Every child on the 1890's Orphan Trains hoped to be taken in by a loving family, to know what it meant to be wanted and loved. For 10-year-old Kittie Thornton, it meant leaving her brother-protector on the train and being taken in to serve an abusive family in Kansas. Now, as a frightened 18-yr-old, she must flee or die at the hands of the man who never saw her as a daughter, only as his woman.
Fly to the mountain
Fly to the sun
Fly to the apple grove
One by one
It was only an apple. And it was only an arm’s length away. Take it, and she might lose her job. Leave it, and her little Hannah Marie might die.
Kittie could hardly feel her hands as she labored over a massive pile of freshly-washed bed linens.
A cloud of steam hovered above the heavy lumps of laundry, still hot from the boiling tubs. But her fingers would be starting to freeze by the time she got half way through the pile.
At least until then she could plunge her stiffening hands into the heart of the pile for a moment’s warmth. Not too long, though, or the screaming nerves would render her hands immobile.
Her lips trembled and her heart hammered in her chest as she fed the next heavy, wet sheet through the wringer. The apple, nestled in the laundry owner’s lunch pail, seemed to swell larger each time she glanced at it from the corner of her eye. Larger, redder, shinier. And closer.
All she had to do was reach out.
“Calloway!”
Kittie lurched back from the wringer and knocked over the bench beside her. Flossie’s lunch pail flew off and the woman’s sandwich tumbled, still wrapped in waxed paper, onto the floor. The apple rolled, hit the wall, spun sideways, and came to a stop somewhere behind the coal bin.
Flossie Timberlake thumped her on the shoulder. Hard.
“Y’hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kittie whispered, staring at the trail the apple had made through the coal dust around the bin.
“You watch what yer’ doin’, girl. You ‘bout lost a hand.”
The owner of Timberlake Laundry lumbered past the upset bench and grunted as she worked to bend enough beyond her huge belly to pick up the sandwich. She waggled her fingers toward it and only succeeded in flipping it further out of reach. Disgusted, the double-chinned one-time doxy heaved herself upright and kicked the sandwich into the corner.
“If’n you finish afore I git back, start on them collars. I’ll take m’ lunch at Maloney’s fer a change.”
Kittie nodded and leaned into the crank. Sheets were the worst. The heavy wet fabric made the crank bog down so she had to push twice has hard. Distracted by the apple, she’d nearly fed her own hand through the very wringer she herself was cranking.
The tail end of the sheet slipped through the rolling jaws that squeezed every last drop of moisture into the tub below. Kittie dropped the crank, snapped the sheet three times, and ran it through the hot mangle that stood nearby. At least this part, ironing the sheets, gave her shoulders a break.
She worked the treadle with her foot and kept the sheet folded neatly in half and as flat as possible while she maneuvered it through the heated rolls of the mangle. It taunted her with searing puffs of steam so hot that she had to stretch and dodge to keep her face from getting burned. All that twisting and leaning put wrenching pressure on her right knee as she strained to keep a toe on the treadle.
If Flossie would only let her sit at the hulking machine, her face would be well away from the burning vapor. But Flossie said that sit-down jobs just made girls lazy, so Kittie was left to crouch and lean.
The lavender oil Flossie worked into the mangle’s rollers each night left a delicate scent in the crisp, warm sheets. Her devious employer believed it disguised the fact that she kept the rinsing barrel full by dumping the contents of the wringer bucket into it throughout the day.
Kittie added the last of this customer’s order to the pile that sat on the wrapping table. In just seconds she had the brown paper snug around the stack of fresh laundry and tied off with string. She marked the customer’s name with a pencil and carried it to the pickup bins.
Without breaking her resolute, shuffling stride, she snatched the apple from behind the coal bucket and the paper-wrapped sandwich from the floor and headed back to the pile of sodden linen.
“Oh, you there!”
The voice stopped Kittie dead in her tracks. She’d been caught red-handed with the sandwich and apple. Her heart thudded in her chest. Hannah Marie was going to eat tonight if she had to kill to keep the sandwich. There would be enough meat and cheese between those two slices of bread to feed her for three days.
