Yet none of her ideas felt quite right. What did a woman give a man who seemed to have everything he needed? A razor, a belt, a hat. None of them were a good fit for the man who had once owned her heart, then abandoned it, and was now trying to wriggle his way back inside.
“Mrs. Dowrick.” Ruby Spritzer headed toward her, a threadbare shawl pulled tightly across her shoulders while her growing stomach protruded from her thin frame. “I was sorry to learn about your fire.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Spritzer.”Ruby. But the one time she’d called the other woman Ruby, Mrs. Spritzer had blinked, then gone right on calling her Mrs. Dowrick.
“I suppose that means you won’t have no more mending for me?” The woman’s jaw trembled the slightest bit as she spoke.
A quick glance at the fraying basket she carried told Jessalyn there was only enough food inside to feed the Spritzer brood for a few days. “No work. I’m sorry.”
There had been no shortage of people stopping by the apartment since the fire, but most of them were men wondering if their coat or shirt or trousers had been spared. Thomas had started leaving her with a stack of dollar bills to give the men for each garment lost so they could go to the mercantile and purchase another.
“I don’t think I’ll be taking on any more sewing between now and when I leave in the spring. But if anyone stops by with something to be mended by hand, I’ll send them your way.” She’d been planning to hand over her sewing clients to Mrs. Spritzer come spring anyway. After all, Ruby Spritzer needed steady work more than any other woman in town. But would she be able to keep up with both a new baby and the town’s sewing demands?
“Thank you for your time.” Mrs. Spritzer gave a brief nod. “And Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.” Except she didn’t feel very merry as the mother of eight—soon to be nine—walked to the back counter with only a handful of things in her basket.
Jessalyn blinked at the shelf in front of her, shoe polish blurring with the razors and mirrors and belts. A Christmas present for Thomas. That’s what she’d been thinking about before Mrs. Spritzer approached.
She reached for one of the pairs of black stockings sitting on the bottom shelf. Stockings were a nice gift for a man. Always useful, but not too personal.
After all, she was already sharing an apartment with her husband and sleeping beside him every night. They hardly needed to become more personal than that.
And praying with him every morning. And helping him clean up dinner every night, making him oatmeal in the morning before he left to walk their daughters to school.
Oh, who was she kidding? She was already far too personal with her husband for a woman who was planning to move to a different state without him in a few more months.
And if she didn’t move to Chicago in the spring, how many other women like Ruby Spritzer would go unhelped?
And here she was breaking a truce that was only two weeks old. She’d promised not to think about what would happen in the spring, and so she wouldn’t.
She headed to the back counter where she paid for the flour, stockings, and ribbons. Then she pushed through the door of the mercantile and into a light dusting of snow falling from the sky.
And there he was, pulling the girls down North Street on a sled, their delighted giggles filling the air while a handful of other children trailed after them, all clamoring for a turn.
He paused, laughing as he ousted Olivia from the sled and let Alice O’Byrne and Jane Oakton climb on. They loved him. Not just their own children, but half the children in town flocked to him.
How could she not fall in love with a man like that?
She tilted her head to the side and rubbed her brow. Why hadn’t she seen what would happen once she declared that truce? Once she let the walls she’d carefully built around her heart crumble?
But then, how could she hold herself back from the man who had fathered her daughters? Who wrapped his strong arms around her every night when they slept, yet had never once asked she give him anything in return?
Who called her angel?
He may have been gone for five years, but now he was part of their lives again, in a permanent sort of way that couldn’t be removed without causing pain and suffering.
She looked down at the stockings laying in the top of her sack. What was she going to do?
Thomas shucked off his tan trousers and reached for the dark blue ones hanging on the peg in his room. He was late to meet Isaac—again. What was he going to say when he found the sheriff? That he’d spent too long playing checkers with Olivia? That Olivia had beaten him twice?
He glanced at the perfectly made bed in the corner. When he’d first volunteered to be a deputy, he hadn’t been living with Jess and the girls. Now he was giving up evenings with his daughters and unable to fall asleep next to his wife, and all so he could spend half the night wandering around in the cold for free.
He must be going daft.
“Thomas?” The door to their room opened, and Jessalyn stepped inside. “The girls are in bed and I was… oh.”
She swept her gaze briefly down his union-suit clad chest. “Are you going out on patrol again?”
