Miss Emily took a deep breath. “You poor child. What in the world are the gossipmongers of this town doing to you? You’d better come to my house and have a talk.”
It was an hour later when Nellie left Miss Emily’s house. She didn’t feel anything at the moment; her pain was too deep for feeling. Miss Emily had repeated what she had been told by the young ladies who came to her shop. It seemed that while Jace had been visiting Nellie he had also been visiting other women on a regular basis. At least five women told lurid stories of Jace Montgomery’s kissing them. Mae Sullivan went into such detail about Mr. Montgomery’s touching her that three young ladies had nearly swooned.
“If just one girl had said these things I wouldn’t believe her, but it seems that your Mr. Montgomery cut a wide swath through this town. Oh, Nellie, I am so sorry. I usually consider myself a good judge of character, and I thought this man was a gentleman, but it seems that he was not. I’ve been told he only wanted your father’s freight office, and when he couldn’t have it he left town.” That wasn’t the only reason she’d heard he’d left town, Miss Emily thought. If he was as bad as the town was saying and he had had his way with Nellie, time would tell if she carried his child. It was no use making Nellie feel worse than she already did.
“I do believe he cared for you,” Miss Emily said, pressing Nellie’s hand. “Even if he has turned out to be a base fellow, I am sure he cared for you. He—”
“I must go,” Nellie had said, and without another word she left. Once on the street she started toward home. If people snubbed her, she didn’t notice.
But she didn’t make it home. Instead, she stopped in the bakery and bought doughnuts, fried pies, cookies, cupcakes, cream-filled pastries, and a large chocolate cake. She ignored the look of the woman behind the counter, took the two large bags, and left the store. She didn’t think about what she was doing or where she was going; she just started walking.
When at last she stopped walking she was in Fenton Park, in the exact spot where she and Jace had sat and he’d put his head in her lap. She sat on the ground, opened the bags, and began to eat. She tasted nothing, chewed very little, but slowly and systematically ate her way through the first bag.
The tears began when the first bag was emptied. She wasn’t really crying; it was just that tears were streaming down her face.
By the middle of the second bag she was so stuffed with food that she had to stretch out on the grass in order to be able to continue eating.
Carrying his child, she thought. No, she wasn’t carrying his child. He hadn’t quite been able to force himself to go that far to get her father’s business. He’d only been able to bring himself to kiss her, to touch her now and then, and to lie to her.
No, she wasn’t carrying a child, but Nellie knew she was a woman. She was a woman who had been used by a man, had been used and discarded. She thought of the way she’d believed in him, trusted him, the way she’d given him her love, and again hunger overwhelmed her.
She remembered the night of the Harvest Ball. Miss Emily had said that Jace kissed Terel that night, and he’d kissed Mae and Louisa that night also. Nellie pictured herself with Jace. “Twice as wide,” Terel had said. Everyone in town must have been laughing at her as she waltzed with him, he so tall and handsome, she so fat and dumpy. Everyone must have enjoyed the joke greatly. They all must have known why Jace had been courting her. Everyone except Nellie knew. Her father and Terel had tried to warn her, but Nellie hadn’t listened. Instead of listening she’d been defiant, believing she knew more about the man than anyone else did.
It was nearly sunset when she picked up her empty bags and started home. On the way she stopped in Randolph’s and placed a grocery order for enough food to feed six families for four months.
“Having company?” Mr. Randolph asked, but Nellie didn’t answer. She didn’t feel like talking or thinking or even living. The only thing she was aware of was a deep, insatiable hunger.
At home her father complained about dinner being late, and Terel wanted to know where Nellie had been, but Nellie didn’t answer. She went to the kitchen and began to cook, and for every one thing she cooked and served she cooked two others and ate them. Perhaps her father and Terel talked to her, but she didn’t hear them. Her thoughts were completely, totally, absolutely concerned with feeding the hunger that engulfed her.
Nellie ate for three weeks. She didn’t care what she ate, when she ate, or how much she ate. Her only concern was in trying to fill up the hunger that ravaged her. Yet no matter how much she ate she still felt empty. It was as though no amount of food in the world could make the hunger go away.
