My Darling Melissa (15 page)

Melissa hoped that she would grow old with Quinn, but she had her doubts. If he kept on being as cussed as he had been, he probably wouldn’t live to see forty.

She glanced at the pile of carrots that still needed scraping and felt yet another twinge of nostalgia. At home she’d often helped Maggie fix meals; she enjoyed cooking and was good at it.

“Would you like some help?” she ventured to inquire.

Mrs. Wright must have been a perceptive person. “Yes,” she said quite formally, “if you must know, my feet hurt, and I’d like to lie down for fifteen or twenty minutes.”

Melissa was thrilled to step into the culinary breach. She waved the housekeeper aside and began scraping and chopping carrots.

She wasn’t conscious of Quinn’s presence until he spoke to her from just the other side of the cutting board, startling her so badly that she nearly stabbed herself.

“Do you do everything with the same fevered energy, Mrs. Rafferty?”

Melissa smiled, wildly glad that her husband was home. “Why didn’t you tell me that you have a sister?” she inquired, ignoring his question because she knew he hadn’t expected an answer.

“You didn’t ask,” Quinn said, helping himself to a slice of the peach pie Mrs. Wright had been saving for dessert. He sat down at the kitchen table and began to eat.

Melissa was determined to be the docile wife, at least for the next few minutes. If she could manage brief intervals of conventional behavior, she might get better at it over a period of time. She found a mug in the china cupboard and went to the stove to fill it with coffee.

Quinn looked at her in surprise when she set the cup down in front of him, smiling pleasantly.

“Would you like sugar or cream?”

He shook his head. “Sit down.” The words were delivered as an order, but there was no unkindness in them, so Melissa complied, folding her hands in her lap.

“Tell me about Mary,” she said.

Quinn’s gaze dropped to what remained of his pie, but he didn’t lift his fork again. “Mary is seventeen,” he told Melissa quietly, “and she attends a special school in Seattle.”

“What kind of school?”

A ragged sigh escaped Quinn. He was silent for a long time before he answered, “My sister is blind.”

Melissa was stunned for a moment, but then she realized that Mary Rafferty must have adjusted rather well to her handicap if she possessed an armoire full of ball gowns. “When did she lose her sight?”

Quinn’s answer was sobering. “Last year.”

Melissa reached out tentatively to touch her husband’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she told him softly.

He drew back. “I don’t need your pity, Melissa, and neither does Mary.”

Melissa could scarcely have been more taken aback if he’d thrown his coffee in her face. “I didn’t mean—”

Quinn pushed back his chair and stood up, and anything he might have said was forestalled by Mrs. Wright’s inopportune return from her nap.

Mr. Rafferty left the room, and this time Melissa didn’t have the heart to go after him.

She waited until she knew he was out of the house, then went upstairs to work on her notes.

Instead of planning her new project, however, she ended up writing a long, heartfelt statement of her situation to her sister-in-law, Fancy. All three of her brothers’ wives were dear to her, but Jeff’s wife Fancy had an especially gentle nature, and Melissa found it easy to confide in her.

When the dispatch was finished Melissa found an envelope, addressed it, and hurried off to locate the post office. If she was quick, she could mail the letter before closing time.

Twilight was falling as she started home again. Spring was on its way, though, and the days were getting longer. She waved at Dana when she passed the mercantile and exchanged a pleasant greeting with the lamplighter.

By the time she reached the train depot Melissa was in high spirits. Her energy was renewed, and she planned to scour the want ads in the
Seattle Times
for a used printing press as soon as supper was over.

She glanced toward the railroad car, thinking of the happy days she would spend there writing her book. Even as she watched an ancient engine backed onto the spur and attached itself to Quinn’s car with a jarring clank.

Quinn himself appeared on the platform, smoking a cheroot and looking worried, and although Melissa called out to him and waved, he either didn’t hear her or chose not to notice.

She was unaccountably injured by this and stood watching in bewilderment and frustration as the two-car train steamed its way out of the depot. Melissa could hear the boiler, and occasionally the whistle, long after Quinn’s coach had disappeared from sight.

Slowly she started toward the house she had come to regard as home, her lower lip caught between her teeth, her shoulders stooped.

Darkness had fallen by the time Melissa let herself into the house by the kitchen door, and Mrs. Wright laid one hand to her elderly heart and drew her breath sharply at her appearance. It seemed Melissa was forever startling the poor woman.

Mrs. Wright’s surprise at her entrance soon turned to gentle concern. “Why, what is it, child? You look downright sorrowful.”

Melissa sighed. “I guess I’m just feeling lonesome,” she said.

Mrs. Wright smiled, spooning fragrant stew into a china tureen. “He’ll be back, Mrs. Rafferty,” she said. “He’ll be back.”

It was true, of course, but Melissa couldn’t seem to pull herself up by her bootstraps and get on with the evening. She missed Quinn with a keenness that intensified with every passing moment.

“I don’t think I want any supper,” she announced, and then she went up the rear stairway to the second floor and made her way along the hall to the master bedroom.

There was a fire burning on the hearth, and the lamps were lit, but the warmth and light couldn’t reach into Melissa’s heart.

She went to the window, drew back a curtain, and stood staring down at the sidewalk, willing Quinn to walk through the front gate, whistling.

A knock sounded at the door, and when Melissa turned
around Helga was just entering, a tray in her hands. “Mrs. Wright says you’ve got to eat,” the maid said, bracing herself for an argument.

Melissa only gestured for her to set down the tray and turned back to the window. Even though she knew that Quinn was far away, she still tried to conjure him up.

Nine

Frost made intricate curlicues on the windows of the railroad car, and the March air was so cold that Quinn stretched to reach the clothes he’d laid out the night before and pulled them on before getting out of bed.

