Jane Bonander (8 page)

Finally, she turned to Mrs. Hatfield. “I think you and your husband should spend the night here, with us.”

L
ettie Hatfield slept most of the afternoon, and Susannah had started preparing dinner early. Although it had begun to rain, the cabin was snug and warm.

Susannah wasn’t used to cooking for company. She’d never had any faith in her cooking at all, with good reason. Ma Walker had always said she was useless in the kitchen. No matter how much Susannah had practiced, nothing she did was ever good enough for the Walkers. But she’d gathered new confidence now, even if it had been cooking for just her and Corey. And . . . Nathan Wolfe, who gratefully hadn’t complained.

Now, as she cleared away the supper dishes, she listened as Mr. Hatfield talked about the old days and his courtship with his wife. In all of her life, Susannah had never known anyone who liked to hear himself talk more than Alvin Hatfield.

Mrs. Hatfield was on the sofa, curled up with a blanket over her knees, listening and smiling at her husband.

Susannah decided that if you loved someone, you could listen to that person forever, no matter how much he or she bored everyone else. All day she’d watched the couple, and now she felt a huge swell of envy. No one had ever cared for her like that. Not the way Alvin Hatfield cared for his wife. She’d had her mother, who was dead, and Louisa, who was still in Missouri, and Corey, who was just a child. They loved her, she knew that. But the feeling between Lettie and Alvin Hatfield was different, and Susannah wanted something like that for herself. It made her realize that her life was empty, barren and cold.

“So, Mr. Wolfe,” Alvin Hatfield said, turning his attention to Nathan. “How did you and your little missus meet?”

Startled, Susannah froze. The bowl she’d been carrying to the counter slipped through her fingers and crashed to the floor. She stared at it, yet didn’t really notice what she’d done.

It was the sound of Nathan’s voice after the bowl hit the floor that finally made her move. She bent down, fumbling with the broken pieces, her fingers shaking so badly she was unable to pick them up.

“Susannah?”

The question in Nathan’s voice made her look up. The concern on his face startled her. What had she expected? Anger? Hatred? Snarling lips?

He bent in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. The warmth from his long, strong fingers seeped through her dress, into her skin.

He brought his lips close to her ear. “Follow my lead,” he instructed. “Go sit down, Susannah. I’ll clean this up.”

She crossed to the chair, grateful to sit. She felt weak all over, for his gentleness still shocked her.

Alvin Hatfield clucked his tongue. “You women,” he said around a chuckle. “Always thinking you’ve destroyed something that can’t be replaced. That’s the way my Lettie is, ain’t it, Lettie? Remember the time you broke that old platter? Why, I think you cried for two days, and that wasn’t because it was anything special, it had just been your ma’s. It was already cracked and chipped; it was danged old.”

“You just don’t understand, Alvin. Women become attached to things that belonged to their mothers. It’s all they have left, just memories,” Lettie said quietly from the sofa. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

Susannah glanced at her, then at Nathan, who was cleaning up the broken pieces. He looked up, and their gazes held for a brief moment.

“I think that belonged to
my
mother, didn’t it, Susannah?”

Grateful he knew what to do, she nodded.

“See, Alvin? It isn’t just me,” Lettie Hatfield scolded softly.

Mr. Hatfield rubbed the bald spot at the back of his head. “Guess I’ll never understand women.” He reached across and patted Susannah’s arm.

She noticed his gnarled and liver spotted hand and wondered if he’d ever used it to strike his sweet wife.

“So, little lady, how did you and your husband, here, meet?”

“Oh, he’s—”

Nathan’s booming laugh interrupted her. She glared at him and attempted to finish explaining, when Nathan interrupted her again.

“She wasn’t quite fifteen when I first laid eyes on her.” Nathan gave her a look of warning.

Susannah frowned. What was he doing?

“Fifteen!” Mr. Hatfield whistled. “That’s pretty young, ain’t it?” He winked at Susannah. “You musta had him hog-tied mighty early.”

“Well, well, I—”
Follow my lead
, Nathan had said.

“I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.” Nathan sat down next to her and took her hand in his, giving it a gentle squeeze. His callused palm grazed hers, and she felt a jolt of heat. “One look into those big, brown eyes and I was lost.”

Susannah squirmed under his touch but didn’t pull her hand away.

He grinned at her, a look that to anyone else would have been intimate. “It wasn’t an easy courtship, was it, Susannah?”

