Mail Order Sweetheart Page 26

  He shrugged off her concern. “She’s convinced Samuel is doing anything he can to force her to close Holbrook’s. I spoke to him and he doesn’t approve of her running the shop, but I can’t believe he would do anything more than state his opinion.”

  Ma considered his words for a moment as she chewed a bite of her lunch. “I haven’t spent much time with Coralee since your pa’s accident.” She gestured to her husband’s arm and Jake flushed with guilt. While Pa was recovering from the farm accident that cost him the use of his left hand, Jake had been away in school, unable to help at all. But now he finally had a chance to secure his practice in Spring Hill so he could be near his parents to help out. He had to make this work.

  Ma’s soft voice pulled him back to the conversation. “Coralee’s always been kind and honest, Jake. I understand that you trust Dr. Jay and believe in him, but Coralee is a good woman, too.”

  “Ma, how good could the woman be when we all know I can’t trust her any farther than I can throw her?”

  A compassionate smile graced her face. “Jake, I know she hurt you, but there are reasons behind the things people do. You should give her a chance. Maybe time has changed both of you for the better.”

  Jake didn’t quite know what to say in response. His relationship with Coralee had ended seven years ago. He should be past the pain by now. But he still couldn’t bring himself to even try to understand Coralee’s motives. There couldn’t be any good reason for the way she had hurt him. Just when he had been ready to confess his love for her, she had started a fight about him going away to medical school. Without giving him a chance to explain his plan for them, she had stormed out. Less than a year later his best friend, Alan, had broken the news that he and Coralee were going to be married. He understood how Alan had fallen for her, but he would never understand why she had betrayed him that way.

  “Talk to Coralee, Jake,” Pa said. “You’ve already talked to the doc. Now find out her side of this and get it settled. And you know I think you ought to settle the past, too. But I suppose you won’t listen to your old pa any more now than you did when it happened.” He grabbed another cookie and leaned back on the quilt, done saying his piece.

  “Fine, Pa. I’ll go see her about Samuel. But you’re right. I’m not going to dig up the past. It’s done and buried.” Jake reached for more lemonade, determined to ignore the knowing look his parents exchanged.

  He put off the visit for several days. But, finally, he knew he had to confront Coralee. He left his room at the boardinghouse early to stop by Holbrook’s before starting his day at the clinic. As much as he wanted to avoid any contact with Coralee, in a small town like Spring Hill there was no way to steer clear of her forever. He wasn’t ready to trust her, but he supposed hearing her side of the conflict with Samuel wouldn’t cause any harm.

  All too soon, he approached Holbrook’s Apothecary. The old pane-glass door was now embellished with the shop’s name in gilded letters. As he pushed the door open, the familiar scent of herbs and soap filled his nose. Nostalgia washed over him. He missed the hours spent discussing remedies and diseases with William Holbrook. He had always admired the older man’s passion for healing.

  Inside, the shelves that lined one long wall contained neat rows of the same bottles, tins and jars that he remembered. But the counter in front of the shelves now held a large copper scale and several small displays instead of Mr. Holbrook’s piles of paperwork. To his surprise, the small tables on the other side all sat empty. He hardly remembered a time when there hadn’t been at least one customer waiting for an order.

  “Jake!”

  He turned just as a dainty figure swathed in flowered muslin launched into his arms. Laughing at Cat’s exuberance, he swung her around before setting her back on her feet. It was good to see that her unconventional, passionate spirit hadn’t changed with the years.

  “Coralee said you were back, Jake, but I wasn’t sure you’d have time to stop in. All that responsibility with Dr. Jay, you know,” Cat quipped with a wink. She glanced at the door behind the counter. “If you’re here to see Coralee, she’s working with some ingredients in the back. Peppermint, this time. It smells wonderful, unless it burns.” Cat’s pert nose wrinkled at the memory of the acrid smell and Jake grinned.

  “It’s all just part of the job, Catrina, my girl.”

