Page 72 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
“Is thatPearl?” She scooted around the bed and along the narrow passage to look closer.
“She sent me that portrait when she wrote to accept my, uh, proposal. I forgot I had it until I was moving things around for construction. That frame isn’t the right size. It’s all Yeller had. That’s why the glass is cracked.”
It was still such a thoughtful gift, it brought tears to her eyes. Pearl with her angelic smile, the one that got her out of the trouble her inquisitive nature got her into. She was sweet at heart, but too pretty for her own good, convinced her looks were a commodity that ought to buy her things. Too often it did. That smile earned her an extra sweet roll from the baker or a silk scarf that had been ordered in for another customer.
Pearl hadn’t suffered the same wrath from slavery-supporters as Marigold because she was not one to kick up a fuss or confront people or sign her name to suffrage petitions.You get more flies with honey, she would often tell Marigold.
Sometimes Marigold was so infuriated with her sweet, oblivious, spoiled behavior, she wanted to shout herself blue.
But she missed her sister. She missed how they made each other laugh and shared secrets and how Pearl expected life to work out for her, and thus it always seemed to.
Marigold lifted the portrait off the nail and pressed it to her heart, touched beyond measure. Why couldn’t Virgil stay grumpy and blockheaded so she could continue to despise him? Why did he have to give her a piece of her old home, as if he knew she was missing her family, when she doubted he’d ever had a sentimental moment in his life?
“Look…” He paused to glance upward to where the children’s voices and movements were penetrating through the ceiling. “I can’t have you sleeping in the open like a trapper. I brought you here with the understanding you’d be given room and board if you looked after my children. Can we go back to that?”
Because they’d managed that so well so far?
“You can’t work through winter,” she pointed out. “You’ll be here, able to look after them yourself.” She’d been thinking about that a lot, how she was not as necessary now as she had been two months ago. Leaving felt wrong, nonetheless. She didn’t want to abandon the children. She still owed him a lot of money, but he didn’t need her.
“Not true. The weather will get in the way of mining, but we can skid logs when it’s icy. Emmett has milling equipment coming. We’ll cut timber for walling the cookhouse and build a bunkhouse for next year. Men will stay through the winter if we can keep them warm and dry, but someone’s gotta hunt and trap to feed the bunch of us. I’ll be out doing that, too. If I could cook anything worth eating, I’d already be doing it. I’m never going to learn to sew—”
“Goodness,” she muttered, holding up a hand. “You’ll turn my head, making me feel so important to operations here.”
“The children need you, Marigold.” He folded his arms. “I need you as an employee. That’sall.”
She bit the inside of her lip as she looked out the window, nodding an acknowledgment of the boundary he was putting in place around her position here. She understood it was meant to reassure her, but it hurt. Everything about this arrangement hurt.
How nice it must be to be a man and not feel anything.
“Is that a nod yes? You’ll move back in here?” he pressed.
Above them, the children suddenly went silent.
As the sense of anticipation thickened, Marigold broke the skin on the inside of her lip and tasted blood. She made herself smile through the pain and nodded more deliberately.
“How could I refuse?”
Upstairs there was a small squeal and a fervent, “Yes!”
She sent a rueful look toward Virgil. He wore a somber expression. He nodded and turned away, saying, “Good,” but something in his demeanor told her he was disappointed on some level.
What had he expected? Unbridled enthusiasm?
Maybe she had imagined his dour reaction, because she heard him encouraging the older children to show Harley how to come down the ladder.
Marigold looked down at her sister’s portrait still tilted against her chest.
Pearl smiled up as if to say,See? I fixed it for you.
Nothing was fixed, of course. This was exactly the sort of fix that Pearl was famous for, one that had all sorts of flaws that were plain as tarnished brass and cracked glass, but there was that undeniable vision of optimism radiating from within it.
Oh, to be that unmarred by life.
She kissed her sister’s image and put the frame back on its nail. Time to get to work on making this a home.
Chapter Eighteen
In the next week, two other men failed to come back from their payday trip to town. Bing Sun packed up with his crew, intending to winter in San Francisco. Virgil hated to see Bing Sun leave, but one of the reasons he’d invited Bing Sun into this partnership was the valuable manpower he brought. The retreat to San Francisco was an important recruitment step for next spring.
