But I wasn’t the only guilty one here. I had erred as much as Officer Krugel. Two boys with eyes wide from all the excitement and disappointment they’d encountered that morning were staring at me with the exact same message in their eyes that my heart was feeling: disappointment, disillusionment, yet with sprinklings of hope among the dark reflections of despair.
We would all need to build up our trust again. Perhaps it was like a bank, and the more we put in, the greater our savings would be. I’d heard about such banks, and Frank had explained that he kept some money in one, but the idea of someone keeping my money, someone who I’d learned to trust completely, just seemed illogical. But perhaps that was what I needed to do, for the sake of the boys, for Mrs. Penn, for Frank, and for me.
I guess everyone living together has to work on trust. I’d written letters to those I’d left behind in the village. That was a kind of trust. Had my letters been the cause of these two men coming to Tinkle Town? Had someone betrayed my whereabouts?
But confrontations like this needed to be made final, anyway, to bite off the many tails of the monster. Frank told me that both men would be jailed and judged for their false accusations. That would mean another court session — not something to look forward to, and what if the town didn’t like my being a witch, which is what the preacher kept calling me? What if they . . .
The deputy took the two men off to jail, the preacher still calling out that we should not suffer a witch to live. Mr. Barner just struggled against his handcuffs and cursed up a storm. I hoped that Mrs. Penn’s hands over the boys’ ears would keep them from hearing the nasty words flowing from the man’s lips. It was too late to wish they hadn’t heard that I was a witch.
I led Frey back to unsaddle him. My escape hadn’t gotten me very far. I supposed that was a good thing, because I truthfully didn’t want to go. Mrs. Penn had reminded me that running was a coward’s way. She’d said that I must stick around to see if everything couldn’t all get ironed out.
I closed my eyes and tried not to see the faces of the villagers throwing their stones at me, their mouths twisted ugly, their eyes shooting out hate, their bodies primed to hurt me, and maybe even kill me.
Frank took the saddle from me and hung it up on the rack he’d built for me. I slipped off Frey’s bridle and spoke softly to him, explaining that we couldn’t go for a ride at that moment, but I promised him I’d take him out the next day.
“Things are going to be okay now, Shama. Nobody in the town will believe you could be evil. They know you. They’ve accepted you. They, frankly, adore you. You’ve won them all over with the sweetness of your smile.”
He had wrapped his arm around me, and was walking me back to the boys and Mrs. Penn.
All three of them, plus the doctor, were beaming at me as if I’d done something marvelous. Mrs. Penn even winked.
“You bet your boots they’ll stand by you, young lady. Now that you’re the fiancé of our head sheriff, they will be even more loyal,” she added.
Fiancé? I waited a moment for Frank to deny it, to rush forward and assure Mrs. Penn that there was no such agreement, but he didn’t. Instead, he’d gently pulled me closer, kissed my forehead, and said, “You bet they won’t dare say a single negative about you. Not ever. Because you’re the one I love, and the one who will soon become my wife.”
I didn’t negate the statement that day, but I didn’t agree either. My insides were raw, tender, and uncertain. I bit my lip but vowed to keep my relationship with Frank in hesitant mode for a while.
Stability isn’t achieved by someone just telling you the quicksand is solid enough to walk on.