  Cat shot him a good-natured smile and sudden seriousness settled over Jake. Life had been much simpler when they were growing up. Before Coralee had broken his heart, before he’d left Spring Hill, before Alan had died.

  He shook off the gloomy thoughts of the past and looked around. The middle Holbrook sister wasn’t in the store as he expected her to be. “How’s Cecilia?”

  “Oh, she’s fine,” Cat answered, waving one hand in her usual flippant way. “You know she was covering the school when Alan was sick and couldn’t teach?” Jake nodded. “The school board asked her to take over the position after he...” Her voice trailed off as she glanced at the workroom door again. Her brow furrowed and she caught her bottom lip between her teeth, looking as if she was hesitant to even mention Alan’s death. But she shook it off, smoothing her already perfect hair. “Anyway, Cecilia seems to love it. I think being in charge of an entire roomful of children sounds dreadful.” She shuddered dramatically, making Jake chuckle.

  “I’m glad she’s doing well, even if her career makes you ill,” he teased.

  Cat’s light laugh dispelled the somber mood. She pointed toward the office door. “You’d better go see her, Jake. She was hopping mad the other day after she talked to you.”

  “What’s going on with Dr. Jay, Cat?” He had to know what his lifelong friends saw in his mentor.

  Her hands clenched at the mention of the doctor’s name. “Oh, the man is a bother. He doesn’t like Coralee running Papa’s shop and he tells his patients not to come here. She’s working so hard to keep things going, but business is too slow these days.” She gestured to the empty tables. “I think Dr. Jay will come up with a way to get at her no matter what she does.”

  Jake studied the closed workroom door thoughtfully. He trusted Cat, but he also trusted Samuel. “Cat, it’s been good to see you again. I’m going in. Come and check on me if you hear her throwing things.” He winked and squeezed her hand as he headed behind the counter. He paused with his knuckles raised to knock, took a deep breath and prepared to face Coralee.

  * * *

  Inside the workroom Coralee stood at one end of the large wooden table. Wiping her hands on the canvas apron covering her navy blue dress, she pushed back the strands of hair that always seemed to come loose. Jars of herbs, half-full beakers, a small metal scale and Papa’s marble mortar and pestle sat before her, evidence of an early morning full of work. She hoped she was close to figuring out which elements would create the right amount of pain relief with the fewest side effects. But this process wasn’t as easy as extracting the usual herbs like dogwood, ginger root, lavender or spearmint. Mixing elements to form a new compound had been Papa’s idea. After too many failures, Coralee was beginning to think a single herb had to be the answer.

  A firm knock sounded on the door several times before she noticed. She shuffled her notes into a haphazard pile and covered the remnants of burned peppermint and yarrow with a cloth. When it came to making Papa’s shop a success again, she couldn’t be too careful. “Come in,” she called, trying to smooth her hair again.

  When the door opened to reveal Jake, her breath caught for a moment. His chocolate-brown eyes made all thoughts of chemistry and herbs disappear. She couldn’t help admiring the width of his shoulders, broad chest and strong arms as he stood outlined in the doorway. Coralee flushed, realizing the direction of her thoughts. She had given up the right to notice Jake’s looks a long time ago.

  “Good morning.” His deep voice was a bit cool. Not surprising, after her shameful behavior at t
he café the week before. In spite of her embarrassment, her traitorous heart started to beat faster as he stepped into the room. Closer to her.

  Coralee forced herself to sound aloof to cover her unwanted reaction. “Good morning. I hope you haven’t come to spy on my work for Dr. Jay. I’m certain he would love to get his hands on anything he could use to undermine my business more.”

