Christine Johnson - Mail Order Mommy

“Thank you, but I can manage. It sounded like you wanted to speak to your brother.”

Garrett was ashamed of himself. Amanda thought only of everyone else’s needs. He could kick himself for being such a fool yesterday. His children were hungry, and she’d responded the only way she knew how. Instead of thanking her, he’d accused and blamed her. He would change. Next time he would give her the benefit of doubt. He owed her that much.

* * *

Making hash looked easy when Mrs. Calloway demonstrated it. First Amanda needed to chop up everything. Then she needed to cook it in a big, heavy skillet. It took a bit of searching with Sadie and Isaac before she found the knives, a big wooden spoon and the skillet.

Peeling the potatoes had proved challenging, but she managed to get most of the skin off without cutting herself. The onion made her eyes water. The salt pork proved easiest of all.

It took a while for the stove to get hot enough. Apparently Garrett banked the fire before sending the children off to school and going to work. That meant an icy cold house and stove, but by the time she’d stowed all the purchases and chopped the ingredients for the hash, perspiration rolled off her forehead.

Now which went in the pan first? Amanda searched her memory but couldn’t remember. She took a guess. The potatoes were hardest. She seemed to remember Mrs. Calloway saying they’d take the longest to cook. She dumped them into the hot skillet first.

“It’s my turn,” Sadie cried out from the bearskin rug, where they were sitting to play jacks.

“No, it’s not,” Isaac retorted. “My turn isn’t over yet.”

“Yes, it is. Miss Mana, tell Isaac to let me play.”

“Everyone needs to have a turn,” Amanda said.

“She just had a turn,” Isaac insisted. “And now she wants my turn, too.”

At school, Pearl would send one student to one corner and the other to the opposite corner to think about how they ought to behave. At the Chatsworths’ house, a dispute had been settled with a few whacks of the strap on her behind. Amanda could not use either method. She wasn’t their teacher or their mother.

Instead she joined them and knelt so she could look each child in the eye. “Is this the way your father would want you to behave?”

“He doesn’t care about anything but work,” Isaac said, his little jaw stiff but his lip quivering.

Amanda’s heart about broke. She would have to speak to Garrett about spending more time with his children.

“Papa loves us,” Sadie cried out. She grabbed her old rag doll, the one Amanda had repaired soon after arriving, and hugged it tight.

“Of course he does,” Amanda said. “He’s a busy man. All fathers are.” At least Mr. Chatsworth had always seemed busy. He was gone long hours, sometimes until midnight. She couldn’t remember much about her real father. He and her mother had died when she was five, but the tiny fragments she could recall always teemed with their love for her and for her brother, Jacob. Jake. A pang shot through her at the thought of her missing brother. They were separated after their parents’ deaths. She went to their grandmother, while he was sent to their uncle’s farm. For reasons unknown, Jacob ran away and was never found. Someday she would find him. She must find him. No tragedy could break family bonds. That applied in her case and for Isaac and Sadie. “Your papa loves you both dearly. I know he does.”

“Then why doesn’t he listen to us?” Isaac demanded.

“I’m sure he does,” Amanda said.

“If he listened to us, he’d at least try to get married again.”

Oh, dear. Amanda had no idea how to answer that statement, especially since Sadie had named her as the preferred new mama.

She began carefully. “Marriage isn’t something to be rushed into.”

Isaac’s eyes widened, and his lips formed an O.

Amanda frowned. Her statement wasn’t that difficult to understand. “Your papa wants to find the right woman to, uh, be your mother.” Surely her cheeks were bright red.

Instead of agreeing or disagreeing, Isaac pointed toward the kitchen.

Amanda turned to see smoke pouring from the skillet.

Oh no! She scrambled to her feet, grabbed a towel and quickly pulled the skillet from the stove before the whole thing started on fire. She carried the smoking pan to the worktable and poked at the potatoes. Burned. And stuck to the pan.

Oh, dear. Her first attempt at cooking had come to ruin. She swallowed hard, trying to think of what to do. Did she have enough time to start over?

The door flew open.

“I’m home!” Garrett stepped inside and sniffed. “What’s on fire?”

Oh, dear. There was no hiding this fiasco.

Chapter Five

“Supper,” Isaac declared in answer to Garrett’s question.

It didn’t take long for him to confirm his son’s explanation. Amanda stood at the worktable with a smoking skillet of something burned. The contents were too charred to identify.

“Supper?” he echoed. “You mean the food you just...”

Amanda cringed, and he let the thought trail off. He had vowed earlier this afternoon to give her the benefit of doubt.

“Is it salvageable?” he asked instead.

She poked a wooden spoon at the incinerated contents. “I don’t think so.” She looked stricken yet determined. “I’m sorry, Mr. Decker. You can deduct the cost of the potatoes from my wages.”

“Potatoes.” He breathed out in relief. It was only potatoes, one of the least expensive items she could have burned.

“Is there a fire, Miss Mana?” Poor Sadie looked terrified.

The lady dropped to her knees, the burned potatoes forgotten. “No, there isn’t. I just scorched the potatoes, like holding an iron too long on a piece of fabric.”

Garrett wouldn’t call those quite the same, but his daughter accepted the explanation.

“You can hold Baby.” Sadie offered Amanda the doll.

“Thank you, Sadie, but she needs you more than I need her. A little hug will take care of everything.”

His daughter obliged, hugging Amanda an extra long time.

Amanda finally patted her back. “You did such a lovely job setting the table. Why don’t you tell your father what you learned in school while I take care of the mess and cook up some supper?”

Garrett had to admire the way Amanda directed Sadie’s attention away from the smoke and onto other topics. Nevertheless, while Sadie described her school day in minute detail, he watched Amanda carry the skillet outdoors to dump the ashes and then return and set the pan on the hot stove. She hesitated over two piles of chopped food. One looked like bacon or salt pork. The other appeared to be onions. She finally put one bit of onion in the skillet. It popped and hopped out.

The fire must have disconcerted her. He was about to suggest cooking the pork first when she began to add it to the skillet. While it cooked, she chopped a couple more potatoes and added them to the pork, finishing off with the onions.

Other than the smoke, which hadn’t yet cleared the room, it smelled good. When she placed the hot skillet on the table without a trivet or rag underneath, he grabbed a towel from the cupboard.

“Let’s put this under the pan,” he suggested. “To protect the tabletop.” He could imagine what a mark that pan had put in the varnish.

She blinked and then blushed while lifting the skillet. “I’m sorry. I got a bit discombobulated.”

“A little smoke can do that.” He glanced in the skillet and his stomach stopped rumbling. She hadn’t gotten all the burned potatoes out of the pan.

He took a deep breath. Give her a chance. Give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Amanda was the only woman in town both available and willing to take the job, and she was good with the children.