Bluebonnet Belle by Lori Copeland

same fate,” Beulah mused.
    â€œGrandpa refuses to talk about Mama.”
    The loss of his only daughter during a routine hysterectomy seven years earlier had traumatized him. Riley had never fully recovered. When Delane’s name was mentioned, he refused to discuss her.
    â€œAny man who takes in a fourteen-year-old girl to raise—a pigheaded fourteen-year-old, I might add—can’t be as close-minded as you paint him to be.”
    Sighing, April went to look out the pharmacy window. “I saw Mama die. And she didn’t need to. If that doctor had known more, if he’d had something like Lydia’s vegetable compound to at least try before surgery, my mother might still be alive. That’s why I do what I do—not to torment Grandpa, but in the hope that someone else won’t lose their mother or daughter to needless medical procedures.”
    â€œThen why wouldn’t your grandpa encourage you to sell a product intended to help women?”
    â€œHe thinks the compound is nonsense, and it wouldn’t help anyone.”
    â€œHe told you this?”
    â€œHe doesn’t have to. I’ve heard him talking. He thinks women are silly for taking it.”
    â€œStill, I think you should tell Riley what you’re doing.”
    â€œYou’re entitled to your opinion. Just make sure you don’t let it slip when Grandpa comes in to buy sundries.”
    â€œDon’t worry about me,” Beulah told her as April opened the door to leave.
    â€œAnd you don’t have to worry about me.”
    That was the nice thing about best friends; they didn’t have to worry about each other.

Chapter Four
    D atha Gower had kept house for Riley Ogden for over five years. Since she was eleven years old she’d polished floors, hung wash, cooked and cleaned.
    Ogden’s Mortuary was a towering, two-story landmark with a large, wraparound front porch that caught the sun in the morning, and a roomy back porch that offered a cool breeze in the afternoon.
    It took a powerful lot of work to keep it all clean.
    A screened-in porch on the north side of the house allowed Mr. Ogden privacy after a long, trying day. He was known to sit for hours, drawing on his meerschaum pipe while watching the foot traffic that passed in front of the mortuary, knowing that one day, like as not, he’d be burying every last passerby. Why, he could guess within an inch how tall anyone was and what size coffin it’d take to put them away.
    Riley lived with his granddaughter in six big rooms above the main parlor. The place had been tastefully decorated by Riley’s deceased wife, Effie, who had favored overstuffed chairs, cherrywood and a passel of worrisome trinkets that needed dusting.
    Wisteria vines trailed the length of the white porch railings shaded by large, overhanging elm trees. Datha and Flora Lee, her grandmother, lived in servants’ quarters behind the main house. Flora Lee had been with the Ogden family all her life. Flora Lee’s daddy, Solomon Tobias Gower, had served the Ogden family during the Civil War, refusing to leave them when the Emancipation Proclamation was effected. The Gowers thought themselves lucky to serve such a fine, upstanding family.
    When Flora Lee had gotten too crippled to do much around the house, Datha took over. She’d lived with Flora Lee since her mama died in childbirth. On good days Flora Lee still came to the main house to help clean, but most days her rheumatism kept her home. Comfortably lodged in nice quarters, the two served the Ogden family with humble gratitude and tireless loyalty, counting their blessings that April and Riley were kind, caring people who were more family than employers.
    In Flora Lee’s youth, long before the dead were taken to funeral homes for eulogies, long before the Ogdens had turned their private home into a mortuary, Flora Lee had helped Owen Ogden, Riley’s papa, to prepare friends and neighbors for