New Yes, that was the word.
Closing the kitchen door behind her, Eve looked eastward at the first pink streaks of dawn lightening the morning sky. For the past several days, she’d tried to define the feeling that had come over her since her decision to accept Christ. She felt new. Yes, she’d found the peace, the comfort Christ had promised in His Word. No longer did she wake in the night trembling with fear. Even Sheriff McCord’s news that, though delayed, a Pinkerton agent had been assigned to her case and could arrive any day hadn’t disturbed her serenity. But beyond the sense of calm that had enveloped her, she felt new. Though the facts of her past remained elusive, she’d asked God’s forgiveness for any wrongs she had done in her life.
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” The words from 2 Corinthians that John had read last night after supper played again through her mind in his deep, resonant voice.
John. The warmth flooding through her at the thought of him and the look he had given her when he read those words had nothing to do with the late-August morning. Her heart throbbed with a deep ache. She was new. God had made her new through Christ. Whoever she was before, wherever she’d lived before, now she belonged here in Eden.
She belonged with John. The bold thought at once surprised and saddened her.
Eve blinked back tears misting the rosy hue of the morning sky and quickened her steps toward the barn. The Pinkerton agent Sheriff McCord spoke of could arrive today to rip her from this place. Away from John.
“Dear Lord, don’t let anyone take me away from here.” The final words of her whispered prayer hung for a moment in the heavy morning air as she stepped into the barn. After Cinnamon’s birth, she’d begun helping John with the morning milking to let Matthew’s bruised arm heal and had continued the habit after the boy’s arm was well again. While her claim of wanting to check on Cinnamon was true, she knew it was not the calf but the chance to spend more time with John that enticed her to arise before the sun each morning.
The now-familiar scents of the cows, manure, and straw met her inside the barn’s dark interior. Something shot across her path. Startled, she gasped and stopped short, then giggled at her fright when she recognized one of the barn cats. The smells, sights, and sounds of the morning barn with its shifting shadows, mooing cows, and bleating calves had become both commonplace and comforting.
“Did Nubbin scare you?” John’s deep voice as he stepped from a stall behind her set her heart pounding.
“You’d think I’d be used to him by now.” Eve couldn’t stop the nervous giggle that accompanied her light quip and hoped John didn’t detect the breathlessness in her voice.
His expression softened with his voice. A dim ray of morning light slipped between the building’s weathered wallboards, illuminating his handsome features. “I won’t let them, you know.”
Eve’s heart hammered harder, and her breath caught in her throat as he stepped nearer. Did he have any idea what his nearness did to her? “W—what? You won’t let them what?”
He curled warm fingers around her upper arm, sending pleasant tingles from her shoulder to the tips of her fingers. “I won’t let them take you away.” A grin lifted the corner of his mouth, and he glanced away for a second, looking as boyish as a six-foot-tall man could look. “I didn’t mean to hear your prayer, but I don’t want you to worry. You must know I’ll do everything I can to keep you here.”
Eve’s heart throbbed, and unexpected tears sprang to her eyes and slipped down her face. “Dear John.” She lifted her wet face to him and cupped his bristly jaw in her hand. “I know you’ll do what you can, but—”
“Eve.” His voice turned husky. He slid his arms around her waist and drew her against him. For one long moment, their gazes held, and she felt as if she were sinking into the depths of his hazel eyes. As if in a dream, she watched his dark lashes sweep down to kiss his cheeks the instant before his lips kissed hers.
For one heart-stopping moment, time stood still. There was no barn, no cows, no world, only Eve and her angel-man floating in a sweet sphere oblivious to any earthly intrusion. Then Eve felt a subtle shift, deep in her being. In that moment, the planets aligned, and she slipped into the niche in the universe carved explicitly for her. All doubt evaporated like the morning fog beneath the rising sun. This is where she belonged: here in the arms of her angel-man.
Too soon he lifted his lips from hers, shattering the spell that had bound them together, while still holding her in the circle of his arms.
Eve slammed back to earth with a jolt. Garish reason crashed over her like an icy ocean wave, demolishing the beautiful dream that had enveloped her. As much as both she and John might want it, they couldn’t begin to contemplate a future together until they learned her identity. She pushed away from him and fought fresh tears. “There’s no sense in it, John. You don’t know who I am. What if I’m the fugitive embezzler the Pinkertons are after?”
