and the owner of the saloon burst onto the boardwalk wearing a knee-length nightshirt and a pair of argyle socks. Even with one big toe poking out of the tip of the sock, the man looked formidable.
“Stop your bleating, woman!” Ephraim’s bellow had always been loud enough to shake windows. This morning, having no doubt been awoken after a night of debauchery, it was even louder.
“I demand that you keep your fleas on your own side of the wall. Folks are complaining all day and night!” Elvira Pugley was as hot-tempered as her neighbor.
“My fleas be damned!” Ephraim Culverson snatched the hammer from her hand and pitched it halfway across the road. “It’s your fat, hairy rats carrying them to my place.”
“Of all the insulting—I’m not the one who named my business The Fickle Dog. Dogs have fleas.”
“No more than rodents do!”
Juliette was pretty sure her windows rattled, but she shrugged and continued to sweep. This was not the first time the saloon owner and the hotel owner had erupted in a battle of words.
No doubt both places had fleas borne by rats. She didn’t care much who’d had them first, so long as the vermin kept to their own side of the road.
“I’ve a mind to sell the hotel rather than spend another day next door to you.”
She had? For how much?
“Sure would suit me not to hear you hammering on my door in the wee hours.”
To Mr. Culverson the wee hours were what others would call eleven in the morning.
Did she dare make an offer for the hotel?
If the saloon owner considered Mrs. Pugley a bothersome neighbor, well, Juliette would be worse. Not as loud, perhaps, but more persistent in the quest for cleanliness.
But to restore the hotel and hopefully attract a more family-oriented sort of person to Beaumont Spur, to make the ones who were leaving reconsider? The possibility niggled around in her mind until it turned into downright temptation.
“I just might take the train out of this town before that no-good, thieving, arsonist, taker-of-innocence son of yours comes back to town, and I hear he is.”
At the mention of Trea, Juliette stopped sweeping, leaned for a moment against the broom handle.
The last thing she expected was for her heart to kick at the mention of that long-absent boy.
Maybe he was going to come back to town and be his father’s pride and joy—but he had never been that, not really.
He would have needed a blacker soul in order for his father to be proud of him.
For all that Trea acted like the town’s black sheep, Juliette saw someone different.
She saw a boy with a decent heart looking for acceptance from people who would never respect him. And mostly because of his bully of a father.
That boy had sought affection in whatever way he could.
Just now her heart reacted to the mention of him the same way it had so many years ago, with a thump, then a yearning. She could not deny that she had been in childish adoration of him.
Over the years she’d often wondered about him, remembered the mischievous glint in his warm brown eyes, the hurt and rejection caused by those whose approval he so desperately wanted.
Of course, he would never have gotten it. The acorn didn’t fall far from the tree she’d heard time and again in reference to Trea.
How many times had she wanted to shout that trees and their nuts were a far different thing than human beings and their children?
It was her long-held opinion that a child should not have to bear the sins of the father. It had been shocking to her to discover that, in the opinion of most folks, they did.
Most especially when the acorn, the product of a sinful man, was named Trea Culverson.
“You better take that train, Elvira. I aim to promote my son to head man around here, right under me. Don’t reckon you’ll like having my young hellion to answer to.”
The argument over Trea and fleas continued for another five minutes before the combatants went back inside their own places of business.
It wouldn’t be long before they were back at it, though, unless Mrs. Pugley was serious about selling.
If she was? Well, the idea was likely to leave Juliette distracted all day and sleepless all night.
Juliette fashioned the ribbons of her bonnet into a tidy bow under her chin while she watched out the front window for Rose McAllister.
The babies were fed. Her father-in-law napped near the stove in the kitchen. Given that it was two in the afternoon and a quiet time for the restaurant, seventeen-year-old Rose should have no trouble tending things while Juliette went out to take care of business matters.
For the first time, she didn’t need to fret over the money she paid young Rose. In fact, with Christmas coming, she would give the girl extra. Rose, who was raising her younger sister, needed additional funds as much as Juliette did—or had until she found a hatbox with her name on it.
While she watched the boardwalk, her attention wandered to the hotel on the other side of the street, seeing it not as it was, but as she envisioned it.
Sometime during the wee hours of the night Juliette had made her decision. It was hard to know the moment it happened. At some point in her mind the hotel went from being the run-down eyesore she saw from her restaurant window to being hers.
Suddenly there was a coat of fresh paint to brighten its appearance. The front porch had half a dozen rocking chairs for her guests to sit in and window boxes full of blooming flowers for them to smell. Blamed if one of her guests would ever suffer a fleabite once she was in charge of things.
She was in the middle of a quick prayer that Elvira Pugley really did intend to sell when she spotted Rose hurrying along the walk, her ten-year-old sister in tow.
The door opened with a rush of frigid air. With the clouds building as quickly as they were, it couldn’t be long before snow began to fall.
“I’m sorry to be late, Juliette.” Rose yanked off her coat and then her sister’s and hung them on the coatrack. “Cora couldn’t decide which book to bring.”
“Thank you for coming, Rose. I can’t tell you how I appreciate the time to get a few things done.” Juliette would not tell her exactly what things just yet. “I hope to be back within an hour.”
“No need to thank me. Cora needs a bit of diversion. Without school, she gets restless.”
“From what I hear, the new teacher will be here any day,” Juliette said.
“Hope the new one’s better than the
