“R-reckon not,” he stammered, looking at his feet, color creeping up his neck. “Do you want to go to my porch?”
Daddy brushed past them and went inside the house. Copper was sure she could hear him guffawing as he edged the door closed.
“Would you mind telling me what’s going on?” she asked. “Why are you acting so silly?”
“Um, well, I . . . it’s like this, Pest . . .” He stood on one foot and polished his shoe on the back of his pant leg.
Paw-paw crammed himself between them, and every time he wagged his tail it thumped against the back of her knees, nearly buckling them. Men and dogs—she’d just about had enough. Putting her hands on her hips she leaned toward John, tapping one foot. “Forevermore, John, chew it slow and spit it out.”
“We’re courtin’,” he replied. “You and me—your daddy said we could.”
“I should think I would be the one to decide!” She turned her back and poured a little water from the bucket into an old fruit jar before arranging the wilted posies in it. They were right pretty. “What if I don’t want to be courted?”
“I reckon I didn’t think on that, Pest. Do you?”
“What, John?” she teased, turning back to him, her nose pressed deep in the flowers. “Do I what?”
He blushed again, red as a rooster’s comb. “You’re plaguing me now.”
Taking pity, she sat demurely in one rocker and batted her eyelashes as she asked, “Would you like to sit a spell?”
“Don’t mind if I do, Pest,” he answered, sitting beside her and rocking up a storm. “Don’t mind if I do.”
CHAPTER 12
Grace watched from the screen door as the children played. The evening was cool. Soon they’d have to leave the door closed all the time. She hated winter. It gave no peace. Sometimes in the summer she could steal a whole afternoon with her books . . . transported to another place by the poems of Dickinson, Shelley, Browning, and Keats. Will would be gone working; the children would be out chasing this thing or that. She never had to worry about the boys—their sister would watch over them.
A pressure behind her eyes caused her head to thrum a familiar steady beat. She dipped a drink of water from the bucket on the washstand and caught an unwanted glimpse of her face, pulled in a frown, into the wavy mirror. She tried a smile. It looked false, her teeth too full for her mouth. When had she forgotten how to smile? She took out her combs and shook her hair loose. Gray-streaked red curls tumbled to her shoulders. A faded imitation of her youthful self stared back at her, unforgiving.
No wonder Will was always gone. It had gotten worse since Laura Grace’s accident. He blamed her, she knew . . . blamed her that Laura Grace had tried to run away. Now he made the trek up the mountain to the cemetery to Julie’s grave nearly every evening.
Footsteps pounded across the porch. Jerking away from the mirror, she twisted up her hair. She and Will had to talk, come to some resolution. She couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Move, Paw-paw!” She shoved against the old dog’s rump with the door. He rarely left the porch since his escapade in the cave and now spent all his nights indoors, much to Grace’s dismay.
“Daniel, take three baby steps,” she heard Laura Grace say as she stepped out onto the porch.
“Mother, may I?” Daniel asked, nearly standing on his sister’s toes.
“No fair!” Willy cried from his stance near the porch. “He always wins.”
Grace didn’t correct his unwarranted judgment of his brother, just tightened her shawl against the coolness of the evening. There wouldn’t be many more days of outside play. “Laura Grace, get the boys ready for bed, please,” she said, her voice a sigh of resignation. Even her books couldn’t take her away from this suffocating place for long. She always had to come back. “Be sure they wash their feet.” She started down the walkway, then paused. “You may read two chapters from your book about pirates tonight.”
“Oh, boy,” Daniel replied. “I love pirates. Don’t you, Willy?”
“Yeah, I’m going to be a pirate when I grow up an’ have a parrot an’ lots of gold dub . . . dub . . . what are them things called, Sissy? Oh yeah, double loons. But no wooden leg.”
His voice faded away as Grace entered the barn. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, but she could find no sign of Will. She went to the little window beside the rickety ladder that led to the hayloft and saw him then, faintly, the white of his shirt visible as he crossed the meadow.
Her heart twisted with bitterness as he stepped into the barn. She stayed at the window, her back to him, her eyes fixed on the shadowed mountain. The strength of his presence cast an aura around her.
“Grace?” was all he said. As usual, he left all the unsaid words to her.
She didn’t mean to. She’d steeled her heart against it, but as soon as she opened her mouth to speak, tears came instead—great racking sobs that doubled her over and felt for all the world like the hard contractions of childbirth.
He reached for her shoulder, but she shook off his hand. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice worried. “Is it the children?”
“They’re fine,” she spat. “It’s me! Do you ever wonder how
I
am?”
“What’s got your dander up? You never used to carry on like this.”
A wash of color bright as blood clouded her vision. She wanted to break something. She wanted to push him straight through the barn siding. Instead she grabbed the milk bucket that hung on a peg near Molly’s stall and flung it out the little window. They could hear its metallic ring bouncing off one rock after another.
“That bucket’ll be ruined,” he said as if the bucket was what mattered. “It’ll be full of dents.”
She rushed him then, catching him full in the chest and knocking him onto his rear.
He struggled to a standing position as she beat at his head with closed fists. Catching her hands, Will pulled her into a firm embrace. “Grace, honey, stop.” She struggled against him, but he wouldn’t let her go.
His strength overpowered her, and she sagged against his chest. “Why must you go up there to her grave every night? Why don’t you talk to me?”
Will shook his head, holding her away from him so she could see the disbelief on his face. “You can’t be jealous of your own dead sister.”
Suddenly she was as cold as ice. Her shoulders slumped. “You’re right,” she said, resigning herself to the situation. “I know I can never take her place. I don’t even want to try anymore.”
