Dishonoring Jack

Chapter Ten

 All of Jack's wishing and waiting made the days drag by, and when Saturday finally came, she was bursting to see Donovan and take him to Irvington. For all of Irvington's problems--the prejudiced people, long-standing history of discrimination, and peevish gossip--Jack knew that there was also much to love, and she wanted to take him to the medical practice to meet her nieces, Dr. Benjamin, and Hannah.

Jack turned up on the Bookers' front door in the early afternoon on Saturday after a morning spent picking a basketful of produce she would deliver to Corrie. Minnie opened the door on the second knock.

"Come on in, Jack. Donovan is just fetching his keys."

Jack entered the Bookers' home, scouring the room with her eyes for a glance of the man. "Keys? I thought we would walk."

"Why walk when you have an automobile?" MInnie said with a thin smile. "A ride in that beast is almost enough to make me want to come into town."

"Why don't you join us, Minnie? I'm sure the girls would be happy to have you," Jack asked, but Minnie shook her head, her dark hair tied back in a no-nonsense bun at the nape of her neck.

"I'm not bothering nobody. You know I like to keep myself."

Jack did know that Minnie was something of a loner, staying on the outskirts of town and the edges of crowds. The only people she visited regularly were Jack, her next door neighbor, and her daughter, Esther.

"Fine, then. Do you need anything while I'm there?"

"Nothing at all. You have a good time--you and Donovan are both younger at heart than I am, these days," Minnie said, chuckling as she grasped a damp rag from the table and continued cleaning the room, lifting a chipped vase and wiping the table it rested on.

Donovan appeared from the edge of the second bedroom in the small house wearing a fine jacket and dangling a set of shiny metal keys in one hand.

"Are you ready for an adventure, Jack?" he asked.

Jack resented his insinuation that she'd never ridden in a Model T before and she turned away from him. "I've ridden in an automobile before, I'll have you know. I'm not quite so uncultured as you might think."

"Of course you have, but never with me behind the wheel," he said, offering her his arm and an audacious wink at the same time.

His step was light and jaunty, and Jack smiled up at him as she grasped his forearm and he escorted her out the door. It had been years since a man had offered his arm to her for a reason beyond sympathy for an old maid, and the attention ignited a flutter in Jack's stomach that felt foreign and unfamiliar.

"So where are you taking me today, Jack?" Donovan asked as he opened the passenger door for Jack, helping her climb inside.

Jack suddenly felt dawdy in her worn cotton dress and straw hat with her basket full of fruits and vegetables. No matter what Minnie said, she wasn't a foolish girl to go off in an automobile with a man she barely knew. She was nothing but a spinster, and Donovan was a lawyer, a man of education and prestige.

"Jack?" he asked as he started the automobile, the engine groaning and sputtering to life.

"I have, uh, friends in town. My nieces live there, and the eldest is married to the town doctor," Jack stuttered, suddenly at a loss for words.

What in tarnation are you doing? Going courting with a man you scarcely know? Was that what this was, some sort of an outing? It would seem so to anyone who saw them, and Jack felt like she was pretending to be someone she wasn't. But then she considered Matilda Tuttlebrook, the ringleader of the town gossips, and she chortled at how the woman would respond if she saw Jack driving by with Donovan in a shiny new Model T. Oh, how they would talk! Truthfully, it mattered very little what they said. It was her life to live, and live it she would.