Mackinnons #02 For All the Right Reasons (4 page)

She hit the water with a loud splash, a wall of silvery water rising high into the air all about her. The water closed over her face and she fought her way to the surface, realizing by the time she reached it, just how lovely the cool water felt.

Once she was in, she decided to stay in. She made her way to shallow water, where she could plant her feet firmly on the sand, and began removing her clothes. Each article she removed got a fair washing before she stood on her toes to drape it from the low-hanging branches that stretched out over the water. Normally, when the sisters were allowed to swim, they kept their undergarments on, but today, Karin decided not to.
Katherine wouldn’t take all of her clothes off,
a voice said.
Who cares? Katherine is only fifteen.
Karin, who at sixteen was a year older than her sister, was feeling just a little daring. It was summertime, she was young and the world seemed to hold still just for her. She removed all her clothes, even down to the hair ribbon holding her long hair back with a bow at her nape. Once she was free of all her cumbersome clothes, Karin waded back to the deeper water, where she cavorted like a young seal, swimming and diving and floating on her back. She laughed and splashed water on a frog watching her from the opposite bank, and tossed a dead branch at a turtle that was swimming her way.

On the opposite bank, a dry-mouthed Alex watched, barely aware that his good fortune to see Karin like this was doing strange things to his body. Alex had never seen any more of a woman’s body than her face and hands, and to catch a quick glimpse of water-slicked white skin now and then left him breathing hard. When Karin finished her swim and walked from the water, standing at the creek’s edge while she sluiced the water from her body with her hands, Alex noticed another reaction his body was having, farther down. Watching her hands move with swanlike grace over her body, he thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. Everywhere he looked she was as smooth and white as satin, except for the pale twisted ropes of hair that hung down her back and the darker clustering of curls that glistened with droplets of water between her legs. He swallowed hard when she tossed her head, her breasts bouncing and drawing his eyes to the firm young points that looked as soft as a kitten’s nose. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak. All he could do was watch.

Along the water’s edge, the grass stopped growing, and as if drawn by the promise of moisture, a colorful blanket of flowers seemed to compete for the space. Standing in the shallows, Karin gathered a bouquet of red and yellow and white blossoms, adding sprigs of clover in bloom. She tossed a few clover blooms out into the water as well, and watched as they floated beneath the log and meandered around the bend and out of sight. As her eyes followed the tiny white blooms under the log, she saw the reflection of a face looking at her from the opposite shore. Her first thought was to cover herself and run, but something about the moment, the silent intrusion into her privacy, gave her a feeling of power. She had never held anyone’s rapt, undivided attention before. It was a challenge to her to see just how long she could.

Turning toward the opposite bank, she knew she was giving the man an unobstructed view of everything he had come to watch. Something warm and intense throbbed low in her belly, and her eyes searched the dark foliage that grew along the opposite shore. Then she saw him, not just a man, but a man she knew. Alex Mackinnon. A moment later she turned and made her way back to the log to let the sun dry her hair.

As she lay there pulling the silky strands of hair through her fingers, Alex thought she was the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes upon. And when she was dry and began to put her clothes on, he knew he could never love anyone like he loved Karin Simon.

Chapter Three

It was a few weeks after the incident at the creek when Katherine Simon stood in front of her mirror giving herself a critical look. “I’m too short and too plump,” she said, as she looked at her reflection even more critically than she had five seconds before.

Ellie Simon put her head through the door to see who her daughter was talking to. Just as she thought. Katherine was at it again. Talking to herself. Ellie stepped into the room. “You’re too plump and short for what?” Ellie asked, giving her a quizzical look, fighting the urge to smile.

“For anything. I look like a toad. A speckled toad,” Katherine added, reminded of her freckles. “Why can’t I be thin like Karin? And born without freckles.”

“Karin is a year older than you,” Ellie said, wondering if she should remind Katherine she wasn’t born with freckles either, that they had come along later. She decided against it. That would lead to another round of questions.

“Yes, and she was thin last year, and the year before that.”

“You’ll grow out of it.”

“When?”

“Before too long.”

