Some people didn't.
Kizzie's sister Laurel feared Daddy's ledgers, but Kizzie loved them. Keeping track of the books, watching how items and money came and went.
And using these fancy fountain pens of Mr. Carter's only made the job even more exciting. The ink flowed so smoothly onto the paper, and she was pretty sure they made her handwriting look better.
Gayle took Charlie right out of Kizzie's hands with a grin.
“I'll put him to nap when I see he's fussing, so you can work, because I know I've left you with a tangle. But you can hear him when he wakes up, because the piping carries voices from the room upstairs.” Gayle waved toward a pipe running along the ceiling and disappearing into an adjoining wall. “That's how my Howard always knew when Gloria was awake.”
Kizzie had met the little brown-haired, freckle-faced girl the day before. A quiet, shy little thing, her smile bloomed readily, and she loved her “Granny Gayle” with such sweetness. It was good the two of them had each other to grieve the loss of Howard Carter.
“And I think Charlie's taken quite a liking to that cradle, don't you?” Gayle asked, stepping toward the door of the room.
Her happy baby had. He'd snuggled right into the blankets Gayle found for him and slept from nightfall almost to sunrise for the first time in his life. But even with the added rest, Kizzie's back ached as she stood from the bed—likely from carrying around the ever-growing Charlie—and she didn't have much of an appetite. However, Gayle proved a difficult person to refuse, and Kizzie found herself eating a ham biscuit from the restaurant next door along with some home fries.
As the week progressed, Kizzie's schedule began to take shape.
On Wednesdays and Fridays, she took Gayle's place as shopkeeper, and on half days of Monday and Thursday, she kept the books. On Saturday, she and Gayle took turns with the shop, but that was the day little Gloria's presence came in handy as another person to watch after Charlie.
And Gloria took to snuggling Charlie like a duck to water. In fact, the little girl kept finding ways to visit with Charlie when she got home from school each day.
Over the first week and a half, besides digging through the many bills, receipts, and notices, Kizzie started understanding a little more about the workings of the store and boardinghouse too. Gayle had hired another one of her boarders, Hettie, as a part-time cook and housekeeper, which was likely more for Hettie's sake than Gayle's. Hettie had two children, one five and the other three, and, as with Charlie, Gayle found ways to assist with them. On the surface, one would think Gayle didn't care much for the young women who stayed in her boardinghouse. Her sentences came in curt, direct commands or requests, and her smiles for them weren't particularly frequent. But beneath all the bossiness, she found ways to offer the women some stability, by paying one of them to hem garments brought in for secondhand purchase, another to stock shelves.
She boarded four women in addition to Molly.
They paid her a minimal fee or worked for their lodgings, but they knew they had a roof over their heads as long as they kept to Gayle Carter's rules.
Otherwise, Kizzie didn't know the full extent of how else the boardinghouse worked. Guests who were passing through town stayed on the first floor of the boardinghouse. The young women, “Gayle's Girls” as some folks called them, came and went via an upper, external stairway from the second floor. Evidently, the women had a separate entrance that kept them out of the way of the downstairs boarders.
Kizzie offered reading lessons for Molly and Susan, two of Gayle's girls, and math for another, Pamela. All bright enough to learn. Teaching them reading, writing, and math would open their job opportunities.
After her second lesson with the women, as Kizzie sat by the window nursing Charlie and watching the evening sky eclipse the sunset, a realization dawned.
Perhaps God had created her for just this moment with these women.
To help Gayle Carter with her grief and her business.
To teach the other young women skills to assist in their futures.
And to offer Victoria Lewis friendship.
Tears stung her eyes, so she closed them and leaned her head back against the wood of the rocking chair. When she'd left Charles, she was scared, uncertain, and alone, and in under two weeks, God had filled her life with more purpose and people than she could have imagined.
He just kept surprising her.
And she just wanted to keep embracing the gratitude. The hope.
Beneath the newness and lessons, she began to feel the slightest inkling of an idea growing in her mind.
Belonging somewhere might not just be about a physical place.
Or the presence of a certain person in her life.
Maybe belonging had a lot more to do with accepting where God had placed her and loving His plan in the best way she could.
If she thought about it that way, then the disappointment weakened and the fear disappeared, because if she was in His hands—and, as she'd read that morning from her mama's Bible, nothing could snatch her from His hands—then she was right where He wanted her.
And that's exactly where she wanted to be.
