus. Either ship Timmy and Ellie out West to that rich rancher Sarah married, or send them to the orphanage. I don’t care which.” She paused, then hissed, “Listen, and listen good. I want those kids out of here!”

Stunned by Agatha’s viciousness, Ellie staggered back to bed. She found Timmy scrunched under the covers with his hands over his ears.

“What’s happening, Ellie?” His voice trembled.

“Shhh. Go to sleep. I’m here.” Yet after he fell asleep and silence reigned below, Ellie lay wide awake, glad for the warmth of her brother’s frail body. What would tomorrow bring? And the day after that?

It can’t be any worse than the past
. Ellie sighed.
I’ve never been more to Pa than just another mouth to feed. And since Sarah left, someone to do for him
. Her bitter thoughts rushed on. The only kindness she had ever known was when Gus married Virginia Anderson, a wonderful Christian woman. Virginia conscientiously cared for Ellie and her three brothers, along with her own teenagers, Seth and Sarah.

A lone tear slid from beneath Ellie’s tightly closed eyelid, followed by rebellion. Two months after Virginia died, Sarah had slipped away in the night. Seth had already fled Gus’s wrath. Their leaving made eight-year-old Ellie the woman of the house.

“It’s not fair,” she whispered, too low to disturb Timmy. “I did everything I could to please Pa and the boys. All I got were slaps and complaints when the food burned.”

Powerless to stop the raging memories, Ellie thought of how she’d lived in fear when Gus was drinking or lost at gambling. The older boys took off, but she and Timmy hid. During the past three years of drudgery, she’d tried to remember what her stepmother had taught her about Jesus. Was there really such a Person? She sadly shook her head. No man of her acquaintance bore any resemblance to the kindly, loving Christ Virginia had described.

Shortly after Sarah fled, Pa had announced he and Tice Edwards were going to California to fetch her home. Ellie’s poor, tired heart bounced. She and Sarah hadn’t gotten along very well, but maybe things would be different now. If Sarah and Tice got married like Pa said, would they let her live with them? Or at least help out so Ellie didn’t have to work so hard?

A second tear crawled out. Pa came home without Tice, blaming the gambler’s death on Sarah’s stubbornness and sourly saying she was going to marry a rancher. Now his threat was, “If you younguns don’t behave, I’ll ship you off to California and let the mountain lions eat you.”

It struck terror into the already cowed children. Ellie continued to do as she was told, seldom spoke, and silently bore the shame of being Gus Stoddard’s daughter. Although longing to learn, she secretly felt relieved when Pa ordered her to stay home and tend the house and Timmy. It meant temporary freedom from tormenting schoolmates who delighted in mocking her, leaving scars so deep she felt they would never heal.

What they said was true. She was nothing. Pa was nothing. And nothing would ever change. She’d go on day after endless day cooking, scrubbing, and mending. When she was a little older, she’d be sent out as a laundress as Sarah had been. Ellie sighed. Was Sarah happy now that she was married? Or had a mountain lion eaten her?

One day, Pa had come in from the few days’ work he did at a time on the St. Louis docks, just enough to keep the family from starving, and dropped into a chair. “Tomorrow you slick this place up, you hear? Ellie, make the best supper you can. Tim, help her.” A self-conscious smirk crawled across his face, and he dropped into a rickety chair. “We’re havin’ comp’ny.”

Company?
Ellie didn’t dare ask, but Timmy had no such qualms. “Who?”

Gus scowled. “Mrs. Batdorf, that’s who. You’re to mind your manners. She’s a widow-lady I met at church.

“Church?” Ellie blinked. Pa hadn’t gone to church since he’d married Virginia Anderson.

“Sure.” Gus guffawed. “Best place there is to find good, hard-working wives.”

Ellie sniffed, then brightened. Would Mrs. Batdorf be as nice as Virginia had been, even when the children didn’t mind her?

“Do we have to call her Ma?” Timmy persisted.

Gus slapped him, then leaned back until the tired chair screeched in protest. “You’ll treat her with respect, or I’ll send you to Seth and Sarah.”

“To California? Where the mountain lions are?” Timmy wailed. “I don’t wanna go, Pa. Please don’t make us go!”

