The Bride's House by Sandra Dallas Read Free Book Online Page B

think of herself as a bride coming home to that house with its tall windows and big veranda and fanciful gingerbread trim, a house as white and fine as a bride’s cake, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine herself in something so nice. “If you lived in a house like that, everybody in town would take off their hat to you.”
    “Then it’s just the house you should have. Who’s to say you won’t live here someday?”
    And then Nealie saw herself standing at the front door of the house on an early evening, watching a man come up the steps and kiss her on the cheek, then follow her inside where children waited. The man looked a great deal like Will Spaulding.
    They walked back to the boardinghouse then. “I don’t know how long I’ll be in Georgetown, but I’m sure it will be through the summer, maybe longer,” Will told her when they stopped on Mrs. Travers’s porch. “I’ve got obligations, if you know what I mean. I can’t do anything about that, but I think we could have a good time together. I hope you’ll let me see you again.”
    “Oh, I will,” Nealie said, and in the dark, she blushed, either from the wine or the pretty words.
    Will took her hand and kissed her fingers. “Good night, Nealie.”
    “Good night, Mr. General Grant.”

 
     
    CHAPTER 3
     
    N EALIE DIDN ’ T HEAR C HARLIE D UMAS until the big man, hat in his hand, called to her from the street. She was sitting on the porch, dreaming about the day nearly two weeks before that she’d spent with Will Spaulding and not paying the least attention to the passersby. Nealie was startled, and Charlie looked crestfallen. “I didn’t mean to scare you none, Miss Nealie.”
    Of course, if she’d had her rathers, Will would be standing there, but Nealie was feeling so happy that she was glad to see even Charlie. “Mr. Dumas, come and sit,” she said.
    The big man grinned and stomped onto the porch. He towered over her, until Nealie indicated the place beside her on the bench. “Today’s a fine day,” he said.
    Nealie had to agree. In almost the blink of an eye, it had gone from winter to summer. There was no spring in the high country, Mrs. Travers had explained to her, just mud. The runoff from melted snow still ran high, filling the creeks almost to the tops of their banks, and the streets had their patches of mud yet, but the sun was so bright that it quickly dried the mud into ruts. The yards were greening, and people had begun whitewashing their houses and sheds, replacing the paint that the wind and dirt had sanded off during the winter. Houses were going up, and every day, Nealie walked past the place that Will had called the bride’s house, stopping to watch the carpenters nail up siding. And each day, she thought of Will walking up the stairs of the house to greet her. It was such a fine house, with a gable in front and a tower with a peaked roof, a porch around two sides, and a bay window that caught the sun all day long.
    Smoky-gray bluebirds and the black-and-white birds that Mrs. Travers called camp robbers flitted about, along with red and green hummingbirds that hovered in the air, their wings spinning so quickly that Nealie could scarcely see them. She sat on the front porch, a bit of mending idle in her hands. Before Charlie had called to her, Nealie, eyes closed, had held up her face to the sun, despite Mrs. Travers’s warning that the air was thin, and the girl’s pale skin would burn before she knew it.
    “Why aren’t you up at the Bobcat?” Nealie asked. She turned to look Charlie in the face. “You didn’t get laid off, did you, Mr. Dumas? Mrs. Travers said there were rumors the vein pinched out last week. She feared you might be out of work.”
    “Did you fear it?” Charlie asked.
    “I fear anybody missing payday,” she replied, carefully choosing her words. Of course she didn’t want Charlie losing his job. She didn’t wish it at all, wouldn’t wish it for anybody, because being out of work was a