Love's New Beginning (a Love Comes Softly fanfiction)

Pretty Things

After carefully tracing Missie's feet for new shoes and briefly checking over the list with Marty to be sure they weren't missing anything, Clark headed into town.

The store was bustling, as usual, and Mrs. MacDonald didn't have time to stop and ask him questions about his new wife, much as she appeared to want to. He had her make up the bundle of items for Missie. As he was waiting there by the counter, it occurred to him that winter was coming, and Marty would be cooped up in the house for weeks at a time with only Missie—and himself—for company. She might want something to do. What would Ellen have done? Fancy work, he thought, remembering back. Quilting and knitting and such-like.

When Mrs. MacDonald returned, he asked her to make him up a bundle of such things, paying the added cost without a murmur. When he first saw Marty's poor little trunk and the rickety wagon, it was obvious that she had very little of her own. It didn't bother him to be buying her things—he had the money to spend, she was his responsibility now, and it was the right thing to do to care for her wants as he would have for Ellen's.

Still ... as he took the bundle he could remember bringing similar things home to Ellen, watching her exclaim over them, taking her in his arms as she thanked him. For a startling moment he imagined holding Marty that way, smoothing his hand over her unruly bright hair, and then he shook his head to clear the image away. Neither of them wanted that. He didn't even know where the thought had come from.

When he came in with the first load of items from the wagon, he noticed that Marty was just now building a fire in the stove, and wondered what she and Missie had done all day. Missie seemed fresh and happy as she ran to greet him. He was pleased to see that after their rocky start, Marty and Missie appeard to have taken to one another just fine.

Once he finished the chores, supper was on the table, simple but filling. When they finished eating, he brought out the bundle of items for Missie. Marty even joined in on the wonder of unpacking and showing Missie the things and telling her what they were for.

Missie was beside herself, hugging the new shoes and dancing around with the new coat and bonnet and running back and forth waving her little stockings. Clark thought she might have been just as excited because he and Marty were excited as she was because of the things themselves, but it was hard to say. She always had been drawn to pretty things, flowers and such-like.

All of a sudden she ran out of the room with her stockings fluttering behind her. Clark and Marty looked at each other, wondering what she was doing.

But in a moment, Missie reappeared, dragging the stockings along. In her hands she held a little dress, it looked like, of the material he remembered buying for Marty. She put it into his hands. "Pretty. Mine. Pretty."

He looked it over, seeing how well-made it was, how beautiful the embroidery across the front. Marty had done a good job with this. It touched him that she had taken the time to make something so obviously special for his Missie. It was what he had hoped for, that he would bring her here and she would love Missie, and he was so grateful. He looked up at her, finding her eyes locked on his face as if she was worried about his reaction. As Missie poked at him, he said, "Yeah, Missie, very pretty." But he was looking at Marty as he said it, wanting her to know. After a moment, he cleared his throat, handing the dress back to Missie. "Now ya go and put this away carefully, after yer Mama made it fer ya special."

She did so, while Clark found the rest of the surprises he had brought home. For Missie, a picture book. She was amazed by it, and immediately sat down in the middle of the floor turning the pages and pointing to everything she recognized, babbling away at the pictures as though the characters could hear her.

He had a few new books for himself, to while away the winter. Briefly he wondered if Marty would like him to read to her. Then he thought about reading to Ellen, and somehow that got tangled up in his mind with the moment earlier, and the idea of reading aloud to Marty felt strangely intimate in a way that he wasn't ready to consider. Instead, he laid the other bundle Mrs. MacDonald had put together in front of her.

"I asked Missus MacDonald to put together some things fer ya to work on in winter. Knittin' an' quiltin' an such-like. Thet be okay?"

"More than okay, thank ya." Marty fingered the soft wools, her eyes shining, and Clark looked away.

Missie fussed over bedtime, talking about her book and her shoes and all, and Clark told her in no uncertain terms that all of those things would be there in the morning. He took on the task of readying her for bed while Marty picked up and folded all the little things and put the material away to be made up later into small garments.

And then he wished her good-night, taking himself off to the lean-to, where he lay awake for a long time before falling into a fitful sleep.