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“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” She moved the gallon bucket, then eased up from her stool. “I’ll go get your breakfast. I can’t do anything right this morning. Of course, I never can do anything right. I wish I could run away from the farm.”

  *

  “Molly. Molly Lee.” What in tarnation was she doing out in the barn so long?

  Mrs. Russell grabbed a long amber bottle from a kitchen drawer and rolled out the biscuit dough on a floured board with hard, fast strokes.

  She was glad she could talk to her husband, Calvin, about anything. Even if he had been dead nigh on forty years, looking at the big picture in her room of him wearing his Confederate uniform kept him alive in her mind most all the time.

  “I heard Molly get up late this morning, the lazy heifer. Then she lolled around getting dressed. Sounded like she was in a daze, stumbling over everything. I give her the easiest chores on the place, and she can’t even get up and out in time to do ’em right,” she muttered to him. “Where’s that gal’s head most of the time? In the clouds, I reckon.”

  After patting plump biscuits into a greased pan, she shoved them into the hot oven and slammed the door shut with a clang.

  “Most likely dreaming up a new piece of music, Calvin.” At least he understood what she had to put up with. “Says she wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes with a song running through her head, so loud she has to jump out of bed and scribble it down. Thinks she’s another Chikovski—some fancy Russian fella she’s always carrying on about. Well, if she doesn’t bring me some milk pretty soon, I’ll Chikovski her.”

  She stormed halfway out to the barn and called again. “Molly, I know you can hear me. We need some fresh milk in this house right this minute. You best quit lollygagging and get a move on.”

  A blue jay on the peak of the outhouse raised his crest straight up and squawked like he was mocking her. She threw a stick at him then marched back to the house in the early morning light.

  Maybe she’d get a rise out of Molly, the little slacker, but she doubted it. The overeducated know-it-all.

  Chapter Three

  Jaq tightened her grip on the steering wheel of her black Model T. “Damn. We’ve been on the road—if that’s what you call these washed-out ruts—three days. They’re pounding me to jelly.”

  “Sorry I can’t help more. Maybe my leg will be better when we head back.” Eric McCade unwrapped the white butcher paper from a wedge of yellow cheese and pulled out his pocketknife.

  “How much farther to New Hope?”

  He handed her a thin slice with larded cheesecloth still stuck to one end. “I bet you didn’t hear me say it’s almost four hundred miles all told. Thinking about getting away from your mother, weren’t you? She and your pop seemed concerned about you when we left.”

  “You’re imagining things. Now she won’t have anybody to gripe at except him. She knows he’ll stay at his office even more now, without me to distract her. Just tell me when we’ll get there.” She bit into the sharp cheese, its pungent, earthy flavor easing her queasy stomach. “How about some crackers? I can still taste that chili from last night.” This drive through Louisiana made her appreciate the luxury of traveling by ship and train.

  Eric maneuvered several saltines from their waxy package. “Here you go. If we expect to find someplace better than that dump we stayed in yesterday, we need to make it to Natchitoches tonight.”

  “Okay. How far’s that?”

  “Forty more miles, give or take.”

  “I’ve given you about all I can. Another half day? Then what?” She polished off the crackers and another piece of cheese, dusted the crumbs onto the black rubber floorboard, then pointed toward the half-empty Coca Cola bottle he held between his legs. “Remind me again how I let you talk me into this.” She could kick herself. She must have been nuts.

  “So many questions.” He handed her the Coke. “We’ll reach New Hope Saturday. And in case you’ve forgotten, my darling, you stood before that official last year and promised to love, honor, and obey me.”

  “Right.” The lukewarm drink tickled her nose and washed down the dry crackers and cheese. If only she could wash away such a foolish mistake so easily. “And the next day I told you to forget it.”

  “But in the eyes of God and the law, we’re still one.”

  “And only one of us is driving.” She smoothed the black leather seat beside her. If only it was better cushioned. “Hey, didn’t Father give me a swell homecoming gift? I don’t care if this Model T’s four years old. She could probably do thirty-five or forty on a good road. But our sham of a marriage isn’t near-enough reason for me to spend ten hours a day behind the wheel, no matter how much I love her.”

