A Texas Christmas Reunion Page 21

  “No, you wouldn’t. The council members are being tight-lipped. Even Nannie doesn’t know.”

  “It would be all over town if she did.”

  “I believe she’d have sniffed it out anyway if she wasn’t so head over heels for Dr. Fulsom all of a sudden. But everyone will find out as soon as my sister takes to the streets. Do you know—I think that one day, all on her own, that girl will win us women the right to vote.”

  No doubt that was true. She and other girls like her would one day rule the land.

  With a quick goodbye, Juliette hurried toward the sheriff’s office, struggling all the way against the wind and herself.

  Ought she to tell Trea about the upheaval over the future of his career? Or not?

  Spending Christmas Eve in jail would be a dreary prospect as it was. No need to add new angst to his day.

  Of course, she did not believe he would spend all day in a cell.

  A niggling voice at the back of her mind asked why not.

  Her only answer was that it was Christmas.

  Christmas would set everything to rights.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cora had done her job so well that there were too many people attending the committee meeting to fit inside the sheriff’s office, so Suzie Fulsom offered the former Suzie Gal as a meeting place.

  This turned out to be a lucky thing for Juliette, given that Warren balked at being dragged out into the cold.

  She had been trying to lift him from his chair at the dining room table when she saw people going into the former saloon with Trea and the sheriff in the lead.

  “Look, Father Lindor, The Suzie Gal is open again. See all the people going inside?”

  “Well, then, what are we waiting for, girl?”

  “For you to let me put your coat on.”

  Standing, he stuck his arms out in a scarecrow stance. She slid a sleeve over one arm, then the other, all the while watching out the window.

  There must have been thirty people wanting to have a voice in the schoolmaster’s fate. Some hoped to see him vindicated; others hoped to see him condemned, but this was Trea Culverson so there would be plenty of opinions.

  Only the first twenty or so people to arrive were able to get chairs. Juliette and her family were not among them. They took a spot in the back of the room with the others who were standing. At least it was warm inside.

  That was something to be grateful for, because even if she’d had to peer through a window she would have. Whatever happened here would have a great influence on her town and on her life!

  Here was where the man she loved—the one she was going to join her future with whether he thought so or not—would have his fate determined.

  Trea sat beside the sheriff several feet from a long table where six stern-looking council members stared at him. Judging by the stony looks on their faces, she’d bet Trea was already condemned.

  He must have sensed when she came in because he turned, shot her a crooked smile.

  Funny that Nannie, standing a few feet from the door, saw the smile directed at Juliette but did not react to it. How interesting. Was it because she was standing beside Dr. Fulsom?

  Perhaps Rose was correct and Nannie’s affections had shifted.

  As much as the smile she’d received from Warren earlier, this would be a Christmas gift that money could not buy.

  For the first ten minutes of the meeting, discussion went back and forth in a civilized way, ideas presented respectfully on both sides.

  But when Stella Green bolted up from her chair, accusing Trea of being a scoundrel, causing Adelaide Jones to leap from her chair and with a wagging finger call Stella an idiot, and then Mr. Jones told Mrs. Jones to sit back down, it all fell apart.

  Shouts pinged about the room like stones flung from a slingshot until one man raised his rough voice and barked, “Sit down, the lot of you!”

  Ephraim Culverson’s glare sliced across the room. Voices fell silent.

  When everyone was seated, staring wide-eyed, he shook his fist at them.

  “You pack of moralizing hypocrites, accusing my boy?” Folks glanced around at each other, stunned and offended, but no one spoke. “Ned Jones, where were you last night? Maybe you ought to tell your wife that, instead of telling her to sit down.”

  Someone laughed, but only until Ephraim stung him with a frown. “I know your secrets, too.”

  “What you do or don’t know about a few folks has no bearing on what is going on here,” one of the council members found the nerve to say. “You, of all people, are not able to judge.”

  “What a bunch of fools you are if you think my boy set those fires any more than he set the livery to flame years ago. It’s a plumb fact that he doesn’t have it in him.”

  Trea stood up, turned around to face his father. No wonder he looked so astonished. He would not have expected the man to be here, let alone speak in his defense.

  Herbert Cleary stood up. “Then why did he run?”

  Juliette wished Herbert was not a council member. He would not be unbiased, given his shed had burned. “If he wasn’t guilty he wouldn’t have.”

  “You sober enough to hear what I’m going to tell you, Cleary? You sure weren’t the other night.”

  The newest citizen in town, Dr. Fulsom, appeared to be fascinated by the shouts suddenly fired from around the room.

  Ephraim Culverson gazed silently at his handcuffed son until folks wore their voices out and became quiet again.

  “The reason my boy didn’t stay had to do with me, not anything he did. You know good and well it wasn’t him you were judging that night—it was my damned soul. How many times have I heard you good folks say, like father, like son?”

  “Too many, I’m quite sure,” Adelaide Jones put in. “I didn’t live here then, but even I’ve heard it. You should all be ashamed.”

  She spoke to everyone but flipped her finger at her husband’s ear, a clear message that he was guilty of this and other moral crimes.

