The Star Garden Read Online Free Page A

Discipline and control? Did he want to raise soldiers? And was he telling me the only things he thinks I do are cooking and cleaning? I was mad enough at his words that I’d like to see him on his way. Harland’s arm lay heavy across my shoulder, and my anger was tempered with the weight of that arm. “Little brother, you know you’re welcome to stay. I own that house in Tucson. If you want it, you can live there and try your luck.”
    “First time you actually sound like you’d let me go.”
    “Keep telling me I don’t know how to mind children, and I’ll mail you to town myself with a stamp from my boot. General delivery. Why would you want to take your children to town? They’ll be exposed to all kinds of diseases. Rough characters. Unfair teachers.”
    “They tell me you’re a mean teacher.”
    “They tell me you can whistle out your eyebrows.”
    He laughed. “You know, that house of yours was the first whole house I ever built.”
    “Did I ever pay you for that?”
    “I recollect I billed you a peach pie and a haircut. Believe you paid twice.”
    I patted his arm. “When you leaving?”
    “I don’t know. Thought I’d have more trouble convincing you than that.”
    “There’s no rush.”
    Later, I showed Miss James to my room. Then I handed her a night shift and set about tightening up the ropes under my bed to pull the sagging middle up flatter. When I’m alone there’s no harm in letting it sag. I don’t mind sharing with someone but with another woman in the bed, I’d as soon we didn’t slide toward the middle all night long.
    I turned down the lamp, and as I was getting in, Miss James rolled away from me. I faced the opposite wall, too. I was thinking about Harland and each of his children. Thinking what they’d need, how they’d fare in town, how much better they’d be here in the fresh air.
    Miss James’s voice startled me. “Miss Castle thought he was going to marry her. That’s all. I saw you looking cross when her name was brought up.”
    It took me a minute to put that into place. “Professor Fairhaven?”
    “She said he talked to her of marriage and having a family.”
    “
Did
he talk of it?”
    “Well, she was going to have a … no matter what she did, she was my friend.”
    “I see.” No matter what she did. Going to have … what, a little visitor? The story played out in my imagination. The learned Dr. Fairhaven had seduced Miss Castle and talked her into leaving her business behind and coming with him with no promise of marriage or support. As if when he got tired of her company he could tell her to go set up a shop somewhere.
    Miss James sniffled, and after a bit, said, “Do you really?”
    I never could see how a woman could give over to a man, without reservation, without a ring or a parson. Still, there wasn’t any use in being harsh toward Miss James so I said, “She must have loved him.”
    “She told me I had him all wrong and that he was real smart and fun to be with and clever, and she wanted to marry him, I know that.”
    I saw no grief in Professor Fairhaven’s eyes. Disdain, that’s what I saw. A far cry from Harland’s deep-cut pain. “You don’t think he loved her?” I asked.
    “Oh, I said that before, but how can you tell? Maybe. Love? Well, maybe. As a man does, I s’pect.”
    “I’ll tell you what, Miss James,” I said, turning in the dark to look over my shoulder and face her. I saw little sparks of moonlight reflected in her eyes. “If he did, you and the whole world would know it.” I lay back down, facing my wall, and went on, “I’ve been loved both poorly and greatly by two different men. A woman who dreams of a good home with a man who holds for her only a poor love is putting a fifty-dollar saddle on a twenty-dollar horse. She’d be far better off single than riding with him.”
    At that, she said no more and soon I heard her breathing hard, sleeping. Well, I had had a way of stopping all conversations this evening, that