Still House Pond by Jan Watson

but she carried hers, swinging the paper bag against her skirts. If no one had been watching, she would have skipped, but the town was bustling with folks doing their weekly shopping.
    In front of the barbershop, she saw a couple of ladies she knew from church and stopped to chat, which led to showing off her purchases.
    â€œMy,” one of the ladies exclaimed, “I don’t know when I’ve seen a prettier button.”
    â€œWhat are you looking for today?” Manda asked.
    â€œJust stocking the pantry,” one said. “Nothing near as nice as what you bought.”
    â€œA new broom,” the other said. “Mine’s near worn to a nub.”
    â€œI saw some in the window of the hardware store,” Manda said. “See you all tomorrow?”
    â€œCertainly,” one of the women said. “See you in church.”
    The livery station where Dimmert was selling his wares was on the outskirts of town. She walked on. Just across the street in front of the hotel, a crowd was forming. A little boy danced a jig as a familiar voice filled the air—soaring and dipping like a bird on the wing. She paused to listen. “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies,” surely one of her favorites. How often did she and her sisters sing that tender tune of young love and dire warning? In a flash the song carried her right back to her childhood before the death of her mother turned things wrong.
    Mommy hadn’t been one to cuddle and spoil her children. She had been a woman of few words and could go days without uttering an unnecessary one. But on hot summer nights after a supper of lard on biscuits or soup beans from the bottom of the pot, Mommy’s fine voice would soften the edges of their hunger. She would start a song, and soon the girls would join in harmonizing and singing parts. They had loved “Barbara Allen” and “Pretty Polly,” “Mary of the Wild Moors” and “The Wayfaring Stranger.”
    And “Tender Ladies,” of course. Mommy had sung those words like a promise: “Love is handsome. Love is charming. Love is beauty while it’s new. Love grows old. Love grows colder and fades away like morning dew.”
    Mommy had had her reasons to be a little jaded by love’s sweet promise, Manda suspected.
    Manda crossed the street. It was the middling man. Manda knew it before the crowd dispersed, pitching change in a felt hat at his feet. She watched as he tucked a fiddle in a black case before pocketing the coins. Her heart trilled. Any moment now he might notice her and say hello. Instead, he slicked back his hair, stuck the wide-brimmed hat on his head, and quick as a wink disappeared around the side of the building.
    Manda couldn’t believe it. She’d lost her chance.
    Heart speeding up, she brushed past the bench where he had been sitting and glanced down the alleyway between the hotel and the grocery store next door. Two men and a dog with a long, skinny tail stood halfway down the alley, just past an overflowing trash bin. After a moment’s bickering, money and liquor changed hands. White mule, Manda thought, seeing what looked clear as springwater in the quart jar the middling man held. Nobody’d pay money for water. The other man elbowed the middling man, and he looked up the alley, catching her watching. Her heart thumped, beating painfully against her rib cage.
    She ducked around the corner and nearly ran across the street. She kept glancing over her shoulder as she hurried along the slatted wooden sidewalk, but nobody followed. Her heart didn’t settle until she neared the livery station, where she could see several men selling wares from the beds of wagons: ax handles and one-eyed hoes and gallon jars of molasses. She’d just spotted Dimmert and started his way when she felt a presence close as a shadow behind her.
    â€œWhere you going in such a hurry, good-looking?” the middling man said, stepping