  Eric gave her more cheese and crackers. “Let’s see, then. You’re coming with me because you feel sorry for me?”

  “Huh. That’d be a cold day in hell. So what if your plane crashed and ended your flying career—for now, at least? You think that’d make me agree? Besides, I’m counting on us not being there long. If you believe I feel sorry for you, you’re crazier than I was when I married you.” She was lying. The battered man beside her barely resembled the strutting pilot who’d bulldozed her into marrying him just a year ago. Of course, all the gin they’d consumed had helped.

  “So you’re doing it because I’m still a tall, handsome war hero with a fistful of medals?” Eric cut a thick slice of cheese for himself and stuck it between two crackers.

  He was so banged up, she couldn’t bear to hurt him. She simply didn’t want to be his wife. “Something like that. And we understand each other. You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”

  “I suppose so. Especially if you’d promised we could annul our mistake.” He ate some more, then gathered his crumbs and tossed them toward the steep ditch on the side of the road.

  Hell, she might as well be honest. “Hmm. Yeah. That went a long way toward convincing me. But I still love you—like a brother.”

  He finished the rest of the Coke and threw the bottle out too. “If you’d let me, I’d convince you we could be more than that.”

  “Nope.” She’d learned her lesson. “We tried once. That’s enough. I told you, I love women and you’ll never be more than a friend.”

  “Speaking of your so-called love for women, what’s with you and Willie Piazza? I spotted you two in the saloon last night when I stopped by for a quick drink. You looked like you could eat each other alive.”

  “Yep. We’d been doing that quite often. But it’s nothing serious. We’re just pals.”

  “Like you and me, I guess.”

  “Yeah. But she’s got the right equipment and plenty of spare time.”

  “Not something you and I’ve had much of till lately.”

  She tightened her shoulders, then released them. All this driving, talking, wandering, and running away had made her quiver inside. She just wanted some peace and quiet for a while.

  “Yeah. Well, how about we end this bogus marriage soon?” She stretched one arm above her head, then the other. Disguising herself as a man so she could visit Willie late at night had made her skin prickle. Disguising herself as a wife made her yawn.

  If God would just let her get back to New Orleans and become a free woman sooner rather than later, she might think a little better of him. Being tied down sure wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

  *

  Molly’s right cheekbone ached and her eyes felt grainy as she grabbed an old wooden box. The sweet odor of the hulls and yellow cottonseed meal she scooped into it eased her headache, but it didn’t lessen her perpetual heartache. A stubborn refrain, Why did I marry and move here? rarely stopped playing in her mind and plaguing her heart.

  “Here’s your favorite treat, Nellie,” she called. “Nice and rich. It’ll keep your coat shiny.”

  Nellie lowed and swished her tail. Usually docile, even she rebelled when she didn’t get what she needed.

  “Be patient, sweetheart. I can’t stand for both you and
Mother Russell to rush me. Oops.” She’d hit her ring with the scoop. She was all thumbs today.

  She glanced down at her left hand. “Oh dear, I knocked the diamond out of my engagement ring.”

  She pulled on her gloves, dropped to her knees, and ran her hands along the littered ground. Nothing but chicken feathers, tufts of hay, piles of cornhusks, and mounds of dried and fresh manure. Her stomach churned, and she gulped to keep from throwing up.

  “Darn. Well, let me finish milking and run a bucketful to Mother Russell. After I wash the breakfast dishes, I’ll come hunt my diamond.”

  She rinsed Nellie’s tits then sat on the low stool, her head fuzzy as Nellie munched her breakfast and finally cooperated. The leisurely music of the milk buckets was usually soothing as their treble ping, peng gave way to a bass shhoop, shhuup. But the twenty minutes it took her today seemed like twenty hours.

