“I can’t ask him,” Nellie whispered.
“For me? For your dear old aunt?” Berni said pleadingly.
Nellie took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding. “All right. For you.” She stepped out the door into the cold, snowy air and started walking toward the hotel.
Berni shut the door and smiled. Easy, she thought. Almost too easy. Jace probably hadn’t come to lunch because he hadn’t received the note, but Berni knew Nellie was a person who took her responsibilities seriously and would no doubt sit down and wait for Jace to give him the message personally.
She sat down at the table, started munching Nellie’s cookies, then snapped her fingers and the 1989 Christmas issue of Vogue appeared in her hands. This fairy godmother stuff is a cinch, she thought. She’d probably have Jace and Nellie together by ten o’clock tonight. Maybe they’ll name their first kid after me, she thought, smiling.
On the other side of the kitchen door Terel tightened her mouth into a firm line. So that’s it, she thought. Their aunt was a friend of the Montgomery man’s mother. That’s why Aunt Berni had so suddenly and unexpectedly come to Chandler. It had nothing to do with choosing one of the Grayson girls to inherit. Aunt Berni wanted her friend’s son to marry Nellie.
And leave me behind, Terel thought. Nellie gets to marry a rich man and get out of this dreadful town while I have to stay behind.
Tiptoeing, Terel made her way across the room and out the front door without making a sound. “Nellie!” she called, once outside.
Slowly, Nellie turned to her sister. “I thought you were taking a nap.”
“I was, but I was afraid to leave you alone with her.”
“With Aunt Berni?”
“Yes, with her. I tell you, Nellie, my every instinct cries out to beware of her.”
“But she seems so nice. I don’t think—”
“You didn’t think there was anything wrong with that awful man who said he loved you, either.”
Nellie looked down at her hands.
“Where were you going?” Terel asked.
“To the…ah, Aunt Berni asked me…”
“She didn’t ask you to see him, did she? Oh, Nellie, she is cruel. This is unspeakable! How could she do something like this to her own flesh and blood?”
“I don’t think she meant any harm. She merely wanted me to ask her friend’s son to dinner.”
“And you think that was mere coincidence? You think she just ‘happened’ to ask you to go to this man? You think she doesn’t know every sordid detail of what’s happened to you?”
“I didn’t really think about it. She asked me to go, and—”
“And you obeyed her. Oh, Nellie, why don’t you ever stand up for yourself? Tell her you’re not going to degrade yourself more than you already have. Tell her the truth about the man.”
“The truth?”
“Yes, that he made free with you then went off and left you, and that he walked out, and more, with nearly every female in town, and that he’s a liar, saying he wrote you letters while he was away. Oh, Nellie, the man is a scoundrel. He’s proven that repeatedly, but here you are chasing after him like you did the night of the Harvest Ball”
Nellie wrung her hands. She knew Terel was saying these things because she worried about her, but the words made Nellie feel really awful.
“All right, Nellie, I wasn’t going to tell you,” Terel said with a sigh, “but your Mr. Montgomery has been taking Mae out for the last two days.” She put her hand on Nellie’s arm. “I’m so sorry about him. I know you believed you cared for him, but you’ll get over him. He’s not worth shedding one tear over. Now that you’ve lost weight you’re quite presentable-looking, so we’ll be able to find you a husband. Ted Nelson needs a wife, and he’s a very dependable man.”
Ted Nelson was at least fifteen years older than Nellie. He ran a livery stable on the edge of town with his two big half-grown sons, who everyone said were so dumb that the horses were teaching the boys to read and write. It was debated around town whether any of the Nelsons had ever had a bath.
“Well, don’t turn up your nose,” Terel snapped. “Everyone says Ted Nelson has a fortune hidden somewhere. But if you don’t like him, we’ll find you someone else. Maybe we can look in Denver. No one there knows of your reputation. Maybe—”
“I won’t ask him,” Nellie said, putting her hands over her ears. “I won’t ask Mr. Montgomery to dinner. Please stop.”
“All right,” Terel said tightly. “I don’t know why I bother. Sometimes you act as though I am the villain.” She slipped her arm through Nellie’s. “Let’s go to the bakery and get something to eat. You really are getting too thin.”