He tightened his arms around her again. She could hear his heartbeat against her ear, and it muffled his reply. “Listen to me carefully, Grace. I loved Julie. She was my heart, but you are my soul. I love you none the less because you are second.” He traced the track of her tears with his thumb. His words were a balm to her aching heart.
“I always felt that you were too good for me, that you held yourself apart because you could never love the man who caused your sister’s death.” He rested his chin on the top of her head. “I’ve felt so guilty for loving you as I do.”
Emotions she’d long kept at bay threatened to overwhelm her. Why had she always turned away from such powerful love? What could be wrong with loving the man who so obviously loved her?
Will’s next words nearly broke her heart. “Seems I should suffer every day of my life. Instead God has blessed me with you and our children.”
The pride that had sheltered her nearly all her life shattered; like a broken crystal vase it lay in pieces at her feet. She would take a chance and open her true self to him. The sound of a sob clutched her heart, and she felt his tears drip down her own face. A man’s tears—so much heavier than a woman’s.
“I’ve been so stupid, so wrong,” she confessed. “Will, I always felt that if I gave in to your love then I was betraying Julie somehow. I think it was because I never got to make my peace with her.”
He bent his head to hers and murmured against her ear, “I’m so sorry. . . .”
A gentle rain began to tap its music on the barn’s tin roof. Twilight deepened to dusk, and dusk ushered in the night as they grieved their terrible loss together. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close as they sat on a stack of newly mown hay.
Their tears mixed together as he told her of the guilt and anger he carried with him daily. “I didn’t take proper care of Julie. I was so full of myself, so sure I could handle everything. I couldn’t wait for Granny and Emilee to leave so I could take care of my family myself.” He bowed his head as if in prayer. “God forgive me, but it was my own negligence that killed Julie. Granny warned me to be careful, but in my haste, I took the buggy instead of the wagon. If we’d been in the wagon it wouldn’t have turned over in the creek.”
“But that was my fault, Will.”
He looked at her. “I don’t see how you figure that.”
Grace leaned her head against her bent knees. Her voice was hushed, contrite. “When you took Julie away, I was so angry. I meant to make you pay. If I hadn’t sent the buggy to Julie after father died, the accident would not have happened. I sent it to entice her back to me. I sent it to show her what she was missing.”
Grace fished in her pocket for her handkerchief. She wiped her tears and turned her face away from him. “And then, Will,” she said, her voice hoarse from crying, “I betrayed her even more when I fell in love with you. I’ve harbored such anger toward you . . . as if it were your fault that I love you.”
He stood and lit the lantern that hung by the barn door, turning the flame down low so just a little yellow glow protected them against the darkness of the night. He settled down beside her and tenderly plucked a piece of hay from her hair before he took her hand. She felt his fingers trace her own and hoped he didn’t notice how rough hers had become over the years at Troublesome Creek. For a moment she wished she could turn back the clock and give him her youthful self once again.
“When did you come to love me, Grace?” His voice was husky. “How was it that I didn’t know?”
“That’s the part that gives my heart such grief, Will. I came here for the baby, for Laura Grace, but I stayed for you. I stepped into my sister’s life, and I fell in love with my sister’s husband.” She paused, afraid to reveal too much, yet her heart told her she couldn’t turn back now. “I think I loved you from the time you came to Lexington to get me, but I wouldn’t admit it . . . even to myself.”
He stood and helped her to her feet. “Julie was so gentle and so kind, and she loved you, Grace. She wouldn’t deny us happiness.” The night outside their little circle of light was as dark as the inside of a well. He put his hands upon her shoulders, and she let them stay, warmed by his touch. “No more hiding. No more secrets. It’s time we truly buried the past.” His face was set with determination and tenderness. “I do love you.”
“And I love you,” she replied, tasting the unfamiliar words on her tongue. “I love you, Will Brown.”
Their kisses were tender, tentative, as if they were new lovers, and in a sense they were.
Much later, they returned to the house to find the children asleep in the same bed—Copper in the middle with a twin curled on each side, an open storybook tangled in the covers.
Will put his arm around his wife’s shoulder, and she let him hold her. “Should we tell Copper?” he asked, gazing at his sleeping daughter. “Should she know about the night her mother died?”
“Oh, Will,” Grace said, “let’s give it a while. That’s a heavy weight to put upon such young shoulders.”
CHAPTER 13
Copper and Daniel were churning butter when Willy dropped a dead hen at their feet. “Daddy said for you to clean this, Sissy. Something got in the henhouse last night and drug off two other chickens.”
“Probably a possum,” Copper replied, eyeing the plump bird.
Willy poked the dead hen with his bare toe. “This’n got left behind. Daddy says we might as well have chicken and dumplings for supper.”
“Mam?” Copper yelled through the screen door. “Do you want me to finish this butter or pluck this hen?”
“There’s no need to raise your voice, Daughter.” Mam stepped out, pulled the dasher from the churn, and looked at the clots of butter hanging on the wooden rod. “It’s nearly ready. I’ll finish. You go ahead and dress the chicken.”
Copper went to the side yard and started a fire under a cook pot filled with water. She chopped off the chicken’s head and hung the body by its feet from the clothesline. Blood dripped onto the grass.
Still fresh. It will be all right to eat.
She gathered her skirts beneath her and settled down to rest for a minute.
Wonder what varmint got into them
.
I need to patch that fence.
She stuck a chunk of wood onto the fire, letting her mind wander. There was something different about Mam today. She kept looking at herself in the mirror, and she’d put on one of her nice dresses, but they weren’t going to church. Maybe she’d received a letter from her friend Millicent—that always made her smile. But Copper didn’t remember seeing one in the post yesterday. Mam always let Copper read the letters before she put them in the little dresser drawer that held her few pieces of jewelry. Millicent lived in Philadelphia, where she and her husband ran a school. Millicent was always after Mam to come to Philadelphia for a visit.