Nevada Barr - Bittersweet

Imogene glanced at the bowl of dried apricots on the table. “Did you have a nice time?”

“I’m scared of horses, I didn’t want to ride it. It was one of those big ones that rolls its eyes at you.” Sarah stared out the window as she talked.

“Do you like Mr. Weldrick?”

Sarah pulled her thoughts back from the riverbank to look at her companion. The teacher’s face was carefully composed and gave no clue to her thoughts. Sarah picked up Imogene’s hand and pressed the scarred palm to her cheek.

“You’re so cool. It feels good.”

“Are you feverish?” Imogene asked in alarm.

“No, it’s from the stove. I don’t think I like Mr. Weldrick,” she went on, to answer Imogene’s original question. “He was nice, though. Not to Wolf. If I didn’t know already, I’d never guess he was Wolf’s pa by the way they act around each other. But maybe I like him okay. He’s a man.” Sarah waved her hand as if this explained all.

“Your brother and Mac are men; Lutie’s Fred is a man too,” Imogene reminded her. “If Mr. Weldrick is boorish, his sex is no excuse.”

“I don’t know.” Sarah played with Imogene’s fingers, arranging them, crablike, on her knee. “He said it was unnatural, two women alone with nobody to talk to-you know.”

“Yes. I do know. No man to talk to. How empty our lives must be without the intellectual stimulation that the likes of Mr. Weldrick could provide. I suppose his sparkling wit and fascinating manner kept you spellbound?” Imogene had risen to stalk about the room; she snapped a picture book shut and turned to Sarah.

“No-o,” Sarah said carefully, choosing her words, “but I know what he meant. We’re just women.”

Imogene said nothing.

“It’s unnatural.”

Imogene forced herself to be still and returned to the chair beside Sarah. “Do you like him?” she asked gently. “Being with him, does it make you happy?”

“No,” Sarah said.

“Then there’s an end to it.”

Sarah bit her lip and gazed out through the dying light to the river.

SNOW WAS FALLING IN TINY DRY FLAKES, A DUSTING OF WHITE already on the ground. The wind swooped down from the mountain slopes in sudden gusts, sending the snow into white whorls and pushing wavelets of white across the frozen lawn. Slate-colored clouds hid the mountain peaks, and the Truckee River ran gray in sympathy.

Sarah watched out the window, the snow quietly cloaking the brown grass and leaving a white tracery on the tree branches.

Wolf pushed up beside her, nudging under her arm. “Can we play at Mrs. Whitaker’s today?”

She stroked the coarse black hair. “Not today, today is for staying indoors. Home.” She looked around, eyes soft with contentment. The bare makeshift look of the rooms was gone, and homely touches warmed the house: a rag rug on the floor, crocheted doilies on the chair arms, white-and-blue sprigged curtains in the windows. “I like being inside when it snows; I always have, even when I was a little girl. I could be warm and snug and look out the window and watch the snow come down.”

“Can I go outside?”

“A little later. Imogene has half-day on Saturdays, maybe she’ll take you out when she gets home. If the snow gets deep enough, maybe we’ll make a snowman.”

The snow was ankle-deep by the time Imogene, red-nosed and smiling at an all-white world, came home from school. She and Sarah bundled Wolf in sweaters, coats, and scarves until he could scarcely move, took him out near the banks of the Truckee, where the drifts were deepest, and taught him to make angels in the snow.

Nate’s clayback stallion was tethered in the drive when they got home. Around the horse’s hooves the snow had been churned black, and a blanket was thrown over him. Wisps of smoke came from the stove pipe, rising straight up until they were as high as the main house, then feathering off sharply to the east.

Imogene shifted Wolf to her other hip; he’d been too tired to walk. “Evidently Mr. Weldrick is here. He’s been to call on Wolf a half-dozen times since the new year. Fatherhood seems to have hit him hard, if rather late.”

Sarah looked confused and depressed, an expression she often wore when Nate Weldrick came to call. “He’s not on the porch.”

“It seems he’s invited himself in and built a fire,” Imogene said sourly. She strode to the front door and jerked it open, banging it against the side of the house. Nate, who was crouched before the stove, poking kindling into a growing fire, started at the crash.

“Mr. Weldrick. What a surprise.” Imogene stood in the doorway without coming in.

“How do, Miss Grelznik.” He reached to take his hat off but it wasn’t there; he snatched it from the chair beside him. “Come in, come on in.”

“Thank you.” She was painfully polite.

“I nearly froze to death riding over from Carson. Just got here maybe a quarter of an hour ago. You gals were out, so I just kind of let myself in.”

“So I see.”

“Didn’t figure you’d mind, what with it snowing and all.”

“You’re here, it seems, so it would certainly be a waste of time to mind. If you’ll excuse me, Wolf is wet and tired. We all are.” Imogene carried the boy into the room he shared with Sarah, and closed the door.

Quietly, Sarah shut the front door and lit the lamps. A lamp flared, brightening her cheeks and eyes for a moment before she turned down the wick.

“You look real pretty. That’s a pretty coat,” Nate said.

“Imogene made it for me.”

“You look pretty in it. You ought to wear it more often.”

“I wear it when I go outside.” Sarah fingered the fur on the collar, then, at a loss for anything else to do, took it off, though the room hadn’t taken any warmth from the fledgling fire.

“That blue looks good, better than all the drab gray stuff she’s got you in most of the time. You ought to get yourself some bright-colored things.”

Sarah hung up the coat and smoothed the sleeves of her charcoal-colored gown self-consciously. It was another of Imogene’s dresses cut down and resewn to fit Sarah’s slight frame.

“Get yourself something pretty.” Nate dug into his pocket and took out a small leather purse.

“Please, Mr. Weldrick.” Sarah glanced anxiously toward the bedroom door.

“You’re afraid of her, ain’t you?”

Sarah laughed, a light surprised sound.

“She don’t like me much, does she?”

“I don’t know. We never talk about you.”

Her answer seemed to annoy him.

It was late when he finally left. Imogene stood in front of the stove, heating sausage cakes in the skillet. At the kitchen table, perched on a stool, Sarah peeled and sliced boiled potatoes. Neither had suggested supper while Nate Weldrick was there.

“Wolf never got his supper,” Sarah said. “Should I wake him, do you think?”

Imogene pushed at the sausages with a wooden spatula. “I think not.”

Sarah dropped the potatoes into the hot grease and watched them brown. A companionable silence flowed around them, warmed by the sizzling.

“Mr. Weldrick thinks you don’t like him. Do you?” Sarah asked.

Imogene spooned their dinner onto the waiting plates. “I don’t think he’s a good father,” she replied carefully. “But mostly I suppose I don’t care for him because he makes you so unhappy.”

“Mr. Weldrick’s nice to me,” Sarah protested.

“Yes and no.”

Sarah waited.

“He’s pleasant and complimentary,” Imogene continued, “and he seems to care for you, after his fashion. But since we’ve moved to this house you have come so far. I remember those first months at the Broken Promise-you are so much stronger now, more sure of yourself. Mr. Weldrick takes that away from you.”