The Heart of Joy: A Short Story (A Prairie Heritage Book 8) Read online

  A sob clogged Joy’s throat. “Mr. O’Dell has spent these years searching for our baby. He has never complained or uttered a word of discouragement. He has been our—my—strong arm, my ally and support. And I know he has . . . feelings for me. If-if I were to give him any encouragement at all—”

  Joy could not finish, could not voice—not to Grant nor to herself—what might come. Instead, she wiped her face again and spoke to her God.

  “Father, I know you love me, and I trust in that love. Lead me, Lord, in paths of righteousness for your name’s sake. I commit to you: Where you lead, I will follow.”

  Joy stood to her feet and smoothed away the wrinkles on her skirt, flicked away the bits of grass. She carefully, methodically, folded the brown paper and tucked it into her handbag.

  Once more, she placed her hand on the marble headstone. Rubbing the smooth surface under her fingers, Joy gave the headstone a last caress.

  “I love you, Grant Michaels. I will always love you, but I hear our Lord whispering that the times and seasons are changing. Perhaps I must change, too.”

  ~*~

  O’Dell watched the tender farewell from the road, saw Joy square her shoulders and stride toward him. As she drew closer, he noted her reddened eyes and the blotchy patches on her cheeks. Nevertheless, she attempted to smile as she reached the edge of the road.

  “Thank you for waiting for me, Mr. O’Dell.”

  O’Dell lifted his hat by way of greeting. “It was my pleasure.”

  He opened the passenger door and handed her inside, then went around to the driver’s side and climbed in. His 1910 touring car from the now-defunct Bergdoll automakers was not the newest or shiniest motor car running around the cobbled streets and dirt roads of Denver, but in O’Dell’s role as head of the Denver Pinkerton office, the 30-horsepower auto, with front and back seats, was a godsend, an essential tool to his trade.

  Not sure how I managed without it before.

  Today he was doubly glad for the automobile. “Are you comfortable? Hat secure?” The car sported a partial front window and a canopy that extended above the seats and down the back, but the remainder of the auto was open to air rushing by at a brisk fifteen-mile-an-hour clip.

  Joy tested the wide brim that shaded her face. “I believe so.”

  Her sleek, wheat-colored braid, wound about itself and pinned at her neck, filled the underside of the hat’s straw and tulle. O’Dell had trouble tearing his gaze from her lovely hair—until he saw her watching him—watching him with a knowing expression.

  “Harrumph.” He cleared his dry throat and started the engine.

  Am I mistaken, or is something different, Lord? Are things changing? he asked silently. After these many years?

  They rode in silence, but it was a companionable silence. Soon they drove out of the relative peace and quiet of the cemetery and its neighborhood and into the cacophony of afternoon traffic flowing through downtown Denver. Automobiles roared down the narrow streets, their drivers honking at passing acquaintances, at the friends who strolled the walkways along the boulevards, at the traffic snarls engendered by the confluence of horse-drawn conveyances and motorized vehicles.

  Joy perked up and pointed. “Oh, look! There is Tory Washington!”

  O’Dell tipped his hat to the elegant woman conversing on the wide walkway in front of her establishment, Victoria’s Fashions. Tory’s smart, picture-perfect attire was the best advertisement for her chic designs and gowns. One slender, gloved hand waved a greeting to Joy and O’Dell.

  “It never fails to amaze me,” O’Dell confessed, “how changed the young ladies we, er, ‘removed’ from Corinth are. How successful and happy they have become.”

  O’Dell was referring to the girls and young women whom Joy and her mother, Rose, had rescued when they lived in the little mountain village above Denver. On that memorable night, O’Dell, a party of fellow Pinkerton agents, and a contingent of U.S. Marshals had helped terminate the bogus employment scheme by which evil men had kidnapped and ensnared the girls. They had liberated the girls and young women from forced prostitution.

  Tory Washington had been one of those young women.

  Not long after the Corinth showdown, an elderly Denverite, Martha Palmer, had given Rose and Joy the house her husband had built three decades before. The house had been sitting empty for years and had suffered much from neglect, but its three stories and many bedrooms were exactly what Rose and Joy had prayed for.

