Promise of Yesterday by S. Dionne Moore Read Free Book Online Page B

thankful he had not noticed her. She brushed her hand across her brow, the gesture bringing Cooper to mind. She needed to check on him and today, this moment, welcomed the diversion. Anything to take her mind off Chester and the raw emotion that had swelled inside her breast at his touch.
    She was too old for love, she decided. Besides, she couldn’t get attached to someone who might be a murderer. Marylu pressed a hand to her stomach and wondered, though, what it would be like to love and be loved. To have the children she’d always dreamed of.
    She chided herself for such fanciful imaginations. She was Miss Jenny’s friend and she could never leave her friend alone.

nine
    Chester finished work on the chest of drawers before putting away the tools and sweeping the floor clean of wood dust. In his head, he planned out how to approach making the table Mr. Shillito had asked him to create. He needed more nails to complete the job.
    Standing the broom in a corner, he bent to collect the debris, inhaling deeply of the wood dust and shavings, a scent he never tired of. He had worked with wood for years. Even on the plantation, he’d preferred the feel of the warm wood to the labor of picking cotton. His master had seen his skill and taken him from the fields to work with Sam, a boy not much older than his own seventeen years.
    Stroking the smooth surface of the completed chairs brought back the good memories of Sam. The days they’d worked together as friends. Before Sam’s jealousy had sucked dry the fountain of friendship.
    Chester allowed himself the briefest moment to grieve for the bond of brotherhood they had shared. Or he had thought they shared. He should have seen Sam’s weakness in the way his friend talked of others, and known it would be the way he would talk about him behind his back. Or even in the way Sam’s face had grown dark when the master’s wife praised Chester’s creations more than Samuel’s.
    But he hadn’t seen it until it was too late and the knife of betrayal had not only stabbed him in the back but also cost him the loss of his tongue.
    The euphoria of confidence he’d felt the previous evening crashed. With heavy steps, he crossed to the trash receptacle and dumped the debris. Brushing his hands together, he decided to take a walk. Maybe he’d head over to Hostetter & Sons’ Grocer, where he had first discovered Cooper, to see if the man’s cough had cleared up.
    He kept his eyes to the ground. Wagons rattled past on the road, and he kept close to the right side. When he shuffled into the town’s square, he raised his eyes to the tall clock tower on top of the bank. It touched the underbelly of dark clouds scuttling through the sky.
    “You looking for that lazy, no-account Cooper?” Chester raised his eyes to find Cooper’s friend, Russell, wrestling a huge crate to the edge of a wagon bed. “I reckon he’s at home playing ‘possum for Miss Jenny.”
    Chester arched his brows in question.
    “Miss Jenny says to me this morning that he’s got himself a cough. She was picking up tea for him. Can you believe that?” Russell steadied the crate, not showing the least discomfort at having several hundred pounds balancing on his shoulder. “Prob’ly got those women waiting on him like he some king.”
    He might have talked tough, but Chester also saw the worried frown that wiped away the sting of the words. Cooper had told Chester Russell was one of the men on the wagon that night. They’d been good friends for years, and from what Chester had observed that first week of his arrival as Cooper took him around town, the two harped at each other every chance they got.
    Chester widened his eyes, then clutched at his chest and pretended to drop over.
    The black man hunched down a bit, distributing the weight of the crate onto his back. He chuckled. “Yeah. It’d be just like him to leave on out of this world so’s I have to handle these crates by myself.”
    Chester grinned and waved