would attract a better sort of clientele than the saloons did. The town might then thrive, and new families would move here to replace the ones who were leaving.
Baby Lena curled her fat little fist around the ribbon tied in Juliette’s braid. She drew it to her mouth and sucked on the yellow satin.
“Here comes Mr. Bones back again. From here it looks like he’s grinning. He’s got a leather bag tucked under his arm. He must have caught the robber, then.”
“Looks like your money is safe until the next time, Juliette.” Levi stood up, then dug about in his pants pocket. Withdrawing some coins, he stacked them neatly on the table. “If I were you I’d keep my cash under the bed or in the mercantile safe, like I do.”
Stashing money under her big lonely bed was the least safe place she could think of. Strangers were not the only ones hoping to snatch unsecured funds.
Crossing the room, Levi joined her at the window and peered out. He cupped the curve of Lena’s dark, curly-haired head in his bony hand, his fingers gnarled with age and years of hard work.
“A widow like you.” He shook his head then kissed Lena’s chubby fingers. Turning, he walked toward the door, slid the bolt free. “With the responsibilities you’ve taken on—you shouldn’t be here. Go someplace safe and find a good man to marry.”
“I’ve had a good man.”
Steven Lindor had been reliable in every way a husband could be. What was left of his body was buried in the cemetery outside of town, alongside Thomas Warren Lindor’s equally broken body.
“I still say he and his brother never should have taken a job with the railroad.”
Looking back, no one would deny that. But at the time, Steven and Thomas had both been newlyweds and could not turn down the generous pay the railroad offered.
Even the fact that both men had babies on the way had not kept them from going. No—she believed it had actually propelled their decisions.
Her husband and her brother-in-law had perished.
But she had not.
Yes, she had wept, pounded her fist against her pillow and railed against fate. But in the end she had given birth to a beautiful baby girl.
In the instant she’d heard her newborn’s cry, hope for the future bloomed in a way Juliette could never have imagined.
“Take care walking home, Levi. The boardwalk will be slippery.”
“Been walking these streets more than half my life, missy, don’t reckon I’ll lose my balance now. See you at dinnertime.”
Juliette watched him go then closed the door, relieved to see that he did test each step as he proceeded down the boardwalk.
In the distance, the train whistle blew. She heard the rumble of the big engine as it pushed the train back toward Smith’s Ridge.
If only—oh, never mind.
Wishing that the railroad had picked some other town in which to set down its spur was as useful as wishing there was something she could do to restore Beaumont to the hometown she loved. The place where neighbors smiled at one another when they passed on the boardwalk, where one laid down one’s head at night in blissful slumber without the racket of saloons to disturb the peace of the evening.
A flash of yellow caught her eye. A hatbox with a fluffy yellow bow sat on one of the tables.
Oh, no! A customer—Miss Quinn her name was—must have left it behind. The woman had been distracted with joy over boarding the train and going home to marry the handsome man she was engaged to.
There was nothing to do but store the hatbox away in the event that Miss Quinn returned for it one day.
Reaching for it, Juliette saw an envelope tucked between the box lid and the bow. Curiously, Juliette’s name was written on the delicate parchment.
Before she had a chance to wonder about it, she heard a baby’s strident cry coming from the small room behind the kitchen.
“Sounds like your brother is hungry, Miss Lena.”
“If you can’t keep that boy content, you shouldn’t be running a business. Family comes first for a woman.” Her father-in-law’s grumble reached the dining room from the kitchen.
Thankfully there were no customers present to hear his lament.
Truly, did the man not understand that she would rather be at home tending her husband and their child?
Circumstances had sent her life another way. She could smile at the future or weep over the past.
She chose to smile.
* * *
Juliette sat down at a table in the back of the dining room and draped a shawl over her left shoulder. Tenderly she tucked the end under Joe’s small padded bottom.
There was rarely a time when she put him to her breast that she did not think of Lillian. For all that she smiled while she cooed to Joe and tickled his fat little belly, she felt a tug of sadness that it was Juliette feeding him and not his mother.
“Your mama was beautiful, Joe—just like you are. And she loved you so very much.”
Truly, no one could have looked forward to a child’s birth with more joy than Steven’s brother and his wife had.
Juliette knew this because they had shared a wedding day and a home. Lillian had only been one month along in her pregnancy with Joe when Juliette conceived Lena.
Their large home had nearly vibrated with happiness over anticipation of the babies’ arrival. But there was worry, as well. Her husband and her brother-in-law were determined that their children would be born to the best of everything money could buy. The trouble was, at that point in their young lives, they’d been far from able to provide a pair of silver spoons.
So the men had left their pregnant wives behind and gone away to California...to make a living working for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
During the wee hours of a January morning in the mountains at Tehachapi, the rear cars of the train they’d been on had detached, rolled back down the grade, crashed and burned. Life as Juliette knew it had perished along with Steven and Thomas.
Lillian lost her will to live. Try as Juliette might to get her sister-in-law to look toward the future for her child’s sake, she could not draw Lillian out of her despondency. After Joe’s birth she grew even more morose. She wouldn’t eat or take the fresh air, choosing instead to sit in her darkened room and weep.
Until the chilly night she’d crept quietly out of the house to crouch in the rain. Juliette didn’t know how long her sister-in-law had been in the yard shivering. She only discovered Lillian was out there when Joe began to cry.
That had been the first time she took her nephew to her own breast. The poor baby was hungry and his mother refused him. As Lillian sat in front of the fire, shaking with cold, a distant look in her eyes, Juliette had known she’d set her sights on death.
For