“Miss? I should like to —”
The call was broken by a spasm of coughing. Kittie turned and looked toward the front of the laundry. It seemed impossible that the horrid hacking sounds could be coming from so slight a woman.
Kittie pocketed the sandwich and apple, forgot her guilt and pointed her stiff toes toward the makeshift front counter. Her feet wouldn’t warm up until she planted them next to the corncob burner tonight. During the day she simply scuffed along to protect them from getting banged up inside her cracked and hole-ridden shoes. Sometimes they were so cold she thought her toes might just shatter like glass if she bumped them wrong.
Flossie worked inside the main building that stayed toasty and warm from the small coal burners that heated the big wash tubs. Even on days like this the woman broke a sweat in there. Kittie’s assignments kept her in the lean-to built on at the back. It was a dilapidated excuse for an enclosure that let the frigid wind keep a constant draft through the unheated shed.
Kittie forced herself to focus on the woman who leaned on the counter. “Are you all right?” It wasn’t her place to deal with customers, but it was impossible to ignore the lady in distress. And it would keep her inside the warm sanctuary for a few precious minutes.
The woman raised her right hand and nodded feebly as she tried to hide the next spasm behind the dainty handkerchief clutched to her mouth. Her lifeless graying hair was pulled into a careful bun beneath a jaunty hat that looked out of place to Kittie, sitting as it did over gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes. Her fashionable shirtwaist and three-quarter coat would have been pretty if it hadn’t hung so oddly from her bones.
Kittie recognized the sunken eyes and gray pallor. The consumption had taken Hannah Marie’s mother just like that little more than a year ago. She fingered a wild strand of hair back into her own topknot, glad that her apron hid the shabby condition of her skirt and jerkin, and wondered what she could do for this poor woman.
Before she came up with an answer, the woman sagged into a broken-backed chair, and Kittie found herself hobbling on around the counter. She twisted the tap on the cider keg that sat in the corner and ran a cup of the sweet, golden liquid and knelt beside the woman.
Water would have been better. But the water in the big wooden tubs was not fit for drinking. Cider was the weakest thing Flossie kept in the place. And from the looks of this woman, a cup from the bottle of gin beneath the counter might just do her in.
The cup tipped as Kittie handed it to the customer, and she caught hold of it again to steady it for the wheezing lady.
“Here, now, just take a sip and let it slide down. Easy now. Just a sip. There. Don’t worry, I’ll hold it for you.” She hadn’t even realized she was gently patting the woman’s back until a bony shoulder blade shocked her and she drew her hand away.
She continued to croon until the poor woman’s spasm subsided to an occasional cough that almost sounded normal.
“I just—” she coughed and shook her head. “All I wanted—” Each time she spoke triggered another spell.
“You just wanted to bring in your laundry?”
Kittie spied a bundle that had dropped on the floor.
The woman nodded.
Kittie let go of the cup and reached for a scrap of brown paper. She traded the paper and a pencil stub she found on the counter for the cider cup. “Just write your name and I’ll see that your laundry is well taken care of, ma’am.” She tried a reassuring smile, but the woman’s distress still worried her. And truth be told, it had been so long since she’d felt like smiling, Kittie wasn’t certain that her face was screwing into an expression that would actually comfort anyone.
“Rosalinda Archer? Mrs. Archer?” She studied the scrap the woman handed back to her. The handwriting was so shaky she could barely read it. “I’ll keep this right here with your bundle. Don’t you worry now. We’ll take good care of it.”
Mrs. Archer managed a weak smile and didn’t resist Kittie’s help when she tried to struggle up from the chair.
“Is your buggy outside?”
“No, dear,” the woman whispered. Whispering seemed less likely to send her into another episode. “Bank. Just a...” She hissed in a breath and wrinkled her brow. As if by involuntary reflex, she tapped a gloved hand to her breastbone. Mrs. Archer was in pain. “...across the street.”
“Shall I walk with you?” Kittie stowed the bundle behind the chair, after tucking the paper safely beneath the knotted string. It made her nervous to see the poor woman teetering toward the door.
“Well,” Mrs. Archer whispered, “perhaps, yes, I, that would be nice.”
