Pieces of Dreams Read Free Page B

as if he had come home.
    As the older woman trundled off in the direction of the kitchen, Melly reached to take Caleb's hand and give him a swift peck on the cheek that made his brother blush scarlet. Falling back on her role as hostess, then, she directed Caleb to draw up the single chair that sat against the near wall. As that was being done, she turned back to him.
    “You remember everyone, Conrad?” she said with careful politeness. “That's Lydia there on the end, of course. Her father owns McDougall's Mercantile. And my cousin Sarah, seated there next to her?”
    He smiled, responding easily to the greetings as Melly continued quickly around the sewing circle. He was glad of the reminders. The ladies had changed out of all recognition since he’d left Good Hope. Except for Melly.
    The introductions done, Melly resumed her seat and drew Caleb down next to her. Conrad, left to fend for himself, dragged a chair closer to the group of females, though not quite near enough to be a part of it. That was always the way it had been for him, or so it seemed—outside the charmed circle.
    “Well, I have to say Melly's mistake seems perfectly natural to me,” Sarah Franks declared as she looked with raised blonde brows from him to his brother. “I think I might have trouble telling the two of them apart if we met on the street tomorrow.”
    “Maybe so,” tall, auburn-haired Lydia McDougall said with a sly and laughing glance at her friend, “but Melly never kisses Caleb hello like that.”
    Now that was interesting, Conrad thought, his gaze on Melly's flaming face. Why, he wondered? No cooperation? But the answer ceased to matter as he caught the fleeting glance she flung in his direction. That look reproached him, castigated him for his presumption—and sent a shaft of sheer yearning winging through him.
    “Yes, and maybe it's just that we've never seen her do it,” Ester Montgomery said.
    Conrad didn't care for that idea. He didn’t care for it at all.
    “She used to be able to tell Caleb and Conrad apart with a single glance, the one person in the whole town who could,” the little one, Biddy, commented. “Seems she had better start practicing that trick again.”
    They were all looking at him and his brother now. Conrad shifted uncomfortably, feeling the tips of his ears grow hot. At the same time, he knew that Biddy was right. Melly had usually been able to recognize him on sight back in the old days. He could fool her sometimes, if he tried hard enough, but not often.
    Aunt Dora came scurrying in again just then. Taking charge without effort, she steered the conversation into safer channels, demanding to know where he had been and all the things he’d done in the long years he had been gone. Conrad obliged with a version that was considerably more colorful than actuality in some places, considerably less in others. Mustn't disappoint the ladies, but heaven forbid that he should shock them.
    Even as he spoke, however, his mind was busy elsewhere. Melly had been—what?—all of thirteen when he left? He remembered her as a princess in pig-tails, one of those girls who never seemed to go through an awkward stage. Smart, sweet, tender-hearted, she had her temper, maybe from being a little spoiled after what she went through in the steamboat explosion, being thrown into the water and half-drowned, and losing her parents. She had ruled the play yard with a high hand, ordering all the boys around like so many hired hands. He had not been among them, of course, being nearly ten years older, but he had enjoyed watching her antics and always felt a warm spot for her in his heart.
    All the signs had pointed toward Melly being a beauty one day, but he hadn't been able to stick around to see it. The sea had called to him—or so he had thought. Mostly, he had just needed to get away from his old man and Good Hope, Missouri, to see the world, be on his own, make something of himself.
    Conrad hadn't gotten along with his