  “I always wanted my boy to be like me. For a long time I resented it that he took after his ma, instead. I wished he’d done all those things you accused him of—would have made me proud at the time. All you fine ladies sitting here judging—you weren’t so fine back then—and some of you upstanding gentlemen? What mischief did you do and blame it on my boy? Hell, as much as I wanted him to have done those things, it wasn’t in him and still isn’t. It shouldn’t be so hard for you fools to figure out that if it was, he’d have come back an outlaw, not a schoolmarm.”

  Wind shook the door, a fitting exclamation point to Ephraim’s remarks.

  “And that’s what I have to say.” With a nod at Trea, he stomped to the back of the room, flung the door open wide and left without bothering to close it.

  “You sure you brought me to The Suzie Gal?” Warren stated into the silence that followed Ephraim’s departure. “When’s the bar going to open?”

  When, indeed? A calming glass of wine might help everyone.

  It was a crime in itself the way people were behaving in front of the youngsters sitting on the floor near their teacher.

  If the children learned a lesson in carrying on a civil debate, it would not be from some of their council members.

  One child sat apart from the others.

  Charlie.

  All of a sudden he bolted from the chair he slouched in.

  “I—” he said, his gaze fastened on Trea’s face.

  Juliette went cold inside. Was he about to admit starting the fire?

  But no, he sat back down, slouched in the chair, hands pressed between his knees while he stared at the floor.

  Warren took a step away from her side, as though he would wind a path through the chairs to get to the bar. She snatched his sleeve, drew him back. The sudden movement knocked the buggy. Joe started
to whimper.

  “I believe Ephraim Culverson’s outburst, his accusations against our fine citizens, only points out that what we’ve always believed is true,” declared the banker, Lee Bonds. “In this case, it is like father like son.”

  “Ha!” Cora vaulted from her chair, stood in front of Trea, waving her arms as if to shield her instructor from the judgmental glares coming from the council members. “He’s the best teacher we ever had. He’s kind and he cares about us and he’s a million times better than the one you hired last year. If any of us ever succeed in life, it will be because of what Mr. Culverson is teaching us.”

  Charlie drew his hands from between his knees, dug them into his hair. She would have gone to him if it not for the density of the crowd blocking her way and Warren’s continued effort to go to the bar.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Culverson? Where were you on the night of the fire?” With her attention distracted, Juliette was not sure who asked that.

  Trea glanced at Charlie, then quickly away. His silence spoke louder than an admission of guilt.

  Joe’s fussing became increasingly fretful. He woke Lena.

  “He—” Nannie’s voice cracked, her glance shifting between the doctor and Trea. It settled on the doctor. “He was with me. We spent the evening together—we saw the fire at the same time.”

  “Can anyone verify this?”

  “No,” she half whispered. People shifted in their chairs, pivoted where they stood, eager to hear the softly spoken words. “We were quite alone.”

  If an ax had suddenly slammed Trea in the gut, he could not have looked more stricken.

  Apparently robbed of speech, he shook his head in silent denial. Holding Juliette’s gaze, she knew he pleaded for her not to believe it.

  “Suzie Gal! Bring me a beer!”

  Juliette would have shushed her father-in-law if she had not been so stunned. If Lena hadn’t chosen to react to Joe’s fussing with a long, high-pitched screech.

  * * *

  Nothing in Trea’s life had been worse than seeing Juliette’s gaze turn to him, stricken. Clearly she had been rocked to her core by what Nannie revealed.

  Not a single thing that anyone had ever thought of him was worse than this.

  If the one person who had always trusted him no longer did, what would anything be worth?

  But Nannie! Why had she done it?

  Voices buzzed around his ears like angry bees while he tried to figure it out. All the while Joe and Lena cried, as if in competition with each other.

  Juliette looked like an ice statue, standing there stiff and pale.

  Nannie, red-faced and wringing her hands, stared at the floor. Why would she sacrifice her reputation to give Trea an alibi? It made no sense at all.

  Oh, he could play along with her and go free—lose Juliette and then have the investigation implicate someone else—Charlie, perhaps.

  But no. He could not claim to love Juliette and break her heart in order to gain his freedom—in case he hadn’t already broken it by refusing to marry her.

  He hadn’t run when the sheriff gave him the chance and he would not do it now.

  “Why would you say that, Miss Breene? It’s not true. I was at the schoolhouse all evening.”

  That admission ought to seal his doom, but the truth was the truth.

  “Like I said,” declared a faceless voice from the crowd. “I saw him running away.”

  He wanted to tell Juliette that he had not been running away, but had been hurrying to her. But the last thing he was going to do was implicate her in this nasty bit of business and ruin her chance of making a success of her hotel and her life.

  “I make a motion that Mr. Culverson be dismissed as schoolmaster on grounds of being morally depraved.” Who’d said that? Trea lost track of who was accusing him, with so many voices at once it was impossible to say.

  “He’s not!” Cora added her high-pitched voice to the din. “He’s wonderful.”

  “Miss Breene?” When Sheriff Hank stood to speak, silence seemed to suck the voices out of everyone. “Was the prisoner with you or wasn’t he?”

  Nannie shook her head. “Wasn’t.”