Despite her thinness, it was all Kittie could do to support the frail Mrs. Archer. Kittie concentrated mightily on walking flat-footed enough that she wouldn’t throw the poor woman off-balance.
Step by painful step, they conquered the short distance across the street to the Cumberland State Bank. Even as they entered the building, the woman sagged and nearly toppled.
Kittie caught the leg of a chair that sat near the door with her toe, winced silently, and dragged it away from the wall. She helped Mrs. Archer sit as she looked around desperately for someone to recognize the woman and come to her aid. The poor lady was failing fast.
“Rosie? Rose! What’s wrong?” A scrawny white-haired fellow hurried down the last few steps of a central staircase and rushed to bend over Mrs. Archer. “What happened?” He raised his pained eyes to search Kittie’s face.
“She brought laundry, sir, across the street. She needs a doctor. Right away, I think.” Kittie tried to draw away, but the woman held fiercely to her hand.
“Charles, my sweet Charles.” Mrs. Archer raised her other hand to the man’s cheek, her eyes full of a warmth Kittie had never witnessed in her eighteen years. “This young lady saved me from falling in the street. Walked...all the way here w...with me. You must thank...thank her for me.”
“Oh, no, ma’am, I—” Kittie was embarrassed that they might think she was stalling in hopes of a reward.
“There, there, Rose, I certainly will. Right after I send for the doctor.” The answering look in his eye held the same kindness, with a bright sheen of tears that glazed them over a bit.
“Now, please? Please, Charles.” Mrs. Archer turned her eyes to Kittie. “This is my husband, dear. Charles Archer.”
She squeezed Kittie’s hand so hard that Kittie’s frozen bones began to scream back. But if it helped the woman’s pain, she could squeeze them to dust.
“Just seeing that little bit of color in your cheeks is thanks enough, Mrs. Archer. Will you be alright until the doctor comes? You and Mr. Archer?”
“Yes, yes, dear. You run along. Charles?” Mrs. Archer patted Kittie’s hand and then waggled a finger back and forth, signaling Charles.
He smiled and shook his head, as if he were put out with his wife, but his eyes just softened even more. He dipped a hand into his vest pocket and pulled out a coin. Mr. Archer pressed the coin into Kittie’s hand and held her hand closed in both of his.
“You’re a good lass, a good lass.” He shook her hand inside his warm clasp. “God walks with you.”
The coin seemed to burn into her palm, and she flinched at the man’s kind words. The only thing that had walked with her for as long as she could remember was trouble. Especially in the eight years since she and Penn had lost each other. Her big brother. Her protector.
But the eyes that looked back at her offered their own reassurance. God walks with you.
Things would have to change pretty dramatically for her and Hannah Marie for Kittie to believe that. Her heart quieted, as if he were still speaking to her. And the warmth that traveled from his hands into her bones seemed to echo his words.
Kittie drew away, self-conscious in the presence of such sincerity. Such faith. “Thank you, Mr. Archer. You’d best see to the doctor now, d’ya think?”
“Go along, Charles. I’ll sit right here until you get back with the doctor. You too, um...” Rose suddenly seemed to realize she didn’t know what to call Kittie, and she flushed a bit in confused embarrassment.
“Kittie, ma’am.” She’d been using her mother’s maiden name, Calloway. But it seemed a lie using it with this nice lady. But she dared not use Thornton, either. Not yet. “Just call me Kittie.”
“Kittie. A name as sweet as the girl herself. Thank you, Kittie. I’ll be fine now. Bless you for helping me back to my Charles.”
Kittie looked down at the woman who seemed to have recovered somewhat. An impulse she had not felt in a decade swept through her, and Kittie bent and kissed Mrs. Archer’s powdered cheek before she turned and shuffled out the door.
Idiot! She should have offered to stay with Mrs. Archer in the warm bank. For a minute there her hands had almost felt human again. She had almost felt human again. They’d done that for her.
Treated her like a person.
The looks that had passed between the man and wife startled her to her very core. In her world, a woman in pain was usually fleeing from a man. This one had made an excruciatingly painful journey to get back to her man.
