Twice Loved (copy2) (30 page)

“You always did have your way with her, Rye, starting when the two of you were—”

That was the last word Dan uttered. Rye’s fist whistled out of nowhere and settled into Dan’s stomach with a thud. A single grunt swooshed from Dan before he folded in half and slumped into Rye’s arms.

Laura’s hands flew to her mouth as Josh came to life, racing across the room, crying, “You hit my papa! You hit my papa! Put him down! Papa ... Papa!” The pitiful little creature rushed to Dan’s defense, but Rye bent down, put a shoulder to the inert stomach, and lifted the man onto his broad shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Before Laura could stop Josh, he’d fallen against Rye’s stomach, punching him and yelling, “I hate you! I hate you! You hit my papa!”

It had happened so fast, Laura was stunned. But she finally moved, lurching forward to pull Josh away from Rye and calm him, then finally turn him toward the door.

Rye bounced Dan more comfortably onto his shoulder and spoke to a shocked Tom and Dorothy Morgan. “I apologize for the scene, but it’s been a rough day for Dan. My condolences on the death of y’r brother.” Then, turning to Laura, he ignored the curious onlookers, and ordered, “Come on, let’s get him and the boy home.”

They left the house without looking back, realizing that behind them speculation billowed. Rye’s long legs strode along the cobblestones while Laura hurried to keep up. Josh was still crying, but she tugged him along by the hand.

“Why did he hit Papa?” Josh whimpered.

Rye stalked along without slowing or glancing at either Laura or Josh.

“Papa had too much beer,” was all Laura could think of as explanation.

“But he hit him!”

“Hush, Joshua.”

The heavy clump of Rye’s heels led the way while Laura followed with her heart breaking and her son too young to comprehend any of it.

“And he put Grampa in that hole so they could bury him in the dirt.”

“Joshua, I said hush!”

She yanked at Josh’s hand and his head snapped. But when his accusations subsided into sniffling, tears brimmed in Laura’s eyes and guilt tore at her insides. She leaned to scoop Josh into her arms and carry him the rest of the way home while he buried his wet face against her neck, clinging and confused.

When they reached the 
Y
 in the path, Rye stalked on ahead and she followed the sound of his footsteps up the scallop shells in the dark. At the door of the saltbox, Rye paused, letting her enter first. He stood with Dan’s dead weight now creating an unbearable ache on his shoulder, listening as Laura found the tinderbox and lit the candles. As the light blossomed around them, her dark eyes sought Rye, then immediately she ordered Josh, “Get your nightshirt on, and I’ll tuck you in in a minute.”

She left him standing in the middle of the keeping room, watching as she led the way into the bedroom linter with a candle. Standing back, she watched Rye dump Dan’s inert body on the bed. When he straightened, his eyes moved around the room from the bed to the partially opened door of the chifforobe where Laura’s and Dan’s clothing hung, to the small commode where her whalebone comb rested beside a pitcher and bowl. When his eyes at last came back to her, standing in the doorway with her hands clasped tightly against her bosom, Rye’s expression was closed and stiff.

“You’d better take his clothes off.”

Laura swallowed the lump in her throat and moved farther into the room. But there was little space, and as she neared the bed Rye was forced to step around her. He moved to the door as she bent over Dan and began removing his shoes.

From the doorway, Rye watched her lift one foot, then the other, and set Dan’s shoes quietly on the floor beside the bed. She loosened his tie, then slipped it free and laid it on the commode. She freed the button at Dan’s throat while Rye remembered those hands removing his own clothing such a short time ago in the meadow. He scowled as Laura sat on the edge of the bed and struggled to remove Dan’s jacket, but his limp body refused to comply, and at last Rye ordered, “Leave him to me and go see to the boy.”

She stood to face him again, and he saw tear-filled eyes and quivering lips. Then she brushed around him, holding her skirts well aside as she hurried out.

Rye removed Dan’s coat, trousers, and shirt and managed to roll him beneath the covers into an unconscious, snoring heap. He studied Dan for a long minute, then—more slowly this time—he looked across the room. He stepped to the commode, picked up Laura’s comb, and ran his thumbnail along its teeth. He brushed the back of his fingers along a towel hanging on a mirrored rack on the wall behind the pitcher. Swiveling slowly around, Rye confronted the chifforobe. With a single finger he slowly opened the carved mahogany door. It widened silently, and he removed his finger and slipped it inside his waistcoat pocket while his gaze glided over the contents of the chifforobe where her dresses hung beside Dan’s shirts and suits. He reached out to finger the sleeve of the yellow dress she’d worn that first day he’d seen her in the market. He worked the fabric lightly between his fingertips, then wearily dropped his hand and sighed, deep and long. Glancing over his shoulder at the man sleeping behind him, Rye silently closed the chifforobe door before blowing out the candle and returning to the keeping room.

