“Good morning.” Alice greeted Jesse outside the gate in the picket fence surrounding his mother’s front yard.
“Good morning,” he returned stiffly, eyeing her suspiciously. “You weren’t waiting out here for me, were you?”
“Yes, I was,” she confirmed.
“What for?” he grumbled. “You’ll be late for work.”
Alice nodded down the street in the direction she had to go to get to Mrs. Tindal’s. “I was hoping you would walk me there.”
“If I do, I’ll be late for work,” he complained.
“This could be the only time we have to talk,” she pointed out. “We haven’t spoken to each other in over a week.”
“I’ve been busy,” he muttered.
“You used to meet me at Mrs. Tindal’s almost every day,” Alice recalled. “You used to wait for me to finish work, just so you could walk me home.”
“That was before.” He moved to walk away down the street, but she fell in step beside him. “I imagine you have your hands full getting ready to leave on your journey at the end of the month.”
“I haven’t been so busy that I wouldn’t talk to you,” she assured him. “And I know you’re no busier now than you were before.”
“So,” he demanded. “now that we’re walking together, what do you want?”
“Just to talk to you,” she maintained.
“Here I am,” he declared. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I just want to talk to you the way we used to,” she said. “We used to have such a good time, just walking down the street and talking about everything and nothing in particular. Couldn’t we do that again?”
She slipped her hand inside his arm, but he didn’t bend his elbow to provide her with a place to rest it, the way he did in the past. He kept his arm hanging limply at his side. “I don’t think so,” he mused.
“Why not?” she inquired. “What changed?”
“You did,” he remarked.
“I didn’t change,” she countered. “I’m not the one who stopped talking to you. You did that.”
“That’s because you decided to leave town without so much as a passing thought for anyone but yourself,” Jesse informed her.
“But I haven’t left yet,” she argued. “I’m still here.”
“You left town before you ever set foot on the train,” Jesse grumbled. “I never imagined you could be so heartless. It’s not just me. It’s your father, too. He needs you.”
“What Dad needs,” Alice stated. “is for me to move away from him and find another way of making a living. But I didn’t think you would call me heartless when I was just trying to help. I tried to come up with a solution that would meet everyone’s needs, and you got mad at me instead.”
“What did you expect?” Jesse spat out the words.
“I expected you to be glad that at least Dad can stop worrying about keeping a roof over his head. That’s the last thing he needs to worry about, at his age, when he can barely even walk.”
Jesse stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and faced her. His face contorted through a range of expressions, from disgust to disappointment to despair. “You expected me to be glad that you’re leaving? How could I be glad? You’re the person I care about the most in all the world.”
She stared at him, the deeper meaning of his words becoming clear to her for the first time. “What are you saying?” she whispered in astonishment.
She saw him in front of her as if looking at a stranger. In all their previous acquaintance, even sitting opposite one another at the supper table the night before, she saw the little eight-year-old boy with whom she climbed trees and stole apples from the cellar. Now, she struggled even to recognize this slender, dark-haired young man. He recalled to her events from her past attended by the little boy, but this stately gentleman who stood a foot taller than her wasn’t present back then. This earnest man with the intense, piercing eyes looked capable of taking her in his arms and kissing her with frightening passion. He looked capable of arousing in her a tornado of vast longing, and she would never find her way back from the tumult of it. In the depths of his ardor, exposed to her scrutiny now for the first time, he looked capable of just about anything.
The momentum of his admission carried him onward. “You know more about me than anyone else I’ve ever known. You know things about me even my own mother doesn’t know. I’ve told you everything I thought and felt and dreamed. How could I be glad you were leaving? You’re the only person I care about. You’re the only thing in my life that gives me any happiness at all. And now you’re leaving. You’re going to get on the train to travel across the country to marry a man you don’t know. And you’re going to leave me here alone to rot in misery for the rest of my life.”
Alice swallowed hard but nothing moistened her mouth, and the hard lump in her throat refused to go down. “You…care…for me?”