For weeks, hunger pangs and cold misery had kept Kittie on the edge of confusion. Weak, and struggling to focus on her tasks. But compared to Mrs. Archer, she’d felt like a gothic warrior, strong and sure. Where had the strength suddenly come from?
Wherever it had fallen from, it retreated just as quickly when her attention was drawn to her employer’s doorway. Kittie blanched and struggled with a sudden urgent impulse to turn and go with all possible haste in the opposite direction.
But Flossie was counting on her. And on her frozen stumps that passed for feet, she knew even Flossie could outrun her.
Kittie drew a shaky breath and stepped up onto the boardwalk she had left just minutes earlier. The tender words of the loving couple still tumbled around in her head. Gentle. Comforting. God walks with you. Their words plumbed the depths of love and respect that were all but extinct in Kittie’s life since she had been “rescued” from the Orphan Train.
The sounds spilling from the doorway ahead, though, were intimately familiar. And they alerted Kittie to the fact that Flossie was back from lunch. If the ruckus going on inside was any indication, the woman was in a foul mood. The words Flossie Timberlake was flinging from the back room of the second-rate laundry were as far from love and respect as gutter language could get.
Chapter Two
Fly to the washtub
Fly to the line
Fly to the hiding place
None can find
Corporal Jake Kannady strode along the boardwalk looking for the laundry house Sheriff Davies had told him about. Tomorrow was his first day on the job. He didn’t want to wear the stink of the road beneath his new tin star when he met the citizens of Mounthaven for the first time.
Deputy Sheriff Jake Kannady.
It had a nice ring to it. And this quiet Ohio town had a nice feel. He hoped it might take him a good long while to accomplish his mission, the task that had brought him to this sleepy town in the first place, just so he could stay and soak up some peace and quiet for a change.
“Owww! What the hell—?”
A battered lunch pail sailed through an open door and clipped him on the shoulder just as he passed. He spun and crouched, and realized it probably hadn’t been aimed at him. Someone inside had ducked.
He’d learned in the Cavalry to launch his senses to full alert at the first hint of attack, and they rushed to the forefront for him now. Weak female cries could barely be heard beneath the caterwauling of a huge woman whose backside took up the entire doorway at the back of the building. His eyes skimmed the words that were soaped onto the front windows.
Timberlake Laundry.
Continues...
Fly to the mountain
Fly to the sun
Fly to the apple grove
One by one
It was only an apple. And it was only an arm’s length away. Take it, and she might lose her job. Leave it, and her little Hannah Marie might die.
Kittie could hardly feel her hands as she labored over a massive pile of freshly-washed bed linens.
A cloud of steam hovered above the heavy lumps of laundry, still hot from the boiling tubs. But her fingers would be starting to freeze by the time she got half way through the pile.
At least until then she could plunge her stiffening hands into the heart of the pile for a moment’s warmth. Not too long, though, or the screaming nerves would render her hands immobile.
Her lips trembled and her heart hammered in her chest as she fed the next heavy, wet sheet through the wringer. The apple, nestled in the laundry owner’s lunch pail, seemed to swell larger each time she glanced at it from the corner of her eye. Larger, redder, shinier. And closer.
All she had to do was reach out.
“Calloway!”
Kittie lurched back from the wringer and knocked over the bench beside her. Flossie’s lunch pail flew off and the woman’s sandwich tumbled, still wrapped in waxed paper, onto the floor. The apple rolled, hit the wall, spun sideways, and came to a stop somewhere behind the coal bin.
Flossie Timberlake thumped her on the shoulder. Hard.
“Y’hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kittie whispered, staring at the trail the apple had made through the coal dust around the bin.
“You watch what yer’ doin’, girl. You ‘bout lost a hand.”
The owner of Timberlake Laundry lumbered past the upset bench and grunted as she worked to bend enough beyond her huge belly to pick up the sandwich. She waggled her fingers toward it and only succeeded in flipping it further out of reach. Disgusted, the double-chinned one-time doxy heaved herself upright and kicked the sandwich into the corner.
“If’n you finish afore I git back, start on them collars. I’ll take m’ lunch at Maloney’s fer a change.”
