“Oh, yes, he is, but don’t the rich always want to get richer? Look at Mr. Kane Taggert.”
The women looked at each other and nodded in agreement.
“I never trusted him from the first,” Terel said. “From the first night he came to dinner I felt uneasy around him. I’m sure he sensed it, so he started courting my poor, dear sister. Poor, poor Nellie. She doesn’t have any idea men like that even exist. Nellie is such a sweet, naïve dear, and for the first time in her life a man was paying attention to her. I hadn’t the heart to tell her what I thought of Mr. Montgomery. Besides, I could have been wrong.”
Terel paused to sniff some more.
“Your instincts were right,” Louisa said.
“But last night,” Mae said, “he seemed to like Nellie so much. He seemed to adore her. I’ve never seen a man look at a woman like that.”
“Mr. Montgomery should have been on the stage,” Terel snapped. “At about nine o’clock I stepped outside for a bit of air—all my many dancing partners were leaving me breathless—and who should be on the porch but Mr. Montgomery?”
“What did he do?” Mae gasped.
“He kissed me!”
“No,” all the women said together.
“How dreadful for you.”
“How frightful.”
“The cad!”
“The scoundrel!”
“I wish he wanted to buy my father’s business,” Mae said dreamily, but she straightened herself when the others glared at her.
“It was what I suspected all along,” Terel said. “My father refused to sell his business, and I guess when Mr. Montgomery found that out he tried to obtain the business another way, by courting Nellie.”
“I did wonder,” Louisa said, “why a man who looks like he does would want a woman like…I mean, not that Nellie doesn’t have a pretty face, but she is a bit…well…”
“You don’t have to be tactful,” Terel said. “Father and I faced the truth a long time ago. Nellie is fat, and she is getting fatter every day. It has been a burden Father and I have always had to bear. We’ve tried everything. Both of us have tried to talk to her. Three years ago Father sent her to a clinic outside Denver. She lost some weight while she was there, but as soon as she was home she gained it all back. We just don’t know what to do with her. She eats whole cakes and pies, dozens of cookies at a time. It’s like a disease with her. We don’t know what to do about her.” Terel buried her face in her handkerchief.
“We had no idea you had kept such a heavy secret,” Charlene said, patting Terel’s shoulder.
“You haven’t heard half of it.”
The women leaned forward again.
“This morning Mr. Montgomery left town on the four A.M. freight train. He checked out of the hotel, no forwarding address, no message to anyone. He just left before daylight. He…he…oh, I can’t say it.”
“We’re your friends,” Charlene said, and Louisa nodded in agreement.
“I think Mr. Montgomery realized that he was not going to get Father’s business, and I think he…he had his way with Nellie.”
The women gasped as one.
“He…”
“She…”
“They…”
“Is she…will she have a baby?” Mae whispered, not really knowing the technical aspect of what Nellie was believed to have done, but her mother had warned her emphatically about men and babies.
“I don’t know,” Terel said into her handkerchief. “What am I going to do? Father has asked me to be the one to tell Nellie that her…her lover has left town. How can I tell her? She is so enamored of the cad that she will never believe anything I say. I’m sure that if I told her about Mr. Montgomery’s kissing me she would undoubtedly think it was sisterly jealousy.”