This book is not a sequel to What Heals the Heart. (BTW, that book is available on Kindle Unlimited, for those who have access to it.) Rather, as with many romance series, it returns to the same locale -- Cowbird Creek, in this case -- and shifts the focus to other characters. Tom and Jenny both appear in the first book, but now take center stage. Those who've read the first book will see the reappearance of its main characters, Joshua and Clara, as well as important secondary characters like Freida, Jedidiah, and Madam Mamie. And you'll get to know some other characters, like Silas Finch, rather better.
Without further ado, here's the final excerpt, in which Jenny asks Madam Mamie about whether she's seen any girls "in the life" who got married, and Mamie tells her what happened to some who did.
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Mamie stood up from her desk and snapped her fingers in Jenny’s face. “Come back here, girl! Where’d you drift off to? I was
telling you about that gentleman I’ll likely be sending your way, next time he
comes in.”
Jenny hadn’t heard a word of it. “I’m sorry,
ma’am. Could you tell me the most important part over again?”
Mamie studied her face and said, in a tone
close to a warning, “I hope you’re not still fretting about that harpy in town.
You’ve had plenty of time to get over her.”
It probably wasn’t the time to ask Mamie
what a harpy was. “No, ma’am. I mean — I’m not, and yes’m, I’ve had time
enough.”
Mamie shook her head, closed the door, and
pointed to a chair. As Jenny lowered herself into it, Mamie leaned back against
the desk instead of going back behind it. “Set yourself down. Whatever’s
cluttering up your mind, you’d best spill it so there’s room for what I tell
you.”
She’d been trying to get up the nerve to
ask Mamie a question, and here Mamie was ordering her to. “Ma’am, I was just
wondering, that is . . . have any of your girls got married? To a customer, or
someone in town, or anyone?”
Mamie looked a little smug, like she’d
guessed what she was going to hear. “You were just wondering. Curiosity out of
nowhere. Not because you’ve grown fond of a particular customer.”
Jenny usually knew better than to answer
back to Mamie, but Mamie was poking her in a tender spot. “I don’t see how my
reason changes the answer none.”
Mamie’s hand twitched like it might want to
give Jenny a slap. Jenny held her breath, trying not to scoot her chair any
farther from the desk. But Mamie put her hand back on the desk and even
chuckled. “I’d rather a girl have spirit than bore the life out of me. All
right, then, we’ll start with my answering your question. I’ve seen it three
times in the years I’ve run this place, and once before then. And now, before
you get all starry-eyed, you should ask me how it worked out.”
Jenny slumped back in the chair. “Yes,
ma’am, please.”
“The one who got married when I worked
elsewhere, I never did find out about, being as I left not long after. The
first one of my girls who married was back here inside of three months. The
man’d gone back East and left her. Later she heard he’d gone and got married
again, no doubt not bothering to tell his new bride she was the second of two —
or maybe more.”
Jenny gasped, and right away felt a fool.
Mamie kept going. “The second one stayed married, ‘til she died in childbed.
The third, well, they left town, heading farther west. I got a letter from her
a while back. She was still married, but he didn’t treat her too well. Kept
throwing what she’d been up to her, and spending his evenings at a dirty little
hookshop in their dirty little town. She daren’t complain, naturally, and he
knew as much.”
Jenny put her chin down, knowing it
probably made her look like a sulky child. “But it doesn’t have to turn out that way. The one who died, she might’ve been
happy if she’d lived. Not every man would treat a woman like that last fellow.”
Mamie slumped a little, which hardly ever
happened, and sighed, which happened even less. “Not every man, it may be, but
if you were betting — such as betting your heart and your future — that’s the
way to bet. A man might think he can handle his woman having been a soiled
dove, but after a while it eats at him. It’d be a rare kind of man who can live
with it. Maybe one who actually thinks that men and women aren’t so different
deep down, and that if a man can lie with a passel of women and then love and
be true to just one, a woman can do the same with a man.” Now it was Mamie who
had a faraway sort of look. “Don’t know as I’ve ever met a man like that, at
least to know he was.”
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I hope you've enjoyed these excerpts -- and I hope you enjoy the book!
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