  What they had needed.

  Some of the girls rescued from Corinth had gone home to be reunited with their families. Those who had no homes or family to whom they could return had come to live at Palmer House under Rose’s healing ministrations. In the years since, Denver churches had recommended—and were still referring—other women in similar straits to Palmer House. To Rose and Joy’s welcoming arms.

  Within the safety of Palmer House’s walls, mother and daughter poured love on these wounded souls, shared Jesus with them, prayed over them as they healed, and labored to prepare the women for honest work—work that allowed them to envision and achieve independent and self-sufficient futures.

  Joy answered O’Dell, “Grant called them our ‘girls from the mountain.’ And I could not agree more with your assessment. Only God can restore a devastated life so completely.”

  Soon they were out of heavy traffic and into a well-heeled residential area. O’Dell eased his car up to the curb of an immense corner lot. He jumped from his seat and raced around the car to open Joy’s door for her.

  Again, she fixed him with that look—partly shy, partly knowing. A bit questioning? And most definitely skittish.

  Wary.

  Afraid.

  He moistened his lips and—the remnant of an old habit—patted his breast pocket where he used to carry his cigars. But that was before.

  Before Jesus.

  She noticed his action and whispered, “Old ways crop up at the strangest times, do they not? When we are nervous.”

  “Are we nervous, Mrs. Michaels?” The words flew from his mouth before he could prevent them.

  Joy shifted her feet and circumvented his question with a hastily crafted query of her own. “May I take your arm, Mr. O’Dell?”

  O’Dell snapped to attention. “Certainly.” They took the few steps to the gate of Palmer House. He opened the gate, and they walked through it and up the walk at a leisurely pace toward the porch. There they stopped, and O’Dell released Joy’s arm.

  He hesitated and then said, “I am glad I was able to share Grant’s birthday with you. I know how hard it had to have been for you. I pray my presence there was a help and not an intrusion.”

  “Your presence has never been an intrusion, Mr. O’Dell.” Joy was just being honest. With him. With herself.

  She took a deep breath. “Perhaps . . . perhaps you might join us for dinner this evening? Nothing special. Only ordinary, midweek fare.”

  To hide his surprise, O’Dell teased, “Are you not required to give Marit and Breona at least a twenty-four-hour notice?”

  Palmer House’s cook and housekeeper were legendary sticklers for propriety.

  Joy laughed—a real, uninhibited laugh. “I have a feeling they will not complain much.”

  O’Dell nodded and smiled in return. He could not help himself—and his gaze probed hers, looking, wondering, hoping for a sign. “Well, then. I leave them to you. Until this evening.”

  Joy’s laughter dissolved. In its place appeared that same shy, fearful knowing.

  “Yes, um . . . very well.” She might just as well have been agreeing to a doctor’s injection for all the lack of enthusiasm she conveyed.

  She opened her mouth, perhaps to rescind her invitation—but O’Dell gave her no opportunity to do so. He raised his hat and spun on his heel, forestalling such an action. He was halfway to the gate before she could assert her qualms or retract her invitation.

  No, my dear, O’Dell thought. We have begun now, and I shall press my s
uit hereafter.

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 2

  Joy closed the front door behind her and leaned against it. Her heart was hammering. She was breathless. Panicked.

  O Lord! What have I done?

  Rose, hearing the door open and shut without any subsequent footsteps in the entryway, left her desk in Palmer House’s great room and went to investigate.

  “Why, Joy! Is everything all right?”

  Joy laughed and a tiny note of hysteria tinged her laughter. “I am not sure, Mama.”

  As she spoke, soft paw pats and the clicking of nails on the parquet wood of the foyer pattered toward them. Blackie, roused from his bed in the kitchen, raced to greet Joy. He skittered to a stop, tail thumping the floor, and grinned up at her.

  Joy bent and rubbed Blackie’s ears and muzzle. “Good boy, Blackie. Did you miss me? Did you have a nice day with Will and Charley?”

  Will and Charley were Billy and Marit’s two young sons.

