Page 108 of My Heart Will Find You

“Lord, no! Never. But then, she never asked anything. She’s been absolutely perfect. She’s been working with the cook to make better meals for the men. And she and Freddy are putting in a garden.”

“Sounds like she’s bossing people around. Cornelia says Etta’s good at that. She said Etta is worse than her father.”

Max gave a one-sided grin. “Two rattlers in a pit.”

The men looked at each other in understanding. On Sunday they’d spent a lot of time together, and they’d become friends. One of the things that bonded them was the ferocity of their women. They both liked that about them.

“It all sounds good,” Bert said.

“Not really. Etta won’t leave home. She doesn’t want to see anyone. She just wants to cook and...” He raised his eyebrows, silently saying that Etta was insatiable in bed.

Bert was obviously not understanding Max’s problem.

Max looked at his friend. “Etta is different from other people. She seems to have things she has to do.”

Bert nodded. “Like putting me with Cornelia, and Alice with the blacksmith?”

“Yes.”

Bert used his lawyer brain of figuring things out. “She has things she needs to do, but she’s not doing them. Is that what you’re worried about?”

Max nodded. “Since Sunday, it’s like she’s afraid of something. I asked her about it, but she won’t tell me what it is. She says she’s not angry, but maybe she is. I don’t know what’s wrong, but she is not doing the things she said she wanted to do.”

“Did she tell you what they were?”

“More or less.” Max laughed. “You know Henry, the painter who comes through here every few years?”

“No. Never met him.”

“He’s a nice old man. Etta wants him to meet Martha Garrett.”

Bert grimaced. “I do know her. She chased me off her property with a shotgun.”

“That’s Martha. Etta wanted to invite her to dinner. With Henry.”

“You’d have to set up an armed guard.”

“Exactly,” Max said. “It’s a silly idea.”

Bert was looking at Max as though he were a client. Sometimes he had to work to understand what they really wanted. “What else?”

“Alice has the idea of opening a school.”

“That sounds good.”

“You don’t know my sister. She’d lose interest in a month. But Etta said she’d seen a woman in town who could run it, but that’s all. My wife refuses to come to town.”

Bert leaned forward. “Sometimes with a woman, you just have to put your foot down. I told Cornelia we are going to move to Kansas City, and she’s going to create a house for us.”

“You mean you’re going where Etta told you to go and do what she said you had to?”

Bert blinked a few times. “Yeah, that’s right. My point is that maybeyoucan do what Etta wanted to do.”

“What does that mean?”

“Invite them all to dinner. You do it.”

Max raised an eyebrow. “Do I shake out the lace tablecloth? Get out the good glasses?”

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