If she stepped into the pantry, where Jace had kissed her and held her, her stomach contracted with hunger. If she looked outside, where the season’s first snow now covered her garden, she remembered Jace saying he liked her flowers and she felt ravenous with hunger. If she heard a man laugh, a man speak, if she even saw a man, she was overcome with hunger.
It was Terel who first noticed Nellie’s weight loss.
“It can’t be because she isn’t eating me into bankruptcy,” Charles said. “Nellie, this month’s grocery bill was enough to break me.”
Nellie didn’t comment, and her next grocery order was even larger.
“I can’t have you looking like this,” Charles said after Jace had been gone for four weeks. “You look like a scarecrow. Go get a new dress.”
Nellie hadn’t bothered to look at herself in a mirror for a long time, but now she did, and she saw that her body was a shadow of its former self. She could hold handfuls of her dress bodice away from her. Reluctantly, not caring what she wore, she went to her dressmaker’s.
The dressmaker took one look at Nellie’s ravaged face and said not a word. She’d heard all the gossip, of course, and Terel had said that Nellie did nothing but stay home and eat, that she refused to step out of the house, and that her long face was very annoying.
If she’s eating, she isn’t eating very much, the dressmaker thought as she undressed Nellie down to her smalls. She was amazed that anyone could lose as much weight as Nellie had in such a short time. She went to her workroom to get her tape, but she halted as she looked at a finished gown hanging from a peg in the wall. It was a winter costume she’d just finished for Mrs. Kane Taggert. It was made of dark blue velvet with satin lapels of a lighter blue, and there was a lovely matching cape to the dress.
The dressmaker looked at that velvet gown, knowing that Mr. and Mrs. Taggert would be out of town until after Christmas, and she thought of the way that man had betrayed poor, sweet Nellie. With resolve, she took the dress from its peg, then snatched one of her own corsets from a drawer.
“Now, Nellie, we’re going to make you smile.”
It took an hour’s work to ready Nellie. The dressmaker arranged her hair; since it was dirty, she had to powder it twice to absorb all the oil. She put Nellie into the corset, then hauled on the cords until Nellie’s waist was a respectable twenty-one inches, leaving her bosom and hips to swell out above and below her little waist.
Through all of this Nellie stood or sat as commanded, taking very little interest in the proceedings.
The dressmaker got on the telephone and called the milliner. “I want you to bring the blue toque you made for Mrs. Taggert over here. No, she hasn’t returned yet, but someone else is here. You’d better come yourself because I don’t think you’re going to believe this.”
When the milliner arrived, indeed, she didn’t believe what she saw. She’d known Nellie since she was a pretty little girl, but at twelve, after her mother had died, Nellie had started putting on weight, and her pretty face had been lost atop her big body.
The milliner pushed up her sleeves. “The hair is wrong. Get a curling iron and call Miss Emily. She should see this.”
Thirty minutes later a new Nellie stood before them, hair softly arranged, a fat blue velvet toque jauntily on one side of her head, her hourglass figure encased in a stunning velvet
dress. Her beautiful face, with its haunted eyes, looked back at the milliner and seamstress.
When Miss Emily arrived the two women stepped back. No words could describe their achievement, so they just parted and let Miss Emily see their creation. For a moment Miss Emily was speechless. She stood and stared and gaped and gawked. But then she smiled. There was a bit of revenge in that smile. The talk of the treachery of Jace Montgomery had nearly died down in town, but for weeks Miss Emily had had to listen to stories about “poor Nellie.” She’d had to hear about how stupid Nellie had been to have believed that a handsome man would like an old maid like her. Well, this vision was no old maid.
“Come with me, Nellie,” Miss Emily said firmly. “I mean to show you off.”
The seamstress caught Miss Emily’s arm. “She hasn’t said two words since she arrived. She seems to have been really hurt by that awful man. I’m not sure she realizes she’s…” She turned and smiled at Nellie. “I’m not sure she knows she’s beautiful.”