Even then he was shivering as he dashed across the car to throw more coal into the little potbellied stove in the corner.

There was a rap at the door, and, never having been fond of mornings, he yelled, “Come in, damn it.”

Since he’d expected the foreman of his timber crew, he was chagrined to be greeted by a good-looking and vaguely familiar blond woman carrying a steaming pot of fresh coffee. The scent of it restored Quinn’s faith in civilization.

“Mornin’,” the woman chimed. “My name’s Becky Sever, and I’m here to help out the cook for a few days.”

Quinn nodded and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee she poured for him before setting the blue enamel pot on the small stove to stay warm. Now that he’d had a chance to think about it, he recalled that Becky lived in a shack just a few miles away with a small child and a no-account husband. She came to help out in the cookhouse whenever
Wong, the regular cook, wanted a day off or fell behind in his work.

Quinn’s thoughts turned to the past and the hardships his mother had known, living on this same mountain, tied to a man who’d seemed to delight in making her life miserable. He wondered if things were the same for Becky.

Becky answered the unspoken question by saying somewhat harriedly, at the door of the car, “I’m grateful for a chance to work, Mr. Rafferty. Jake can’t seem to find a job that suits him, and my little girl needs so many things.” She paused, looking shy as she drew her ragged woolen shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “The men’ll be comin’ in for breakfast in the next few minutes if you want to eat with them.”

Quinn nodded and thanked Becky, and then she went out.

He drank two more cups of coffee before pulling on his cork boots, gloves, and heavy woolen coat. Remembering that Becky had been wearing nothing more than a shawl over her skimpy dress, he shivered as he stepped out of the car into the biting chill of dawn.

The scents of woodsmoke and fried pork filled the air as Quinn crossed the distance between the spur of track and the cookhouse. Here and there shreds of dirty snow lay on the ground, but the earth was reawakening, and spring was imminent.

Despite rumors that all was not well on his timber crews, the men seemed happy to see Quinn, and they included him in their boisterous conversations as they consumed heaping platefuls of meat, eggs, and toasted bread.

Becky Sever hurried between the tables, refilling coffee cups. She smiled a great deal and endured the men’s good-natured teasing without taking offense. Her little girl, who looked to be about five, sat contentedly on the hearth, playing with a one-eyed rag doll.

Quinn was once again reminded of the old days, and he longed for Melissa. When she was around she kept him so distracted that there was no time for looking back into the past.

When breakfast was over the foreman lingered, as did a
couple of representatives from the labor union. The men had voted in favor of the alliance months before, and there had been grumbling and threats of trouble ever since.

Quinn sat watching them over the rim of his coffee cup, waiting. They’d demanded this meeting; they could make the first move.

“The men ain’t makin’ enough money,” one of the strangers finally said. He was nothing more than a lad wearing a cheap suit and depending on bravado to see him through.

Quinn sighed. “They’re making as much as any other crew in the state,” he replied truthfully. Before Melissa had entered his life, when he’d still been able to think straight, he’d made a thorough investigation of the matter.

The foreman, a seasoned old bull of the woods named Eric Jergensen, gave Quinn a beleaguered look. “I try to tell them, Mr. Rafferty, but they don’t listen—”

The union men broke in, both jawing at once, and so the parley went. No one paid any attention to anyone, and nothing was accomplished.

After an hour had passed Quinn was so disgusted that he ordered everybody but Becky, her child, and Wong out of the cookhouse.

“Do you think they’ll strike?” Becky asked as she gathered the enamel mugs that had been left on the rough-hewn trestle table.

Quinn shrugged tiredly. He’d traveled all the way up that damned mountain and nearly frozen his backside off during the night, and for what? Things were worse than they had been before.

Becky was walking away when he stopped her by asking, “Does it bother you—being the only woman in camp, I mean?”

She smiled trustingly, her brown eyes alight. “I believe I have a few protectors among the loggers,” she answered evenly. “Besides, I reckon it’s safer here than it is over to our cabin right now.”

Quinn realized that he was keeping her from her work and
said nothing more. He did wish, suddenly and sorely, that he could go home.

He left the cookhouse and spent the morning felling timber, working as hard as any of his men did. Whatever labor problems the company might have, he knew he was respected and liked for his ability to not only keep the pace, but set it.

During the midday meal he hardly noticed Becky, because the workers were giving him an earful—what they wanted and didn’t want, what they needed. Quinn listened with his good right ear—he was stone deaf in his left, thanks to the old man’s temper—and when the food was gone he went back to the timber and manned his end of a crosscut saw until the day was over.

Quinn had been brought up tough, and he was no stranger to hard work, physical or otherwise. Even so, he was so tired that night that he could barely eat, and he fell asleep sprawled out on the fur bedspread, still wearing his clothes.

By the time Becky arrived first thing the next morning, with another pot of coffee, he missed Melissa so badly that he was on the point of walking down the mountain.

“It’s nice and warm in here,” she said cheerfully, and Quinn shivered.

“If you say so. Your husband—his name is Jake, isn’t it?”

Becky nodded, her eyes wide and worried. “Yes.”

“How does he feel about your working over here?”

She averted her gaze for a moment, looking shamefaced. “I told him I was lookin’ after a sick neighbor woman, old Mrs. Higgins.” She stopped and shook her head. “My man’d be real mad if he knew we were here.”

Quinn sighed. He didn’t like interfering in a marriage, and by keeping Becky on the payroll he was doing just that. “He’s bound to find out the truth sooner or later,” he reasoned. “What will you do then?”

Becky stuck out her chin. “No matter what, I won’t let him stop me ’fore Margaret’s got her shoes and her reader for first grade,” she said. “I’ll be here every day, as long as there’s work, Mr. Rafferty, unless you send me away.”