The chair came forward with a crash. “You’ll do what I tell you, hear? Don’t you forget: mountain lions have powerful big teeth and are mighty fierce.”

Timmy cried himself to sleep that night…and a cold, hard knot that chilled Ellie through and through began to form in her breast.

The morning after Agatha’s ultimatum dawned gray and cheerless. Breakfast was a disaster. The biscuits Ellie had learned to make light and fluffy didn’t rise. Pa fired one at the wall. “Seems like a man should be able to have decent food around here.”

Ellie didn’t bother to tell him they had what he provided, but Agatha did. “Baking powder’s probably too old. Time to change it—and other things.”

Timmy’s big brown eyes, so unlike Ellie’s crystal blue ones, opened wide. “What’s gonna change?” he asked.

Gus hesitated, then pulled a soiled sheet of paper from his pocket. Ellie noticed how he refused to look at them when he said, “I’m sending this telegram to Seth and Sarah this morning.” He smoothed out the crumpled page and read:

Even though she’d known it was coming, the words hit Ellie like a runaway freight train. She stared at Pa, who still avoided her gaze; at Agatha, swelled with triumph; and last of all, at her little brother’s peaked, terrified face. Bile rose in her throat. She shoved back her chair, snatched Timmy by the hand, and dragged him away from the man who had betrayed his children.

“Git back over here,” Gus ordered.

They had no choice but to obey. Ellie tightened her hold on her brother and returned to the table, vowing to protect Timmy as best she could. She sent Agatha a look of loathing and asked, “When do we go?”

Gus cleared his throat. “Today. If they don’t want you, there’ll be no time for them to say so.”

Fear spurted. What if Seth and Sarah didn’t want them? It was no secret Ellie and Timmy had given Sarah plenty of grief. She still remembered snatching up Sarah’s hand one time and biting it. She winced.

But Ellie couldn’t think of that right now. She pushed her terror aside and dropped to her knees beside Timmy, who was sobbing uncontrollably. “God is going to pay you back for this,” she told the two adults towering above her.

Agatha put on an aggrieved look. “Why, Ellianna! How can you speak so to me and to the father who loves you and knows best? Surely the stepmother I’m always hearing about must have taught you that children are to obey their parents in all things. The Bible says so.”

Criticism of Virginia, who had tried to be a good mother in spite of Ellie’s rebellion, overcame her fear. If she didn’t speak out, she’d burst. She leaped to her feet. “How dare you quote the Bible to me?
You’re
making Pa send us away. I heard you shrieking at him last night.” Her voice became a perfect imitation of Agatha’s:

“ ‘I’ve had enough of living in this shack with two worthless brats. You’re going to get rid of them, stop drinking, get a job, and be respectable.’ ”

“You ungrateful girl! What if I did?” Agatha thrust her mottled face close to Ellie’s. “No one wants the likes of you around. They never will. If Sarah takes you in, which she may not, it will be from pity and duty, not love.”

Ellie’s tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth, and her heart felt like lead. What if Agatha was right? She felt Timmy tug at her worn, calico gown. Tears streaked his dirty face.

“Won’t they want us, Ellie?”

“Don’t be foolish. Of course they will,” she soothed. But the question hammered at her brain until she thought it would burst.

A few hours later, Ellie and Timmy stood beside the train that would carry them to California. Timmy screamed again that he didn’t want to go, but Gus shook the daylights out of him, turned without so much as a
Godspeed
, and walked away.

In that moment, the meekness behind which Ellie had always masked her feelings for her father turned to hatred. She put a comforting arm around her brother and led him up the train steps. The conductor took them to their seats, and Timmy snuggled down next to her, crying as if his heart would break. “Don’t worry, Timmy. I’ll take care of you. So will Seth and Sarah. They live on a big ranch, remember? It will be lots of fun. Why, I’ll bet they’ll even have a pony you can ride.”

“You won’t let a mountain lion get me?” Timmy quavered.

“No.” Feeling years older than she actually was, Ellie gently laid his head in her lap and stared out the train window. But she didn’t see the scenery through which they were traveling. What would California be like? Would Sarah and Seth—and that rancher fellow, what was his name? Matt?—be sorry that she and Timmy had come? A lifetime of misery swept through her.
Jesus, if You are really like Stepmama said, please…