  She grabbed several flour sacks she’d boiled and poured each pail of milk through one of them into small buckets for sweet milk to drink and into crocks for churning. Then she set the crocks in a washtub, poured water into it, and let each one’s cloth covering hang in the water to help cool the milk. The cream would gradually rise. After breakfast she would add some leftover souring cream and a little milk, then churn the mixture into butter and buttermilk. As careful as she was, though, sometimes the milk spoiled.

  She hurried to the well, even more jittery, and jerked her gloves on again. Otherwise the rough rope would callus her hands. Her shoulder muscles protesting, she strained to pull an already cold tin full of milk from the deep well for breakfast and carefully lowered the small buckets of fresh milk to chill.

  She scuttled to the kitchen but didn’t dare spill a drop. “This should be enough for breakfast, Mother Russell.” She’d mention her diamond later.

  Mr. James walked in from feeding the mules, Patrick dancing beside him. “Hi, Ma. I’m all clean and ready to go to school.”

  “Good boy.” She rubbed his arm and her day brightened. She couldn’t survive without him and her music. “You missed a spot.”

  His sunny expression dimmed. “Gee. Sorry. I tried.”

  She squeezed his small shoulder. “That’s all right. Just run along and wash your neck again before breakfast.” She gazed fondly at him then asked Mr. James, “Could you draw some more well water? I need to heat enough to fill the kettle, wash the dishes, and sterilize the pails.”

  When he returned to fill the reservoir on the wood-burning stove, she was in the pantry looking for some preserves. She overheard him and his mother.

  “I declare, James. Don’t see why she has to scald those milk buckets every blessed time she uses them. Once a week’s enough. Powerful waste of manpower, and well water too.”

  “You’re right, Ma. Like you’re always saying, she’s gone overboard about germs. I bet she got that notion at that gol-dern university.”

  She’d heard it all before, but she stopped for the first time that morning, afraid the heavy white sacks of flour, corn meal, and sugar on the shelf next to her might fall and crush her. They’d trap her in this small closet and smother her.

  Suddenly she wanted to smash the Mason jars lined up on another shelf. The purple blackberry jam, the light-pink plum jelly, and the crimson strawberry preserves, safe and sweet in their glass jars, would dye the pantry floor. Then she’d grab the tidy white bags that hung over her head and scatter seeds all around her—cotton, squash, okra, cucumbers, peas, and beans.

  Did Mr. James and Mother Russell even care if she overheard them? Did they think she was deaf and totally insensitive? How much longer can I endure her hateful remarks and his refusal to defend me?

  Mother Russell grumbled about how salty the ham was as she sliced it. When she dropped each piece into her black skillet, it hissed. “Downright finicky, that’s what she is.”

  Molly felt like crying. They obviously believed she was worthless. She had to get away.

  *

  The bile started rising in Mrs. Russell’s throat as soon as Molly confessed she’d lost that dad-blasted diamond. What business did a farm wife have wearing a one-carat ring, especially while she milked the cow?

  She ate a biscuit and gravy, two pieces of ham, and two fried eggs but still felt a mite nauseous. Cooking the ham hadn’t taken any of the salt out of it. Better kill another hog pretty soon, before it got too hot.

  That diamond kept worrying her. Nothing but trouble, just like Molly.

  James had been bound and determined to own that ring. Cost him a good bit of money too. But they’d had a bumper cotton crop that year, and he’d felt flush.

  The first gal he offered it to lived just down the road. He musta had her in mind when he bought it. He’d been partial to the sweet little thing for quite a spell. Might have made him a pretty fair wife, and she was always batting her eyelashes at him after church. Why, at the New Hope picnic she sat beside him at dinner and let him buy her lemonade and ice cream. She couldn’t figure what he saw in the girl though. She always acted like a scared rabbit.

  But when he popped the question, she hemmed and hawed, said she was honored and all sorts of nonsense but wanted to move to town and try city life.

  He moped around then started sparking a flashy, hard-looking woman in the next county over. Her folks were kinda trashy, and she looked like she’d had plenty of hard knocks. But James took a shine to her and courted her awhile.

  She coulda told him right off the bat that’d never pan out. The woman was most likely meaner than a snake when you got to know her. Good thing she turned him down flat after he brought her over for Sunday dinner.

