Rejected at the Station — Until a Cowboy Whispered: ‘My Twins Need a Mother Like You.’

Chapter 7

The third day brought Harold Briggs.

Clara was in the yard with Jesse and Cole, showing them how to check the water trough near the smaller barn to make sure it hadn’t frozen solid overnight, when she heard the wagon coming up the road.

Jesse heard it too and turned immediately with the instinctive excitement of a child for whom any arrival was an event.

Cole looked up more slowly, more carefully. The way he looked at everything.

The wagon stopped at the gate. Harold Briggs climbed down with the deliberate movements of a man who’d rehearsed his reason for being somewhere.

He was wearing his good coat.

That told Clara something.

“Mr. Callaway around?” he called toward the house.

Ruth appeared in the doorway before Clara could answer. “He’s in the north pasture, Harold. What do you need?”

Briggs walked through the gate. His eyes moved to Clara with the particular quality of a man who’d come specifically to see her and was pretending he hadn’t.

“Morning, Ruth. Just came to check on things. Storm’s been hard on everyone.”

“We’re managing fine,” Ruth said.

“I can see that.”

He stopped a few feet from Clara.

“Miss Whitfield. You’re still here.”

“The coach isn’t running yet,” Clara said.

“No, it isn’t.” He put his hands in his coat pockets. “Spoke to the station master this morning. Says it might be another five days. Maybe six.”

Clara kept her expression even. “I appreciate you letting me know.”

“Tom Harding feels terrible about the situation,” Briggs said. “His wife—the new one—she feels bad, too. They wanted me to tell you that.”

“That’s kind of them.”

“They were wondering,” Briggs continued, with the careful tone of a man delivering a message he’d been given specific words for, “whether you might be more comfortable staying at the widow Pearson’s place. One of her travelers left yesterday, so there’s a room open now. Tom said he’d cover the cost, given the circumstances.”

Jesse was watching the conversation with open fascination.

Cole had moved—without any apparent decision—to stand slightly closer to Clara.

Clara looked at Harold Briggs for a long moment.

She understood exactly what was happening.

Tom Harding’s conscience wasn’t the reason for this visit. The town was talking, and Harold Briggs was the town’s instrument for managing things it found untidy.

“Tell Mr. Harding I appreciate the offer,” she said. “But I’ve made an arrangement with the Callaways, and I intend to honor it.”

“It’s just that people are talking, Miss Whitfield,” Briggs said, dropping the pretense of the message now and going straight to the real thing. “A woman alone in a widower’s house. It doesn’t look right. I’m sure you understand.”

“I understand perfectly,” Clara said. “I’m helping Mrs. Ruth Callaway with the household while her son manages a difficult situation with his cattle in the worst storm of the decade. There are two children here who need consistent care, and Mrs. Callaway’s hands have been troubling her.”

She paused.

“Is there something about that arrangement that requires correction?”

Briggs’s jaw moved. “I’m just saying how it looks.”

“You’re saying how it looks to people who aren’t here?” Clara said. “I’m telling you how it is.”

Cole’s hand—very small, very deliberate—closed around two fingers of Clara’s left hand.

She didn’t look down. She didn’t move. She just kept her eyes on Harold Briggs and let the child hold on to her.

Briggs looked at Cole. Then at Clara.

Then he cleared his throat.

“Well. I’ll pass along your answer to Tom.”

“You do that,” Ruth said from the doorway.

Her voice was pleasant in the way a closed door is pleasant. There. And not moving.

Briggs climbed back into his wagon with slightly less dignity than he’d arrived with.

Clara watched the wagon until it turned back onto the main road.

Then she looked down at Cole.

Cole released her fingers. He looked up at her with his father’s steady gray eyes.

“He was trying to make you leave,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to leave?”

Clara looked at him for a long moment.

“Not until the coach runs,” she said.

Cole studied her face. Then he nodded once—a small, serious movement—and went back to checking the water trough.

Jesse, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet, said to no one in particular, “I don’t like Mr. Briggs.”

“Jesse,” Ruth said from the doorway.

“I’m just saying.”

Clara went back to the house.

Ruth was standing in the kitchen with her arms folded, looking out the window at the retreating wagon.

“Harold Briggs is a man who mistakes talking for thinking,” Ruth said. “Always has been.”

She turned to Clara.

“You handled that well.”

“Thank you.”

Ruth was quiet for a moment.

“Cole doesn’t hold hands,” she finally said. “Not since his mother died. Eli’s tried. I’ve tried. He just… doesn’t.”

Clara set her coat on the hook.

“He held yours,” Ruth said.

Clara didn’t say anything.

Ruth crossed to the stove and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“I don’t know what that means,” she said. “But I know it means something.”

She sat down at the table.

“Now. Let’s talk about supper.”