  Jake stiffened at Coralee’s sharp words. “I came to speak to you about the problem you seem to have with Samuel.” His eyes flashed and Coralee realized baiting him might not have been the best response. “I don’t want working in the same town to be awkward, but you aren’t making it easy to get along. Samuel believes that medical professionals should be educated and governed. He doesn’t know anything about your experience, just that you aren’t certified.” Jake gave her a hard look to go along with the forceful words. “He might be a bit old-fashioned concerning his feelings about women in the field, but that’s all it is, Coralee. It’s not personal.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised that you would take his side. Do you have a problem with my level of experience, as well?” She turned sharply on her heel and marched to a glass-fronted cabinet full of clean jars and beakers. Her reactions weren’t smoothing things over at all, but she couldn’t seem to get her emotions in check. Alan, Jake, the failed experiments, Dr. Jay, declining business at the shop... It all swirled in her mind, making her tense and snappish.

  With her back still turned, she heard Jake retreat to the doorway. “I’m sorry you think that of me.” His voice sounded tight and maybe a little wounded. “I’d hoped we could work together, in spite of our past. But I can see that you haven’t become any more reasonable than you were the night I told you about St. Louis.”

  To her dismay, tears filled her eyes. She stood facing the cabinet, pretending to search for something. If she didn’t reply for long enough, maybe he would just leave.

  It must have worked. A moment later she heard the door slam behind him.

  For the next several days Coralee threw herself into her experiments. She spent hours bent over her table pressing tablets and brewing teas. Many of the tinctures she had mixed weeks before were ready for a few of her patients to test. In spite of some mild success, nothing was effective enough to market to the public. As much as she wanted to make a brilliant discovery, she was about to hit a dead end. With each compound she marked off Papa’s list, Coralee grew more and more worried.

  In the evenings she tried to relax in the living quarters behind Lily’s Café with Cat, Cecilia and Aunt Lily. Their conversation flowed around her, but her mind whirled with thoughts of herbs and Jake. Why did she behave so dreadfully every time she saw him?

  “Coralee?” Cecilia’s sweet, concerned voice broke her out of her dark thoughts. “What’s going on? You’re so quiet and distracted these days.”

  She looked around the table at what remained of her family. The shop’s success or failure affected them, too, so she might as well include them in the problems. “As Cat knows, our customer base is dwindling. My experiments on Papa’s research for the new medicine aren’t going well. I don’t know what to do to save the shop.”

  “We still have customers coming in, Coralee. Enough to keep the shop running. We can pay the bills and we have some money in the bank.” Cat sounded unaffected, as always. But her confidence didn’t weaken the constant pressure in Coralee’s chest.

  Cecilia reached over to rub Coralee’s shoulder as she chimed in with her usual optimism. “Papa would understand if things don’t work out. He loved the shop, but he wanted us to be happy more than anything.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But Papa trusted me to run the shop the way he would. I know I can do this. I have to do this.”

  Aunt Lily clucked her tongue. “Now, girl, you worry too much about that old shop of your pa’s. Your life can be much more than just running that place, my dear.” Coralee started to argue, but Lily shushed her and went on. “I think I see what the problem is here. It seems you don’t think you’re meant for anything more than that shop. But I’m here to tell you that’s altogether wrong, child. God has great things for you, happy things. Maybe this is just one small part of your story, not the whole thing.”

  Cat and Cecilia nodded along with Lily’s words, but Coralee couldn’t accept that. God had placed her in the position of running Papa’s shop, carrying on his legacy. She had accepted that His will for her didn’t include her own family, so the shop had to be her sole purpose now. It had to be enough.

  Coralee went to bed early, just to have some time away from her family’s prying eyes. But no matter how much she tossed and turned, she couldn’t sleep. Jake’s presence in town had stirred up feelings she had hoped were long buried, disappointments she had tried so hard to force away in the years since Alan’s death.

  Frustrated by the emotions rising in her, Coralee left her room. She tiptoed through the house, hoping she wouldn’t wake anyone. It only took a few minutes over the stove before she settled in a chair at the kitchen table with a china cup full of steaming tea. She had just started trying to formulate some kind of words of prayer when a voice startled her.

  “Mind if I join you?” Aunt Lily stood in the doorway, a thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Without waiting for an answer, the older woman crossed the room to the teakettle, fixed herself a cup and settled at the opposite end of the table.

