Page 36 of A Convenient Heart
And now he had to figure out a way to skirt Morris’s notice while he helped Merritt finish the work for her pageant.
Guess he was going to see that preacher after all.
* * *
Merritt glanced up from where she was scratching ink onto a blank page at one of the tables in the dance hall, copying the pageant script onto one more piece of paper.
Jack was nearby, brushing blue paint onto one of the canvas-and-wood rectangle forms that made up the eight-foot-tall backdrop, a replacement for what had been lost.
Night was falling, and the circle of illumination thrown by the lamp she’d put on the table seemed to have shrunk. Jack’s lamp was burning low, and surely his stomach must be in want of supper.
She hadn’t meant for him to get this education on what being married to a teacher was bound to be like for the months she’d finish out her contract—working long hours, preparing for the classroom.
Jack had shown up earlier after meeting with Mr. Carson, looking stymied, like one of her older students working a difficult arithmetic problem, and had surprised her by asking whether he could try his hand at painting. The children were gone now, after an abbreviated class time. They had been distracted by their surroundings, and without books, the memorization work was more tedious. For hours, she’d been aware of Jack as he’d worked on one of the large framed canvases stretched out on the floor, mostly sitting next to it but occasionally standing to move around the backdrop or wash out his paintbrush.
It had been his suggestion to keep working when, after the last child had left for the afternoon, she’d looked longingly at the stack of papers she needed to copy.
There was much work to be done and little time. Most of the children knew their lines, but one or two still needed to read from the paper.
Certain that her mind wouldn’t stop its worrying, she put down the fountain pen and massaged her right hand in her lap. Jack looked over at the motion.
“Cramp?” he asked, placing his paintbrush in a mason jar of water nearby.
“Just tired muscles after a long day,” she replied.
She stood, realizing how tight her muscles had become. The cavernous room had cooled as the evening had waned.
“You should’ve warned me it was getting dark,” she muttered, touching the last page to test if the ink was dry before adding it to the stack of other scripts. “I’m sure you’re completely bored after a long day observing my classroom.”
He stood up, wiping his hands on a rag he pulled from his back pocket. “Not bored at all.” When he glanced at her, she got a hint of the way he’d looked at her the night of the fire. Wanting, but hiding it. Or trying to.
“Drew said you were born to be a teacher,” he said, throwing the words toward the floor as he stuffed away the rag and then bent to pick up the mason jar. “I can see what he meant. I think I would’ve boxed the ears of a couple of those boys, but you held your patience.”
Pleasure flushed through her at the compliment.
“There are days where I do have to mete out punishment,” she said. “Right now, we’re all out of our element and discombobulated without a classroom to learn in.”
She moved to gather her papers into a leather satchel.
“Did you always want to teach?” he asked quietly. He put the mason jar on the other side of the table and moved to the backdrop, grabbing one side of the heavy frame to lift it.
She hurried around the table to lift the other side, remembering the weight of the large wood pieces. He smiled his thanks.
“I wanted to be a writer,” she said. “Or a painter. Something romantic.” She laughed a little to hide the blush rising into her cheeks. “But my parents…” She trailed off, unsure whether she wanted to think about Maisey, about the past.
“Your parents didn’t encourage it?”
Her smile had grown stiff as they dragged the frame to lean against the wall. “After…” She couldn’t bring herself to talk about Maisey after all. She swallowed back the sudden knot of tears that surprised her. “I was fifteen when my parents decided to move back east. My father grew up here. My mother was a transplant from Ohio. It was—things were too difficult for them to stay.”
He rested the canvas and frame against the wall, dusting off his hands. She let go and hid her fisted hands in her skirt.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else,” she said. She looked to the side but didn’t see the wall that separated them from the outside. Only the vast prairie beyond, the Laramie Mountains in the distance, the sky that seemed to extend forever…
“So I was given a choice,” she finished. “Attend normal college and find a posting for a school, or move back east with my parents.”
She’d walked back to the table, but he stood frozen where she’d left him. “That’s an awful big decision for a fifteen-year-old. They couldn’t stay long enough for you to finish schooling?”
She shook her head. It was easier to look at the two books she’d brought over from her house and lift them to her midsection than to look at him. “They really couldn’t. It wasn’t hard?—”
