today?” she asked as Ace mopped up some yolk with a piece of biscuit.
“You can’t go anywhere,” Nita said. “Doctor Rachel made that very clear to us. She said the wagon trip out here about did you in, and she doesn’t want anything setting back your recovery.”
“I’ll be better when I can hold them,” Meg insisted.
Ace thought he heard a bit of steel in that voice, the first emotion he’d seen besides her very real fear of him and that disturbing melancholy. He shot his mother a questioning glance, and she answered with a slight lift of her eyebrows and an almost imperceptible shrug of her shoulders.
“I was going to cut down a couple more trees this morning,” he told her, pushing back his chair and carrying his plate to the waiting dishpan of hot sudsy water. “Winter will be here before we know it, and I don’t want you running short of wood.”
He didn’t tell her that if her husband had been taking care of his family instead of robbing people, the wood would have been cut and stacked long ago, making starting a fire a lot easier.
If you hadn’t killed him, he could be here right now, doing just that.
The voice inside his head that reminded him of his sin several times a day put a stop to his mental criticism of Elton Thomerson. Meg had grown up a country girl; Ace figured she knew you needed a mix of seasoned and green logs to keep things going.
He also knew there was no way the fragile woman sitting across from him could have done the work herself. How would she have kept warm when she’d burned the scant supply of wood in the lean-to? Despite his attempt to not think ill of the dead, a muscle in his jaw knotted in anger at a man he’d known only by reputation.
He turned to face her, leaning against the narrow table that sat against the wall. “Would you like for me to go and see about bringing them home instead of chopping more wood?”
“Would you?” she breathed, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
“I’d be glad to.”
It wasn’t a lie. Though it was fitting that he step up and do the right thing for the woman whose husband he’d shot, Ace hadn’t realized how hard it would be. Not the work—he was no stranger to backbreaking labor—but seeing how badly she was scarred from the whole experience, and how deep her wounds were, left him feeling angry and helpless. He just wanted to fix things for her.
A sharp gasp caught his attention. His gaze flew to Meg’s. The pure terror on her face took him aback. What had happened? Why was she so afraid? Seeing no cause for her alarm, he shot his mother a questioning glance and saw reproach in her eyes.
Understanding slammed into him. His loathing for the way Elton Thomerson had treated his family, especially his wife, had somehow slipped past his usual outward show of stoicism. Seeing his feelings stamped on his face had terrified her.
It was time to go, time to get away from this woman who had somehow gotten beneath his skin the first time he’d seen her sunny smile and worked her way into his heart. For all the good it would do him. Whether or not Elton was corrupt and no good, Meg had no doubt loved the man she’d married. Ace would do well to remember that.
They finished the meal in silence.
“I’ll go to town and talk to Rachel,” he said when they were done. “If she says it’s okay to bring the children home, I’ll make the arrangements.”
“Thank you,” Meg said, without looking up. He gave his mother a brief hug goodbye and left, thinking that winter would be a long time coming.
* * *
Feeling guilty and with nothing to do, Meg sat on a stump in the shade of an oak tree and watched Nita finish stacking the wood Ace had split earlier.
Overcome with guilt, Meg waited until Nita stopped to rest a moment and said, “I feel terrible, sitting here watching you work. I’m not used to being so lazy.”
“It isn’t called laziness, child. It’s called healing. There’s a difference. All you need to do is sit there and soak up God’s sunlight.” She gave Meg a teasing smile. “But if you feel you must do something, you can help me shell the last of the beans that dried on the vine. I thought I’d fix them for supper. It would give you something to do and be a great help to me.”
“Yes, thank you,” Meg said, excited to be doing something worthwhile after being inactive for so long. “Where are they?”
“In the basket next to the front door.”
Meg went through the back door and crossed the room. The basket was sitting right where it was supposed to be. Meg bent over to pick it up with her uninjured arm. As light as it was, the effort still brought an ache to her chest.
She was about to carry it out when she realized she’d seen the basket before. It, or one very like it, had shown up on the porch with predictable regularity while Elton was in prison. More often than not, it contained vegetables, though sometimes there was coffee or a little meal or flour. When she’d emptied the basket of its bounty, she’d put it back on the porch, only to find it gone the next morning. Then it would show up again in a week or so.
Sometimes, she’d find a skinned and gutted squirrel or rabbit hanging on a nail, always fresh, as if someone were aware of her habits and knew just when she’d be there to find them. It never entered her mind that she should be concerned about someone watching her comings and goings, since she wasn’t the only person who had benefited from the mysterious benefactor. Ace and his mother were rumored to be responsible, but no one had ever proved it one way or the other. Recognizing the basket was as close as anyone was likely to come to solving the mystery.
Readying herself for the task at hand, Meg tied a faded apron around her waist. She’d lost weight since the day of the shoot-out, and Rachel said she was far too thin. Well, maybe her newfound freedom would relieve her of some of her worry, and her appetite would come back. Most likely, she’d just find a new anxiety, like how she was going to provide for her kids. She couldn’t rely on the good folks of Wolf Creek forever.
She was almost to the door when she realized she was thirsty. No doubt Nita was, too. The water bucket sat on the tall table she used for preparing meals, beneath the dishpan that hung on a nail and two shelves that held her few dishes and bowls. The long narrow stand, the same one Ace had leaned against that morning, was pushed against the wall, and the breakfast dishes she’d insisted on washing were draining on a flour-sack towel.
After filling two spatterware mugs with the fresh water Nita had carried in, Meg looped the basket over her right arm and took the drinks outside. It felt good to be useful, even in a small way.
Nita, who was just finishing with the wood, smiled when she saw Meg with the mugs. “Thank you,” she said, taking one. “I was getting pretty parched.”
Automatically, the two women headed toward the shade of the small back porch, where two unpainted, worse-for-wear ladder-back chairs sat. Meg took the one with the sagging woven seat, leaving the better one for Nita, then went back inside to fetch a couple of thick pottery crocks. Nestling them in their laps, the two women began to shell the beans into the bowls, letting their aprons catch the hulls. They worked in companionable silence for a while before Meg said, “I want you to know that I appreciate your help, Mrs. Allen. Your son’s, too. There’s no way I could have come home if you weren’t here. And I certainly
