A Chance at Forever by Melissa Jagears

Author:Melissa Jagears
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction;Love stories;Christian fiction;FIC042030;FIC042040;FIC027050
ISBN: 9781493412426
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-12-26T05:00:00+00:00

20

Mercy moved the flickering lamp closer as she stitched her second quilt block of the day. The moral society had decided to quickly piece together another quilt top for next week’s auction to benefit Max and Robert, and everyone had taken blocks home.

But instead of starting her next seam, Mercy leaned toward the darkened window, straining to hear whatever sound was coming from outside. Was it the steady whirring of a mower despite the sun having set more than an hour ago?

In the week since the fight in the cellar, if she went anywhere near Aaron, he’d find work to do elsewhere. Now that summer had arrived, she spent a lot of time with the children in the backyard, and the grass had grown higher than it should have. Surely he wasn’t mowing in the dark to evade her.

The wind stirred the curtains, but no shadowy movement confirmed Aaron’s presence. Then a gust of wind rattled the pampas grass. That must have been it. And yet she was a little disappointed not to see him roaming about in the dark. She’d seen so little of him in the past six days.

Though he avoided her, the hopelessness in his posture and expression couldn’t be masked, even from afar.

Aaron had run from the cellar as if chased by wolves, and she’d assumed the other man had run off to report the assault. She’d braced herself for the impending chaos, but the police never came.

Had the other man started the fight and Aaron was the one not pressing charges? She’d hardly figured out what was happening before it was over.

Though she’d felt like running after Aaron, she’d stayed in the cellar to make sure Jimmy was all right.

He’d had nothing but a bruise to his right cheekbone and a serious case of evasiveness.

Upon asking why he’d never told them about his brother, Jimmy quickly denied having a real brother. He’d said all street children called each other brother and sister because they very well could be, considering hardly any of them knew who their father was.

And yet the man who’d rushed past her had been at least twenty years old, and Jimmy had said he wasn’t from the Teaville district.

Of course, Jimmy had an answer for that too. The man was the older brother of a friend of his at school who lived in the district. They couldn’t get smokes on their own, so Zachary, as Jimmy called him, brought them some.

At least the mystery of where he got his tobacco was solved.

But when she’d asked if they should report Zachary for whatever it was he was forcing Jimmy to do, the boy had called her a busybody and stalked off for the mansion. Since then, he’d refused to talk to her at all.

She’d asked Caroline if she knew who Zachary was, but she had no idea. None of Jimmy’s teachers could guess who Jimmy’s “friend” might be, considering his classmates spent as little time with him as possible.

It was as if Zachary didn’t exist.

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