Harlot (Bartered Hearts 2)
“You can save each dollar for the next time I see you. Take good care of this place.”
Melisande nodded. “We will.”
“I know.”
“We wanted to ask you something, Bill and I…” Melisande’s eyes flickered toward the front where Bill and Caleb were readying the horses for the trip. “I got a letter from my aunt.”
“Your aunt? I didn’t know you had any family!”
“We lost touch for a while. She fell out with my mother over me, but now…well, I wrote once I’d settled here.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Will she come visit?”
Melisande laughed. “No, she’s vowed to never set foot outside New Orleans and never has. But she did have a thought.”
Jess had rarely seen the woman hesitate over anything, and never for this long. “You sound like me discussing whoring. Spit it out before it turns bitter.”
Her smile was a little shaky this time, but she nodded. “A cousin of mine died. Left two little ones behind. The boy is eleven, old enough to start farming. The girl is only six, but she can help around the kitchen. I thought… Well, Bill and I thought maybe they could come here if you wouldn’t mind.”
“If I wouldn’t mind?” Jess barely got the words out before tears choked her throat. She wasn’t sure who’d started it this time. Melisande’s eyes were damp too, tears of nervousness or hope or excitement.
Jess understood the terror of all those emotions, because she felt them too. A life she’d thought lost to her was opening up, spreading its wings to the sky. Jessica wasn’t sure about children. She wasn’t sure about anything, really, but she felt hope and she could see the same in Melisande’s face.
Jess cleared her throat, trying to let the words free. “Why would I mind?” she finally managed.
“It’s your place.”
“No, it’s your place now. You bring all the family here you want. Make this place alive again. Drive out all the ghosts.”
“Yes.” Melisande dipped her chin in one firm nod. “Let the past be the past. Kids are good at chasing old stuff away.”
She could picture them all come springtime. Bill and a young man half his size, working to expand the cornfield. A miniature of Melisande next to her in the kitchen, learning to bake biscuits just as Jessica had. The idea so thrilled her that she reached for Melisande and pulled her into another hard hug. “I can feel how happy this place will be. How happy you’ll be.”
“You gave this to us,” Melisande whispered.
“No. We did this together. Gave each other a chance.”
Melisande’s cheek rubbed Jess’s hair when she nodded, and then her friend pulled back and swiped at her eyes with an apron. “Let’s go see what the boys are doing.”
Jessica looked around one more time, her gaze touching every memory in the kitchen before she nodded. It felt good to be leaving, but she would miss her best friend.
They found the men huddled together just past the front porch, Caleb drawing something in the dirt. “You can start it before the ground freezes,” Caleb said.
“Start what?” Jessica asked.
He looked up with a half-smile that made her heart turn so fast it hurt. “I was just showing Bill where he could dig an irrigation ditch from the creek.”
“I’m just glad to see you didn’t lose your patience and set off without me.”
“Never,” he said, giving her another crooked smile. “But if you ladies are done with good-byes, we really should get going.”
Jessica hugged Melisande one last time, bid farewell to Bill, then rushed toward her horse before she could cry again.
Caleb helped her up before mounting his own horse. “I like seeing you like that,” he said, his eyes sliding down her hiked skirts.
“Is that why you didn’t buy me a sidesaddle?”
“Naw, I just wanted you to be more comfortable.” He winked, and she giggled, loving how easy it felt now. It wasn’t what they’d had before. It was better.