“I . . . I . . . I—” His touch continued to confuse her.

“I had to really woo her. I think I brought her dozens of roses before I discovered she was allergic to them. Remember, honey?” he asked, giving her a warm, lopsided smile. “You’d sneeze and sneeze, but would never hurt my feelings by telling me you couldn’t stand to have them in the house.” He chuckled, as if remembering, and gently rubbed the top of her hand with his thumb.

The warmth—the same warmth she felt whenever he touched her—crept up her arm. She tried to pull away, but he held her hand tightly.

“I think it was that night at the barn dance that you finally gave in and decided you might as well marry me, because it didn’t appear that you’d ever get rid of me. Remember?”

She stared at him, feeling her throat work as she tried to talk. “The . . . the barn dance?”

Nathan nodded and briefly closed his eyes. “It must have been my army uniform that did it. It sure wasn’t my ugly mug.” He chuckled, amused. “I’d never been so bowled over by a girl in all my life,” he reflected. “That was a special night, all right, but I think I fell in love with her long before that.”

Mr. Hatfield grinned. “Sure sounds like you had it bad, young fella.”

“Yeah, I had it bad, but I think I fell in love with her the first time I saw her.” His gaze rested on Susannah.

Her heart pounded hard. “You . . . you did?”

“Don’t you remember, sweetheart?”

That word directed at her was so foreign to her that she felt a wave of dizziness.

“You were outside, trying your darndest to chop up that tree.” He laughed again, a soft, warm sound that gave her gooseflesh. He didn’t look at her, though. His gaze was focused on the table. “You were just a bit of a thing, and could hardly pick up the ax, let alone use it. As I rode up, you hauled off and kicked the tree trunk with your foot. You sputtered and mumbled, hopped around on one foot while you held the other. I think you cursed the tree ten ways from Sunday.”

Susannah sat mesmerized as he smiled and continued to study the table. Then he glanced at Mr. Hatfield.

“I knew then and there that she was the girl for me, but of course I had a devil of a time convincing her of that. She was so stubborn she wouldn’t even let me help her chop wood. I knew she was the kind of girl who needed a long length of rope.” He winked at Mr. Hatfield. “I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t hang herself with it, but I stuck around to make sure she didn’t.”

His gaze swung to Susannah and he searched her face. “Remember that day, honey?”

She nodded, unable to speak, the words
honey
and
sweetheart
sticking in her mind, making truth and fiction a jumble. Oddly, she knew that comparing her to an animal that needed tethering wasn’t exactly complimentary, but she was too befuddled to react. “I . . . I do remember the tree.”

He touched the cleft in his chin. “I’ll never forget the night of the barn dance when I proposed. You wore that pretty gown of yours. Remember the one? All pink and white and frothy as a cloud?”

Unable to help herself, Susannah pictured them together, Nathan, tall, straight and handsome in a blue army uniform and her in . . . in a multilayered pink net dress with a low V neck and gold and pink cording fastened to each ruffle. It was a dress she’d often seen in her quieter, less violent dreams. One that had come into her mind after Louisa had told her about New Orleans, and the balls the white folks she’d worked for had given for their friends.

“It was the first time we’d touched, really,” Nathan murmured, his voice interrupting her daydreams. “And we danced. Remember how we danced, honey?”

The endearment almost brought tears to her eyes. “We . . . we danced?” In spite of herself, Susannah had a picture of herself dancing in her special dress with Nathan. It was a ridiculous vision; she didn’t even know how to dance.

“Oh, now, honey. You couldn’t have forgotten that. It had started to snow, remember? We were dancing outside, away from the crowd.” He tossed Mr. Hatfield a knowing grin. “I wanted to get her alone, of course.”

Alvin Hatfield chuckled, enjoying Nathan’s entertaining, though unbeknownst to him, fabricated, story.

“And it started to snow. Those big, soft flakes that just drifted lazily down.” He moved his fingers over her wrist, pressing the soft underside.

Susannah allowed his touch to trigger the picture he’d painted, seeing big, fat snowflakes melting on his hair and his thick eyelashes. She could almost feel the warmth of his hand on her back, of her fingers against the rough wool of his uniform, of his legs as they moved on either side of hers, of their bodies touching . . . that casual touch that was not casual at all. She could see it. See them dancing together. Forever.