“Once the cats of this town see her they’ll let her know,” Miss Emily said, then she ushered Nellie out the door.
Nellie was unaware of the sensation she caused as she walked through Chandler. Men, young and old, stopped to stare. Women did double takes. When Miss Emily escorted Nellie into the tea shop all conversation, all movement, stopped. Miss Emily pushed Nellie forward.
“Mae, Louisa, Charlene,” Miss Emily said, “you remember Nellie, don’t you?” She got a great deal of pleasure watching the young women’s eyes widen. “Poor Nellie? Poor, dear Nellie?”
“May I have something to eat?” Nellie said softly.
Miss Emily ushered her to a table, and while Nellie had eyes only for the tea cake cart, the young women of Chandler had eyes only for her. Nellie was no longer a person to be pitied, but one to be envied.
Later, after eating a tea for six, Nellie started home, and she never once looked at the people who stopped and stared at her. At home she went straight to the kitchen, put on her apron, and began to prepare dinner. Her back was to the door so she didn’t see Terel enter.
Terel had been told by her friends that Nellie was a sight to behold, and so she’d rushed home to see for herself; but even forewarned, she was not prepared for her first sight of Nellie. She had never seen a woman more beautiful than Nellie. In all of Chandler only the twins, Houston and Blair, could hold a candle to Nellie. And the blue velvet dress emphasized her newly slim body.
Anger surged through Terel, anger at being betrayed by her own sister.
Terel put on a smile and walked forward. “Nellie, you look beautiful, really beautiful.”
Nellie turned and forced a smile. “It’s a lovely dress, isn’t it?”
“Yes, really lovely, but do you think you should be wearing it in the kitchen? I know it is only money, but aren’t you concerned with ruining such an expensive dress?”
“Yes, how thoughtless of me.” Nellie removed her apron and started upstairs, Terel close behind her.
“I am so glad to see that you’ve lost weight. I guess I can say it now, but you don’t know what an embarrassment you’ve always been to Father and me. There were times we hated to be seen with you. Not that we don’t love you, but we love you in spite of the way you look, do you know what I mean?”
As Nellie stepped out of the velvet dress her stomach growled with hunger. “Yes. I think I know what you mean.”
Terel scrutinized Nellie’s figure in the borrowed corset. “It looks as if you’re going to need all new clothes, so perhaps I’d better choose them for you. Maybe you didn’t realize that velvet doesn’t exactly fit with working in the kitchen. Or maybe now you don’t want to cook for Father and me. Maybe now you’d rather go to one ball after another and dance with men like Mr. Montgomery. Maybe more men—”
“No!” Nellie half shouted. “No more men. I don’t trust them. I want nothing to do with them. You choose the dresses, I don’t care what I wear.” She pulled on her oldest housedress, which now hung off of her, and ran down the stairs, buttoning as she went.
Once in the kitchen she grabbed a pie, still hot from the oven, and began to eat it. “No more men,” she said aloud. “No more men.”
If Nellie wanted nothing to do with men, the same couldn’t be said for men regarding her. After having been ignored by the male population all her life, suddenly she was besieged with invitations. Handsome young men waited for her outside her house, then followed her wherever she went. They offered to carry her purchases, run errands for her. They invited her everywhere.
There seemed to be nothing Nellie could do to discourage them. She didn’t talk to them, didn’t so much as smile at them. She made no physical effort to make herself more pleasing to them. She wore the drab, oversized dresses Terel chose for her; she never minded when Terel burned her hair with a curling iron. But nothing seemed to put the young men off, for the truth was, now nothing Terel did could hide Nellie’s beauty, and Nellie’s reserve only encouraged the young men.
At home Nellie listened to Terel, because once she hadn’t listened to her and she’d been duped by a lying, traitorous man.
“You don’t want to go to the Christmas party at the Masonic Lodge, do you?” Terel asked, looking at the invitation. “You remember what happened at the Harvest Ball, don’t you? I don’t think I could bear seeing my beloved sister make a fool of herself like that again.”
