“Oh, honey. Another one?” She set down her pencil and held out her arm.
“It hurts.” Tears glistened in Olivia’s eyes, and she leaned against Jessalyn’s side. “I don’t know why I keep getting them.”
“Sometimes earaches just happen.”
“Then how come they don’t happen to Claire and Megan?” Olivia rested her sore ear on Jessalyn’s shoulder. “Or you?”
Jessalyn sighed and stroked her hand up and down Olivia’s arm. “I don’t know.”
And it was hardly fair to say they “just happened.” They’d been “just happening” a lot over the past two years, almost to the point that her daughter had a constant ear infection.
Jessalyn glanced out the large display windows facing North Street to find the snow coming thicker and faster. The tiny pellets of white weren’t obscuring the bar on the other side of the road yet. But it wouldn’t be long given the dark gray clouds and whipping wind. It might only be November, but the first storm of the season was here. By tomorrow morning the dirt road and dry autumn grass would be covered in snow, and they’d stay buried for the next six months.
The hills surrounding Eagle Harbor might be rich with copper, but Michigan’s Copper Country also sat on an unprotected peninsula that jutted into Lake Superior. The big lake to their north gave them at least twenty feet of snow every winter, and that was in a mild year. Some winters saw closer to thirty feet.
“Let me see if we have any willow bark tea in the kitchen. Perhaps that will suffice until the storm stops, and we can visit Dr. Harrington tomorrow.” Provided the storm didn’t keep up for two or three days.
“We’re out. I already checked.”
“Drat.” Though she shouldn’t be surprised. Olivia’s last infection had only faded a week ago, and she’d not replenished the usual supplies and medicine yet.
Olivia bit her lip and glanced at the bridal sketch. “Will you be able to get your work done if we visit the doctor?”
“Of course.” She’d just be up past midnight doing it. She patted Olivia’s side. “Get your coat and boots on while I fetch Claire and Megan. Maybe we can make it back before the snow gets too deep.”
Ten minutes later she pulled open the door to her shop, herded her three girls out into the storm, and stopped short at the sight of a hulking man approaching through the snow.
“Can I help you?” She pulled her youngest daughter, Megan, to her side to shield her from the wind.
“I need my coat back.” The man’s broad shoulders and towering form proclaimed him to be either a miner or logger.
She squinted at him. He looked vaguely familiar. “I just finished a pile of them this morning. What did you say your name was?”
But since he was already wearing a drab brown coat, the better question might be why he was asking for it back during a blizzard.
“Ebberhard. Frank Ebberhard.”
The name was familiar as well. “Yes, I’m pretty sure I finished it this morning. Didn’t you need buttons replaced?”
Something unsettling moved through the man’s dark eyes, and he didn’t bother to answer her, just glowered.
“Um, why don’t you come inside? It might take a minute or two to find it.”
“I’ll wait here.”
A frisson of fear shivered through her. She’d had strange requests before, yes, but nothing quite so odd as this.
“Go back inside, girls.” At least they could wait in the warmth. She certainly wasn’t going to leave them alone with a man like Frank Ebberhard. She followed her daughters inside and hurried toward the stack of mending she’d finished, waiting on the table at the back of her shop. His had been a mackinaw coat, hadn’t it? The red and black plaid pattern was popular among loggers in Copper Country.
She rounded a final table and stepped over a pile of socks that needed darning before reaching the stack of coats. Spotting the mackinaw fabric in the middle of the pile, she set the top ofthe stack aside and grabbed the two plaid coats, then glanced at the scrap of paper she’d pinned to each of the collars. Emmett Tungston and Frank Ebberhard.
She moved to lay Mr. Tungston’s coat back with the others, only to find a piece of paper had slipped from its pocket. She shook her head and retrieved the paper, then put it back into the closest pocket. Must the men who dropped off mending always leave their pockets full of papers and trinkets? It seemed she was always picking up something or other. If she actually kept all the change that ended up on her floor, her savings account at the bank would be double its current balance.
She draped Mr. Ebberhard’s coat over her arm and rushed through her shop, weaving her way between tables and around stacks of scraps. Outside, the wind was so frigid it nearly sucked the breath from her lungs. “Here you are, that will be?—”
“Keep the change.” He shoved a dollar at her and turned, stalking away.
She blinked down at the bill. She only charged twenty-five cents to replace buttons, but the man’s shadow had already faded into the storm.
