The Loom (16 page)

Lou nodded. She needed her to be quiet.

“But God knows.”

“He sure does, baby.”

“He knows.”

“Hush now, Lydia. Hush.” Not another word.

Lydia’s hands fell still. She rocked, her eyes in a distant place. “He knows.”

“I told you to hush!” Lou snatched the patty from Lydia’s hands, but when she touched the thin fingers, felt the warm skin of her offspring, the shaking took over. She couldn’t stop. It rode through her body like a loaded train.

Isaiah. Her boy. Her baby boy. Beautiful, beautiful boy. Not my baby. Not my baby! All her children taken away. Now, on this side she had none. A flood of tears surged. She slumped against the wall, slid down on her son’s dark blue blanket, fingernail prints pressed hard into the cakes still in her hands. She was drowning, drowning in quivering images of a boy who stole her heart with his first breath.

“Isaiah. My baby.”

She shook with her granddaughter holding her, Lydia’s arms wrapped around her. She shook, squeezing the patties, harder, deeper. She couldn’t fight it.

“I can’t stop shaking. Please, Lord, have mercy.” Lou clung to her grandbaby and wept. “Have mercy on me.”

The next morning, Lydia dragged herself toward the house she would never call home again.

When she reached the old colonial, her heart weighed against her, heavier with each step it took to arrive. Covered in dust, her shoes slid against each plank until she was standing where her father had stood, struggled, cried out to her. She knelt and glided her fingers across dried scarlet drops on the damp wood.

No life at all.

How much more could she bear? How much longer could she remain? If she stayed she could die at their hands or worse yet live at their feet. She thought of Lou, stripped of the last child she had. Dead is better than us alive.

At least Daddy was free.

When she could sit, bow no longer, she rose, stronger, and marched right through the front door. She wanted them to tell her something, ask her anything, and she would give them what they wanted, whatever they needed to shut her up. She could feel the heat blazing from the pit of her belly to her chest. Let them kill her. Let them stop her heart, quench her breath. She had nothing to lose. They couldn’t take what she never had.

In her room, she stretched across her bed and wrapped herself in the blanket she had weaved for John. She had only a few rows to complete but even that would prove challenging now.

Her door creaked open.

She rolled to her side. Lizzy stood under the door frame, shaking. Loose blond strands shimmied over her red eyes.

“Lydia”

She sat up and stared at her.

Finally, Lizzy inched closer. “I’m sorry, Lydia. I’m so sorry.” Her words gurgled in tears.

Lydia watched her, weeping, trembling, and she knew, she knew Lizzy felt the same hurt, carried the same weight, experienced the same pain. They were not friends. They were family.

She ran to her, clung to her, and cried.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” Lizzy said. Over and over she said the words until they soothed like a balm for a wounded heart.

She stepped back and looked at Lydia. “I didn’t know. I never said anything.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know why, Lydia, but—”

“I know.”

There was nothing else to say.

When she nodded and turned to leave, Lydia wanted to scream. Don’t go! Stay! But she said nothing and watched her slip away. Another back to her.

When she heard the door close, she stood still for a long time before her knees locked and buckled. She slid to the floor, felt the cold oak against her legs, her spine, her scalp. It penetrated, chilling her until she shivered.

As cold as it was, she remained. Didn’t have the will to rise.

Emma rocked on the edge of the wing chair, clutching the cushion that spilled out beneath her, and watched her husband ease the front door open.

She knew where he had been.

He bumped his head on the silver candelabra hanging in the center of the room and winced. He looked drained, weathered, sorely out of place in a sunlit room of lilac and crushed velvet.

“I’m sorry,” he said, kneeling at her side.

For Isaiah? Or the countless women?

Even on his knees, she had to look up to him. The smell of sweat clung to his clothes, lingered around the collar of the same bloodstained cream shirt she couldn’t scrub clean. He had worn it the evening before when she sent him out on the porch with his boys.She had heard the moaning.

The sound of muffled cries from covered mouths. They echoed like screams that fought to escape but were bound by fear, shoved down deep into the pit of souls. It was this anguish that drew her to the window.

The people below moved slowly, cautiously, as if they could be stung at any moment by angry white bees swarming above.

The men lowered their hats over icy sneers as they strutted across the porch, raising their fists.

