Beautiful Bad Man by Ellen O'Connell Read Free Book Online Page A

seen it, and I thought it was happening to you and there was nothing I could do. I should have tried harder. I should have....”
    Norah hugged her again. “You were wonderful, and you still are. Please say you forgive me, and let’s not talk about it any more.”
    “I don’t forgive you because there’s no need. Now come in and warm up. Archie and the boys will be in for dinner soon, and you’ll eat with us, and we’ll share the latest news, and it will be like old times.”
    Mabel’s voice quivered on the last words. Norah had a small lump in her own throat.
    “Maybe everyone would like to have a slice of this after dinner,” she said, handing over the cloth-wrapped package she’d brought with her and hanging Joe’s coat on a peg by the door.
    Mabel stood in her parlor with its white-washed walls and wide board floors holding the package for a moment as if she didn’t know what to do with it. Finally she unwrapped a corner to expose the golden crust of the raisin-studded loaf of oatmeal bread inside.
    “We worried about you starving. How could you make this? What happened while we were both being stubborn and foolish?”
    “Later, when your men come in and I can tell you all at once, I actually have a story to share,” Norah said, realizing she did. She had an extraordinary tale and only had to decide how much to tell.
    “I knew I heard someone talking to Ma down here.”
    Becky, the Carburys’ only daughter and their wild child, skipped down the last of the stairs and hugged Norah as hard as her mother had.
    Tall and blonde, with strong features that combined into an arresting whole, Becky was the image of what Mabel must have been before the years had laced her hair with gray and taken her figure from willowy to matronly. Seeing them side by side again, Norah wondered as she always did whether Mabel’s calm blue eyes had once danced with as much curiosity and mischief as her daughter’s.
    “I’m so glad to see you,” Becky said. “Three of my own brothers are going to stay here and guard the house instead of coming to my wedding, but you’ll come, won’t you? Say you will.”
    “Wedding? Last time I talked to you, you and young Mr. Butler had quarreled, and you were never going to forgive him.”
    “But I did forgive him, and we’re getting married the day after tomorrow. Say you’ll come, Norah. Please, please.”
    “I, I’d love to come,” Norah stammered, “but you know I can’t. I can’t stay overnight in town, and if I went, I’d have to.”
    “You can too come, and you can squeeze in with us at the Butlers’ house overnight,” Mabel said. “Archie and the boys are staying in the hotel, but Becky and I won’t have to set a foot in that place, and neither will you.”
    The two of them had an answer to every one of Norah’s objections. She didn’t exactly agree with their plan, but she began to feel swept away by the inevitability of it.
    The three women worked in the kitchen together, getting dinner on the table, while chatting about the wedding. Mabel and Becky both shed a few tears over how their lives would change when Becky moved to town with her new husband, who had proposed the day after he landed a job managing Hubbell’s railroad station.
    The Carbury men filed into the house for dinner and greeted Norah without surprise. Unlike Becky, who was in all ways a younger version of her mother, the four Carbury sons all showed their father’s influence in their dark hair, gray eyes, and thickly-muscled, sturdy bodies. None of them stood more than average height, but Norah had never seen another man challenge Archie or his oldest boys.
    Maybe Ben, the only one of the boys younger than Becky, would become like his brothers by the time he got his full growth, but so far he seemed more like his loquacious, enthusiastic sister. He often made Norah laugh.
    The conversation stayed focused on the wedding and Becky’s new life until Mabel remembered the oatmeal bread.
    “Enough