“All right.”
“Do you have to go?”Lizzie asked, pulling on Trick’s jacket.“I wanna ride Willow again!”
Trick knelt down and smiled at the little girl.“We’ll come back.Don’t you worry.It’s a good idea for you all to learn how to ride, I reckon, if your momma says it’s okay.”
Cal looked out of the window.Seemed she was done with us and wanted to be left alone.
“Bye, Cal,” Oscar said, gazing at his onetime friend with a sadness I could feel, since it echoed in my own heart.
“Bye,” Cal said, but she didn’t look at us as we took our leave—simply held little Samuel close and stroked his back as he gazed at us o’er her shoulder with droopy, sleepy eyes.
Chapter Eighteen
Miss June to the Rescue
We didn’t speak much on the ride back to The Angel.I supposed we were reeling from the discovery of our old friend, living in a hovel with three children who called her ‘Momma’ with no man around and pretending everything was fine, when it clearly wasn’t.
We stabled the horses with William and went to see Miss June.She wasn’t in the parlor so we headed to the kitchen, where she liked to spend her time during the day, chatting with Cook, sewing or doing a number of other things that contributed to the effective running of The Angel.
As we walked down the hall, she came out of the kitchen and saw the three of us.Her eyes flew wide, and she stopped in her tracks.
“Did you find Cal?”
“We found her,” I said.
Miss June’s hands flew to her cheeks, and she gasped.“Well?Is she all right?”
“Well, she is and she ain’t,” I said, and glanced to Trick for some assistance.
Miss June ushered us into the kitchen, and we sat around the big wooden table.Cook continued her business at the stove but she had one ear on our conversation, I reckoned.
“She’s livin’ on a small”—I glanced at Oscar.Could I even call it a farm?—“farm…in the Wildman’s Creek area.”
“Cal says her husband’s away to look for work, that he sends her money when he can and that she and the children are fine,” Trick added.
Miss June blinked.“The…children?Cal haschildren?”
“Sure.I don’t know where the original momma is, but Cal’s their momma now.”
Miss June blinked, absorbing this news.She huffed a laugh, and I could see she was taken aback at this news.“Goodness.”
Oscar smiled.“That was the only comfortin’ thing about any of it.You should have seen Cal with those young uns—like she was born to it or somethin’.They called her Momma, and she was real good with ’em.”
“That’s a fact,” I said.“They were good kids, too.They helped us to clean up a bit.The place was a shambles.”
“Oh dear.”
“I reckon Cal’s in over her head,” Trick said, “though she wouldn’t admit it.”
“How old are the children?”
I glanced at Oscar and Trick for help.I didn’t know much about children, but neither did they.Nobody said anything, so I took a shot answering.
“Well, the smallest one, he’s only a baby still, though he’s walkin’…well, runnin’, I should say.That’s how we found them.He was tearin’ toward the road, and Cal came out from behind some trees to get ’im.”
“Oh my,” Miss June said, putting a hand to her mouth.
Trick chimed in then.“I asked Lizzie how old she was, and she said she’s seven, Samuel’s one and a half and Peter’s ten.”
