Page 97 of My Heart Will Find You

Pat’s big hands encased her newly small waist, and he swung her down to the wooden platform of dear little Garrett, Kansas.

“Is he back yet?” she asked.

Pat gave a smile of knowing who she meant. “No. Give him another couple of days.” He picked up her big leather bag and she saw another one being put on the wagon. Pat helped her up to the seat.

When he sat by her and took the reins, she said, “Anything new with you?”

They looked at each other and laughed. They didn’t need to say that his life and his daughter’s and Alice’s had changed completely.

“Tell me everything,” she said. She knew Phillip had never been much of a talker except to people he knew and liked. That this version of him talked with her at ease felt like an honor.

Pat told her that Nellie was staying in a bedroom on the ground floor of Max’s house. “The room near Alice’s.” The way he said her name made Etta smile broadly. “I don’t know what Mr. Lawton will say to that.”

“Max will be fine with it. So when’s the wedding?”

Pat stopped smiling. “I can’t ask her that. I’m not up to her level. I couldn’t...” He trailed off. “Miss Alice is teaching Nellie. It’s kind of her to do it. She may open a school.”

Etta knew her sister didn’t have the patience to be a schoolteacher. Alicia liked grownups and all their complexities. Etta turned her attention back to Pat. “You’re right. Alice needs a less physical man than you. She’s such a delicate little flower. Let’s find her a dandy who tiptoes around.”

As she’d hoped, Pat smiled at that image. Alice was not “delicate.” And she was a very “physical” person. It looked like Pat had discovered that aspect of her.

Again, they laughed together.

“I need to get some supplies,” he said. “Do you mind waiting?”

“I would love to just sit and look at this town.”

He stopped in front of the mercantile, tied the horses, and went inside.

Etta looked around the town at the buildings. There were a couple of alleys but mostly things were slammed together tightly. How could every inch of this town have disappeared so completely? When she and Zack visited, she hadn’t seen so much as a piece of iron. It had been just flat land.

The yelling of a man made her turn toward the sound. Down the street, three men were on top of a house. It was larger than the other houses, and the roof was steep. The men were holding ropes, and they appeared to be pulling something up.

Pat returned with two fifty-pound bags of flour, one on each shoulder. He was a living display of masculinity at its finest. If she had her phone, she would have made a video of Pat carrying the sacks then unloading them into the back of the wagon.I’d show it to Alice, she thought, but then she grinned.Ha! I’d put it on TikTok and share it with the world.

Pat looked at her, seeming to ask what was in her mind.

“What’s going on over there?”

“While you were gone, we got a new doctor,” he said proudly. “Came in from the East with his wife and two daughters. He bought the Oldham house and added on a story. He says that fancy window is his wife’s dowry. She wouldn’t come unless he brought it with them. You want something from the store?”

“Peaches.” After he left, Etta looked at what the men were dragging up to the new second story.

When it was turned around, she drew in her breath. The stained-glass window was about two feet in diameter, a Victorian abstract of greens with bits of blue and pink. It was quite beautiful, and it was the window she’d seen at the top of John Kecklin’s house. Did he steal it when he built the town he named after himself?

Etta looked around the town like she was on a scavenger hunt. She tried to remember everything she’d seen in Kecklin. Were there other things that came from Garrett? There was a carved post on one of the saloons. Didn’t she see that somewhere else? A saloon was called the French Quarter, and it had a pretty iron railing on the upstairs balcony. Etta was sure she’d seen that in Kecklin.

Down the road was the church where she’d been married. It was a rough building, but the door had a round top. Wasn’t that also on a building in Kecklin?

Her hair seemed to stand on end as she felt someone staring at her. A man in his sixties was sitting on a large black horse, and he was glaring at Etta. She’d never seen him in person, but there had been enough pictures of him in the museum to know he was John Kecklin.

As though he owned the world, he reined his horse toward her and stopped just a few feet away.

He was a man of normal height, but his horse was very tall so he looked down at her.Compensating much?she thought.

She didn’t flinch at his glare, which was obviously meant to intimidate her. “You look just like my daughter said.”

The “old and plain” hit. That was a slap in the face! Etta didn’t let him know she was affected by his words. She smiled sweetly at him. “You’ll have to come to dinner. My get-togethers are very productive.” She was reminding him of how she’d taken away his dream of uniting Max’s land with his.

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