Chapter Nine

A couple days later, Lucy sat in the rocking chair on the porch, finishing the curtains she planned to hang in the bedroom. She held them up and thought the light blue fabric would make the room more cheerful. She liked blue. It was a soft and soothing color.

The breeze ruffled the curtains so she set them in her lap. Her hand went to her stomach, but she quickly snatched it away. She wouldn’t know for another three days at the soonest if she was expecting a child, so she tried not to think about it. However, trying not to think about it was easier said than done. She closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh air.

When she opened them, she saw the well and outhouse. To her right were the creek and the trees lining Brian’s property, but up ahead and to her left was the endless prairie. She couldn’t think of a more perfect view to enjoy while she cooked or sewed.

She did enjoy her new home, and even more, she enjoyed being Brian’s wife. He was a lot different from Adam. While Adam had been outgoing and fascinated many around him with the tales he could spin—tales she was sure were largely made up to impress people, Brian was quiet and tended not to elaborate on any given matter.

She often wondered why Adam chose her when her sister would have been better suited for him. Her sister, needless to say, hadn’t been pleased when he directed his attention to her. Staring off into the distance, she remembered the first time she met him.

Her brother’s wedding was in Saint Paul, so her family went there to enjoy the festive occasion. Since his fiancée was the governor’s daughter, the event was quite elaborate. The night before the wedding, her family attended the reception at the governor’s house.

None of them had been inside a house so big before, and her mother couldn’t stop gushing about the fancy things the governor had. Her sister, Meredith, spent most of her time accepting offers for dances while Lucy sat in the corner of the large room and tried to blend into the background.

Her brother found her and led his fiancée over to her. “Why aren’t you out there dancing?” He nodded toward the dance floor.

She turned her attention from watching the couples on the dance floor and smiled. “I don’t care much for it, Phillip.”

“Oh, come on, Lucy. You’re pretty good at it,” he said.

“You know I don’t care for large social gatherings. I’d be too nervous out there with everyone else watching me.”

“You’re watching them.”

Laughing, she shook her head. “But they don’t mind being watched.”

Smiling, he moved aside and motioned to the dark brunette standing next to him. “This is Teresa.”

Lucy stood and hugged her. “So you’re the one he can’t stop talking about.”

Teresa blushed and glanced at him. “Do you talk about me all the time?”

“That and more,” he replied.

“I’m glad you could make it, Lucy,” Teresa said. “Phillip said you enjoy reading.”

“Yes,” Lucy said. “I read under my favorite tree when I find the time.”

“I had a tree I used to swing on when I was a girl.” Teresa clasped her hands together. “As for reading, I do that often when I get the chance. There are some books I would like to pass onto another avid reader. If you’re interested, I can show you my collection, and you can take back whatever catches your fancy.”

“I never turn down the chance to get a new book,” Lucy replied.

“Splendid! After dinner, I will take you to the library.”

Library? “You have a library in this house?”

“Of course. I’ll be happy to show it to you after we eat.”

Lucy’s gaze swept the room, and she wondered just how many rooms this house contained.

Her brother held his hand out to her. “You need to have one dance while you’re here.”

“You’re a hard one to say no to, Phillip,” Lucy replied.

“That he is,” Teresa added with a chuckle. “Go on and dance with him.” Leaning forward, she whispered, “You’re his favorite sister, and he’ll miss you most when you return home.”

Touched by Teresa’s words, Lucy decided to dance with Phillip. When the next song started, he led her to the floor and took her in his arms. “Are you nervous about tomorrow?” she asked him.

“Not really. Everyone’s going to be watching Teresa. Well, maybe everyone but Ma. You know she’s going to be crying about how her little boy is all grown up.”

Lucy giggled. “Yes. She’ll be quite distraught.”

“Dramatic, I’d say.”

“She means well though.”

“Lucy, are you going to be alright without me at home?”

She peered up at him and then glanced at her sister who was laughing at something her dance partner said. “Maybe she’ll find a man to marry while she’s here.”

“Maybe. But if not, I hope you’ll be alright.”

Lucy sighed. “Let’s hope she finds a husband.”

After their dance, she returned to her seat. Her brother and his fiancée left to make their rounds to the other guests. Lucy watched people dance for ten minutes before a man who looked to be in his late twenties pulled up a chair and sat next to her.

