Page 62 of A Convenient Heart
“We want to talk to you about Jack,” Danna said gently.
Merritt pressed her lips together to keep them from shaking. “There’s nothing to talk about. He lied to me. He wasn’t my groom after all.”
There was no husband for her. No future children. Only a classroom and work, work, work…
Corrine squeezed her arm. “When my first husband died, I felt…well, I felt a lot of things. Relief. Guilt. I started to sink into loneliness, but it was you who reminded me that God is always with me—husband or no husband.”
Had it been almost two years ago? Merritt remembered evenings spent with Corrine when Corrine had been a widow with a newborn and toddler. She couldn’t tell the other woman what she’d said back then.God is always with me. She might’ve said that.
But right now the words felt like a scrape against raw skin.
She caught sight of the children’s costumes, lying neatly over the back row of chairs, waiting for her students to arrive. One white angel’s robe had slipped and pooled in the seat of the chair. She slipped past her friends, ignoring the look they exchanged, and went to straighten it.
She’d been a fool to think she needed more than this. What was so wrong with getting a little lost in her work? She was needed here. A teacher was always needed.
Danna sidled up next to her, reaching out to touch one of the angel wings. “There were times in my marriage to Fred that I felt lonely. A husband isn’t a guarantee that you’ll never feel that way. It wasn’t until I realized I had to find my contentment in God that I truly found peace.”
A shudder passed through Merritt as realization washed over her. She’d kept her plans to marry John Crosby from her family and friends because she hadn’t wanted to admit how lonely she’d become. She’d allowed herself to become lost in her job and then in the idea of having a husband of her own.
She should’ve been looking for peace from her Heavenly Father. And it wasn’t too late to start searching, was it?
Danna cleared her throat, then changed the subject. “I got hold of some interesting information when I wired the marshal back in Nevada.”
Merritt shook her head. She didn’t know whether she could hear any news about Jack, and that must be what Danna was talking about.
“Rumor is Jack won a large sum at the poker tables. Nearly bankrupted a grocer who was charging higher prices to some of the folks in town—folks who mostly seemed to be immigrants, if you catch my meaning.”
Merritt’s heart squeezed.I was trying to protect you. He’d said the words to her, and she would never be able to forget the man who’d once been a boy, who’d tried and failed to save his best friend and adopted brother. Of course Jack would’ve tried to right the wrong.
“The marshal said those same folks came into some money. Seven families in all. None of them would say where they’d gotten the cash.”
A tear slipped down Merritt’s cheek.
“Also heard from the sheriff over in Colorado, where this Morris fellow is from. He’s a hired gun mostly working with a silver miner there. Big operation, bad working conditions. Several men died in a cave-in. And their widows mysteriously came into some money after Jack left town there. After he won a big pot in a hand of five card draw.”
Merritt swiped at the tears on her cheeks. Her hollow stomach rumbled. She’d skipped lunch. Maybe she should go home and find something to eat.
“He sounds like the hero from the play you wrote when we were children. The one based off that Robin Hood book,” Corrine murmured. “As I recall, you made me the Little John character.”
IfJack had done those things, it did sound like someone stealing from the rich to serve the poor. Jack wasn’t a fictional character. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t heroic.
Could one be heroic and be a liar at the same time?
Her emotions were muddled. Her thoughts, too. Jack had cleared away most of the rubble so the school building could be rebuilt. He’d hauled auction donations to her house.
Then we gotta talk.
I need to tell you?—
Had Jack tried to tell her the truth? There’d been times she’d sensed something building up between them, on the cusp of being shared.
If she blinked, she’d see the stricken expression when she’d given him the hat box.
I’ve never been given a Christmas gift before…
Corrine came close and put her arm around Merritt’s shoulders. Only last night, they’d giggled together as they’d whispered what next Christmas might be like with Merritt as a married woman.
“I let myself get lost in him,” Merritt whispered. “I should’ve known—how could I not have noticed that he wasn’t John?”