Kittie nodded and leaned into the crank. Sheets were the worst. The heavy wet fabric made the crank bog down so she had to push twice has hard. Distracted by the apple, she’d nearly fed her own hand through the very wringer she herself was cranking.
The tail end of the sheet slipped through the rolling jaws that squeezed every last drop of moisture into the tub below. Kittie dropped the crank, snapped the sheet three times, and ran it through the hot mangle that stood nearby. At least this part, ironing the sheets, gave her shoulders a break.
She worked the treadle with her foot and kept the sheet folded neatly in half and as flat as possible while she maneuvered it through the heated rolls of the mangle. It taunted her with searing puffs of steam so hot that she had to stretch and dodge to keep her face from getting burned. All that twisting and leaning put wrenching pressure on her right knee as she strained to keep a toe on the treadle.
If Flossie would only let her sit at the hulking machine, her face would be well away from the burning vapor. But Flossie said that sit-down jobs just made girls lazy, so Kittie was left to crouch and lean.
The lavender oil Flossie worked into the mangle’s rollers each night left a delicate scent in the crisp, warm sheets. Her devious employer believed it disguised the fact that she kept the rinsing barrel full by dumping the contents of the wringer bucket into it throughout the day.
Kittie added the last of this customer’s order to the pile that sat on the wrapping table. In just seconds she had the brown paper snug around the stack of fresh laundry and tied off with string. She marked the customer’s name with a pencil and carried it to the pickup bins.
Without breaking her resolute, shuffling stride, she snatched the apple from behind the coal bucket and the paper-wrapped sandwich from the floor and headed back to the pile of sodden linen.
“Oh, you there!”
The voice stopped Kittie dead in her tracks. She’d been caught red-handed with the sandwich and apple. Her heart thudded in her chest. Hannah Marie was going to eat tonight if she had to kill to keep the sandwich. There would be enough meat and cheese between those two slices of bread to feed her for three days.
“Miss? I should like to —”
The call was broken by a spasm of coughing. Kittie turned and looked toward the front of the laundry. It seemed impossible that the horrid hacking sounds could be coming from so slight a woman.
Kittie pocketed the sandwich and apple, forgot her guilt and pointed her stiff toes toward the makeshift front counter. Her feet wouldn’t warm up until she planted them next to the corncob burner tonight. During the day she simply scuffed along to protect them from getting banged up inside her cracked and hole-ridden shoes. Sometimes they were so cold she thought her toes might just shatter like glass if she bumped them wrong.
Flossie worked inside the main building that stayed toasty and warm from the small coal burners that heated the big wash tubs. Even on days like this the woman broke a sweat in there. Kittie’s assignments kept her in the lean-to built on at the back. It was a dilapidated excuse for an enclosure that let the frigid wind keep a constant draft through the unheated shed.
Kittie forced herself to focus on the woman who leaned on the counter. “Are you all right?” It wasn’t her place to deal with customers, but it was impossible to ignore the lady in distress. And it would keep her inside the warm sanctuary for a few precious minutes.
The woman raised her right hand and nodded feebly as she tried to hide the next spasm behind the dainty handkerchief clutched to her mouth. Her lifeless graying hair was pulled into a careful bun beneath a jaunty hat that looked out of place to Kittie, sitting as it did over gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes. Her fashionable shirtwaist and three-quarter coat would have been pretty if it hadn’t hung so oddly from her bones.
Kittie recognized the sunken eyes and gray pallor. The consumption had taken Hannah Marie’s mother just like that little more than a year ago. She fingered a wild strand of hair back into her own topknot, glad that her apron hid the shabby condition of her skirt and jerkin, and wondered what she could do for this poor woman.
Before she came up with an answer, the woman sagged into a broken-backed chair, and Kittie found herself hobbling on around the counter. She twisted the tap on the cider keg that sat in the corner and ran a cup of the sweet, golden liquid and knelt beside the woman.
Water would have been better. But the water in the big wooden tubs was not fit for drinking. Cider was the weakest thing Flossie kept in the place. And from the looks of this woman, a cup from the bottle of gin beneath the counter might just do her in.
The cup tipped as Kittie handed it to the customer, and she caught hold of it again to steady it for the wheezing lady.