  Now Molly sat there cutting her eggs into little bites and eating ’em like nothing had happened. Acted like she’d forgotten she’d been careless enough to lose a diamond in that filthy barn. But it wouldn’t do a lick of good to ask her how she coulda done it. She’d have some smart-aleck excuse.

  Her mind seemed stuck on James and that diamond, like the day he charged in real excited, saying Molly had consented to be his wife.

  She glared at Molly—leaving all that good ham sitting on her plate—and felt like wringing her neck. What a wastrel.

  Back then she’d told herself that Molly was just funning him and, sure enough, after a couple of days there came a letter. She’d had second thoughts and was sending his ring back.

  She buttered a biscuit and filled it with fig preserves.

  James’s heart near ’bout broke. Looked like one of the mules had kicked him in the face. Then he musta decided he just wasn’t gonna take no for an answer, because he started paying her all kinds of attention. Courted her for quite a spell, then brought her home on a Saturday afternoon and said they’d tied the knot. Coulda knocked her over with a cotton boll.

  Hmm. These preserves sure had turned out good.

  Molly’d been all dressed up in a frilly white outfit, with matching kid-leather shoes cut to show her ankles. And wearing real silk stockings! Great Scott. She didn’t look fit for anything but sitting around all day drinking tea and playing the piano. And that’s exactly what she’d do if she had her way.

  She sopped her third biscuit in the egg yolk left on her plate. She didn’t feel quite so queasy now.

  At least she’d taught Molly to milk old Nellie, and they seemed to get along fine. But look what came of that. Now she had to go help her hunt that diamond. Molly would never find it by herself.

  Law. She was just about at the end of her rope.

  Chapter Four

  “Damn horseshoe nails. They ought to outlaw horses from main roads.” Jaq studied her right front tire. “Flatter than this river bottom. Glad I brought some of my brother’s old clothes to wear.”

  She gazed up and down the hard-packed highway near the banks of the Cane River. “Doesn’t look like anyone will rescue us, so I better fix this. How about getting my tool kit out of the back.”

  She was sweating after she jacked up the car and wrestled the tire off, but it felt good to get some
exercise for a change.

  “Say, I’ve never known a woman who could do that,” Eric said.

  She straightened up and wiped her forehead with her shirtsleeve. At least he had the grace to praise her. “My brothers taught me. Came in handy driving an ambulance.” She ripped the tube out of the tire and inserted a new one. “I’ll patch this old tube when we reach New Hope. No sense wasting daylight now.”

  Fifteen minutes later they leaned against the front fender and gazed at the huge fields. “Those are pecan trees on this side of the road,” Eric said, “and cotton fields on that side, in case you didn’t know.”

  She shrugged and pulled a small packet of cigarettes from her front pocket, then tapped one out. She needed a break. “Want a cigarette?”

  “One of yours? Nah.” He jerked out his own pack and held it up. “Real men smoke Lucky Strikes. Couldn’t have made it through the War without them.”

  Spoken like a typical man, she thought. “Who changed that tire?”

  He grinned. “A real woman, I suppose, even if you do wear men’s clothes. They’ve been okay so far. Fooled the drummers and whiskey salesmen at the hotels. I bet those guys would have pestered a looker like you, even with me beside you.”

  He gave her an appreciative glance. “But you need to start wearing a dress tomorrow. I’ve already told my aunt and uncle in Logansport that we’re married. Besides, it’s just fifty miles on to New Hope the next day. You’ll have to be Jacqueline instead of Jaq when we get there.”

  She nodded. The cigarette was loosening her tight muscles, pepping her up. Cigarettes had been her best friend last summer when she returned from a late-night run. After picking up wounded soldiers near the front lines and delivering them to the care stations out of enemy range, she’d needed a boost.

  “A drink would taste good about now,” she said. She was ready to reach the hotel and have a decent meal.

  “We’ve got half a bottle of Kentucky bourbon left, and plenty more where that came from. We’re set if we have to stay in New Hope longer than we planned.”