“Of course I do!” Jesse fumed. “You know that! I can’t imagine how I’ll carry on after you’re gone. I’ll have nothing to work for, nothing to live for. You’re my only friend. You’re the only beautiful thing in my life. I don’t care if the sun comes up tomorrow, if you’re not here. I don’t care if the flowers bloom in the park, or if the birds sing in the trees, if you’re not here. Every time I look at you, I think how dismal it’s going to be when you’re gone. I wish you’d leave now, so I wouldn’t have to look at you any more. Then I could get on with the rest of my miserable life and not think about you any more.” He might have said more, but he managed to stop himself and close his mouth tightly.
“I didn’t know that you…loved me,” she hesitated to use that phrase, but no other words explained his extreme behavior toward her. “I never knew.”
He frowned at her, but made no move to soften the blow, either for her or for himself. “Of course I do!” he growled furiously, as if angry more at himself for admitting it than at her for failing to discover it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she murmured.
“What good would it have done, if I did?” he sulked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. But at least now I know why you’ve been acting so strangely toward me.”
“I wanted to keep things light between us,” he confessed. “I didn’t want to say anything, at least until I finished my apprenticeship. I couldn’t marry you before then anyway, and I didn’t want to scare you away. I wanted to protect the friendship we had. Things were too good between us. I never thought you would leave.”
“We could never marry each other, even if I stayed,” Alice pointed out.
Jesse bent his brows together again. “Why not?”
“We don’t have any money,” she explained. “We would never make enough, between the two of us, to marry. We’d be lucky to keep a roof over our heads, but we wouldn’t be able to buy food. We could never raise children on such a small income, and we would be poor all our lives. Surely you don’t want that, do you?”
Jesse drew another inch or two away from her. “Is that all you ever think about? Money?”
“Of course not!” she retorted. “The fact is, I just don’t feel the same way about you that you feel about me. I wouldn’t want to give you a false impression that I returned those feelings when I don’t. That wouldn’t be right.”
“But it would be right,” Jesse replied. “to abandon me in favor of another man whom you don’t love and who doesn’t love you?”
“Maybe we’ll learn to love each other in time,” she speculated.
“And you couldn’t learn to love me?” His hard voice betrayed the faintest hint of sadness.
Alice enclosed one of his hands between both of hers. “I do love you, Jesse,” she breathed, and her own voice croaked with emotion. “I love you as much as I’ve ever loved anyone in the world. I think I probably love you even more than Dad. I grieve more for the loss of leaving you than anyone else, and I shudder to think how I’m going to manage without you to lean on the way I have all these years. You’re the one thing in my life that keeps me going. But I love you like a brother. I love you as a friend, nothing more.”
Jesse closed his countenance to her more severely than ever. He pinched his lips together in a hopeless struggle to prevent any more words from passing between them. “Are you certain we could never be anything more than that?”
She shook her head to clear her thoughts. “I don’t know if we could. Maybe we could. But I’m leaving Greensborough at the end of the month, and you’re staying here. So we’ll probably never know. I don’t want to say good-bye to you, but I am going.”
“If you’ve made up your mind,” Jesse growled. “then we both better get to work, because there’s nothing more to talk about.”
Alice still clung to his hand, reluctant to let him go before circumstances forced her to do so. “Will you walk the rest of the way with me? I just want to spend a few more minutes with you, while I can.”
“Alright,” he mumbled, turning up the street again. “Let’s go.”
They walked together through the streets of the town. Alice made small talk to break the uncomfortable silence. “How is your apprenticeship going?”
“Tolerably well,” Jesse confirmed. “I won’t be sorry when it ends, and I’ll be my own man.”
“But you enjoy the work, don’t you?” Alice warmed to the subject, grateful to discuss something with him other than her own impending departure, and falling into the easy familiarity of their long friendship.
“Of course I enjoy it,” he acknowledged. “I wouldn’t have been able to finish the apprenticeship if I hadn’t.”
“And Mr. Leary? He’s been good to you, hasn’t he?” she prompted.
“Oh, yes!” Jesse replied. “No one could treat me better than he has.”
