Excerpt from The Wrong Christmas Match
Tucker’s Gap, Texas
December 1890
The rasp of Gabe Waggoner’s plane filled the workshop as he guided it along the pine board. A pale curl peeled away, releasing its clean, sharp scent. At the end, he ran his palm over the newly smoothed surface, then bent to sight along the board.
Better.
One more pass ought to finish the last shelf. Then he could assemble the pieces and apply the varnish. Once it dried, Mrs. Talbot’s Christmas gift from her son would be ready.
Gabe set the plane to the wood again. There was satisfaction in bringing a rough board true, fitting each piece into place until the whole matched the picture in his mind. Wood generally told a man what was wrong. A warp could be seen, a rough place felt, a bad joint measured and corrected.
The door flew open hard enough to bang against the wall.
“Miss Felicity killed Penny!”
Gabe jerked upright. The plane slipped from his hand, striking the worktable with a clatter.
His nephew Peter stood in the doorway, cap askew and cheeks red from the cold. His twin, Paul, crowded in behind him, looking equally grim. Peter generally sounded the alarm and Paul supplied the facts once his brother ran out of outrage.
Gabe moved the plane away from the edge. “Who’s Penny?”
“Our rabbit.” Paul’s tone said his uncle should already know that.
“At school,” Peter clarified. “And Miss Felicity killed her.”
Gabe was relieved that no person had met an untimely end, but the boys’ distress was real. It had been little more than a year since they’d buried their father. Perhaps losing the rabbit had struck an already tender place.
He knew the new teacher only by sight—a slender young woman with dark hair and clear gray eyes—but he doubted she’d deliberately harmed the class pet.
He leaned back against the workbench. “Come inside and shut the door. You’re letting in half of December.”
Paul obeyed while Peter marched farther inside. Neither removed his coat. Apparently, they considered this an emergency too grave for comfort.
Gabe folded his arms. “Tell me what happened. From the beginning.”
“We already did.” Peter planted his feet. “Teacher killed Penny.”
“So you said. I asked for the whole story.”
Gabe preferred problems he could examine, measure, and set right. Unfortunately, his nephews’ troubles were seldom that accommodating. Still, he was glad they brought those troubles to him.
Peter’s frown deepened. Paul glanced at his brother, apparently deciding indignation had contributed all it could.
“When we got to school this morning, Miss Felicity had covered Penny’s cage with a cloth,” Paul said.
“And she wouldn’t let us see her,” Peter added.
“She said Penny died. Then she sent Nate Rayburn to fetch Mr. Billings.”
Gabe remembered the reddish-brown rabbit their former teacher had kept in the schoolroom. The boys had talked about the critter often enough—who had fed her, who had forgotten to latch her cage, and how long she’d hidden beneath Sally’s desk the time she escaped.
“I’m sorry.” Penny had been part of their school days since they started. “But rabbits don’t live forever.”
“She was fine yesterday,” Peter insisted.
“Was she?”
“She ate her cabbage.”
Not the most convincing proof of good health, but Peter’s expression warned that saying so would accomplish little. “Penny was getting old.”
“She wasn’t that old.”
“She was already there when you started school.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.” Peter shoved his hands into his pockets. “Besides, Miss Felicity didn’t like her.”
“She wouldn’t hold her,” Paul said. “And she stepped back if one of us brought Penny close.”
“And she sneezed whenever she went near the pen,” Peter added. “A lot.”
Ah. “That doesn’t mean she disliked Penny.” Gabe considered how best to explain to nine-year-olds. “Have you ever breathed in pepper and started sneezing?”
Both boys nodded.
“Did you sneeze because you hated the pepper?”
“No.” Paul scrunched up his nose. “It made my nose tickle, and I couldn’t help it.”
“Exactly. Some other things affect certain folks the same way. Being near Penny made Miss Felicity sneeze and her eyes water. She couldn’t help it any more than you could help sneezing at pepper.”
Peter’s mouth tightened. “That must be why she killed Penny. But it wasn’t Penny’s fault.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Gabe held Peter’s gaze. The boy could fit an assortment of facts together backward and defend the result with the confidence of a circuit judge. “But Miss Felicity’s sneezing doesn’t mean she killed Penny.”
The twins exchanged a look. Clearly, they considered their uncle unusually slow to grasp the obvious.
“When Mr. Billings came, she told him to take care of Penny,” Paul said.
“And he carried her away.” Peter’s voice cracked on the last word.
There it was—the hurt beneath the anger. Peter could sustain a good head of indignation for quite a while, but it never concealed his softer feelings from anyone who knew him.
They’d loved that rabbit and hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.
Gabe pulled two stools over and motioned for them to sit. Peter dropped onto one with ill grace. Paul settled on the other.
“Mr. Billings looks after the schoolhouse and grounds, doesn’t he?”
They nodded.
“Then I expect Miss Felicity asked him to bury Penny.”
Peter stared at the toes of his boots. “She could’ve let us do it.”
“Maybe she thought seeing Penny like that would upset you.”
“We’re not babies.”
“No, but she hasn’t known you long. She likely did what she thought was kind.”
Peter scuffed one boot against the floor. “Miss Sally would’ve known.”
There it was. Penny wasn’t the only thing they’d lost.
Gabe drew over an empty nail keg and sat facing them. “Miss Felicity can’t know what Sally knew. She’s only been teaching here a couple of weeks.”
“She does everything wrong,” Peter muttered.
“She moved geography lessons to mornings,” Paul said, as if offering evidence of a serious failing.
“And she makes us show our figuring instead of just writing the answer. Miss Sally never made us do that.”
Gabe hid a smile. “A hardship, to be sure.”
Peter gave him a suspicious look.
“I wish Miss Sally hadn’t left,” Paul said.
Peter’s indignation faded. “Me too.”
Gabe understood that sentiment better than their complaints about geography lessons. Sally Roberts had taught them for three and a half years—no small portion of a nine-year-old’s life. To the boys, the schoolhouse without her must feel as wrong as their mother’s kitchen would with a stranger at the stove.
“She had a good reason for leaving,” he said. “She got married. She wanted to make a home with her husband and, someday, perhaps start a family.”
Paul’s brows drew together. Peter slowly lifted his head.
“Does that mean if Miss Felicity got married, she’d leave too?”