“And these freckles?” she asked, pointing to her nose.

Ellie smiled, giving her a fond look. “Seven or eight freckles is hardly enough to be overly concerned about.”

“Well, what about this neck?”

“What about it?”

“I don’t have one!” Katherine wailed.

“Oh, Katherine. You have a neck. You most certainly do.”

“No, I don’t. See?” Katherine pulled the collar of her dress apart to emphasize her point. She even went so far as to stretch her neck. “You see? I was right. There is no neck here. My head is sitting on top of my shoulders. I’ll probably go through life being called ‘No neck Simon.’”

Ellie clucked her tongue. “Shame on you, Katherine,” she said, wagging her finger at her. “You shouldn’t poke fun at yourself.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Katherine said morosely. “I should let everyone else call me ‘No neck Simon.’”

“Has anyone called you that?”

“No, but they will.”

Ellie laughed. “I hope the Good Lord isn’t listening to you right now. What would He think?”

“He’d probably agree with everything I’m saying.”

“Oh, Katherine,” protested her mother. “Honestly, I think you’re just looking for something wrong. You have a neck. You have a lovely face. Your figure will come. Right now you’re between stages, no longer a little girl, but not quite a woman.”

Katherine groaned. “What if I’m stuck there? What if I never become a woman?”

Ellie’s laugh was a little heartier this time, and her words a bit more understanding. “You’ll become a woman whether you want to or not. That’s one thing you can’t stop.”

“Who’s trying to stop it? I’d give my three favorite peacock feathers to hurry it along.”

Ellie watched Katherine step away from the mirror, over her hastily discarded nightgown, past her unmade bed, stepping over the dress she wore yesterday, to stop and pick up one of her precious peacock feathers that had fallen from behind the cross-hatched picture over her bed. She leaned over the bed and placed the feather in its proper place alongside the other two.

Ellie sighed and gave Katherine a fond look. Her daughters were only a year apart in age, but a decade apart in womanly things. Ellie watched Katherine slump on her bed, her hand coming to rest on the bedside table where an opened book lay.

She touched that book as if the words could be absorbed through her fingertips. And perhaps they were. Perhaps they went straight into her blood and flowed directly to her heart, for everything about Katherine seemed to come from the heart. And that is where the greatest difference between Katherine and Karin lay. Katherine had a depth and sensitivity that Ellie feared Karin would never possess. While Katherine knew the plot of every classic by heart and could quote poetry or scripture until the cows came home, she had not the faintest inkling about fashion, and showed no interest in learning. She could grow anything, knew every flower by a dozen names, as well as its history, and she had a way with animals and people, not to mention the fact that she could cook circles around half the women in the county. But when it came to knowledge about women’s clothing, Ellie had to agree with Katherine. It did indeed look rather hopeless. “Grow where you are planted, Katherine,” was the only advice she had to give.

“Wonderful,” Katherine said, throwing up her hands in disgust. “I could be one of those beans that sprout on the outhouse floor and all my mother says is, ‘Grow where you are planted.’” She went on to add, “Why couldn’t I sprout in a rich man’s garden like Karin?”

“Karin isn’t any richer than you are.”

“Oh, but she is. She is. She always looks like she is rolling in money.”

Once again, Ellie was inclined to agree with Katherine.

Money for the Simons was scarce as hen’s teeth, but Karin always managed to look like a rich man’s daughter. She worked hard, but where Katherine was always spending her money to buy something for a friend or member of the family, Karin was frugal and saved her money, using it to buy fabric and notions for a new dress from time to time. When Karin got a new dress, she took care of it. She took care of all her things. Ellie looked around Katherine’s tumble-down room. Across the hall, Karin’s room was neat as wax. Ellie let her eyes rest on Katherine. There she stood, in a dress that wasn’t very old at all, but she had worn it when she should have saved it, and now it was soiled and tattered, looking much older than it actually was.

In spite of these differences, Katherine didn’t have a thing to worry about as far as her mother could see. More than once Ellie had scolded Katherine and told her, “You should never be jealous of Karin. You have too many lovely things about you to ever be jealous of anyone. And don’t forget what it says in the Song of Solomon: ‘Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.’”

