The Prince of Spies (Hope and Glory #3) - Elizabeth Camden Page 0,110
reaction to negative publicity surrounding his arrest.
A crushing weight lifted off her chest. Luke was free. Her father had kept his word.
She gazed out past the feedstore and the post office to the fields beyond. Thank you Lord! Please let him be happy now.
Beneath this huge western sky it felt easier to be closer to God. Maybe it was because she’d been stripped away from her family, friends, and every familiar guidepost in her life. Without those crutches, perhaps it was only natural to look up. She was putting her faith in God to find Aunt Stella and perhaps a direction for her future.
She boarded the train and continued traveling west, but she saw the world through new and hopeful eyes. Her sacrifice had worked. Luke was free, and in an odd way, she was too. She was without family or encumbrances. She could make her own way in the world. She had a camera, a sound head on her shoulders, and the desire to do something good. If there were any other requirements for success, she hadn’t heard of them.
Five days after leaving Washington, the train arrived in Carson City, Nevada, a small, prosperous town of fewer than five thousand people. It bordered the Sierra Nevada mountain range and had an arid desert quality mixed with hints of green mountain scrub and pine trees.
Marianne was a mass of jumbled nerves as she disembarked at the train station. The only thing she knew about her aunt was that as of six years ago, she lived at 5 Dover Street. The coming meeting had her tense with anxiety. What happened to a woman who sacrificed everything for love? Marianne was about to find out.
The air in Carson City felt fresh and crisp. The sky was the bluest thing she’d ever seen, but this landscape was so alien. Was Stella even still here?
Marianne headed straight for the train station ticket window. “What time does the train leave?” she asked.
“They’ve got a two-hour break to water and refuel,” the clerk replied. “They leave at one o’clock sharp.”
“Thank you.”
The man gave her directions to Dover Street, and she paid extra to store her heavy portmanteau in a storage room at the depot. It was too heavy to lug the half mile to Dover Street, and she wouldn’t be staying if Aunt Stella was no longer here.
Dover Street was lined with small but respectable homes. Number 5 was an immaculately kept single-story house painted white with purple shutters. It had a low-slung hip roof and a wide front porch. There was a man on the roof, nailing shingles into place.
Was this the man Stella married? With his straight dark hair and bronzed skin, he looked like he could be an Indian.
He also looked angry. He was shouting down to a woman who stood in the front yard with a bowl of something in her arms.
“I’m not coming down for lousy egg salad,” the man said. “I can tell just by looking at it that you made it wrong again.”
“I didn’t make it wrong,” the woman hollered up, one hand on her hip and spine stiffening in anger. “I made it exactly like I did last time, and—”
“And it was wrong last time!” the man interrupted.
“Maybe if you weren’t so persnickety, you could appreciate healthy food.” The shrewish woman had the same shade of chestnut hair as Clyde, with a few threads of silver and lines fanning from the corners of her eyes.
“You tossed out the yolks,” the man growled. “What’s the point of egg salad if you toss out all the yolks? I may as well eat shoe leather.”
“Oh, the unspeakable horror,” the woman bellowed in a tone so loud it echoed off the neighboring houses. “The torture of enduring poorly prepared egg salad! I can hear the angels weeping for your agony.”
The woman continued shouting insults, but the man had gone back to hammering and probably couldn’t hear her over the racket.
Marianne recoiled in dismay. She could turn around and get back on the train to keep heading west. It would spare her having to speak to these people who were so petty as to argue on a public street over egg salad.
But was it possible this wasn’t even her aunt? Maybe these horrible people had bought the house from Stella, and her daring aunt was living happily with her husband somewhere else. She couldn’t leave without asking.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” she asked, interrupting the woman’s tirade. “Are you by chance Stella Magruder?”