“Mr. Brown, I know I’ve damaged your tree,” Hallie said in a rush of words, noticing that as his anger became more rabid, the knotty Adam’s apple in his long throat began to twitch. “I’m sorry—”
“Sorry! You’re sorry?” he cried, walking over to stand directly above her. “I’ll tell you what’s sorry! You and those rowdy children. Don’t have any respect at all for other people’s property!” He paused and his pale blue stare turned into icy assessment. “Do you realize I had this tree shipped from New Hampshire? It made it all the way around the Horn, enduring stormy seas and traveling with that gold-seeking riffraff. It survived the last three San Francisco fires, and what destroys it? A blight known as the Fredriksen family!” Abner stopped directly in front of her.
Hallie looked up at his accusing finger, barely inches from her nose. “I know how you feel about your tree.” Oh do I know, she thought, feeling an unexpected affinity with poor Liv. She watched him raise his spindly arm and shake one finger at the sky, a gesture she knew from experience preceded one of his lectures.
“Girlie, do you realize this is the only apple tree in San Francisco?”
Oh no, Hallie groaned inwardly, here it comes.
“It produces only the finest fruit. Back East, people pay the highest prices for the succulent apples from this strain of tree. They come from township after township to taste the crisp, luscious, red...”
Hallie stood. She knew the story well enough from the times he’d come to the house, dragging out Liv or the twins and accusing her of letting the children run wild. He called them vandalizing little urchins and said she was too young to control them. Hallie shook out her skirts. She wasn’t too young; she was almost nineteen.
Since her fifteenth birthday her father had left her in charge; he trusted her. As captain of a whaler, he was gone so much of the time that Hallie was left to rule the roost, and her roost consisted of her two younger sisters and her twin brothers. She tried to give the children a normal home, but with no mother, it hadn’t been easy. And their home was changing.
In the last three years, San Francisco had grown from a sleepy little village to a wild and sprawling port. Hallie had watched the city fill with men who were lured by the tales of gold. And now many of those same men were so disillusioned that they had become as savage as the criminals who had also swarmed West. It was hard, living in a place where gold fever drove even the best of men crazy.
Was that part of Liv’s problem? How could she expect a young girl to behave when grown men showed so little restraint? Maybe they needed to get away from the violence of this city. She would talk to Da when he came home.
Abner Brown was so enthralled that he had now reached the pinnacle of oratory bliss. As she bent over and picked up the troublesome shoes, her long blond braid flopped over her shoulder. She flung it back and began rummaging through the broken foliage in search of the large hairpins that held her heavy braid in a tight bun. She only found two. Shoving them into her shirt pocket, Hallie straightened.
Lord, that man loves to hear himself talk.
“Look at that!Look, Girlie!”
She wanted to cringe when she saw the damage. There were only a few dozen blossoms left on the fractured fruit tree, and its biggest base branch was angled down toward the ground as if struck by lightning. It was almost laughable the way the broken limb looked like a crutch.
She knew she was at fault; she had practically destroyed his tree. But the way he was acting—well, it was unnatural. Of course, Abner Brown was pretty strange himself, kind of picayunish. And he was always talking. But then again, his job was dead people. Since the dead don’t talk, it was little wonder he would rattle on whenever he came across a warm body. “I’ll pay for the damage,” she told him.
“You sure will, girlie. Someone your age climbing trees when you ought to be watching those—those brats! I’m going to report this vandalism!” Abner Brown raised his gump of a chin, crossed his gangly arms and waited.
The authorities hardly had time to keep peace, much less cause her any trouble. But Abner Brown had influence. He knew Sheriff Hayes well, since he was the only undertaker in the city, and what with the lack of law and order, heaven knew San Francisco had enough bodies to be buried lately.
“I said I’d pay for the damage,” Hallie repeated. “How much do you want?”
Abner’s eyes took on a larcenous gleam. “Oh, I think five hundred dollars ought to do it.”
Five hundred dollars! Hallie swallowed, hard. He had her trapped, and they both knew it. He could easily claim to have been paid that much by the miners. The prices were horrid. With so much gold exchanging hands, prices, especially for fresh food, were outlandish. Men had been known to pay ridiculous amounts for scarce items, bidding against each other for a single fresh egg.
Since she had damaged the tree, she felt responsible, but it stuck in her craw that he could legitimately extort that kind of money from her. She didn’t need any trouble with Da gone, and on the slim chance that Mr. Brown could make trouble for her and the children, Hallie didn’t call his bluff. She was mad at the chiseling weasel, mad at Liv, and even madder at herself for getting into this mess.
“I’ll have the money for you by Friday,” she said and briskly walked away. Just before she reached the perimeter of the yard, she heard his nasally voice.
“See that you do, girlie. See that you do.”
Kit Howland crumpled theletter into a tight ball and pitched it across the room. Reaching over his cluttered desk, he lifted the brass lid from an ornately carved tobacco canister. The scent of rich dark tobacco wafted in the air. He filled and packed his pipe before jamming the bit between his teeth. Striking a flame, he lit it and began to puff.
His father’s letter had been apologetic. He had tried to dissuade Kit’s mother and his aunt from their plan, telling them Kit was a grown man and doing fine on the West Coast. But his mother worried anyway.
Kit remembered her tearful pleading a few years ago, when he had announced his plan to move to San Francisco. His wife had died and her death finally put an end to their disastrous marriage; he’d wanted—needed—to get away. As much as he loved his family, he couldn’t stomach the pity he saw lurking in their eyes. Staying in New Bedford would have only served to remind him of his failed marriage and of the bond of the love/hate he still perversely felt for his unfaithful and now dead wife.
Now, he drew deeply on the pipe, holding the rum-flavored smoke in his mouth before expelling his breath. The bittersweet taste heated his mouth like the bitterness of his wife’s betrayal burned in his hollow heart. Kit stood and walked over to the wad of paper he had angrily thrown to the floor. He pressed it open and stared, hoping he had misread its contents. Two words loomed from the page. Aunt Madeline.
Kit felt like the black cloud that had been shadowing him had just unloaded. It was bad enough that he had to pay exorbitant storage fees, while he cooled his heels waiting for the cursed merchant ship, but now his father wrote that his aunt Madeline was on board—something his family conveniently neglected to tell him until now. No doubt they assumed that the ship had docked and Maddie would already be billeted in his house, philanthropically mothering him. According to his father, Kit was her latest lost cause.
He swore loudly. Where the hell was Taber’s ship? The clipper should have docked weeks ago, though he knew it wasn’t unusual for merchant vessels to arrive a few weeks late, and battling anything from fierce storms to windless seas made the long voyage from the East Coast arduous and unpredictable. Having captained his own ship, Kit knew how nerve-wracking it could be, stranded in a doldrum sea, dependent upon the whims of the ocean current as the only mode to propel the ship, waiting for the wind to once again catch the sails and speed the vessel toward its destination.
He could imagine his aunt ordering the crew about like a seasoned master. Spending those endless hours with her would be unbearable to the men on board. She could nag the weather into changing. If Charles Taber were resourceful, perhaps he could use Maddie’s flapping mouth to help blow the ship to port.