  Coralee examined her dear aunt, the woman who had been such a mainstay in her life. Sitting there in her nightdress with a loose braid pulled over her shoulder, Lily Holbrook looked older than Coralee had noticed before. Maybe even a little frail. All the more reason she had to get the shop back on track. Cat depended on it for her livelihood and soon enough Aunt Lily would, too. She was a strong woman, but she couldn’t run the café forever.

  “Well, my dear, something must be bothering you. After the week you’ve had, you ought to be sleeping like a baby.”

  Coralee considered brushing her aunt’s concern aside. She wanted to. But she was humble enough to admit when she needed wisdom. “It’s been years since I’ve spent so much time around Jake. I’m...having a hard time understanding my own feelings about him right now.” The words came out more faltering than she’d intended, but they were out, all the same.

  Understanding filled Aunt Lily’s face. “You have so much history with him, dear girl. Not all good, though, I’d guess. I never did understand why he took off and you started spending your time with Alan.”

  Coralee twisted a lock of long hair between her fingers. “The last night we talked before he left... Aunt Lily, he never even told me he was applying to medical school. Never bothered to ask my opinion. I thought...” Her voice broke, raw emotion rising to the surface. “I thought he was going to tell me he loved me that night. I was so sure he felt the same way I did.”

  “But, instead, he told you he was leaving.”

  Coralee stared into her tea, focusing on the tiny bits of herbs settling in the bottom so she wouldn’t lose her composure. “He was so excited. Of course, I knew he’d planned to become a doctor. But he had already applied and been accepted in St. Louis, without ever considering what would happen to me.”

  Lily sipped her tea thoughtfully. “You were both young and impulsive, dearest. Are you sure he meant to leave you out of it? Could it be that he didn’t realize how his actions would seem to you?”

  “If he was in love with me—planned to spend his life with me—how could he make such an important decision and not want to include me? His medical training took him away for seven years, Aunt Lily. If he had professed his love, that choice would have affected my life, too. It wasn’t a priority for him to include me.”

  The older woman shrugged, unconvinced. “I’ve known Jake Hadley just as long as you have. He’s always been an honest, kind man. I can’t imagine that he meant to hurt you.”

  “
Well, he did hurt me.” Coralee was getting a bit tired of the way Aunt Lily kept defending Jake. Shouldn’t she be taking her niece’s side? “If he loved me, why did he just leave? Yes, we had a misunderstanding. But after that night, he didn’t try to clear things up with me, didn’t even say goodbye. He just left.” Tears were threatening to overflow. Coralee tried to blink them away but they spilled down her cheeks anyway. “He abandoned me. Just like Papa. Just like Alan. They all left.” She rested her head on her arms as a sob escaped.

  She felt Lily’s arms come around her and turned into the older woman’s shoulder. Since Mama had died when Coralee was four, Aunt Lily had been a mother figure in all the girls’ lives. Now her comforting embrace broke open the floodgates. Coralee let all her frustration with Jake and the situation at the shop flow out with her sobs.

  Eventually the tears slowed and Aunt Lily pulled away to look into her eyes. “Dear girl, I’m so sorry. You’ve had your share of loss already at such a young age. Now, it may be hard to swallow, but losing people is part of life for all of us. Don’t sell Jake short because of past mistakes or the chance of losing him in the future. All you have is today. Try to be open to what the good Lord is telling you.”

  Aunt Lily patted Coralee’s back gently as she headed for the door. “I’m going to try to get some sleep. I’ll offer up a few extra prayers for you and Jake.”

  The late-night talk didn’t calm any of the worries in Coralee’s mind. The next day she was more determined than ever to make the shop profitable again. A few hours into the work, she was stopping every few minutes to stretch her aching back and rest her strained eyes. She wanted to push through Papa’s list as fast as she could, but she kept mixing up the measurements and grabbing the wrong herbs. Her conclusions would never be accurate with mistakes in the process. A break was in order.