Laura was sitting on the edge of the alcove bed, tucking Josh in for the night. Rye told his feet to remain where they were, but the temptation was too great. With slow steps, he crossed to stand beside the bed and look down at Josh over Laura’s shoulder. She leaned to kiss the child’s face, which was still puffy and red from crying.

“Good night, darling.”

But Josh’s lip trembled, and he had eyes only for the man who hovered behind his mother. The accusing stare scored Rye’s heart, but he submerged the hurt and moved a step nearer. As he did, his hips and stomach came lightly against Laura’s back. He reached a hand over her shoulder and touched the boy’s fine, soft bangs with a calloused finger while Josh’s eyes remained wary and defensive.

“I’m sorry I hit your papa.”

“You said you was his friend,” the quavery little voice accused.

“Aye, and I am.”

Laura watched the long, tanned finger slide away from the blond hair and retreat somewhere behind her, but she felt the warmth of Rye’s body still pressing comfortingly against her back.

“I don’t believe you.” The little chin trembled. “And ... and you put that box in the ground with my grampa in it.”

“He’s the one taught me t’ fish when I wasn’t much older than you. I loved him, too, but he’s dead now. That’s why we had t’ put him in the ground.”

“And I’ll never see him again?”

Sadly, silently, Rye shook his head, assuming the role of father now, but with a pain he’d never imagined it might bring.

Josh dropped his gaze to the blanket over his chest, picking at it with an index finger. “I didn’t think so, but nobody’d tell me for sure.”

Rye felt a tremor run through Laura and lightly rested his palm on her shoulder. “That’s because they didn’t want t’ hurt y’ or make y’ cry. They didn’t think y’d understand, bein’ y’re only four.”

“I’m almost five.”

“Aye, I know. And that’s old enough t’ understand that y’r ... y’r papa is going t’ be very lonesome for his papa for a while. He’s goin’ t’ need lots 
0
’ cheerin’ up.” Rye looked down at the top of Laura’s head. “And y’r mama, too,” he added with great tenderness.

Unable to stay there between the two of them and contain her tears a moment longer, Laura again leaned to kiss Josh.

“Go to sleep now, darling. I’ll be right here.”

He turned over on his side, facing the wall, curling up into a little ball. But when he felt Laura’s weight shift off his bed, he looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t shut my doors, Mama.”

“N ... no, Josh, I won’t.”

She left the hinged doors wide and turned, wiping tears from her eyes. When she’d crossed to the far side of the room beyond Josh’s range of vision, Rye remained where he was, studying the boy. From the bedroom came the sound of Dan’s sonorous breathing, his repetitive soft snore the only sound in the dusky room. Rye looked at Laura’s back, then tiredly crossed to stand behind her, studying the intricate coil of hair at the back of her neck, the tight stricture of her black mourning dress across her slumping shoulders. From behind, he covered her upper arms, chafing them gently, watching the tender hollow at the back of her neck as she dropped her face into her hands and wept softly.

“Aw, Laura-love,” he uttered in a shaken whisper, pulling her back against his chest, feeling her shoulders shaking. She stifled her sobs into her palms, and he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it into her hands. He let her weep, feeling so much like weeping himself, but swallowing thickly, closing his eyes and rubbing her arms once again.

“Oh R ... Rye, I feel so guilty, and I’m even more ashamed because I’ve been mourning as much for us as for Zachary.”

He spun her around and crushed her against him. Her arms clung to his back as his head dropped down to her shoulder and they rocked together, solacing each other.