  Rose smiled. “The weather was lovely today. The boys and Blackie played outside all morning. They explored every inch of the grounds together. All three were worn to a frazzle by lunch time—and all three required naps.”

  Rose, resolved on discovering the reason for her daughter’s strange entrance, pursued her quest from a different direction. “Today is Grant’s birthday, is it not? Did you take roses to his grave today? I thought I saw you cutting some this morning before you left for your shop.”

  “Um, yes, to both questions.” Joy made that odd, strangled sound again. “You will never guess who was at the cemetery when I arrived.”

  Rose put her head to one side and considered her daughter. “Hmm. Someone was already there? I suppose I might venture to assume it was Mr. O’Dell?”

  Joy nodded her head, but the anxious shakiness inside remained—fixed and quivering. “Yes, it was Mr. O’Dell. He remembered it was Grant’s birthday, and he, um, he kindly offered to drive me home.”

  “I see.” Rose did not see, but a tiny hope percolated in her heart. “And?”

  “Yes. Well . . . that is . . . I-I . . .” Joy’s sentence faded into oblivion.

  “Joy.”

  Rose employed that age-old tone, the one all mothers perfect; she used that certain and uncanny ability to utter Joy’s first name and, into a single syllable, imbue the weight of her full name: Joy Again Thoresen Michaels.

  “Joy.”

  Joy dithered and then spit out her response. “I, um, I-I invited Mr. O’Dell to dinner this evening.”

  “Ah.” Rose kept the smile that bloomed in her heart from reaching her face.

  Joy blushed. “No, Mama. Not ‘ah.’ It is only dinner; that is all. He has often taken dinner at Palmer House.”

  “Not for quite some time, if my recollections are correct.”

  Joy shrugged her shoulder. “I was merely being polite.”

  Rose raised one brow. “I see. Well, you had best let Marit know. It is half-past four.”

  “Yes. I should do so.”

  Joy dreaded “doing so.”

  Why, I shall adopt a simple, nonchalant tone. Something ordinary and customary, such as, ‘I happened upon Mr. O’Dell’ or ‘Mr. O’Dell and I encountered each other quite by chance—and so, of course, I extended an invitation.’

  That will serve.

  Pursing her lips, she brushed by her mother and strode toward the kitchen, Blackie at her heels. But when Joy pushed through the swinging door, her courage—and all her prepared words—dropped into her shoes: Not only were both Marit and Breona in the kitchen, so also were Marit’s husband, Billy; Palmer House’s caretaker, Mr. Wheatley; and two of Palmer House’s girls, Gracie and Olive. Billy had his and Marit’s younger son, Charley, on his lap while he and Mr. Wheatley sat at the kitchen table and peeled potatoes into an enameled pan.

  Conscious that every eye had turned toward her, Joy still stared at Charley. Her eyes devoured him. The tot was starting to shoot up and lose his baby fat.

  Edmund is nine months older than Charley—how big he must be now! Father, I know you are holding him in your hands, wherever he is, but . . .

  Palmer House’s Irish housekeeper cleared her throat. “Aye, and ’tis lovely t’ be seein’ ya home early, Miss Joy.”

  Joy snapped out of her reverie so quickly that she stammered. “I-I, um, I happened upon Mr. O’Dell—that is, he was at the cemetery when I-I visited this afternoon.”

  The rest of her rehearsed statement went straight out of her head, and she blurted, “Mr. O’Dell will be dining with us this evening.”

  “Oh?” Breona’s black eyes gleamed with interest.

  Gracie and Olive’s joint response was more drawn out. “Ohhhhh.” They looked at each other, nodded, and tittered.

  And every eye in the kitchen fixed upon Joy with increasing speculation.

  “Ja, and ve vill be happy to see Mr. O’Dell. It has been too long, I think.” One side of Marit’s mouth twitched as she plopped two more potatoes on the table. “Add these to vat you are peeling. Olive, you vill roll out another pie crust, if you please.”

  “Yes, Marit,” Olive answered.

  Joy turned on her heel and shoved through the swinging door, Blackie barely making it through with her before it swung closed. Alone in the hallway, Joy placed fingers on her face: Her skin was hot to the touch. A scorching, burning red.

