Page 61 of Wyoming Promises
Chapter Seventeen
Lola shook the blanket from the line and folded its worn softness. “He wants to clear his name.”
Grace stopped short, pulling the basket away. “Hasn’t he done that already?”
Lola focused on a precise fold in the tablecloth she held. “Of course he has. I’m certain even Jake has no reason to suspect him by now. Bridger went this morning to show him...” She let her voice trail off. “To help him finish his official report on Pete’s death.”
But Grace smiled with satisfaction, lips smug and eyes gleaming. She raised the container for the next pins to drop. “I knew from the start.”
“Knew what?”
Lola jostled from Grace’s playful push. “I knew he was a good man.”
Lola focused on removing the next linen from the line, thankful the full sheet hid her face a few moments. “I concede your point. Bridger Jamison is a fine and upstanding man. But what does it matter to me?”
Grace tugged on the sheet. Lola grasped the corner before it fell to the dust, but it no longer shielded her from Grace’s too-knowing gaze. “Because I see the way you look at one another, and it does my heart good to see my best friend falling in love.”
“Love?” Lola grasped the sheet in a twisted roll, wishing she could wipe the heat from her cheeks. She fumbled with the cloth and her words. “He’s been very helpful, and I appreciate that, nothing more.”
“You had supper with him last night.” Grace gave a knowing smile.
“That was business!” Lola plunked the last sheet into her laundry basket and strode toward the door.
Grace stopped her with two hands grasped against her shoulders, the bucket of clothespins bouncing against her arm. “You’re not honestly going to stand there and tell me you aren’t the least bit interested in him otherwise. We’ve been friends too long for that.”
Lola twisted for the breeze to blow strands of loose hair from her face. She caught sight of the woodshop door before looking her friend in the hopeful eye. Was Bridger becoming more than she could admit, even to herself? The memory of his smile in the lantern light across the table last night filled her with warmth and spoke truth to her heart. “You’re supposed to be too preoccupied to notice such things,” she said, feeling flushed.
Grace sobered. Lola dropped her basket to the ground and wrapped her friend in her arms. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know, and it’s all right. But just because I’m grieving doesn’t mean I stop feeling joy in seeing other people drawn together.” The hint of a smile pulled her pink lips. “Perhaps it makes me look for it all the more. I’m happy for you!”
Lola picked up the laundry again, glad to have it off the line before gray clouds over the mountains made good on their threat of rain in town. “I know so little about him. I’m not even sure where he stands with the Lord.”
“There’s time for that. You’re not betrothed...yet,” Grace said, following behind.
Lola winced at the reminder. Her record of courtship carried tarnish already. “I’m not so sure I can trust myself again,” she said, plunking to the step outside the back door.
Grace lowered to the space next to her, and Lola shifted over. “God allows us mistakes to increase our wisdom sometimes. It’s not like when the two of you shared a tutor and Ike seemed like the only eligible man on earth.”
She slid away so Grace could follow her inside. “You make it sound as if I were desperate.”
“Maybe you were, then. But look at you now. A beautiful, kind, intelligent woman of business in a bustling territory town where women are gaining opportunities all the time. You’ve come into your own, Lola. Your papa would be so proud.”
Lola glanced around the tidy kitchen. The sturdy cupboards and smooth sideboard carried her father’s keen workmanship and attention to detail. “You make it sound as if Papa’s death improved me.” Hurt lingered in her tone and grief ached in her chest.
“Oh, Lola,” Grace said, drawing her as close as her expanding middle allowed. “Not that! Not at all! I’m saying there is no great loss without some small gain. God never takes something from us that He doesn’t use to draw us closer, to mold us into the people He wants us to become.”
Tears escaped from Lola’s clenched eyelids as she held her friend close. She thought over the hurt, grief and loneliness of the months since Papa’s death. Over the new sense of confidence and satisfaction in her work, her secret hopes and her plans to somehow find a way into medical school. Would she ever have had the gumption to send those applications to the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania if Papa were still here? Would she have had reason to meet Bridger Jamison?