A smile strolled across his well-shaped lips, and he gathered her back into his arms. “I may not know the name you were born with, or where and how you lived before you came here, but I know who you are. I know your heart and your soul. You are Eve, and your spirit is as beautiful as your face.” His smile quirked into a grin. “I used to be a policeman, remember? I know a thing or two about criminals. If you were a criminal, even if you didn’t know it, your instinct would have been to run, not to stay here.”
Eve’s heart crumpled. She loved him even more for trying to convince her, or maybe both of them, of her innocence. For now, it was enough to know that John cared for her and wanted her to stay here in Eden. John trusted in God, and now, so did she. If God meant for her to stay here in Eden with John, God would allow that to happen. But if she had committed acts that would require her to pay restitution and snatch her awayfrom him, at least she now had the assurance that Christ would walk with her through whatever unpleasantness lay ahead.
Hoping to lighten the mood, she smiled and took his hand. “I couldn’t run away if I wanted to. I don’t have any money.” She turned and began towing him toward Cinnamon’s stall. “Come on. I want to say good morning to Cinnamon and brush her coat before I get started milking. I need to keep her looking her best for the fair competition.”
John stared at the farm’s ledger book lying open on the kitchen table, but his mind refused to register the figures on the lined pages. In the two weeks since he and Eve had shared that kiss in the barn, he’d struggled to focus his thoughts on anything other than the woman he loved. Yes, he loved her. That acknowledgement at once thrilled and frustrated him. Since that morning, she’d allowed no other opportunity for such a private moment between them, avoiding any situation where they might be alone together. She’d stopped volunteering to help with the morning milking and now waited to tend to Cinnamon while John and Matthew were busy filling the milk cans and moving them to the springhouse.
Giving up on the ledger, John leaned back in the kitchen chair, expelled a breath of frustration, and shoved his fingers through his hair. Most maddening was knowing that Eve cared for him, too. Despite her increasingly distant attitude toward him, he’d caught her in unguarded moments gazing at him with a look so tender his heart seized. But she’d made it clear: until they learned her identity, she refused to allow their relationship to grow, and despite multiple inquiries, Sid McCord had received no further word on when the Pinkerton agent assigned to Eve’s case might arrive.
“John, have you been in my butter-and-egg money?” Across the kitchen, Aunt Clara frowned into the blue speckled crock where she kept the money from her weekly sale of eggs and butter.
“No. Is there some missing?” Pushing the chair back with a screech, John got up and walked to the cabinet beside the sink where his aunt stood peering into the container.
“All of it. Ten whole dollars.” A mixture of surprise and dismay played over her wrinkled features.
“Are you sure you didn’t spend it on the material you bought to make those new dresses you and Eve plan to wear to the fair tomorrow?” John leaned in to look into the crock.
“No.” Aunt Clara’s frown deepened as she continued to gaze into the empty vessel, as if by doing so, she could make the missing money appear. “I was careful to keep this back so Eve and I would have a little spending money for the fair.”
“Have you asked Matthew, or… Eve?” John struggled to make his lips form her name even as his mind raced toward possibilities he didn’t want to explore.
“No, I just now found it gone.” Aunt Clara replaced the crock on the cabinet shelf. The sadness in her eyes and in the deepening lines around her pursed mouth sparked a quick anger in John.
He patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Aunt Clara. I’ll find out what happened to your money and get it back for you.” John headed for the kitchen door, intent on questioning Matthew and Eve, when Aunt Clara’s voice stopped him.
“Matthew’s off making those milk deliveries to Fortville and Pendleton, so you won’t be able to ask him about it until sometime this afternoon, though I can’t imagine him doing such a thing.”
That Aunt Clara didn’t mention Eve fueled John’s growing suspicions. Eve’s parting words after their kiss two weeks ago echoed in his head. I couldn’t run away if I wanted to. I don’t have any money. Ten dollars would buy a standard coach ticket to New York. “Where’s Eve?”
“In the barn tendin’ to Cinnamon, I think.” Aunt Clara’s voice sounded strained as she turned to the sink and began busying herself folding towels and rearranging sundries.
Striding to the barn, John dreaded having to question Eve about the missing money and grappled with how best to word his inquiry. Worse, he dreaded her reaction. Would she get angry, or cry, or look him in the eye and lie? His heart hammering, he walked to Cinnamon’s stall, bracing himself for the encounter ahead. When he finally reached the calf’s enclosure, his heart sank. Except for the little red heifer, the stall was empty.