Page 32 of If the Boot Fits

Distracted by a young woman pacing outside the store window with a toddler perched on one hip, Samantha didn’t answer at first.

Was that . . . ?

“Miss?”

The woman outside turned, giving Samantha a full view of her face. It was! Ida Mae Forrester. She hadn’t seen Ida Mae in ages. They’d exchanged letters for several months after Samantha first moved to Boston for school, but their correspondence dwindled over time. After a year, Ida Mae ceased writing altogether. When the few sporadic letters Samantha sent continued to go unanswered, she stopped writing as well. But it seemed God was giving them a chance to reconnect, one Samantha didn’t intend to waste.

“Never mind the wrapping.” She scooped the items off the counter and into the crook of her arm. “I’ll just take them like this.” She hurried to the door, calling out a thank-you over her shoulder as she exited.

Pivoting to the left, she expected to see Ida Mae still pacing the edge of the boardwalk, but her friend had disappeared. Samantha scanned the street and spotted Ida Mae marching with purpose toward Patterson’s Hardware, where a cowboy was loading coils of fencing wire into a green farm wagon that displayed a CCC insignia on the side. The brand of the Three Cedars. One of her father’s wagons.

Samantha started across the street. She didn’t recognize the cowboy loading the supplies, but her father employed dozens of hands, many of whom she’d never met. Only a handful were allowed up at the house, trusted men like Duke Kendrick and Martin Hanover who had been with her father for years. This fellow looked young, probably around the same age as Asher, though he had a shorter, stockier build.

A pair of ladies passed by the wagon, wiggling their fingers in a flirtatious wave. The cowboy stopped his work to tip his hat and flash a cocky grin at the girls, his well-chiseled features the type many would consider handsome. The way his gaze followed the women after they passed seemed rather roguish, though, and left Samantha less than impressed.

She’d navigated halfway across the street when Ida Mae reached the cowboy and started having words with him. Heated, animated words. The man’s demeanor changed in an instant. his swagger disappeared, replaced by a cascade of irritated frustration. He took Ida Mae’s free arm and steered her into the narrow alleyway between Patterson’s and the drugstore next door.

Alarmed, Samantha picked up her pace. Surely he wouldn’t hurt Ida Mae or the baby. Yet something was wrong, and Samantha refused to be one of those weak women who buried their heads in the sand, pretending not to see trouble in the hopes of keeping themselves from being tainted by it. She’d not barge in on a private conversation, but neither would she leave her friend to face trouble alone.

“You gotta do right by me, Leroy.”

Ida Mae’s raised voice ricocheted off the alley walls, slamming into Samantha’s chest and bringing her feet to a halt. She spun around to face the street, keeping her back to the alley in the hopes of shielding Ida Mae from anyone milling about the nearby shops.

“Keep your voice down, woman.”

“I’m done bein’ hushed up,” Ida Mae declared. “By you, by my folks. Jimmy needs a daddy, and I need a husband.”

“Well, don’t look at me. I ain’t applyin’ for the job.”

“There’s no applyin’ to it. Jimmy’s your boy, and you know it.”

Samantha’s chest squeezed, and tears moistened her eyes. Oh, Ida Mae. No.

“I know no such thing.”

How could the man sound so smug? So uncaring?

Ida Mae gasped. “I’ve never been with any man but you.”

“So you say. Just because I was your first don’t mean I was your only. You coulda rolled around in the hay with half the cowboys in the county since we were together.”

The crack of a slap echoed through the alley.

“You ruined me, Leroy.” Tears clogged Ida Mae’s voice, twisting Samantha’s heart. “Don’t ruin your son, too. Take responsibility. Do what’s right.”

“You ruined yourself, Ida Mae. The boy’s your mess to clean up, not mine.”

Bootheels thumped against packed dirt as a woman’s quiet sobs mixed with a baby’s plaintive cry.

Indignation roared to life in Samantha’s breast. Such injustice could not stand. Why should a woman alone bear the consequences of a sin in which the man was an equal participant? Likely even the instigator. The world might excuse and minimize this man’s shame, but she would not.

15

Whirling around, Samantha blocked the alley’s exit and glared at the cowboy striding out of the shadows, apparently unconcerned about the devastation left in his wake.

She said nothing aloud yet communicated her disapproval and disdain in the sharp slant of her brows and the rigidity of her stance. Leroy stumbled slightly when he saw her. His eyes widened with recognition, and his self-assurance withered.

He jerked his hat from his head and held it against his chest as if to shield himself from the invisible daggers she threw.