“Here, now, just take a sip and let it slide down. Easy now. Just a sip. There. Don’t worry, I’ll hold it for you.” She hadn’t even realized she was gently patting the woman’s back until a bony shoulder blade shocked her and she drew her hand away.
She continued to croon until the poor woman’s spasm subsided to an occasional cough that almost sounded normal.
“I just—” she coughed and shook her head. “All I wanted—” Each time she spoke triggered another spell.
“You just wanted to bring in your laundry?”
Kittie spied a bundle that had dropped on the floor.
The woman nodded.
Kittie let go of the cup and reached for a scrap of brown paper. She traded the paper and a pencil stub she found on the counter for the cider cup. “Just write your name and I’ll see that your laundry is well taken care of, ma’am.” She tried a reassuring smile, but the woman’s distress still worried her. And truth be told, it had been so long since she’d felt like smiling, Kittie wasn’t certain that her face was screwing into an expression that would actually comfort anyone.
“Rosalinda Archer? Mrs. Archer?” She studied the scrap the woman handed back to her. The handwriting was so shaky she could barely read it. “I’ll keep this right here with your bundle. Don’t you worry now. We’ll take good care of it.”
Mrs. Archer managed a weak smile and didn’t resist Kittie’s help when she tried to struggle up from the chair.
“Is your buggy outside?”
“No, dear,” the woman whispered. Whispering seemed less likely to send her into another episode. “Bank. Just a...” She hissed in a breath and wrinkled her brow. As if by involuntary reflex, she tapped a gloved hand to her breastbone. Mrs. Archer was in pain. “...across the street.”
“Shall I walk with you?” Kittie stowed the bundle behind the chair, after tucking the paper safely beneath the knotted string. It made her nervous to see the poor woman teetering toward the door.
“Well,” Mrs. Archer whispered, “perhaps, yes, I, that would be nice.”
Despite her thinness, it was all Kittie could do to support the frail Mrs. Archer. Kittie concentrated mightily on walking flat-footed enough that she wouldn’t throw the poor woman off-balance.
Step by painful step, they conquered the short distance across the street to the Cumberland State Bank. Even as they entered the building, the woman sagged and nearly toppled.
Kittie caught the leg of a chair that sat near the door with her toe, winced silently, and dragged it away from the wall. She helped Mrs. Archer sit as she looked around desperately for someone to recognize the woman and come to her aid. The poor lady was failing fast.
“Rosie? Rose! What’s wrong?” A scrawny white-haired fellow hurried down the last few steps of a central staircase and rushed to bend over Mrs. Archer. “What happened?” He raised his pained eyes to search Kittie’s face.
“She brought laundry, sir, across the street. She needs a doctor. Right away, I think.” Kittie tried to draw away, but the woman held fiercely to her hand.
“Charles, my sweet Charles.” Mrs. Archer raised her other hand to the man’s cheek, her eyes full of a warmth Kittie had never witnessed in her eighteen years. “This young lady saved me from falling in the street. Walked...all the way here w...with me. You must thank...thank her for me.”
“Oh, no, ma’am, I—” Kittie was embarrassed that they might think she was stalling in hopes of a reward.
“There, there, Rose, I certainly will. Right after I send for the doctor.” The answering look in his eye held the same kindness, with a bright sheen of tears that glazed them over a bit.
“Now, please? Please, Charles.” Mrs. Archer turned her eyes to Kittie. “This is my husband, dear. Charles Archer.”
She squeezed Kittie’s hand so hard that Kittie’s frozen bones began to scream back. But if it helped the woman’s pain, she could squeeze them to dust.
“Just seeing that little bit of color in your cheeks is thanks enough, Mrs. Archer. Will you be alright until the doctor comes? You and Mr. Archer?”
“Yes, yes, dear. You run along. Charles?” Mrs. Archer patted Kittie’s hand and then waggled a finger back and forth, signaling Charles.
He smiled and shook his head, as if he were put out with his wife, but his eyes just softened even more. He dipped a hand into his vest pocket and pulled out a coin. Mr. Archer pressed the coin into Kittie’s hand and held her hand closed in both of his.