“Then why do you say you’ll be happy when the apprenticeship ends?” she asked.
“I look forward to being my own man,” Jesse revealed. “I look forward to a journeyman’s wages, and the respect a journeyman receives. As it is, I’m doing all the work of a journeyman and getting an apprentice’s wages.
“You always preferred to be independent,” Alice recalled. “It’s your nature.”
“I’m doing as much work as Mr. Leary does,” Jesse told her. “I’m doing all the most complicated and demanding jobs that come into the shop. Whenever a high-paying customer comes in, Mr. Leary immediately refers him to me. My stitching is finer and I can work faster and more precisely than Mr. Leary. I already know everything Mr. Leary has to teach me.”
“You must have gained considerable skill in the years you’ve worked for him,” Alice marveled. “if you’ve surpassed him before you even finished your apprenticeship.”
The more Jesse talked about himself and his work, the faster he talked. He keenly surveyed the house fronts and yards of the streets through which they passed, addressing his comments as much to himself as to her. “I would like to open my own shop someday. But Greensborough is already saturated with tailors. I suppose I’ll have to hire myself out to someone else, at least for a little while.”
“You would do so well in your own shop,” Alice encouraged him. “I feel you would make a great success. People gravitate toward you, and they would come for your superior workmanship. I’ve seen your work. Customers will pay extra to get their work done by you.”
“They already do pay more for my work,” Jesse boasted. “But Mr. Leary takes the profit. Any other tailor I worked for would do the same thing. If I could find a way to open my own shop, I would. But as I said, I couldn’t do it in Greensborough. Greensborough has too many tailors already.”
“Here we are at Mrs. Tindal’s,” Alice observed, releasing Jesse’s hand. “I better get inside. It must be very late. Will you make it to Mr. Leary’s in time?”
“I’m late, too,” Jesse remarked. “but not too late. I’ll just go along this street and I’ll be there soon enough. You go ahead.”
“Will I see you again?” She detained him just a moment longer. “Can we walk together again sometime soon?”
“I guess so.” He kept his eyes cast down toward the sidewalk. “We can, if you want to.”
“Don’t you want to walk with me any more?” she inquired. “Have I hurt you so much as that?”
He refused to answer. “We can walk together if you want to. I won’t stop you from walking with me.”
“So can I wait for you outside the boarding house the way I did this morning?” she suggested.
“If you want to,” he repeated. “Only we’ll have to leave earlier so that we both get to work on time. I can’t be late again.”
“Me, either,” she agreed. “Well, I’ll go in now. I’ll see you later.”
Throughout the rest of the day, as Alice bent over her cutting and stitching, she recalled her Dad’s statements about Jesse and her decision to leave Greensborough as a mail-order bride. Was it really possible that she had misjudged the entire situation? Was the plan she conceived to help out her dearest loved ones really a hardship to them instead? Perhaps she should, as her Dad suggested, reconsider the whole thing and maybe find a way to back out of her promise to Mr. Emerson.
She shook her head in wonder once more at the revelation that Jesse felt cared so deeply about her that he wished her gone already rather than prolong their inevitable good-bye. If he felt so strongly, if he loved her so much more deeply than simply as a childhood playmate, didn’t she owe him some more thorough consideration?
His admission of his true feelings came as much of a surprise to her as her announcement of her plan to leave town came to him. She never suspected, in all the years they played together, walked together, and talked together, that he secretly harbored passionate feelings for her. He behaved so discretely in all their interactions, and he kept any desire for intimacy carefully hidden from her.
His confession did not draw her closer to him or induce her to reciprocate his feelings. On the contrary, her surprise at his abrupt revelation made her want to run and hide from him. What better way to do that, to avoid ever facing him again, than to leave town? She would get as far away from him as possible and run into the arms of another man. Once she safely married Mr. Emerson, all Jesse’s hopes and expectations would be irrelevant to her, especially when he would be on the opposite side of the country. No, she wouldn’t reconsider. She would leave, and she would rejoice in her new life.