At the moment Nellie felt hungry enough to eat the bakery itself—boardwalk, shingles, sign, and all.
Berni was again puzzled when, at dinner, Jace Montgomery didn’t show up. She sat through the long, boring meal eating Nellie’s delicious food and listening to Terel chatter. She watched Charles Grayson smile at his younger daughter and now and then frown at Nellie.
As far as Berni could see, losing weight had had no effect on Nellie’s life. Charles and Terel had always treated her as someone to do their dirty work, and they didn’t seem to think that her losing weight was any reason to change their attitude. Nor had the weight loss changed Nellie. Even though she was now a knockout, she still had very little self-confidence. Nellie wasn’t encouraging the young men who came to call on her; she wasn’t now demanding that her family treat her with respect. She was the same Nellie she had always been.
Berni winced when she thought of this Nellie. Poor substitute for a fairy godmother I am, Berni thought. Maybe I should have done the “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo” bit and changed a few pumpkins into coaches. Nellie got to go to the ball with her handsome prince, but only because someone else came up with a dress. Everything her fairy godmother had done for her had backfired.
After dinner Berni excused herself to her room. There she took a clear glass dome from the top of a lamp and put it on the table. “It’s not a great crystal ball, but it’s the best I can do,” she said aloud. “Now, let’s see what’s going on.”
She moved her hands over the globe, just as she’d seen countless gypsies do in the movies, and to her delight images began to appear. It took a moment for the images to appear clearly, but then she saw Terel talking to the big kid, Duke. She saw the note Berni had sent to Jace’s mailbox, saw Terel take it, read it, and crumple it. She saw Terel talking to Nellie when Nellie was on her way to visit Jace at his hotel.
Berni leaned back in her chair, and at first her only thought was admiration. Terel was more clever by far than Berni had believed. Somehow she’d known Berni was out to help Nellie, and she’d managed to anticipate what Berni was going to do and then thwart her.
“If this keeps up, in two more days Nellie will be even worse off.”
Berni looked at the fading images in the globe. She’d very much like to beat Terel without using magic, she thought. It would be a challenge to outfox this young woman, but the truth was she didn’t have time. She had only three days in which to perform miracles for Nellie, and now one of those days was gone.
So, Berni thought, the first day was a draw. Let’s see what can be done with the remaining two. First she needed a plan.
She tried wiggling her nose like Samantha on “Bewitched,” but that didn’t work, so she wiggled her ears instead. (In all her life on earth no one had ever known Berni could wiggle her ears.)
A chalkboard appeared before her, and a piece of chalk, hovering nearby, was ready to write. Berni leaned back in her chair.
Number one, she thought, and the chalk began to write, Nellie believes Jace left her, and that he fooled around with other women. Number two, she doesn’t believe Jace sent her any letters.
And number three, Jace’s feelings are hurt because he doesn’t think Nellie returns his love. “And heaven help any woman who hurts a man’s feelings. He’ll go off and brood for a few hundre
d years or so.” The chalk hesitated, then wrote “feelings hurt” very darkly. Obviously, the magic chalk was male.
“All right now, what else do we have?” She thought the names Terel and Charles, so the chalk wrote them in columns. Under them it wrote “can’t disturb their comfort.”
“Ah, yes, but they can get what they deserve if they’re happy with it. Charles wants a clean house, good food, and to spend as little money as possible.” The chalk wrote this under Charles’s name. “Terel wants someone to take care of her, to give her everything before she knows she wants it.”
When this was written Berni looked at the board. The obvious thing would be to show Nellie how little her sister and father cared for her, but Berni remembered the pain of hearing her own father saying he thought Berni was useless. “She never thinks of anything except clothes and how much money someone can give her,” Berni had overheard her father saying. No, she didn’t want to give that kind of hurt to anyone, and especially not to Nellie.
“So what can I do?” Berni whispered.
