The Bridal Veil by Alexis Harrington Read Free Book Online Page A

reddened hand the bread
looked like a handkerchief. She answered as she chewed, and Emily
had a passing glance of partially masticated food. “I came out here
in ’60 with my husband. We left out of St. Joe and followed the
Oregon Trail.”
    Sorry that she’d asked, Emily forged
on anyway. “Goodness, what an exciting trip that must have
been.”
    The other woman shook her head and
waved off the suggestion as she chewed. “It was a blame fool idea
my man had. We had perfectly good farmland in Missouri but he got
some notion that he wanted to come out here. He came into the
kitchen one day and said, ‘Pack up, Cora, we’re going to Oregon!’
And just like that, I had to go. We went through every kind of
weather God put on this earth, and I had to dump half of my
belongings on the trail. Every time we crossed a wide river or
climbed a mountain, there went a chair, or a dresser, or a
bedstead.”
    Emily glanced around the table, amazed
by the force of Cora’s oratory. Luke looked as if he’d heard it all
before and more times than he wanted, but Rose jumped
in.
    “ Grammy, tell about how the
ox got sick and died,” she urged, her face animated, “and got all
bloated up with maggots because the weather was too
hot—”
    “ Rose, for God’s sake—” Luke
began, but Emily, horrified by the girl’s suggestion and her dearth
of table manners, interrupted.
    “ Young lady, that is not
appropriate table conversation! In fact, it’s not proper
conversation at all. It is also not proper to create artistic
arrangements of your food.” She indicated the beans stacked on the
fork.
    Rose dropped her gaze to her lap, a
scowl wrinkling her face. “I don’t like beans,” she
mumbled.
    “ Then leave them on your
plate.”
    “ Grammy says I have to eat
everything on it.”
    “ But you’re not eating
them.”
    Rose’s chin began to quiver, and Emily
could have bitten her own tongue. She didn’t know what had come
over her. Maybe it was fatigue from her trip, or the hard,
assessing gleam in Cora’s eyes every time she looked at her. Rose
gave Emily a wounded glance from beneath her lashes, then suddenly
jumped up and ran from the table, sobbing. Her thunderous footsteps
were heard on the stairs and a moment later, a door slammed
overhead.
    Aghast at her own behavior, Emily’s
gaze bounced from Luke to Cora and back again.
    “ Well! Is that how things
are going to be around here now?” Cora demanded. “Luke, are you
going to let this woman talk to Rose that way?”
    “ Oh, dear, I’m so sorry!”
Emily put her napkin by her plate and began to push her chair out.
“I’ll go to her—”
    Luke stretched his hand across the
table toward hers as if to stop her. His expression showed no
anger, only weariness. “No, let her sit up there for a while. She
has a lot to get used to. We’ll just give her some
time.”
    Stricken to the heart, Emily repeated,
“I truly am sorry. I didn’t mean to upset her so. I guess I’m not
used to hearing stories about dead oxen and—and so on.”
    “ Oh, boo-hoo! Doesn’t
anything die in Chicago?” Cora snapped. She glared at Emily with
her hard blue eyes.
    Emily paused a moment before
answering. “Yes, Mrs. Hayward. My sister died,” she reminded her.
“And my parents before her. In fact, I have no family left at all.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid I’m not very hungry.”
    ~~*~*~*~~
    Mrs. Becker? Hah! Cora Hayward sat in the darkened parlor, her
jaw tight, her slippered foot pushing the rocker in which she sat
at a brisk pace. She let her gaze follow the line of the furniture
and Belinda’s keepsakes, still on prominent display. Her sewing
basket sat in the corner, its lid opened to display her
gold-handled embroidery scissors, her sterling silver thimble, and
the last piece of stitchery she had been working before she died.
The linen sat there, folded neatly, half-finished, and looked as if
Belinda might walk in any moment to take it up again. Cora herself
had no