“You’re a good lass, a good lass.” He shook her hand inside his warm clasp. “God walks with you.”
The coin seemed to burn into her palm, and she flinched at the man’s kind words. The only thing that had walked with her for as long as she could remember was trouble. Especially in the eight years since she and Penn had lost each other. Her big brother. Her protector.
But the eyes that looked back at her offered their own reassurance. God walks with you.
Things would have to change pretty dramatically for her and Hannah Marie for Kittie to believe that. Her heart quieted, as if he were still speaking to her. And the warmth that traveled from his hands into her bones seemed to echo his words.
Kittie drew away, self-conscious in the presence of such sincerity. Such faith. “Thank you, Mr. Archer. You’d best see to the doctor now, d’ya think?”
“Go along, Charles. I’ll sit right here until you get back with the doctor. You too, um...” Rose suddenly seemed to realize she didn’t know what to call Kittie, and she flushed a bit in confused embarrassment.
“Kittie, ma’am.” She’d been using her mother’s maiden name, Calloway. But it seemed a lie using it with this nice lady. But she dared not use Thornton, either. Not yet. “Just call me Kittie.”
“Kittie. A name as sweet as the girl herself. Thank you, Kittie. I’ll be fine now. Bless you for helping me back to my Charles.”
Kittie looked down at the woman who seemed to have recovered somewhat. An impulse she had not felt in a decade swept through her, and Kittie bent and kissed Mrs. Archer’s powdered cheek before she turned and shuffled out the door.
Idiot! She should have offered to stay with Mrs. Archer in the warm bank. For a minute there her hands had almost felt human again. She had almost felt human again. They’d done that for her.
Treated her like a person.
The looks that had passed between the man and wife startled her to her very core. In her world, a woman in pain was usually fleeing from a man. This one had made an excruciatingly painful journey to get back to her man.
For weeks, hunger pangs and cold misery had kept Kittie on the edge of confusion. Weak, and struggling to focus on her tasks. But compared to Mrs. Archer, she’d felt like a gothic warrior, strong and sure. Where had the strength suddenly come from?
Wherever it had fallen from, it retreated just as quickly when her attention was drawn to her employer’s doorway. Kittie blanched and struggled with a sudden urgent impulse to turn and go with all possible haste in the opposite direction.
But Flossie was counting on her. And on her frozen stumps that passed for feet, she knew even Flossie could outrun her.
Kittie drew a shaky breath and stepped up onto the boardwalk she had left just minutes earlier. The tender words of the loving couple still tumbled around in her head. Gentle. Comforting. God walks with you. Their words plumbed the depths of love and respect that were all but extinct in Kittie’s life since she had been “rescued” from the Orphan Train.
The sounds spilling from the doorway ahead, though, were intimately familiar. And they alerted Kittie to the fact that Flossie was back from lunch. If the ruckus going on inside was any indication, the woman was in a foul mood. The words Flossie Timberlake was flinging from the back room of the second-rate laundry were as far from love and respect as gutter language could get.
Chapter Two
Fly to the washtub
Fly to the line
Fly to the hiding place
None can find
Corporal Jake Kannady strode along the boardwalk looking for the laundry house Sheriff Davies had told him about. Tomorrow was his first day on the job. He didn’t want to wear the stink of the road beneath his new tin star when he met the citizens of Mounthaven for the first time.
Deputy Sheriff Jake Kannady.
It had a nice ring to it. And this quiet Ohio town had a nice feel. He hoped it might take him a good long while to accomplish his mission, the task that had brought him to this sleepy town in the first place, just so he could stay and soak up some peace and quiet for a change.
“Owww! What the hell—?”
A battered lunch pail sailed through an open door and clipped him on the shoulder just as he passed. He spun and crouched, and realized it probably hadn’t been aimed at him. Someone inside had ducked.
He’d learned in the Cavalry to launch his senses to full alert at the first hint of attack, and they rushed to the forefront for him now. Weak female cries could barely be heard beneath the caterwauling of a huge woman whose backside took up the entire doorway at the back of the building. His eyes skimmed the words that were soaped onto the front windows.
Timberlake Laundry.
Continues...
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