A Time to Bloom (Leah's Garden #2)(17)

Sure enough, Josephine looked up from behind a crowd of customers at the mercantile counter when they arrived, her face strained.

“Sorry we didn’t get here sooner.” Anders squeezed his way behind the counter to join her, tying on his apron as he spoke.

“Anything I can do?” RJ skirted to the side of the counter where dry goods were stacked.

“Climie’s sorting the mail in the back room.” Josephine raised her voice above the din of customers. “If you could bring out what she’s finished, that would help.”

Grateful to escape the crowd, RJ ducked into the back storage area, its walls filled with shelves of canned goods and boxes of hardware, and its floor lined with barrels and buckets. Farm implements leaned in corners.

Climie stood with her back to him, the mostly empty mail sack on a small wooden table before her.

“Uh, Josephine asked me to come get some more mail,” RJ said.

The slender woman stood motionless.

RJ cleared his throat and stepped closer. “Is this it?” He reached for the three stacks that seemed sorted on the table before her.

Climie gasped and jumped back from him. She clutched an open letter to her calico bodice, her gaze darting from him to the corners of the storeroom like a spooked horse.

“Sorry.” RJ stepped back, raising his hands. “Thought you heard me come in.”

“I didn’t—that is—I’m sorry. It’s my f-fault.” She stumbled to a barrel and half-collapsed onto it. Her stooped shoulders folded inward, her chest heaving. “I—I—could you get Anders or J-Josephine, please?”

RJ bolted out of the room and behind the counter. “Hey, could one of you come back here? Climie’s upset about something.”

Anders and his wife exchanged glances. Josephine handed one more stack of mail to a customer, then followed RJ, glancing at Marcella’s basket as she passed to be sure the baby was asleep.

“What’s wrong, dear one?” Josephine knelt before Climie in the back room, clasping the other woman’s trembling hands. Climie was shaking so hard that the barrel wobbled. Tears dripped unheeded off her chin.

“RJ, would you bring a cup of coffee from the front, please? We keep a pot on the stove in the corner for customers.”

RJ hurried to obey. Dread tightened his gut as he poured the coffee into a cup he found nearby. Only once had he seen a living creature this spooked, when he’d come upon a horse during his days in the Corps of Engineers that had been habitually abused by an army sergeant. He’d been able to report the man and get the horse removed, but he’d never forget how the mare flinched and trembled at every movement around her.

Whatever Climie’s story was, it wasn’t good.

Josephine still knelt before her friend when RJ returned, gently rubbing her forearms, murmuring a soothing word now and then. She took the cup from RJ and held it for Climie to sip. The young woman did, her teeth clattering against the cup, then finally drew a longer, less gasping breath.

“Now.” Josephine’s voice came gentle but firm. “Tell us.”

Climie shuddered anew, then drew the crumpled letter from the folds of her skirt. She held it out to Josephine. “It’s—it’s—f-from him.”

Josephine took the letter as if handling a rattlesnake. She smoothed out the wrinkles and scanned the scrawled message within. For a moment, she knelt motionless, and then she pushed to her feet. When she turned toward him, RJ saw a hardness he’d never imagined on the face of his friend’s gentle wife.

“RJ, go get Anders. Climie’s going to need to go with you out west.”



“So he beat her?” RJ thrust his pitchfork under the dirty straw in the stall Captain had been using.

From a neighboring stall, Anders huffed a humorless laugh. “Beat her, kicked her, nearly killed her the last time. Did kill their unborn child. She lost the baby the next day. Then he hightailed it out of town and hasn’t been heard from since—until today.”

“What did the letter say, exactly?”

“Just that he’s on his way home—coming for her. To collect his rightful possession, as he put it.” Anders jammed his fork into the muck as if the sender of that letter lay beneath the straw.

“And he was a leader in your church?” RJ might have nearly lost his own faith, but the juxtaposition still clashed.

“Deacon Wiesel. A devout guide to those seeking humble Christian living, if you listened to him tell it.” Anders finished mucking out the stall and rolled the wheelbarrow near for RJ to add his pile. “Though his living stank worse than this horse dung does.”

“Why didn’t anyone do anything? The sheriff?”

“Legally, he couldn’t—wife beating isn’t a crime, hard as it is to believe.” Anders set down the wheelbarrow so hard that some manure bounced out. “Some of us in the church tried to get rid of him, but I often think there must have been something else we could have done. His shenanigans are part of the reason my sisters left when they did. He blamed Larkspur for stirring up Climie to rebel against him and threatened her. Even showed up at the house in the wee hours once and routed them all out of bed.”

RJ forked the muck into the wheelbarrow, anger simmering low in his gut. One thing he couldn’t abide was cruelty to the innocent, be they person or animal. “I can’t imagine Climie’s got a rebellious bone in her body.”