Page 26 of A Convenient Heart
There was a part of him that wanted her to look at him the way she had yesterday, like he was some hero.
Except he wasn’t.
And he’d realized, when she’d mentioned the letters, that he didn’t know what the real John had told her about himself. Jack was already deceiving her, letting her believe he was the groom she’d been waiting for. He didn’t want to lie to her face.
And talking about Dewey had brought back the rawness of his memories of that time. Jack’s childhood was something he’d rather forget. Not talk about. He’d been raised in an orphanage in Chicago and put on a train at the age of eleven. The benefactors from the big city had hoped that the children they’d sent west would find loving homes.
But that hadn’t happened for Jack. He would never call the people who’d taken him in Ma and Pa.
And he was certain Merritt didn’t want to know about them.
The interruption was welcome. Merritt glanced his way with a guarded gaze before turning to greet the handful of children that scampered inside followed by several mothers and a woman in pants with a silver star on her chest.
Jack hid a scowl. He might be telling a white lie by letting Merritt believe he was her intended groom, but he’d never had an affinity for the law. Not after a small-town deputy had refused to help him and Dewey.
“Nothing is clean,” Merritt protested as the children displayed picnic baskets they’d brought with them.
“We brung blankets!” one of the boys said gleefully.
“Brought blankets,” Merritt corrected idly.
“C’mon and eat, Mr. Jack!” The same little girl who’d been so upset yesterday morning, the very one he’d given his blanket to, waved him over.
How could he say no? He found himself kneeling on the edge of her blanket. Another girl had tugged Merritt over by the hand. Merritt glanced warily at Jack before she sat beside him, then arranged her skirt around her legs. Was it to keep from looking at him?
“Sorry for the interruption,” the young mother muttered aside to Merritt as the two girls dug in the picnic blanket. “I know you’re trying to clean up and arrange things, but they were going stir-crazy, and we wanted to find out whether we could help.”
“It’s fine,” Merritt said graciously. “I’m not sure how much more I—we—can do without books or slates.”
“How’re we going to rehearse for the pageant without our lines?” a boy of ten called out from another blanket. He had a chicken leg in one hand, and his chin was smeared with grease.
“Miss Harding has the whole thing memorized,” the older of the little girls on Jack’s blanket piped up, sounding exasperated. “She wrote it, anyway.”
Jack slanted a glance at Merritt. “You wrote the pageant script?”
Here was another stark difference between them. She was whip-smart, while he could barely read, and that had been self-taught.
Pink roses appeared high on her cheeks. “It’s mostly from the Bible.”
The mother from the next blanket teased, “I don’t remember a talking donkey in the biblical account.”
Merritt pulled a face. “Every child needs at least a few words.”
“Oh, I understand. My Tobias is thrilled to have a speaking part.”
The mother from Jack’s blanket stopped her littlest girl from putting a glob of mashed potatoes on her sister’s skirt. “Do you remember when Merritt wrote that serial story when we were…oh, I was ten. You must’ve been thirteen.”
Now Merritt had ducked her head. He couldn’t seem to look away from the two women.
“She won the county spelling bee two years running,” the other woman said.
“Can’t forget the time she wrangled all four of her cousins into that Easter play,” one of the mothers farther away in the cavernous space called over. “Remember Isaac as the ox, pulling that pony cart?”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” the mother on his blanket said, patting Merritt’s arm.
Merritt looked up and that wrinkle above her nose was standing out. “I’m not embarrassed,” she said coolly.
“God made you to be a teacher. And a fine one,” the woman said.