She leaned back in her chair, waved her wand, and began to look for the letters Jace had sent. It was so fascinating looking into people’s houses, seeing some very odd things going on, that she almost forgot her purpose. But she at last found the letters, tucked away in a drawer in some poor woman’s house. It was obvious Terel had paid her to answer Jace’s letters.
Berni waved her wand again, and then, smiling at her own cleverness, she gave the letters to a crazy old woman and imbedded in her memory a complicated story of how she’d come by them. The old woman lived with her brother and his young daughter, and it looked as though the child could benefit from a fairy godmother of her own.
“You bring the letters to Nellie, and if I know her, she’ll take care of you,” Berni said.
She smiled and looked at the other problems outlined. Now all she had to do was get Jace and Nellie together someplace romantic.
It was nearly dawn when Berni at last had her plan mapped out. One thing good about being dead, she thought, was that she didn’t need any sleep. She stood and stretched, wiggled her ears, and the chalkboard disappeared. Her plan was made and set into action now. She just had to stand back and see what happened.
Chapter Eleven
Nellie was awakened by someone throwing gravel at her window. She opened her eyes to see the early gray light of dawn, then got out of bed to go to the window. A young woman, hardly more than a girl, stood below, shivering in the early morning cold. She opened the window.
“Are you Nellie Grayson?”
“Yes,” Nellie said. “Could I help you?”
“I have to talk to you. Could you come down?”
Puzzled, Nellie wrapped a heavy shawl about her nightdress, slipped her feet into slippers, hurried downstairs, then opened the kitchen door to the girl. “I’ll have the stove going in a few minutes, and I’ll make some coffee.”
“No, please, I don’t have time.”
Nellie gave her a little encouraging smile as the girl stared at her. “You wanted to talk to me?”
“Oh, yeah. I just wanted to see you, that’s all. I mean, I wanted to see what you looked like. On account of the letters.”
“What letters?”
“These.” The girl pulled a fat bundle of letters from under her shawl and handed them to Nellie. They were all from Jace, addressed to Nellie.
“Where did you get these?” Nellie whispered.
“I live way out of town—don’t matter where, it’s just my pa and me and his daffy old sister, my Aunt Izzy. See, my pa don’t want nobody to know his sister’s crazy, so he pretends she’s not. Of course, pretendin’ don’t make her right in the head, but he pretends just the same. Anyway, one of the things my pa lets Aunt Izzy do is collect the mail when we come to town. I don’t know how she done it the first time—probably just lied, ’cause she’s a real good liar—but she told the postmaster’s stupid kid that she was Nellie Grayson, so the kid gave Aunt Izzy your letters. I think she even told him they were secret, so he hid them from his pa and saved them for Aunt Izzy. Anyway, she got ’em all. If I hadn’t cleaned her room yesterday, nobody ever would’ve known. I wanted Pa to bring me in last night so I could give you your letters, but he wanted me to burn ’em. I lied to him and told him I had, but this mornin’ I set out first thing and brung ’em to you. I didn’t wanta wake up the whole house, but I waked up that maid of yours first, and she told me which room was yours.”
Nellie listened to the story, held the letters, and looked at them. Slowly, she was beginning to realize that Jace had written her. He hadn’t abandoned her, but he’d written to her all the time he was gone.
“Them letters is important, ain’t they?” the girl said softly.
“Yes.” Nellie fumbled for a chair and sat. “The letters are very important.”
The girl smiled. “I thought so. Well, I gotta go now.” She started toward the door.
“Wait! Have you eaten? What will your father do when he finds out you’ve defied him?”
The girl shrugged. “Knock me around some. Nothin’ much. He ain’t real mean like some.”
Nellie swallowed. “What’s your name?”
“Tildy, for Matilda.”
“Tildy, how’d you like to come to this house and work?”
“In this pretty house?” Her eyes widened.
“Yes, and I can assure you that no one will ‘knock you around.’ ”
Tildy could only nod as her throat closed in happiness.
“Then come first thing the day after Christmas, and I’ll have”—Nellie swallowed—“I’ll have spoken to my father by then.”
The girl nodded, her eyes still wide, and backed out the door. “Thank you,” she managed to whisper before Nellie shut the door.
