Apparently not.
His considerate reach ended with the violin case. He drew it down, rubbed its side, secured the handle, and turned.
Rachel rolled her eyes and jumped out by herself.
“You’ve been busy.” Phin smiled. “The place is shaping up nicely.”
Gid, more cheerful now, folded his arms and rocked back on his heels. “Thank you. We’re working hard. But I wouldn’t have finished a third of the labor without Freddy and Daniel.”
Phineas acknowledged this with a small bow in our direction.
“It’s been fun.” Daniel lifted the children out of the wagon: oldest, middle, youngest. He crouched to steady Molly on the uneven ground. “All set?”
She nodded, then fell as soon as he released her.
Rachel collected the girl and situated her on a hip. While I knelt to greet the boys, my friend patted my head. “How’s Freddy?”
“Glad you’re all here.”
Gid scanned the wagon. “Not all. Where’s Mrs. Gale?”
Phineas heaved a sigh. “She stayed behind.” At Gid’s crestfallen look, he added, “Trust me: She wouldn’t be good company.”
I dusted my knees and straightened. “Not sick, I hope?”
“Just sick of her brother,” Rachel said.
Phineas made a face. “Of all of us. She started the day in the strangest mood. Grumpy but inexplicably driven.”
“Driven to what?” Daniel asked.
“Clean.” He frowned at the excited nephew who was presenting a chunk of upended sod, one grimy finger pointing out a score of wiggling worms. “Very nice. But please, Adam. You’re raining soil on my boots.” He glanced up. “At least an hour too early this morning, I woke to the distressing sound of vigorous sweeping. As soon as my sister noticed I’d stirred, she began complaining about dirt, how terribly sick of filth she was, how if I had a single care for anyone but myself and my ‘silly mare’ and my ‘stupid violin,’ I’d put up the corner shelves I’d promised her, add an extra bedroom, dig a closer well, and build her a decent porch, so people could leave their boots at the door and stop tracking in the horrible outside.” Hurt crossed his face. “I’d never seen her so angry. On my weary way to pour myself a cup of coffee, I accidentally shuffled through her sweeping pile, and she hit me with the broom. Me! Her own brother! The very man who has committed his life to her and her spawn’s welfare. Slapped me right in the head. With a dirty broom.”
I was used to Phineas’s dramatic antics and turned to Rachel for the true story, but she confirmed his tale of outraged woe with a sad nod. “Truly, she was in a peculiar state: heaving great buckets of water inside for washing, attacking not just the floor but the walls, too, with vicious scrubbing, muttering under her breath about the disgusting Genesee Valley with its awful red, sticky mud. I asked her if she wanted me to stay behind and help her, and she looked up from her cleaning, stared at me—quite unseeingly, if you know what I mean—and said, ‘If you want to help me, Rachel Welds, you’ll take the children with you, take Phineas with you, and get them all out of my hair. For. One. Blasted. Day. I want everyone out of my hair!’” Rachel’s eyes widened at the recollection.
Phineas shuddered.
Daniel gazed at me, nonplussed.
“Huh.” I could hardly reconcile this description with the Marian Gale I’d grown to admire and like very much.
Gid especially looked struck by the account. “I can’t like it. Something’s wrong.” He stared grimly at the visitors for a moment, then announced, “I’ll go visit her.”
“She made it perfectly clear,” Phin said. “She wants to be alone.”
“I can’t explain it. I just feel…” Gid rubbed the back of his neck. “I should check on her.”
Phin shook his head. “Don’t do it.”
Rachel smiled a little. “It’s a fine idea.” At Phin’s squawk, she waved an airy hand. “He might cheer her up. Marian likes Gid.”
While Phineas shrugged, my brother, who was in the process of digging his coat out of the wagon, stilled. “She does?”
His reaction—blatant surprise and pleasure—was a welcome sight. I smiled gratefully at Rachel.
She wiggled her eyebrows at me, then turned to Gid to add blandly, “Quite a bit, actually.”
“Why, that’s—that’s wonderful.” Gid coughed and abruptly yanked on his coat. “Good, then. If she’s fine, I’ll be back before sundown.”
“You’ll regret it,” Phineas said.
“I don’t think so.” Gid tugged on his gloves. “And who knows? Maybe her spirits will have improved. Maybe she’ll come back with me.” He glanced over his shoulder at the cabin and added, with quiet wistfulness, “I really wanted to show her my new place.”
Phin imitated, “‘Maybe she’ll come back with me.’” He grunted a laugh. “And maybe she’ll kill you.”
A look settled on my brother’s face. I knew that expression. I’d seen it a decade ago when he demanded Luke give him back his toy soldier. I’d seen it when he set out to court Rachel. I’d seen it when he decided to try his hand at pioneering. I’d seen it whenever he faced a challenge. Pure mulishness. Sure enough, he didn’t even acknowledge Phineas’s warning with a glance, just retorted, “I’ll take my chances.”
*
Daniel and Phineas struck up a conversation about horseflesh, then wandered side by side toward the cabin, leaving Rachel and me to the children’s mercy. Over his shoulder, Daniel murmured something vague about wanting Phineas’s input on a few farming matters, and Phineas grinned at Rachel and said that she and I—or, in his words, “the love-sick puppies”—would enjoy an hour or two of courtship without a couple of stodgy bachelors shadowing their every move.
Only the speaker appeared tickled by this comment. Rachel scowled at Phineas, Daniel frowned at me, and I shrugged helplessly.
Marian’s little ones took no offense at the men’s transparent agenda to avoid their grimy presence. After trailing Rachel and me along the woods’ edge, splashing in the stream, examining the legendary location where “the great bough knocked Freddy senseless,” demanding games involving marbles, eating all of the biscuits, poking suspiciously at the trout stew, then playing pioneering in the wagon, the children were very ready for bed.
Ephraim adamantly refuted this. “I’m not the least bit tired,” he yawned. Adam thought the sleeping loft a prime spot to play pirates. Molly began to wail for her mother. But once they were calmed down and arranged, biggest to smallest, on the floor mat and then covered with two big quilts, all three lasted fewer than five minutes into my bedtime story before falling fast asleep.
That left the adults downstairs, just the four of us, no Gid to improve our numbers, obviously no Marian, either. On the root-riddled ground, so weirdly like the outside for an inside floor, we sat in a circle, close to the hearth we’d initiated with its first fire.
Gid’s absence began to make me anxious. Why wasn’t he back yet? Every time the wind whooshed and the branches rattled, my eyes flew to the doorway, as yet doorless, expecting the oilcloth to part and present my brother.
Daniel patted my back. “Don’t worry.”
“Marian probably just set Gideon to work on the corner shelves her brother was too lazy to build.” Rachel smirked at Phineas, drew in her feet so that she was sitting cross-legged, and smoothed her skirt over her boots.
Phineas shrugged. “Or murdered him with her broom.” He was plucking the strings of his violin. He adjusted one of the pegs at the scrolled head, fitted the instrument under his chin, hummed himself a note, tested a string according to the hum, and bowed across the other strings, two at a time, to tune all four, first with peg turns, then by twiddling the tiny screws at the chin end. He smiled at me. “Don’t fret. How about some music to distract you?”