“Don’t worry about the money,” Mr. Hopkins interrupted with a deep frown on his face, his eyes not even lifting for the first page of the letter. “I’ll cover it. It’s my fault, after all, that you’ve come all this way for nothing.”
Suddenly Abby knew that she had to get outside and breathe some fresh air. Her stomach threatened revolt. Even with the letter from Pastor Gibbons in his hand, the man was going to refuse to hire her.
Without explaining anything to anyone, she bolted from the room, out the door and around the side of the building. She was almost to the back of the clapboard restaurant when she couldn’t keep her stomach from emptying any longer. For the first time in her life, she wished she had died with her parents. What was to become of her? She was truly alone in this world—and in this strange and unfamiliar town. Back home, the sky had been high and the hills had surrounded her, but she had not known the immenseness of God’s creation until she sat hour after hour and watched prairie grass wave to an endless clear sky. She was a small speck on a wide-open prairie and only God cared she even existed. No wonder King David had asked, What was man that God was mindful of him? She was as insignificant as a stalk of the prairie grass.
“Oh, God, What am I going to do now?” she cried. The sobs that racked her body were almost as painful as the retching. She leaned her forearms against the clapboard wall and hung her head between her elbows. She didn’t even feel the coarseness of the building scratching her arms. Closing her eyes she prayed for a home. Somewhere to go where she could rest—where she could feel safe. She had traveled more than a thousand miles thinking she found a new home only to find it was the biggest mistake of her life.
* * *
Will sat staring at the spot the girl...Miss Stewart, had just vacated. He almost hoped that this was just a bad dream and he’d wake up any minute now to find that he was still camping down by the river on his way into Twin Oaks to pick up his new housekeeper. But Tommy’s little hand pushing on his shoulder, trying to get him to pay attention to yet another barrage of questions, made him aware this was all too real. The new housekeeper was a young, beautiful girl who looked as if a stiff wind could carry her off. She wouldn’t last a week on the frontier.
“Pa, where’d she go?” Tommy asked, his confusion making Will regret even more having started all this craziness. Surely he and Jake could handle the boys on their own just as they had done in the past. Maybe he would not plant in the western field he had cleared last month. He would still make a profit, though not as much as he had hoped. Still, that sounded better than adding more chaos and anxiety to his boys’ lives.
“Pa!” Tommy’s hand pounded harder and Will finally focused on his small son.
“I don’t know where she went. Maybe she needed to get a breath of air.” What did he know about women anymore? He’d been a failure at being a husband, and it had been more than ten years since he had seen his own mother or sisters.
“Um, sir?” The waitress was back again. This time she had two plates full of mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, chicken and broccoli. The third had a large steak and a baked potato with the same side vegetables. “I have your meals.”
She set a plate in front of each of them and then leaned a little closer to him. “Is the young lady all right? Will she be joining you again?”
Will groaned and closed his eyes. That was the question, wasn’t it? Would she be joining them on their trip back to the farm, or would he send her back to Ohio? The sliver of the letter he had been able to read stated the pastor’s approval. According to the pastor, Miss Stewart was an upstanding Christian girl, well respected by the other members of the church where she had attended since she had been little. The pastor indicated that he had known her parents and wanted to make sure she was arriving to a Christian home where she would be protected and respected. It had confirmed what Will surmised about her from her letters.
The only problem was her age—how could he bring a young woman to live with them? True, they wouldn’t be completely alone, thanks to Jake and the boys, but it still didn’t seem proper. Yet it hardly seemed proper to abandon a young woman in a strange town, either.
“Oh...all right!” He gave in to his guilty conscience. He needed to go search her out and see what solution he could offer. It was getting later in the day and he still needed to be back to the river by nightfall. “Can you keep an eye on my boys for a minute?” he asked the waitress, wondering what he could possibly do to make this situation better for everyone.
“We’ll be just fine here, right, boys? I remember when mine were this size.” The waitress smiled at Tommy and Willy and then nodded to Will.
Maybe he could ask Mrs. Scotts to let Miss Stewart stay on their homestead. The Scotts were his closest neighbors, and Mrs. Scotts had always struck him as a kind woman. He played with that idea as he left the building and blinked in the afternoon sun. Once his eyes adjusted, he turned and followed the forlorn sound of someone sobbing. When he found her, she was leaning against the building, crying so hard she looked on the verge of collapse. She was the picture of distress and disillusionment. Knowing he had created this big mess, causing her so much misery, struck him like a sucker punch to his stomach.
He had prayed and sought God’s guidance each step of the process that had brought her here. Mother had started everything when she suggested he advertize for a housekeeper last spring. Being that it was her idea, he’d asked his mother to write his ad and get it placed in a good Christian publication. Miss Stewart’s copy was the first he had seen of the original ad. He never even dreamed she had used his given name—Francis, the name he had grown to hate as a boy growing up. Miss Stewart was not the first person to think it a woman’s name. How could it have gone so terribly wrong? Now the poor girl was in a strange place with no one to count on and nowhere to go.
God, I need a little help here, he prayed as he approached, wondering what he could possibly say.
“Um, Miss Stewart?”
She jerked around so quickly that she almost fell. Her pallid face looked as if she had powdered it with flour. Even her lips looked gray. Her red nose and red-rimmed eyes contrasted her lack of color.
She spun away from him just as quickly and her stomach heaved again, although she brought nothing up. A sob escaped her throat and ripped his heart in half. He stepped closer. Supporting her elbows with his hands, he felt her body shaking.
He felt an unaccustomed surge of protectiveness. He wanted to help this girl, shield and protect her from any source of pain. But right now he was the cause of her distress. What could he say or do to make that right?
* * *
Abby had thought the day couldn’t get any worse when she fled the restaurant, but apparently she was wrong. Now he was here watching her toss up her accounts. How embarrassing.
“I’m sorry, Miss Stewart. I wasn’t expecting you to be... I had thought... I’ve made a mess of this.”
His hands still supported her elbows and he sounded truly contrite, but what could she say? It was all right? That it was understandable after he had brought her all this way into the middle of nowhere that he was going to abandon her and leave her with nothing?
The nightmare didn’t seem to be ready to end. Silence stretched out and neither one knew how to break the uncomfortable tension. At least her stomach had settled to resemble a simple storm instead of a full-blown sea squall.
“Listen, I admit this is a mess.” He stated the obvious. If Abby hadn’t been so tense, she might have seen a bit of humor in that. Right now she didn’t have the energy to be amused.
“Really!” She speared him with a pointed look.
“I’m... Why don’t we go back and sit down? Maybe if you eat something...”
“It’ll come right back up,” she mumbled before he even finished his idea. “All I want is to go home...to have a place to go and lie down, a place that’s safe, where I belong.”
The