“I didn’t even mind getting my slippers wet, did I?” she asked with a dreamy stare.

His fingers grazed her cheek, and she became fully alert. “No.” He held her gaze. “You didn’t mind at all. We danced in the snow until your pa came out and hauled us back into the barn.”

For Susannah, whose life had been deprived of any sweetness and warmth, the fairy-tale story had taken root, and she thirsted for more.

She closed her eyes again, hoping to recapture the magic. She heard the slow lilting of the fiddle music in the distance as they danced together, close in each other’s arms. They twirled under a snowy sky. They gazed into each other’s eyes. He bent his head, nearly capturing her mouth. . . . But that went beyond anything Susannah could imagine.

She opened her eyes, blinking self-consciously. “It . . . it was a perfect evening, wasn’t it?” She played the game, but pretending didn’t come easy to her. Not that she hadn’t had a few daydreams from time to time. She’d often had to escape into a world of her own to keep her sanity. But she’d never dreamed the kind of dream Nathan Wolfe had just put into her head. It was sweet. Too sweet. Nothing was ever that perfect.

She found him studying her, his eyes filled with a strange sadness. “Yes,” he answered, his smile warm, “it was perfect.”

Aware that it was all pretense, Susannah pulled her hand from his. What a fool she was!

“Well . . . well. I guess these people probably want to go to bed.” She rose and went to Lettie Hatfield’s side, relieved that the playacting was over. “Come, let me help you.”

Lettie stood and took Susannah’s arm. “I do hate to put you two out of your bed. Where in the world will you sleep?”

Susannah turned, her questioning gaze searching Nathan’s face.

There was a long, heavy pause. “Susannah can sleep with Corey,” Nathan finally said. “I’ll get my bedroll and sleep outside.”

“Outside?” Lettie Hatfield’s voice was filled with dismay. “Oh, you can’t let him sleep outside, dear,” she said to Susannah. “It’s still raining.”

Susannah felt panic, the old, familiar panic closing in around her.

Nathan cleared his throat. “Well, I suppose I could sleep here, in front of the fire.”

Susannah saw his tentative look, the careful stance. An involuntary shudder passed through her. She didn’t know if it was fear, or gratitude or pleasure. . . . “Yes, why don’t you sleep in front of the fire, Nathan?”

She knew something important had just happened, and it had happened to her. When the Hatfields were settled in her bedroom, and she was curled up next to Corey, she heard Nathan moving around in the other room. Although whatever had happened had happened
to her
, she knew in her heart that Nathan Wolfe was the cause.

Nate crawled into his bedroll and stared at the fire, grateful to be alone. Memories of Judith inundated
him. Judith in her virginal pink and white gown, Judith smiling up at him, snowflakes melting in her hair and on her face . . . Judith sneezing over the roses. That’s why he hadn’t put roses on her grave, planting, instead, an incense cedar to shade the plot from the harsh summer sun. And the guilt of not being there to bury her himself kept his anguish alive.

For years he’d stopped his thoughts when they’d gotten this far. Tonight, they’d flowed without effort, but not without pain. It was odd that he’d pictured Judith in the pink dress, for although he’d bought her the material as a surprise, she’d never used it, tucking it away in an old chest in their bedroom. She’d asked for satin; he hadn’t been able to afford it.

But Susannah . . . The memory of her childlike expression as he’d spun the tale had moved him. Once she realized what he was doing, she’d absorbed the story, pulling it in, making it her reality. He could read that in her eyes. Even before this evening, he’d begun to feel she had no happy memories. And, as painful as his memories were, he felt it would be worse to have no good memories at all.

For some strange reason, one of Judith’s favorite poems came to him as clearly as if it were written before him:

I hold it true, whate’er befall,

I feel it when I sorrow most;

’Tis better to have loved and lost,

Than never to have loved at all.

He turned away from the fire and stared at the curtain that covered Corey’s bedroom door. He could almost see Susannah curled up around the boy, protecting him even as he slept. He sensed that she would fight to the death for Corey. He also felt she was just learning to fight for herself.

What had really happened in Missouri that made her pick up her son and leave without telling anyone? That Harlan was dead was no mystery; Sonny Walker, with the help of some hounds, had found the body, buried in a muddy, shallow grave at the river’s edge, covered with leaves. He’d been stabbed. And Susannah, “the murdering bitch,” was gone.