Page 88 of Charlotte's Reckoning
“I, uh, just moved in, and there’s a lot of work to be done,” she admitted without answering her question. As the wagon wheel hit a particularly deep rut, Charlotte exclaimed, “Stop here, please!”
Jenny and her driver looked around, appalled and puzzled respectively. “You live here?” she asked.
“No,” she replied as she climbed down and rushed to the side of the road. Moving aside brush and limbs, she found her chest where she’d left it. She turned and asked Jack, “Could I trouble you to carry it for me? The handle broke yesterday, and I had to leave it.”
The strapping young man had no trouble lifting it and carrying it to the wagon. With it safely stowed in the back, they started off again.
Charlotte didn’t miss Jenny’s confused and concerned expression, but she didn’t address it either.
They rode along in silence until Charlotte spotted the landmark for her turnoff—the fallen tree she’d rested upon. “The lane is up there by that stand of willows.”
“Those are white aspen,” Jenny muttered. “Our family farm is near here. I know this area well. That road, such as it is, leads to the old Owens’ place.” She laid her hand on Charlotte’s arm. “That cabin was ramshackle when I was a child. Please tell me you didn’t actually buy it.”
“Fine. I won’t tell you,” she quipped, gathering her skirts to hop down when Sam stopped the team. “Thank you so much for the ride,” Charlotte called as she hurried away without looking back, too embarrassed that she had to live this way and now without the funds to do anything about it.
Scratched by briars and slapping at mosquitoes, she arrived at the cabin, which was overgrown but nowhere near as bad as the lane. Her head fell back, and she said with a groan, “I forgot my trunk.”
“Sam will bring it.”
She spun at the voice. “Jenny—”
Her gaze was on her weather-battered, ramshackle cabin. “Oh, Charlotte. It’s worse than I remembered,” she whispered. “I can’t let you stay here. You must come home with me.”
She huffed a humorless laugh. “Your husband wouldn’t approve. He told me not to darken your doorstep again, remember?”
“He didn’t say that—not exactly. Besides, that was ages ago.”
“Not so long,” she corrected her. “And our circumstances and society’s views on them haven’t changed.”
When Jenny worked for her, she disappeared one day and didn’t return. Since she felt responsible for employing the innocent young girl in desperate straits, she’d ventured off Sixth Street to find her. Her search had led to a cabin on Silverbend—the Jacksons’ vast cattle ranch. She’d taken pains to disguise her identity in widow’s weeds, but Heath Jackson told her never to visit again. He wasn’t being cruel; he was protecting his wife’s reputation.
“You can’t live in that cabin as it is,” Jenny insisted. “There’s a gaping hole in the roof.”
“I found tools in a storage closet. I thought to use the rain barrel to climb up and see if I could fix it.”
“Don’t you dare!” Jenny ordered, worlds away from the shy, quiet girl she’d first met. “I know someone who can help. If you promise not to doanything crazy, like climbing up on that precarious-looking roof, I’ll go fetch him.”
“Your husband won’t be happy with the company you’re keeping.”
“Probably not, but I don’t care. We Jacksons help our neighbors. Besides, the help I have in mind isn’t Heath.”
“Who, then?”
“Do I have your word?” Jenny insisted without elaborating.
“I won’t climb on the roof,” she agreed, not relishing the idea anyway.
“I’ll be right back,” Jenny assured her before hurrying down the lane, moving fast for a woman at least seven months along. It was probably her sturdy walking boots, which she could see beneath her hiked-up skirt, as she navigated wild saplings, scrub, and waist-high weeds.
Once she was out of sight, Charlotte turned toward her new home. Aside from the roof, she had a list of other things to tackle before the place was livable, mainly cleaning.
With daylight streaming in through the windows, she could see all she had missed and swept the entire cabin thoroughly. Among the cobwebs and rusty cans in the small pantry closet, she found a bar of lye soap and several rags stuffed into a bucket. That the soap was still in its wrapper and the rags looked practically unused didn’t surprise her.
“This place doesn’t look like it has seen soap or water in eons,” she muttered as she grabbed the bucket and headed for the pump in the kitchen.
Twenty minutes of vigorous priming later, until she was hot and sweaty yet again, she gave up. She opened the back door to let in a breeze and stood staring at the trees. Jenny said they were aspens, but she also spotted willows, like the ones that grew by the creek that flowed through their property back in Virginia.
“Willows thrive near water,” she said to herself before grabbing the bucket and heading out to explore.
