A Time for Everything (13 page)

Jonathan paused along the path and
pointed at the garden. “My mama planted those herbs. She liked the
lavender best because it smelled good.”

Trying not to show too much enthusiasm
over his voluntary statement, Portia simply nodded and spoke in a
neutral tone. “It’s a very relaxing scent. I used to add it to our
pillows when we stuffed them with fresh feathers in the
spring.”

“
Mama did that,
too.”

He leapt from one stepping stone to
another through the middle of the herb garden and turned left
beside the vegetable garden. Portia breathed in the damp, slightly
decayed scent of freshly worked soil. She felt like leaping for joy
from hearing the sound of her student’s voice but decided the best
course of action was to act as though he’d never been
mute.

Passing around the side of the house,
she spied a root cellar.

“
What’s this?” she called
to Jonathan, who had scampered past it. She hoped his talkative
streak hadn’t already passed.

He doubled back and smiled. “It’s a
root cellar. Wanna see?”

“
I would love
to.”

The smell of musty earth, potatoes,
and old wood wafted out when he opened the door. She lingered on
the bare dirt a few feet behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he
gestured to her to come closer.

Portia ducked to stand beside him on
the other side of the short doorway. There were barrels of salt
pork, jars of dried fruits, smoked meats wrapped in gauze, turnips,
and a few chairs. The cellar was far from full, but it held enough
to get them through the spring.

“
I used to play hide and
seek with Mama and Pa,” he said while he smiled into the dark
interior. “I’d hide in here. They’d look all over the place,
hollering for me while I peeked through the cracks in the door. I
was too little to know it then, but I think they were just
pretending they couldn’t find me.”

“
I bet you’re right,” she
said. “I used to love hide and seek, too. Maybe we can play
sometime.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“
But don’t think I’ll
pretend I don’t know where you are, now that I know your
tricks.”

He flashed another smile, followed by
a quick laugh, before he skipped on ahead. They continued beyond
the cellar where a wagon path lined with tall cedars ran past the
garden out to a field and a small house. She could make out the
shape of a man and mule plowing in the distance, Isaac perhaps, and
figured he and Bessie lived in that little house.

All around her, it seemed the land was
waking up from a bad dream — stretching, yawning, and trying to
shake itself into normality. And if normal meant that she and
Jonathan and Bessie could be friends, all the better.

They reached the front of the house
and followed the drive down the hill toward the stable. The large
barn, white like the main house, must have been a grand structure
at one time. Now its paint was faded and chipped, doors and
shutters sagged, and the roof had sections of missing shingles. As
they neared the paddock, she caught movement — a man and a
horse.

Jonathan ran ahead, climbing to stand
on the bottom slat of the paddock fence, arms crossed and draped
over the top. Mr. Stanford held a lead rope taut in one hand and a
smooth stick about four feet long in the other. He stood still in
the middle of the paddock with a pretty chestnut horse on the other
end of the line.

He must have been training her. Or
trying to, anyway.

The horse was having none of it. She
pranced and tossed her head, huffing and blowing the entire time.
Occasionally, she kicked at the air behind her and reared, her
hooves thudding to the ground in cloud of dust. Mr. Stanford
maintained a safe distance, calmly pivoting along as if there
wasn’t a rowdy horse on the end of the line. He made a sound like,
“Shh,” over and over again, perhaps to calm her. Portia feared he’d
take a whack at the poor animal with that stick, but he kept it
pointed to the ground at his side.

Jonathan took no notice of her when
she leaned on the fence just a yard away. Clearly enraptured with
the training session, he watched every move his father made and how
the horse responded. Mr. Stanford focused solely on the horse and
paid them no mind.

As if some silent agreement had been
reached, the horse stopped her antics and slowed to a trot. Mr.
Stanford loosened the rope considerably and held it with a relaxed,
open hand, though he didn’t let go of the lead.

“
See that?” Jonathan
whispered.

It startled Portia to see how he had
scooted along the fence and now stood right beside her.

“
What?” she whispered
back.

“
That’s called float in
the rope. When the horse does what you want it to, you let the rope
float down like that. If it’s doing bad, you tighten the rope until
it obeys again.”

“
I see,” she said, amazed
at such insight from this little boy.

She turned her attention back to Mr.
Stanford. He led the horse around the paddock, and the filly walked
right beside him like they had always been friends. When the two of
them came back around from the far side of the space, Mr. Stanford
stopped. The horse stopped along with him. He rubbed the thick
mane, the white-striped muzzle, the flicking ears. Strangely, he
made little clicking noises every time he touched a different body
part on the animal.

It was amazing, this dance between
horse and man. Portia suspected she’d seen a glimpse of what he
must have been like before the war. Before he came back to a dead
wife and a dying business. The haggard tension on his face had
melted away. There was a softness to his eyes and voice that
soothed and encouraged the filly. A gentleness in his hands as he
helped her get accustomed to his touch. Pure peace and serenity
surrounded them all, and she felt truly blessed to witness
it.

Until Jonathan’s foot slipped off the
fence slat; he banged his chin and let out a yelp. The spell was
broken. The horse reared and whinnied. Man and hat were knocked to
the ground in different directions. Mr. Stanford let go of the
line, and the horse fled to the opposite end of the paddock.
Pushing himself off the ground, he retrieved the wayward hat and
brushed his thick, dark hair from his forehead. He slapped the dirt
from his pants and strode to the fence where Portia and Jonathan
stood. The boy rubbed his chin, but cowered as his father
approached.