  “Then why would you say he was? And why shouldn’t I lock you in a cell for perjury?”

  “Because she’s not under oath.” This composed statement came from the doctor.

  “Sheriff!” Trea said. “You have your man. Leave Miss Breene alone.”

  “I’m sorry.” Tears dampened the corners of Nannie’s eyes. “I didn’t mean any harm. I only thought to help.”

  Nannie pivoted away from Trea, toward the doctor, her face hidden behind her hands.

  With a screaming baby in each arm, Juliette held his gaze. Did folks wonder why they looked at each other so intensely? Probably did, because they were growing silent, all of a sudden clearly suspicious of what went on between Juliette and her boarder.

  Please don’t let them judge her for who he was! Or, more rightly, who he had been.

  She set the babies in the stroller, snagged Warren by the coat sleeve and made her way toward the door. All the while she held Trea’s gaze. Then, framed in the doorway with wind tossing her hair, yanking at the hem of her dress...

  “I love you.” Her voice carried clearly to the four corners of the room.

  And tonight we are getting married—it’s what her eyes vowed, even in the face of the impossible.

  Before he called out that he loved her, too—because now that everyone knew, why deny it?—she was gone.

  The most intense silence he’d ever heard lay heavy on the room until the sheriff spoke.

  “As touching as that was, let’s go, Culverson.” Underwood took him by his handcuffed arm. “Looks like we’ll be spending Christmas in jail.”

  “Noooo!” Charlie launched off his chair, ran for Trea so fast that folks had to get out of his way or be bowled over. “No!”

  He flung his arms around Trea’s middle, making the sheriff loose his hold.

  The child’s face was red, streaked with hot tears.

  “Wasn’t him!”

  Charlie took a swing at the sheriff. Trea caught his hand.

  “Son.” He hugged the boy tight, patted his back as best he could with the restraints. “Don’t say anything else.”

  “But it wasn’t me, either, Mr. Culverson. I’d never burn down our school.”

  “If you know something, you’d better tell us now,” Sheriff Hank demanded.

  Trembling, Charlie spoke to Trea, not the sheriff.

  A shudder shook him head to toe.

  “It was Mam—she set all the fires.”

  “Why, Charlie? Why would she do that?” Trea asked.

  “She didn’t want me going to school—didn’t want me to have anything good ’cause I might get full of myself and leave like my pa did. She thought if I sang my song...”

  Cora took Charlie by the hands, squeezed them and looked him in the eye.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “No one blames you for her.”

  “But I knew about the other fires she set. I couldn’t say anything. She’s all I had and I never thought she’d burn our school. I’m sorry, Mr. Culverson. It was wicked of me to let you stay in jail. I’m so powerful sorry.”

  “Then why’d you do it, boy? Why’d you let an innocent man stay locked up?”

  Trea took Charlie, tucked him away behind his back. Sweet, brave Cora flanked him.

  “Leave him be, sheriff. You know he kept quiet to protect his mother. Any child would do the same.”

  “Where is your mother?”

  “Gone.” Charlie covered his face. Sobbing he sat down hard on the floor. Cora went down beside him and wrapped her arms around his heaving shoulders.

  “Gone where?” Hank Underwood’s voice softened as he
looked down upon the broken youngster.

  “I don’t know. She’s just gone. She’s been gone since she burned the school. I didn’t mean you harm, Mr. Culverson. No matter what anyone comes to say about it, I didn’t! I’ll accept the blame for what she did.”

  “Oh, no, Charlie,” Cora said. “Don’t ever do that! Our teacher knows. You aren’t your mother, you are you. It’s not like parent, like child. It’s ignorant to say so. I like you. And as long as you don’t pull my braid again, I’ll be your fast friend forever.”

  “Ah! Out if the mouths of babes.” Adelaide Jones broke the silence that had gripped everyone since Nannie made her false confession. “All you good people need to put away the ill feelings that have turned this town sour. It’s Christmas and I suggest we all act like it is. I, for one, will go merrily to the hotel’s opening tonight to hear this brave child sing.”

  “Looks like you’re free to go, Culverson.” The sheriff took off the handcuffs then spun about, walked toward the door that remained wide open.

  From where Trea stood, it looked like the wind had suddenly stopped, giving way to a bank of dark clouds that swept down upon the town.

  Sheriff Hank halted in the doorway, blocking the way of people going out. He spun about. “I’ve got something to say to you, Culverson.”

  Anyone who had considered leaving The Suzie Gal must have changed their minds because their rapt stares fixed on the sheriff without pretending to disguise their curiosity.

  Couldn’t say he blamed them. It had been an interesting few days in Beaumont Spur and apparently it was about to get more interesting.

  “Stay a minute, won’t you, folks? After I speak with Sheriff Hank, I’ve got something to say to you.”

  A few of them, he figured, thought a rebuke was coming, given the way their gazes suddenly slid away. But they didn’t leave.

  The sheriff nodded his head, indicating the corner of the room.

  People would be disappointed, but it looked like this would be a private conversation.

  “I reckon I owe you an apology, Culverson.”

  “Maybe so, for a few things. But not for arresting me. You had a duty to perform. It was your job to take me into custody.”