Then she saw Isaiah. Bare-chested and bound. She saw for the first time in years. She had watched the seasons change, her child grow, and her marriage fall apart, but she hadn’t seen any of it. Until yesterday. It was her on the porch. She was Isaiah. Hands tied behind her back, subject to a man in control, bound to one who took her kindness for weakness.

She hadn’t expected to feel anything. But when her eyes locked with Lydia’s, something happened. She saw the silent horror of a girl begging, pleading. It was her grappling for life, begging to be saved without sound. And in that bedroom, for the first time in years, she felt her eyes blinking back tears, her heart beating, her fingers sprawled against cold glass, her hand over a mouth that had swallowed sickness for too long. She stepped back and let the curtains close on the scene she no longer wanted to play. And in that bedroom, she screamed. She screamed. She screamed until Michael rushed through the door and she yelled for him to do something. Do something! Why don’t you do something?

But it was too late.

Emma stood up and left Michael on his knees. She was leaving him. Never returning from Richmond.

It would never be too late again.

More joy. More pain.

As soon as one caught fire, the other ignited. Joy had blazed wild and care-free in his wife, but pain flickered until it flamed in the corners of a hurt heart.

Outside their cabin, surrounded by maples and a fresh scent of ever-green, John stoked low, flickering flames before Lydia arrived. On bended knee, he leaned over the fire until it crackled and he heard the light pattering of feet on crushed leaves. He looked up into the eyes of the woman he loved. Even under the night sky, her beauty glowed against the backdrop of night.

She dropped to her knees and laid her head against his shoulder.

“You feeling all right?”

She nodded.

“It’s going to be all right, Lydia. I know it’s hard to see that now, but I promise.” Please, God. He had to keep his word. “I’m getting you out of here. I’m speaking with Dr. Kelly tomorrow.” He cupped the crown of her head and tilted her face toward him.

She looked at him with little emotion. He searched her eyes, her lips, then smiled for the both of them.

“Rest assured. There’s nothing to worry about.” Her face, his heart, said otherwise.

He blew out a breath.

“I wish I could just keep holding you. Doesn’t seem right you having to go back to that house after what happened. A wife should be with her husband.”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

His wife. He still liked to say the word, hear the sound of it leaving his lips. He kissed her. Once. Twice.

“Maybe after tomorrow Dr. Kelly will let us—”

“Let us?” Lydia’s back straightened.

He rubbed it in long strokes. “We’re going to go just right, Lydia, and trust God to do what only He can.”

Hounds barking in the distance startled him to his feet. “You hear that?” His hand locked around hers as she scuffled up, ready to run. They watched the bushes, the wind in the trees behind them, and strained to see any sign of threat until the sound faded. John breathed relief, but several minutes passed before they settled back near the fire.

“What kind of life is this?” Lydia stared into the flames.

John stretched his legs and leaned back on his palms, orange and red burning, crackling, playing softly around them.

Lydia shivered in spite of it. He drew her close.

“Don’t let it go out, John.”

He scrambled up and jammed a branch into the heap.

“You’ve got to stir it up,” she said. When he leaned forward, he saw it in her eyes.

A flame building.

In their cabin that night, Lydia reached for him.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said, sliding down on the quilt. He leaned in over her until he smelled lavender, breathed in peace, and surrendered to soft fingertips drumming against his back.

“Lydia…”

That night, like the others since her father’s death, when he made love to her, his heart filled with guilt. It seemed wrong to find pleasure in the midst of pain, but she had begged him. Had offered herself to him each night since their wedding. Said she needed him, needed to feel him close.

She had a way with him like no other. He was amazed at how deeply he had fallen, how quickly his sharp edges broke in her softness, her love.

The cracks of day woke him. She was already dressed, ready to leave.

“Lady.”

She turned to him with sad eyes.

“What’s wrong? Something wrong?”

“Seeing you every night is not the same as having you.”

“I know, Lydia. Soon.”

“It’s not enough.” She knelt beside him. “This hurts. I need more.”

When he reached for her, she stopped him, grabbed his hand before he could hold her. “I’ve got to go.”

“All right. Give me a minute.” He wrestled into his pants, searched for the shirt he had worn.

“I’ve got to go.”

“Lydia, let me walk you to the steps.”

She shook her head and flashed a final smile.

He ran out after her, watched her slip away, counting her every move up the planks to the Kelly manor. One hundred and twenty-seven steps later, they were a world apart.