a frame sat in the sun with what she thought might be four rabbit skins stretched from top to bottom.
The sheriff dismounted and tied his horse to the corral post. He walked over, helped her down and had almost released her when her legs wobbled.
He grasped her again and she gripped his forearms, steadying herself further. His arms were hard as stone, so muscular that her fingers couldn’t span but half the width. Holding on to him was like holding on to a tree trunk—sturdy and immoveable.
The look he gave her carried a hint of uneasiness. “Steady?”
She nodded...but couldn’t bring herself to smile and smooth over the awkwardness of their situation—not after the words they had each spoken. “It would be prudent for me to ride more often.” She stepped back to a more suitable distance.
“You’re not in Bos—”
“Not in Boston anymore. As you reminded me earlier.” She glanced at the dismal scene before her and couldn’t help recalling the cozy restaurants and cobbled, clean streets of the city where she had grown up. There was no comparison. And she would—she must—adapt. She couldn’t go back. “I’m trying to accept that very fact.”
“Then you might want to brace yourself.”
At a noise from the direction of the house, they turned. A small, birdlike woman stepped out on the porch holding a rifle before her at hip level with both hands. “State your business,” she said, her voice sharp and suspicious.
Gemma opened her mouth to answer, but then stopped at the woman’s appearance. Her faded dress hung loose on her body with a dirty apron hanging from around her waist and she was barefoot. Barefoot! And with cold weather already here! She looked to be about forty-five but Gemma wondered if that was accurate. She hadn’t bothered to put her hair up, but simply tied the stringy blond strands back with a faded piece of frayed ribbon at the nape of her neck.
“I recognize you,” she said, training the barrel of her rifle at the sheriff’s chest. “You brought my young’uns home from town over the summer when the weather turned.”
“Glad to see you remember. They were selling their pelts. How’s the trapping been out this way?”
“Good as anywhere, I ’spect.”
“You okay on meat?”
“’Preciate your askin’. Billy checks his trapline daily. Got rabbit, raccoon, squirrel. We’re doin’ all right.” Her gaze flickered to Gemma and drifted down her coat to her shoes before eyeing the sheriff again. “What’s she doin’ here?”
“This is Miss Starling, the new schoolteacher in Clear Springs.”
Gemma took one step closer. She couldn’t very well say that she was upset with Tara’s and Billy’s attendance right off. And in the light of their upbringing, suddenly it seemed insensitive to broach a criticism right at the start of the meeting. “I am visiting all of my students’ families to introduce myself.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Odom lowered the destructive end of the rifle only slightly.
“Sheriff Parker offered to accompany me since I didn’t know the way.”
Finally, the woman lowered her rifle completely and walked over to the corner of the porch to wedge it against the wall. “I’d offer you a seat but there ain’t none. What can I do for you?”
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