Nellie was heedless of the cold room; she forgot all about making food for her family. She opened the letters and began to read. It was all there, all of Jace’s love, and a daily account of how he was selling everything he owned in order to come to her in Colorado. He talked of their future together. He told her of his family. She read about his mother’s singing, about his father working so hard running Warbrooke Shipping. He wrote of his brothers and his Taggert relatives in Maine. In one letter he sent her a tiny sketch of an Australian orchid done by his Aunt Gemma. He wrote of his Grandpa Jeff and the old mountain men living in California and promised to take her there on their honeymoon.
By the fourth letter Nellie was crying. By the last letter she was crying so hard she didn’t at first see Mae Sullivan standing over her.
“Mae,” Nellie said, startled, “I didn’t hear your knock.”
“The door was standing open.”
“That’s odd. I’m sure I closed it.” Nellie was trying to dry her eyes on the sleeve of her nightgown, pretending she wasn’t actually crying at all.
“Oh, Nellie,” Mae said, and she began to cry, too. “I couldn’t sleep all night long. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep again until I tell you the truth.”
Nellie sat in stunned silence as Mae poured out the whole story, saying that every female in town was half in love with Mr. Montgomery, and half out of jealousy, half out of anger, they had told Nellie that he had tried to kiss them.
“It just didn’t seem fair,” Mae wailed. “He never even looked at any other woman in town. You hooked him before we even got a chance at him. And then, too, you were so fat we all thought he must be crazy for wanting you, so we figured he wanted your father’s business and was courting you to get it. We just couldn’t believe he really liked you. Oh Nellie, I am so sorry for what we said. Mr. Montgomery never even looked at another woman in this town except you.”
Nellie clutched the letters and gaped at Mae. All she could think of was the awful, awful wrong she had done Jace.
“I’d better go,” Mae said, sniffing. “I hope everything turns out all right for you. I hope you marry him and live happily ever after.” She turned quickly and left the house.
Before she could form another thought Berni entered the kitchen. “I thought I heard someone up.” She looked at Nellie’s letters. “Has something happened? Anything you want to talk about?”
“I…no,” Nellie said. She wasn’t used to talking about her problems to anyone. “I must get breakfast ready.”
“In your nightgown?”
“Oh, no. I must change.” She was having difficulty thinking clearly.
“Nellie,” Berni said, “talk to me.”
The next moment Nellie was seated at the table and pouring out everything to Berni. “I misjudged him. He was always kind to me, yet I believed the worst of him. How could I have hurt him so much?”
“Everyone hurts the people they love. What you have to do is go to him and tell him everything.”
“I couldn’t.”
“It’s not humiliating to tell the man you love that you love him. Half of love is groveling. You must—”
“I would do anything, say anything to get him back, but I can’t leave’ the house. I must prepare breakfast, and my father is having investors to dinner tonight. I must—”
“Keep them comfortable, right?” Berni snapped.
“Yes, I guess so. It doesn’t make sense, but I can’t leave them.”
“They’ll sleep as long as you’re gone.”
“Sleep? But Father never sleeps past seven.”
“He will today. Trust me.”
Nellie looked at her aunt and knew she was telling the truth. “I will go to him.”
“Good girl. Now go get dressed and wear the blue velvet.”
Nellie started to ask how Berni knew of the blue velvet, but she didn’t want to take the time. She wanted to see Jace as soon as possible.
Alone in the kitchen Berni snapped her fingers and was out of her nightgown and into a lovely dress of rust-colored silk broadcloth. The lace at her neck was handmade. She sat down at the table, snapped her fingers again, and a month’s supply of People magazine appeared, along with a plate of croissants and a pot of mocha. Now all she had to do was wait. Once Jace saw Nellie he’d forgive her everything, and wedding bells would soon be ringing. She just had a little bit more to do with Charles and Terel and then she’d be done. She might at last get to try the Fantasy room in the Kitchen. But instead of dragons, how about cowboys? Maybe he’d be a scout and she’d be a spunky young lady who needs to rescue her father or brother, and the scout won’t take her because she’s a woman, but then…Well, anyway, she’d have to try it when she returned.