A Time to Bloom (Leah's Garden #2)(9)
“I’d love to.” But she hesitated as she caught sight of Del heading toward her, thunder on her brow. “I’m so sorry, excuse me a moment.” She caught her sister’s arm and pulled her aside as fiddle and harmonica music twanged through the air. “What’s wrong?”
“I just overhead Mr. Young talking with Mr. Caldwell and some new businessman in town.” Del folded her arms across her best calico bodice. “They were talking about not building the schoolhouse this summer at all.”
Lark frowned. “Without consulting you?”
Del huffed. “Well, they certainly didn’t invite me to join the conversation. Though it was all I could do not to break in right then and there.”
“Probably best you didn’t.” Lark rolled her lips together. Rarely had she seen her steady sister so upset.
“We had that whole Thanksgiving fundraiser, but nothing has happened. If educating our children isn’t important, what is?”
“Well, the train coming through is rather urgent just now, but it won’t last forever.” Lark squeezed her sister’s elbow. “Maybe you can talk to them after church tomorrow.”
Del blew out a sigh and lowered her arms. “I suppose.”
“Why don’t you go join in the music? They’re missing you on the guitar.”
“I better check the refreshments.” Del headed off.
Lark glanced around for Isaac, but he stood deep in conversation with Adam now. Ah well. Perhaps she’d better look for Jesse instead and claim that dance. Hopefully no other fuss would sneak in and spoil the evening.
———
By the time the musicians decided to call it a night, some of the wagons had already left.
Forsythia laid her fiddle back in its case and sighed. “This has been some party.”
“That’s for sure.” Lark yawned. “Everyone seemed to have a good time.”
“Even Del, although it wasn’t looking too promising at one point.”
“She told you about the school?”
Isaac stopped beside her. “Sorry, Miss Larkspur, we never did get that dance.”
“Well, I’m sure we’ll have more parties like this before the snow flies. You going to stay on around here?”
“Well, I might follow the railroad for a spell. But I’ll be back, as long as there’s work here to keep me busy.”
“I know for a fact the schoolhouse needs to be rebuilt, and we’re thinking on a boardinghouse. I’m sure there will be plenty of work.”
“Good to know.” He touched his forehead in a gentle salute and strode off toward town.
The clock had ticked past midnight by the time the sisters fell into their beds.
Lark laced her fingers behind her head on the pillow, thinking of tomorrow. “Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, but like that old saying—make hay while the sun shines.”
“How are we supposed to do both things at once?” Del asked from her bed.
“We need more hands for the scythes and someone else to keep turning the cut hay.”
It was probably a good thing one couldn’t cut hay at night. The other side of her mind slipped in with But you could sharpen scythes by either moonlight or lamplight.
Did everyone have a nagging voice inside their heads?
3
UPSTATE NEW YORK
RJ Easton sat straight up in bed.
The blazing artillery and rifle fire, the screaming—all now a dream. No, not a dream but a horrific nightmare. The morning breeze danced with the lace curtains, the dog’s toenails clicked across the white pine floor, and stove lids clanked in the kitchen below his room. His room. He was home. Relief collapsed him back against the pillows. The war was no longer his life.
His eye itched. Bringing his fingers up to rub his eyes, he remembered. He only had one eye. Somehow—only God knew how—he’d come through the war with no visible scars after three years in the Army Corps of Engineers. He had entered the Union army as a second lieutenant due to his three years toward an engineering degree at college.
He made it safely through the war, only to lose his eye on his long-awaited journey home. RJ pressed his fingers against the throbbing scar, against the memory. The scream of the renegade who had jumped him that night at his campsite, the expletives he’d hurled at him for being a Yankee. The slice of the man’s knife across his face, then the feel of that knife in RJ’s own hand when he wrested it away and killed the man.
So much for his record of not taking any lives in the war.
His empty eye socket throbbed. The dog whined from the rug beside his bed. At least one creature cared that he was home. RJ dropped his hand over the side of the bed and stroked Barker’s ears. The black hunting dog had not left his side since he dismounted at the hitching rail in front of the two-story brick house once filled with music and laughter. With the death of both his parents, his older sister and her husband had taken over the homeplace, but it no longer felt like home. But then, he was no longer the same man who had stridden confidently off to war.
With no eye and blood on his hands, would Francine even want to marry him anymore? They’d promised their hearts to each other four long years ago, before he joined up. Her letters had grown sparser as the months passed, but she had promised to wait for him. He needed to see her. Between his time in the hospital and his slow journey home, it had already been far too long. If Francine still wanted him, and if he could still build the dream house he’d planned for her, before war split their country and their lives in twain . . . well, then maybe he could find a reason for living again.