“
Why aren’t you in the
house, getting your lessons?” Though he directed the question at
Jonathan, he glared at Portia.

“
We brought you lunch,”
she said. “Didn’t we, Jonathan?”

The poor boy’s eyes watered. He
pressed his hand to his injured chin and looked frantically between
his father and teacher. Portia gave him a nod of encouragement,
hoping he would say something, whether to argue his case or to
apologize. Anything.

His father’s rant continued, “You
should have left the basket there in the barn. I can’t have you out
here distracting me. I’m having a hard time getting this horse to
calm down and trot.”

Jonathan cast a furtive glance at
Portia and sprinted away toward the house.

Deep lines formed crevices on Mr.
Stanford’s face. So much for peace. He waited until his son was out
of earshot then impaled her with those sharp eyes.

“
I’m not paying you to
stand around and keep me from my work,” he snapped.

Heart speeding, fists tightening, it
had come down to fight or flee. Portia knew what she ought to do,
but she could feel her chin jutting toward him, begging for a
challenge.

“
You aren’t paying me at
all, remember?”

He looked shocked for a moment before
he resumed his angry-with-everything look. She became certain hers
would be the briefest employment on record.

He plopped his hat back on his head.
“Listen here, that horse could have kicked Jonny right in the head.
It’s not safe out here, especially with a filly like
that.”

Oh, how she wanted to tell him that
his son was speaking again, but she had to let Jonathan do that
himself. She could still fight on his behalf and try to get his
father to take notice of him. “I think he knows a lot more about
horses than you give him credit for. Besides, there isn’t much in
the textbooks he doesn’t know already. He might benefit from
spending time out here with his father, learning the family
business.”

“
He’s still too
young.”

“
Really? And how old
were
you
when you
first climbed on a horse’s back and worked alongside your
father?”

He forfeited their staring contest and
looked down at the ground, arms crossed. “That’s not the point. I
don’t want him getting hurt.”

She suspected as much, and
truth be known, she’d have probably been overprotective with Abby
had she survived. Would she have listened to reason if she were
in
his
shoes?
Probably not, but it was always easier to see the truth from the
outside looking in.

She ventured one step closer to the
fence, softening her voice the way he did to calm the horse. “You
can’t protect him forever, no matter how much you want to. And
ignoring him is doing him more harm than good. He needs
you.”

He made some sort of growling noise
and started to walk away, pausing only long enough to say, “It’s
your job to teach my son, not to give me advice on how to be a
father. I have to get back to work. I expect you to do the
same.”

Biting her tongue until it hurt, she
squeezed out a submissive, “Yes, Mr. Stanford.”

“
Good.”

Closing the conversation with that
last word, he approached the horse and picked up the lead rope
again. Defeated, if only temporarily, Portia walked back up the
hill toward the house feeling slightly unsteady on her feet.
Whatever had come over her, she had no idea. It had all happened so
quickly. She was lucky he didn’t send her packing with the way she
had just behaved. So why didn’t he? Did some part of him realize
she was right?

Jonathan was already in the study when
she returned to the house. She took a steadying breath and decided
to continue with their botany lesson as though nothing had
happened. Should he want to talk about it, she would listen, but
she had to leave it up to him.

She had gathered some decent specimens
early that morning before the day began, including some poison ivy,
which she was careful not to touch with bare hands. Jonathan,
however, now sat at his desk, holding the three-leafed section of
ivy and turning it this way and that. With her handkerchief, she
picked it from his grasp and placed it on the window sill so the
light would provide greater detail.

“
Remember this: ‘Leaflets
three, let it be’,” Portia said.

“
Ugh,” he grunted, looking
at his hands.

She laughed. “You might get an itchy
rash, but it’s only temporary. We can rub some potato paste or cold
coffee on it if that happens.”

They were listing all the ways to
identify poison ivy and its cousins while sketching them on paper
when Jonathan asked, “Do you think Pa’s mad at me?”

“
No,” she said, thankful
he was verbalizing his feelings instead of finding snakes to put in
her bed. “He’s just scared you might get hurt.”

He glanced at her then back down to
his desk. “I was scared he’d get hurt too, when he was
gone.”

“
It’s normal to worry
about the people we love.”

“
I don’t think he loves me
anymore.”

“
Of course he
does.”

He slumped in his seat. “He never
tucks me in or takes me fishing or anything that we used to do. All
he does is work.”

Images of Portia’s own father flashed
through her mind — passed out, whisky bottle clutched in his hand
like it was the elixir of life. She swallowed hard and gave the boy
a gentle one-armed hug, hoping he wouldn’t shrink away from her
touch.

“
Sometimes it’s hard for
people to talk about how they feel. We just have to be patient with
them,” she said.

“
I guess so.”

“
You did very well today.
I can see I’ll have to challenge you further. You’re
dismissed.”

“
Yes, ma’am.” He was out
of his seat and out the door before she could say another
word.

She got up from the desk and took a
short rest in the padded window seat. Just down the hill, she could
see Mr. Stanford and the horse trotting around him. Whether she
would still have a job come tomorrow, she didn’t know. But Jonathan
had finally started talking, even confiding in her, and provided
Mr. Stanford let her stay, she might be able to help them connect
again. A flock of geese flew overhead, ready to settle down in the
warm sunshine of a Tennessee spring.

Portia watched their V formation until
they flew out of her line of vision. And she realized another
little miracle had occurred.

For a good part of the day, painful
memories of Jake and Abby didn’t occupy her every waking hour.
That’s what she had wanted, wasn’t it? Yet — and the thought made
her uneasy — did that mean she was forgetting them?