“No, I don’t want to go,” Nellie whispered, feeling very hungry. After two months, just the thought of Jace still made pain shoot through her. “I don’t want to embarrass you or Father.”
“It’s not that you embarrass us, it’s that you embarrass yourself, what with eating so much all the time, and then, of course, you have no taste in men. I’d be afraid the town drunk would walk in the hall and you’d believe you were in love with him.”
“Terel, please…” Nellie pleaded.
“Oh, I am sorry, Nellie, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I guess I’m just overly protective, that’s all. Here’s an invitation for you to sing with a choir. You don’t want to do that, do you? I mean, there will be men there, and you know how you are.”
“No,” Nellie said, tears beginning to choke her. She didn’t want to go anywhere. She just plain wanted to disappear.
“I really do think it’s for the best that you stay home, at least for a while. Are those cupcakes? They smell delicious. Why don’t you have one or two? People are saying you’re too thin.” She kissed Nellie’s cheek. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”
When Terel was gone, Nellie ate a dozen cupcakes.
Jace stepped off the train and breathed the cold Colorado mountain air. It felt good to be back, good to return to the place he’d come to think of as home. He gave a boy a nickel to carry his bag to the hotel and check him in. He didn’t want to take the time to go to the hotel first. All he wanted now was to see Nellie.
He smiled as the cold, dry air hit his face, and he patted his breast pocket where all Nellie’s letters lay, tied with a ribbon. It had been two and a half months since he’d seen her, the longest ten weeks of his life, but it had taken that long to arrange everything. When he’d first arrived in Warbrooke and found his father to be perfectly healthy, his impulse had been to jump right back on the train and go back to Chandler. He’d had no doubt the rotten Terel was behind the phony telegram.
But the telegram had made him realize how much his parents meant to him, so he’d gone out sailing, just he and his father, and he’d found himself telling his father all about Nellie. At the end of the day’s sailing he’d known what he wanted to do with his life. For all that he loved the sea, for all that he knew he’d miss it, he knew he wanted to live in Colorado with Nellie.
That night he’d written her and told her of his plans. He didn’t tell her that someone had created the telegram. He didn’t want to fight Terel from across a continent, so he just wrote of his plans. He planned to remain in Warbrooke long enough to sell most of his holdings, the land and house he and
Julie had owned, all three of his sailboats, and he needed to work out property divisions with his brothers and father. When that was done, he planned to return to Chandler and make her his wife.
He’d written her long letters telling her of his home town, telling her about his father and brothers, telling her of his mother’s music and how good it was to hear her sing again. Once he was in Warbrooke he realized how little he and Nellie had talked, so he found himself pouring out everything to her. He told of visiting the grave of Julie and his little son and how his grief for them had been merely a dull ache. He wrote of the future he had planned for them, and one night, very late, when he was feeling very lonely, he told her of the trick he’d pulled on her by taking her to the Everetts’ house. And always, repeatedly, he told her he loved her.
Nellie’s letters to him hadn’t been as long as he would have liked; in fact, they were almost curt, but they had been enough to let him know that she was all right. He hadn’t written to tell her he’d be arriving today because, unexpectedly, he’d found a buyer for his last sailboat, and he was at last free. He had thrown clothes in a bag and taken the next train out of Warbrooke. He wanted to spend this Christmas with Nellie, and next Christmas his family promised to come to Colorado to visit him and Nellie and—he grinned—maybe his first kid.
Now, leaving the train station, he was on top of the world. Everything was cleared away for him and Nellie. Nothing else stood in the way of their happiness.
He was so happy, so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn’t see the way the people of Chandler stopped and stared at him. They stared, then they frowned, then they put their heads together and muttered about how he had dared to return to this town.
He was walking so rapidly, trying to get to Nellie as quickly as possible, that he didn’t see the door to The Famous swing open and Terel’s friends step out. He walked right into them and packages went flying.
“Excuse me,” he said, stooping to pick up packages, “it was all my fault. I wasn’t watching where I—”