Josh heard his mother’s sobs and slipped his feet over the. edge of his alcove bed to stand beside it uncertainly, one hand still under the blankets while he watched the wide back of the man curving to hold her. He saw his mother’s arms come up around Rye’s neck, then the big man rocked her, the way she sometimes rocked Josh when he felt bad and cried. Josh studied them silently, perplexed, wondering whether or not he should be mad at Rye for hitting Papa like he had. It seemed like Mama would be mad at Rye ... but she wasn’t. Instead, she was hugging him and had buried her face in his neck just as Josh had buried his face against her when Laura carried him home tonight. Again he heard his mother’s muffled sobs, and while the two rocked from side to side, the boy caught a glimpse of Rye’s wide hand holding the back of his mother’s head tight against him. He watched a moment longer, remembering how Rye had said his mother, too, would need cheering up. Then, silently, Josh lifted a knee to climb back into his bed again, to listen and wonder and decide that mamas, too, liked to be hugged.

Laura wept bitterly, allowing the full flood of grief to escape as it hadn’t during the past three days.

“Laura ... Laura...” Rye said against her hair.

“Hold me, Rye, oh hold me. Oh my darling, what you must have suffered through these last three days.”

“Shh ... hush, love,” he intoned softly.

But she went on. “My heart broke for you when I saw you facing Dan at the end of the wharf, and ... and when I saw you hold him in your arms and comfort him. And again along the beach while we were searching. Oh, Rye, I wanted to rush to you and hold you and tell you I loved you for what you were doing for him. He ... he needed you so badly then. I sometimes think that fate keeps throwing the three of us together, knowing we all need each other.”

“Damn fate, then. I’ve had all of it I can stand!” His voice shook as he held her near, running a hand along her back.

“Rye, I’m so sorry about Josh tonight. But he’ll get over it and stop blaming you.”

Rye backed away abruptly, gripping the sides of her head. “It’s not them I care about. It’s not them I need. It’s you!” He gave her head one emphatic shake and their eyes delved deeply into each other’s. Then he took her roughly against him again, breathing in the scent of her hair and skin, his voice a murmur of despair at her ear. “Why did this have t’ happen now? Why now?”

“Maybe we’ve been made to pay for our sins.”

“We did 
not
 sin! We are victims of circumstance, just like the others are. Yet we’re the ones made t’ suffer, t’ stay apart, when it’s none of our doing. We belong together, Laura, so much more than you and Dan do.”

Her tears flowed afresh. “I know. But ... but I can’t leave him now, don’t you see? How can I leave him at the worst time of his life, when he supported me through the worst time of mine? What would people say?”

“I don’t give a damn what they’ll say. I want y’ back, and Josh along with y’.”

“You know that’s not possible, not now ... not for a while.”

Again he backed away. “How long?” His blue eyes were beginning to show anger.

“Until a decent period of mourning has passed.”

“The mourning be damned! Zachary Morgan is dead, but must we pretend we died with him? We’re alive, and we’ve wasted five years already.”

“Please, Rye, please understand. I want to be with you. I ... I love you so.”

Suddenly Rye grew still. He studied her face in the dim light from the candle across the room. “But y’ love him, too, don’t y'?"

Her eyes dropped to Rye’s chest, and when after a long silence she neither looked up nor answered, he moved his hands to span her throat, pressing his thumbs up against the underside of her jaw, forcing her to meet his gaze.

“Y’ love him, too,” he reiterated painfully.

“We both do, Rye, don’t we?”

“Is that what it is?” He searched her brown eyes with their spiky, wet lashes while from the bedroom came the steady sound of Dan’s snoring.

“Yes, that’s why it hurts both of us so much to see him this way.”

“Does he drink this much often?”

“More and more often lately, it seems. He knows how I feel about you, and he ... he drinks to forget it.”

“And so either way his turnin’ to alcohol will bind y’ t’ him with guilt. If y’ stay, he drinks because he knows y’ want t’ leave. And if y’ leave, he drinks because y’ did not stay.”

“Oh, Rye, you sound so bitter. He’s a far weaker man than you. Can’t you take pity on him?”

“Don’t ask me t’ pity him, Laura. It’s enough that I love him, God help my soul, but I will not pity him for usin’ his weakness t’ hold y’.”

“It’s not just that, Rye. This island is so small. What would people say if I walked away from him now? You saw the looks we got from Ruth today. ”

“Ruth!” Rye exclaimed in an exasperated whisper. “Ruth’d do well t’ go out and spread her legs under a man so she’d know what hell you’re goin’ through!”

“Rye, please, you must not—”

He gripped her jaw and kissed her mouth with a battering assault of his own until he became aware of her working to free herself from the pressure of his thumbs. Then he hugged her to him, immediately repentant.