Page 5 of Songs and Spun Gold
“No, we’ll leave you to wait for customers,” Katy said wearily. Motioning to her friends, she crossed to the blanket that hung between the front room and the milling area. “Come on, the wool goes upstairs.”
They followed her silently across the wood planks, through the tall room in back – quiet since her father wasn’t up yet – and up the steep, narrow staircase in the back corner. She pulled another hanging blanket to the side when she reached the top and held it while her friends passed by.
“Katy. You’re back.” Her mother lifted her head fromwhere she sat in her ancient rocking chair. “Oh. You…brought friends.” She moved her hands to the armrests and leaned forward slightly as if she intended to stand.
“It’s fine, Mother,” Katy said, dropping her burden and rushing across the small room to push her back down. Not that she’d made it very far. With a weary sigh, her mother settled against the backrest. “We’re only dropping off a load of wool.”
Fritz set his pack on the floor. “Don’t mind me, Miss Sabine,” he said politely. “How are you today?”
“As well as…can be expected,” she replied with a tired smile. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “I hope you feel better soon. I’m afraid I must be on my way. Farewell, Miss Sabine, Louise.” Shifting his gaze to Katy, he smiled, his blue eyes soft. “See you later, Katy.”
“Of course. Thank you, Fritz,” she said, sparing him a glance from her examination of her mother’s glassy brown eyes. “Bye.”
As soon as his footsteps faded down the stairs, Louise let out a dreamy sigh. “He’s so sweet.” Then turning toward Katy, she hissed, “Why didn’t you invite him to stay? He’s never going to ask you to walk with him if you don’t give him some encouragement.”
“What?” Katy asked, distracted. She ran her hand over her mother’s olive skin, worrying over its clamminess.
“Fritz,” her friend said. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice that he only had eyes for you this morning. Or are you too busy pining over that noble still?”
The words cut through her abstraction as a familiar twinge in her chest sought to pull her mouth down in a frown. She fought it, closing her eyes briefly as she forced the corners of her mouth back up. A pair of warm brown eyes and a laughing smile taunted her as they danced around the edge of her memory. The whisper of a baritone voice chased after them, thewords just out of her grasp.
“Noble?” her mother repeated weakly. “Is…he back?”
“Of course not,” Louise snorted before Katy could reply. “Five years and not a word, not even to Katy, and you think we would welcome him back to Flussendorf?”
Fair Katrin, the baritone voice laughed faintly.…count the days.
“No. But Katy…needs to find someone.” She lightly patted Katy’s hand where it still rested on her arm. “Can’t if…waiting for him.”
“I’m not, Mother,” Katy said softly. When she caught herself fingering the river stones on her right wrist, she fisted her hand and drew it back slowly, hoping to avoid notice. “I know he’s not coming back.”
A hand slammed against the wall. Jerking her head up, she saw her father leaning against the doorframe of her parents’ bedroom, the curtain that served as a door draped across his shoulders. “Of course, he isn’t,” he growled in his rumbling baritone, nothing like the smooth youthful one still brushing against her thoughts. His graying straw-colored hair hung loose around his face as he scowled at them. “Fancy folk like him have no use for folk like us. No matter what pretty things he may say.”
“He never made any promises.” Katy pinched her lips together, wishing her father could have waited to roll out of bed until after she and Louise had left. Everyone in town knew he’d been at the tavern again last night, but that didn’t mean he needed to appear in front of her friend in his dingy tunic with its dangling strings. He hadn’t even bothered to pull on his boots yet.
“Didn’t he? Maybe he didn’t, but you wanted him to,” her father accused, glaring at her wrist. He pushed off the doorframe and swayed slightly before setting off toward the sturdywooden table that doubled as a counter for food preparation. Settling himself on one of the long benches next to it, he rubbed his forehead with a grimace. “Where’s the water?”
“In the bucket next to the fireplace. Like always,” Katy retorted.
“Don’t you get snippy with me, young lady!”
Katy’s mother tried to sit up. “Josef,” she reprimanded in her soft voice.
“It’s all right, Mother,” Katy said hotly. She glared at her father. “Somehow, the day would be incomplete without him ordering me around.”
“I think I’ll wait downstairs with Adele,” Louise cut in. She backed toward the doorway to the stairs. “I’ll see you when you’re finished with the wool, Katy.”
Katy’s anger drained out as she watched her friend flee. Sighing, she crossed to the cupboard, pulled out a cup, and filled it with the ladle from the bucket. “Here, Father. I’m sorry,” she said quietly as she set it in front of him. Then she emptied her pack, after which she emptied Louise’s pack, too, making a note in her record book of how much there was.
“Katy,” her father said as she lifted the entry blanket. She turned, one foot on the stairs. He lifted his green eyes to meet hers. “I’m sorry, too. You know we’d be lost without you, don’t you?”
She gave him a small smile. “Thank you, Father.” Then she continued down the stairs to fetch her friend for the next load of wool.
CHAPTER 2
Katy
