Seated in the wingback chair, Mr. Reason stared into the flickering candle flames. Anora slipped away, leaving him with his grief.
Weary to the bone, she remembered the bundle of dirty, muddy clothes she’d left on the back porch. In the dark, she brushed what she could see of the mud off her cape and put her dress in a pan of soapy water to soak. Concerned, before going upstairs to her bed, she checked in on Mr. Reason.
Sound asleep, chin tucked in, arms folded across his chest, he looked cold. Hesitating in the doorway, she’d spied a green crocheted throw on the settee and carefully draped it over his chest. A lock of hair had fallen over one eye. She reached out to tuck it back, but stopped herself. Sticking her brazen finger between her teeth, she backed out of the room.
Sleep eluded her. When she closed her eyes, the image of the lifeless infant, the translucent pallor of his skin, the veined, blueish hue of his closed eyelids, haunted her.
Awakened by Isabell coughing in her sleep, she heard the hall clock strike the hour of three. The call of a killdeer rushed her out of the room and downstairs, forgetting to hide the petticoat and chemise she wore to bed. In the kitchen, she fumbled in the dark to rekindle the fire in the cast-iron kitchen stove.
Behind her, a voice in the dark caused her heart to skip several beats. “I’ll do that.”
“Mr. Reason?” Releasing a sigh of relief, she said, “You gave me a fright. Isabell’s coughing. I came down to heat the kettle.”
With amazing efficiency, he lit a candle on the shelf by the doorway. The candlelight moved toward her until she could make out the buttons unbuttoned down the front of his white long johns to the light reflecting off the silver belt buckle on his brown, cord trousers. Her gaze flew quickly up to the shadowed, sharp planes of his strong face. Tortured by insomnia, his eyes had sunk into two dark craters beneath his heavy dark brows.
“You go on, I’ll bring up the water. We don’t want her to wake up and have no one there.”
The candle came closer; she could feel the heat of the flame. In the dimness, their gazes met, and her heart stopped beating, the world stopped revolving. Resisting her instinct to hold him, rock him in her arms, Anora reached out to him. He shook his head and turned his gaze away. Cheeks burning, she lowered her arm, ducked her head, and made good her escape.
Mrs. Reason’s voice calling, “Isabell? Hank?” sent Anora rushing up the stairs and down to the bedroom at the front of the house.
“Mrs. Reason, it’s me, Anora,” she said, looking around the half-opened door. “Mr. Reason’s downstairs boiling water for a steam. Isabell’s coughing in her sleep. I felt her forehead earlier, there’s no fever.”
With that said, Mrs. Reason lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes. Anora came closer to the bed to ask, “Would you like something? Are you in pain? What can I do?”
Silence hung on the air for a few moments, then in a soft, miserable voice that wavered, Mrs. Reason asked her, “Please, Anora, call me Lydia. I need to use the chamber pot. Will you help me stand? It’s under the bed. I feel as limp as an old dish rag.”
“Shhh, now, you need some time to build your strength.” With the chore done, Anora helped Lydia back into bed. “Would you like a candle? Are you hungry or thirsty?”
“Maybe some laudanum? Just a little. I’m so tired. Hank? Is Hank all right?”
“Hank is fine,” Mr. Reason said, coming into the room. “Anora, if you want to go see what you can do for Isabell, I’ll take care of this young lady.”
Dismissed, Anora smiled in the dark. He did love his wife. Downstairs, the look that had passed between them, that was Mr. Reason being Mr. Reason—kind, loving, caring Mr. Reason. He couldn’t help himself. And she would not read more into it than that—ever.
For a while, replacing the poultice, mixing the vapors for Isabell, she could hear Mr. Reason’s soothing voice talking to Lydia. The house went quiet, and Anora assumed they’d at last gone to sleep.