  “Oh, horse feathers!”

  ~*~

  The Palmer House family sat down to dinner at 6:30 each evening. At 6:15, Joy was pacing her cottage at the rear of the house’s grounds. She had been dressed for half an hour but was reluctant to go up the back walk to the main house.

  Reluctant to find Mr. O’Dell waiting on her.

  At 6:25, she could delay no longer. In her mind, the only thing worse than confronting her dinner guest would be showing up to the dinner table even a minute late—generating yet more undesired attention.

  “Whatever in the world possessed me?”

  She was fuming as she stomped up the back steps.

  Joy entered the dining room from the kitchen to find the residents of Palmer House seated and—as she had feared—every eye fixed on her. A quick glance around the table told her that O’Dell was missing.

  Saved! Oh, thank you, Lord!

  Oh, but not so!

  “Joy,” Rose said softly. “Your guest is waiting on you in the parlor.”

  “W-what?”

  Rose tilted her head toward the door. “You should hasten. He has been here since six o’clock and you are delaying dinner.”

  Twenty-one sets of eyes ogled her—and four young ladies tittered behind their hands.

  “Most unbecoming!” Joy muttered between gritted teeth.

  The titters died out but the sly grins did not. Old Mr. Wheatley, his sparse hair standing on end, beamed at her—and made no attempt to hide it.

  Joy huffed, lifted her chin, and marched out of the dining room, through the great room, across the foyer, and into the parlor. The dark-headed man sitting with his legs crossed stood at once.

  “Good evening, Miss Joy,” O’Dell said formally.

  ‘Miss Joy’? Not ‘Mrs. Michaels’?

  Oh, dear.

  Joy cleared her throat. Frowned. “Good evening, Mr. O’Dell. I am sorry you have been kept waiting here for me. You could very well have joined the rest of the house at table.”

  “Ah, yes, of course. However, I did not think it, er, appropriate to present this to you in everyone’s presence.”

  He reached for a tissue-wrapped bundle lying on the little tea table beside the chair. He tendered the bundle to Joy.

  Joy stared at the little package with suspicion.

  “I-I, um, what is this?”

  O’Dell’s eyes were merry above his neatly trimmed mustache. “Please feel free to find out.”

  The muscles in Joy’s neck tensed and her tongue, deprived of all saliva, stuck fast to the roof of her mouth. At the same time, she itched to see what the gossamer paper conce
aled. Ignoring the panicky internal voices urging her to run from the room, Joy folded back the white tissue paper to disclose the gift nestled within.

  An orchid corsage, gleaming with moisture, winked at her. The succulent flower’s deep purple was edged in ivory.

  “Ohhhh!”

  “May I pin it on you?”

  O’Dell did not wait for an answer. He took the corsage from Joy’s stiff, frozen fingers and (quite proficiently) affixed it to the wide lace collar of her dress where the flower’s tantalizing scent tickled Joy’s nostrils.

  “It smells . . . heavenly,” Joy gasped. And then she blushed. “But—”

  O’Dell cut short the makings of an objection. “Blast! Pardon me, but if we are any later to table, Marit will be serving our heads on a platter and not that baked chicken I have been told is on the menu.”

  He tucked Joy’s arm into the crook of his elbow and tugged her along toward the dining room. O’Dell avoided looking at her, but he mentally telegraphed this challenge:

  I have fired the first salvo, my dear. Prepare to be wooed until you are won.

  ~*~

  A dazed Joy sat on her mother’s bed hours later. Dinner had been a stiff, uncomfortable ordeal for her. Not so for the other diners, including Edmund O’Dell! No, everyone had enjoyed their dinner and the pleasant table conversation—while Joy’s food had tasted more like pasteboard than chicken, and she had been unable to string two words together during the entire meal.

  “Mama, I am unsure about starting anything with Mr. O’Dell,” Joy explained as best she could. “I still feel married to Grant. I still love him! I do not even know if I believe in love a second time around.”

  “You forget that I know what it is to love a second time,” Rose murmured. “You forget that I still loved my husband, James, even when I married your father. When you were born, I still loved my other children, the children I lost.”