Sweet Annie (35 page)

"That's not true."

"It is true. I'm tired, please let me
rest."

Burdell walked from the
room slowly, exchanging a look with his mother at the doorway.

A heavy sense of loss and
self-blame wrapped around her like a shroud. Annie glanced at the gaily dressed
porcelain dolls lining the window seat, allowed her gaze to find her
wheelchair, then closed her eyes against the sting of tears. She was back where
she'd started—where she belonged.

Eldon
returned the buggy, his face pulled and drawn. "She asked to be taken to
our home. She's settled into her bed and quite comfortable."

Luke had spoken to the
doctor that morning and had been delivered the crushing news. Annie didn't want
to come home with him. He wanted to stomp into her room and confront her, but
the doctor had warned him about upsetting her.

So he'd returned to the
livery, taken out his fear and frustration over the searing forge, on the
glowing iron, pounding... pounding.

Luke
didn't know what to say to Annie's father. "Thank you," he returned,
knowing it was a lame sentiment.

"I'm sure she just
needs some time," Eldon said.

"Yes."
But why didn't she need him? Did she blame him? Did everyone blame him? "I
thought I could take care of her," he said.

"You did."

Luke
shook his head. "No, I didn't. The wolves. She would have needed to know
how to use a gun, and I never showed her." He stared at the mountains in
the distance. "She thought the horses were more important than her own
safety."

"Maybe
she just needs some time," Eldon said again, as though trying to convince
them both.

Luke
wanted to believe it. In the days and nights that followed he tried to believe
it, tried to understand why she needed time away from him, why her heart didn't
ache for him like his did for her.

After
several nights of sitting in front of the fire, looking at the pins and needles
sticking out of the arm of her chair, touching her clothing and her hairbrush
while his guts wrenched, staring at the empty cradle until the wee hours of the
morning, he packed his clothing, strung the horses on a tether rope, and moved
to the livery where there were fewer memories.

Even
here the nights were endless, filled with regrets and worries and dry-eyed
mourning.

On
Thursday morning, he went to see her and found her on the porch in the
sunlight, a shawl draping her shoulders. She sat in her wheelchair and the
sight slammed him like a punch in the chest. Had something gone wrong that he
hadn't been told about? Why hadn't someone let him know?

"Annie?"
he said. "What is it? Was your leg hurt? Something broken that I didn't
know about?"

Her
head raised. She'd been studying a book in her lap. Her gray-green eyes
flickered over him and shuttered quickly.

"You know what's wrong with me."

"No, no, I don't. Tell me."

"Besides losing your son, you mean?"

Her
words disturbed him. "He was our son, Annie."

Pain
flickered across her delicate features. She composed them. "Yes. You know
the extent of my injuries. What are you asking?"

"I
guess I'm asking why you're sitting in this damned chair!"

"This
is where I belong," she said flatly. She indicated the chair, the porch,
the house.

"Have
you been walking?" he dared, starting with another approach.

"No."

"You
probably need to exercise your legs."

"It
doesn't matter."

He
studied the delicate slope of her nose, her ivory cheeks, the ringlets at her
temple, and craved touching her. He missed her so badly he could taste her and
smell her just by thinking. "I've missed you."

She
turned away from him and gazed at the horizon. She would be right to blame him.
She was more unhappy now than she'd been before they'd started seeing each
other. He loved her more than anything, but he'd loved her selfishly, trying to
make her more like other people. If he'd left her alone, she wouldn't have to
suffer like this now. He was the one who had convinced her to get out of that
chair and take on the world.

And because she had—because
she'd trusted him— he'd taken her from her safe environment and protective
family and let this happen to her. They would all be justified in hating him.
He hated himself.

"I'm sorry,
Annie," he said softly. "I'll do whatever I can to make it up to
you. I'll leave you alone if that's what makes you happy."

She nodded, and he took that as his signal to leave
her alone. Maybe she was better off here. Maybe he'd been fooling them both
into thinking he could be everything she needed. Obviously, he hadn't been.

Mildred opened the screen
door and appeared with a tray holding a teapot and cups. Seeing Luke, she drew
up short, then collected herself and moved past him. "Here's your tea,
darling," she said to her daughter. "Are you comfortable here in the
sun?"

Annie nodded, and Mildred
set down the tray and poured a cup full, handing it to Annie.

Annie accepted it. Both of
them behaved as though Luke wasn't there. With an ache in his heart and his
throat, he backed away from the scene, leaving Mildred to tend to her
daughter's comfort, leaving the Sweetwaters to care for his wife.

Mounting the horse he'd
left at the gate, he rode away, once again the outsider.

No longer would he have a
wife to come home to at night. There would be no son to teach to ride, no children
to inherit all he was working for. But work he did, because it was all he had
left.

"Do
you want to hold her, Annie?" Diana asked. Her sister-in-law approached
her with the pink flannel-wrapped bundle. Annie'd been told of Elizabeth's
birth the month before, and had asked about Diana's health and recovery. Since
Annie hadn't been out of the house for weeks, she hadn't been to Burdell's home
or to church for the baby's christening. This was the first time she'd seen
their new daughter.