Sitting in the window seat, her gaze fixed on the open field to the east. She rested her eyes from time to time, long since surrendering to the fact she wouldn’t sleep. Shortly before six o’clock, the sky began to lighten.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed a shadow in the doorway. Barefooted, soundlessly, Mr. Reason entered the room. He went directly to Isabell’s bed and leaned down to kiss the little girl’s curly top. Heaving a weighty sigh, he backed away from the bed and sat next to her. “No fever,” he said.
Still in his trousers, no shirt, just his long johns, his hair rumpled, unshaven, Anora thought him the most handsome man she’d ever seen. His nearness quickened her pulse. She blushed in the darkness for her unseemly thoughts.
Out of the blue, he started to talk, his voice barely a whisper—more of a hum, a hum with words. “My mother, Eleanor, she died in childbirth. God was merciful. My father…the man who sired me, Curtis Bond—like Ruben, an animal.”
Head bowed, he laid his hand on her arm, fingers relaxed. “Curtis remarried a little girl, Julie Boyd—thirteen, maybe. Curtis made her life hell. Julie took good care of me, protected me. She had a baby, a boy, Michael.
“I helped her to deliver. I was six or seven, I guess. The old man started in on her right after, mad at having another mouth to feed. In a rage, he threw Michael against the door. Broke his neck, he died.
“Curtis left—gone for almost a month. Julie wanted to run, but too sick to move, she couldn’t. She told me how to clean the baby. We dressed him up to look nice. I found an apple box and painted it with whitewash. I remember dressing his little body, trying hard to fix the box nice for her. We buried him up on a little rise not far from the house.”
Anora put her hand to her mouth to hold back her emotions of sympathy, empathy, and horror. Her gaze locked to his moving lips, ears straining, she hung on to his every word. “When Curtis came back, Julie had to become more inventive and cunning to protect me. At seven, I ran away. I left her. I couldn’t save her. I saved myself.
He sighed and shuddered, his gaze moving to the coming light of day. “The Reasons took me in. I wiped those first seven years of my life right out of my head. I never once looked back.”
Head tilted to the side, his slid his hand from her arm to his thigh. “Not once,” he said to her face. “Not once, until the day I met you and Ben Talbot. And now, because of Carter Boyd, I’m reliving what happened to Michael—how he looked, small and fragile, eyes wide, startled, head lolling to one side. In my head, I hear Julie’s screams.”
Her fault. All her fault. No words could ever express Anora’s sorrow, her guilt, her regret. “I’m sorry,” she said, knowing her offering inadequate. Without thinking, she asked, “Lydia? Have you told all of this to Lydia?”
He shook his head. “No. I’ve never told anyone. The Reasons and the Hayes families assumed my family had died of influenza, and I never thought to correct them. A lot of folks perished of influenza at that time.”
The quiet, it was as if the house were holding its breath. The clock downstairs struck the half-past six. Anora put her hand over his. He turned it over and brought her cool fingers up to his warm lips. His eyes closed for a brief second, then he released her and came to his feet on a heavy sigh. “It’s going to be another long day. We’ll bury Carter on the hill across the river. Lydia wants to come. I don’t know if she can. I don’t think Isabell is well enough. Do you mind staying with her?”
“Not at all,” she said. He turned his head, and the light from the window reflecting in his eyes pinned her to the wall behind her. For a long moment, he stared at her, looking at her again in that hungry way that made her think they had more than friendship between them.
Nervous and self-conscious, she said, “I’ll be happy to keep Isabell company. I…I…don’t think I want to go back across the river so soon anyway.”
Blinking, he shook off whatever he’d been thinking to ask her, “Do…do you think…?”
“What?” she asked.
“The river, I guess…the ferry…do you think you can do it?”
“I don’t know. Barney can’t work the ferry, not now spring is coming, he’s needed on the farm. And Whit will leave soon, I know. I’m fine with that. I don’t want him to stay. Unless Ruben shows up, I’ll have to do it if I want to keep the ferry going.”
“Paxton and I will help if we can.”
“You’ve already helped me. You’ve all helped me. I don’t feel alone anymore.”