Free Beauty for Ashes by Dorothy Love

ungrateful of her to have run off without even saying good-bye to Henry, but this morning’s argument with Mary had been so contentious that she could not abide another minute in that house.
    She rose and unpacked her suitcase. Nate was wrong. No matter how bad things got at the Verandah, she would not go back to the farm.
    She’d made her bed, as Granny Bell used to say. Now she’d have to lie in it.

FIVE
    “You’re sure you’ve done the right thing, Carrie?” Nate led her through the maze of books, papers, and shipping crates to his desk at the rear of the bookshop. He motioned her to the seat beside the window, lowered himself into his chair, and took up his pipe. His gray cat, India, hopped onto the desk to greet Carrie before settling into her favorite spot on the windowsill. “Moving off your brother’s place . . . I don’t know. It seems awful drastic to me.”
    “I had no choice. Mary made it impossible for me have a moment’s peace. Her boys are undisciplined and rude, and she took over the house and ordered me around as if I were nothing more than hired help. She’s imperious and, I hate to say it, lazy. She doesn’t know how to run a farmhouse and has no intention of learning. And she’d argue with a signpost.”
    He nodded. “I had a few disagreements with Mary when she ran the telegraph office. She isn’t the most pleasant sort, is she?”
    Carrie snorted. “About as pleasant as an eyeful of cinders. For the life of me, I don’t understand why Henry chose her.”
    “Don’t fault your brother for taking a chance on happiness.” He gazed out the window, his mind clearly a million miles away. “A man gets to be a certain age, and he sees his life slipping away. All his hopes going by the wayside. To salvage something of his dream, he quits looking for perfection and settles for something more attainable.”
    For some reason, she found his words irksome. “And is that what I represent to you? Something attainable?”
    “You know better than that. As far as I’m concerned, you’re about as perfect as a woman can get. Smart, sweet-natured, and pretty too. Why, just looking at you is like being outside on the finest summer’s day.” He smiled. “Except that you are more lovely and more temperate.”
    Carrie blushed, her irritation forgotten. “You’ve been reading those poetry books again.”
    “Guilty.” He puffed his pipe to get it going. Behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, his gray eyes were serious and kind. “I’m sure it wasn’t easy getting along with Mary. Every woman wants to feel in charge of her own home, I reckon. What does Henry have to say about all this?”
    “He’s caught in the middle, trying to keep the peace among all of us. I hated making him feel guilty for wanting the same things I want—a home, a family. And aside from all the other indignities, they were going to move my things into a cramped room in the attic so her children could have my room. It’s the only place I’ve lived since Frank died.”
    “A long time.”
    “Yes.” India vaulted into her lap, and she stroked the cat’s soft hair. “Maybe Mary’s right. Maybe I’m too old and set in my ways.”
    His eyes twinkled. “Not too set in your ways to marry me, I hope.”
    “We’ve been over all that.”
    “That we have, my girl. I’m sure I don’t know why you keep putting me off.” He waved his hand around the cluttered shop that smelled faintly of musty books, ink, and pipe tobacco. “Just think. All this could be yours. What woman wouldn’t jump at the chance?”
    Carrie smiled. It was an old dance between them, this dithering about their future. Would Nate actually go through with a wedding if one day she dropped her objections and said yes? He was, after all, nearly forty and, like her, set in his ways. Perhaps the notion of marriage was more attractive than the reality of it.
    “You know how deeply fond I am of you and how much I enjoy this shop,” she said. “But I want to be