Her niece had wispy dark hair and a delicately
round face. She held her tiny hands right up by her face, and squinted her eyes
open. Annie wondered what color her baby's hair had been, whether his eyes
would have been blue or green. She could have asked Luke about his hair.
"No, I don't want to hold her," she said, her heart pounding too fast
at the thought.

Diana held Elizabeth right
down beside Annie, where she could smell the infant's milky essence. She felt a
painful twinge in her breasts. The child was a miracle, a miniature person,
perfect in every way, fair lashes, translucent fingernails, wrinkly knuckles
and shell-like ears.

Annie
looked up and met Diana's compassionate gaze. Tears of sympathy swam in her
sister-in-law's dark eyes. "I am so sorry," she whispered. "We
took flowers to your little John's grave. It's in a beautiful spot. Someone had
planted forget-me-nots."

Luke,
Annie
thought. She hadn't even been brave enough to go see the grave.

"You can have more
babies," Diana said.

Annie shook her head and
looked away, out the par-lor window where Burdell played with Will on the lawn.
"No."

Two
months hadn't been enough time to allow herself to think of that. Two years or
two decades wouldn't be enough time.

Charmaine,
too, tried to talk to her, tried to pull her from her protective cocoon, but
Annie remained withdrawn and silent. She watched through the window-panes as
the family gathered in the newly green side yard and set up the croquet set for
the first time that year. Life just went on, she thought dismally. Without her.

After dinner, Burdell
ignored her protests and pushed her out onto the porch. He sat on a wicker
chair across from her.

"How
long are you going to feel sorry for yourself?" he asked.

She
ignored his taunt and stared at the hazy mountain peaks.

“The
only happy person around here is Mother, because she has her invalid daughter
back," he said. "What does that tell you?"

Annie
glared at him. "I should have listened to her from the beginning and this
wouldn't have happened."

"You
think nobody ever lost a baby before?" he asked.

She shook her head against
his words.

"You
think only helpless crippled people have accidents?"

She shrugged, avoided his
face.

"What
happened to you could have happened to anybody."

"No.
I wasn't fast enough. I wasn't strong enough. I was slow and clumsy and I let
him down. He deserves someone with two good legs." She glanced across the
yard and caught sight of her cousin running after a wooden ball. "He
deserves someone who can be a real help and not a burden—someone like Charmaine."

Burdy was silent for a moment. “He loves
you.''

"Well, I lost his
baby, didn't I? How sad for him that he loves
me!
He deserves better. He gave me
everything,
love, kindness, hope...he's so good and so pure and wonderful
that it hurts." She brought her fist to her heart in proof. "And the
first thing he ever trusted me with I lost for him."

"Not the first thing," Burdell denied.

"What do you mean?"

"First, he trusted you with his heart."

Tears blurred her vision.
Luke had given her his heart. Completely. Unreservedly. He'd loved her more
than she had ever dreamed of being loved. "I just can't bear to face
him," she whispered, tears thick in her throat. "I'm so ashamed that
I let him down."

"We're to blame for
this," her brother said angrily. "Me as much as anyone. I treated you
like Mother did for so long that I convinced myself you were helpless. I know
I have a hard head, but I saw how happy he made you, how happy and
self-confident you were doing things for yourself. I've been wrong. Now I'm
sure. This isn't you—not sitting here like an invalid. You are a capable,
talented woman. What happened to you and your baby could have happened to anyone—could
have happened to Diana in the same situation."

"But it didn't. She
wasn't out trying to be a farrier's wife."

"But if she loved a
farrier, you can bet she would have. She's just trying to be a banker's
wife."

Annie
thought long and hard about that statement. If Diana had loved a rancher or a
miner or a logger, she undoubtedly would have thrown her whole self into that
kind of life—just as Annie had. "Do you believe that Burdy? Do you believe
it was an accident that could have happened to anyone?"

"I
do. And I think Luke's blaming himself as much as you blame yourself right now.
He told our father he accepted the responsibility for taking you away from your
safe environment and letting this happen."

"Oh,
pooh!" Annie said. "Isn't that just like him to take the blame
himself in order to spare me?''

"He's hurting, too,
Annie. Think about that."

"I
have. And I've decided he's better off without me."

"Right,"
he said. "Let him hurt alone. Let him grieve for both of you. Poor
Annie," he said, getting up. "Poor, helpless Annie." And with
that he walked down the stairs and strode across the yard.

His
words of mocking pity stung. Annie considered all of Burdell's words in the
days that followed. Alone in her room one afternoon, she took a good clear look
at her situation. She had been feeling sorry for herself, taking the blame for
something that couldn't have been prevented, and in doing so she was throwing
away the best thing that had ever happened to her. How could she have let
herself fall into this river of self-centered despondency? Luke had lost a son,
and she had walked out on him.

Let
him hurt alone. Let him grieve for both of you.
He
had buried their child alone. Had reverently wrapped the tiny lifeless infant
in a soft pretty blanket sewn by Annie's hands, dug a grave, said a prayer and
cried all by himself.