“And it says in the Book of John that ‘the truth will set you free.’”

Ellie knew when she was whipped. She knew better than to get into a quoting battle with Katherine, for in truth Ellie knew she wasn’t as well armed as her daughter when it came to that. Wisdom was a mother’s strongest ally. Ellie decided she would be better off if she stuck to that. “If you want to quote scripture, how about: ‘heed the wisdom of your mother’?”

That closed Katherine’s mouth. At least for the time being.

Watching her daughters grow to maturity, Ellie saw early on that Katherine was the kind of girl who was slow coming into womanhood, while Karin seemed to reach it overnight. She looked at Katherine’s stocky form, the straight torso with hardly any indention for a waist, the small breasts, the softly rounded hips. Then she looked at her face.

Of course every mother crow thought her baby crow to be the blackest, but Ellie Simon couldn’t find any fault with that face that looked back at her so earnestly. Katherine had huge green eyes that were almost hidden beneath a thick fringe of lashes. And her freckles were the same color as her rich mahogany hair. Right now that hair was braided rather haphazardly, but when she was older and realized how blessed she was to have such thick, shiny hair, she would learn to fix it in something besides sloppily done braids.

Katherine saw her mother was giving her the once over. “I know I look like the back end of hard times and you have every right to be ashamed of me. Next to Karin, I must be a terrible disappointment.” She dropped her head in her hands, looking like the picture of hopeless despair. “What mother wants to hatch one graceful swan and one mud hen?” Lifting her head a bit she looked dejectedly at her mother. “See? You’re laughing.”

Then to the ceiling she said, “How’s that? My own mother laughs at me. I am a mud hen! I knew it. I knew it.”

“Oh, Katherine, for heaven’s sake. I’m not laughing
at
you, but at what you said. Honestly, you’d make a marble statue laugh. You’ve never been a disappointment since the day you were born. You will be a beautiful woman one day, and don’t you ever forget your mother was the first person to tell you that.”

Katherine couldn’t fathom that. Beautiful?
Me?
How could anyone expect a person with frog-green eyes, hair the color of saddle leather, no neck, and a nose with more speckles than a robin’s egg would turn out to be anything but ugly? And on top of all that, God seemed to have forgotten that there were
certain
things that identified a woman right off that should be making their appearance about now. Did the Good Lord intend for her to have a bosom or didn’t He? And if He did, just where in the world was it?

Her mother understood what was going through Katherine’s mind. And not just because she was an understanding sort, which she was. No, it was more that Katherine reminded her so much of herself at that age, for Ellie had been as awkward as a newborn colt and as homely as they came at Katherine’s age. She had told Katherine that before and it didn’t seem to help. Far as she could see, it wouldn’t be listened to any better the second time around.

“Where is Karin?” Ellie asked, hoping to get Katherine’s mind off her looks and lure her attention to something else. “I found that bit of lace she was looking for.”

“Karin is doing what she always does. She is outside making a fool of herself over Alex Mackinnon.”

Ellie groaned. She had lured in the wrong direction.
Just where is all this wisdom I’m supposed to be having?

“Honestly,” Katherine went on, “I’ve never seen two people who see each other every day act like they’ve been separated for years. What could they possibly find to talk about for so long? Karin doesn’t even know enough words to talk more than ten minutes.” She sighed wistfully. “It must be terribly boring for an intelligent person like Alex Mackinnon to sit there hour after hour listening to Karin recite the same trivia over and over. You’d think he’d welcome a change and a challenge.”

An understanding smile stretched across Ellie’s face. “Now, don’t you go criticizing too strongly, Miss Vocabulary. You’ll be making a fool of yourself over some young man before too long, or I’ll miss my guess. I’ve seen the way Adrian looks at you. He’d be making a fool out of himself too—if you’d only give him the slightest bit of encouragement.”

“Adrian!” Katherine exclaimed. “I wouldn’t give Adrian all the hay he could eat!” Seeing that hadn’t had much effect upon her mother, she added, “Mother, Adrian is past boring.”