Surprised, she glanced in his direction and thought about scooting her chair further from his but wondered if that would be considered rude, so she forced herself to stay put.

“What are you doing here all by yourself?” he asked.

She shrugged but kept her attention on the dancers. “I don’t care to dance.”

“That’s because you haven’t had the right partner.”

“No. I just don’t care for it.”

He seemed amused by her answer. “Honest and to the point. I like that.”

She wasn’t sure what to make of him, so she decided not to respond.

“My name is Adam Nilles.”

“I’m Lucy Barnes.”

“Nice to make your acquaintance.”

She nodded. “Nice to make yours too.”

“Are you on the bride’s side or the groom’s?”

“The groom is my brother.”

“Ah, a close relative then. I’m a distant relative on the bride’s side. I don’t come through the Twin Cities too often though. I’m a traveling salesman, but soon, with any luck, I’ll get a chance to buy a store to sell my goods.”

She turned toward him. “And what goods would those be?”

“Shoes, knickknacks, cookware. Mostly small things for now. I can’t lug a whole lot with me until I have a store that isn’t on wheels. It’d sure be good to settle down where I grew up.”

“You don’t live here?”

“No.” He let out a long, wistful sigh. “My heart and my home are in Oregon. It’ll always be there.”

“That’s a long way from here,” she noted, surprised he would venture so far from Oregon, even if he was a traveling salesman.

“I made my way across the country and am now coming back. I go from store to store and offer my services to business owners to sell their goods to people further out of town who may not, for one reason or another, be able to go to town to buy things the owners are selling.”

“Is it scary to travel by yourself across the country?”

He laughed and shook his head. “No, not at all. I’d say it’s a great adventure. I’ve met a lot of interesting people and have seen a lot of interesting places. Have you ever been outside of Minnesota?”

“No.”

“That’s a shame. There’s an entire world out there, and it’s a beautiful place.” He leaned forward and smiled. “May I have this dance?”

“Alright.”

She accepted his hand and went with him to the dance floor. As she did, she caught sight of her sister who was dancing with someone else. Her sister narrowed her eyes at her, and Lucy averted her gaze so she wouldn’t have to see her sister anymore.

Lucy shoved aside the memory of that night and returned her attention to the curtains in her lap. She stood up and went into the house. Picking up the rod that she had placed on the kitchen table before she went out to the porch, she slid the curtains through it. With a glance at the kitchen curtains, new dishes on the shelves, and the new rug, she saw how much the quaint house was already being transformed into a home.

The storm door opened and she glanced over her shoulder. Turning around, she smiled as Brian entered the house. “How was your day?”

“Good.” He smiled in her direction and set the walking stick by the door. “The marshal wants a bookcase for his wife, and the post master wants a rocking chair.”

“You and your pa will keep so busy I’ll never see you,” she joked.

Chuckling, he replied, “I doubt that. I like being here, especially since you came to live here.”

Her cheeks warmed. “I like it when you’re home.” Clearing her throat, she said, “I finished the bedroom curtains and was about to hang them up.”

Walking forward, he stretched his arms out with his palms up. “I’ll hang them.”

“Can you do that?”

“Sure. I find the window and then feel along the top for the hooks to place the rod on. I do this for Ma from time to time when she washes the curtains.”

“I suppose there’s a lot more you can do than I give you credit for. I’m sorry for assuming you couldn’t hang curtains just because you can’t see.”

“A lot of people don’t realize how much I can do. It’s not your fault. I don’t know what it’s like to see. If I could, I’d probably wonder how a blind person could do the things I can.”

She handed him the curtains. “I’ll have to stop underestimating you.”

He went to their bedroom and to the window.

“I can see why your ma wanted you to hang curtains for her,” Lucy said. “You’re tall enough to reach the hooks. I’d need to stand on a chair.”

“There’s no sense in going through more work if you don’t have to.”

She watched him, marveling at the ease with which he could perform the task. Yes, she’d have to stop thinking of him as someone who had a handicap. What he really was, if she was honest with herself, was someone who learned to build on the strengths he possessed instead of letting his weaknesses define what he could and could not do.

When he finished, he stepped aside. “What do you think? Are they straight?”

“They’re perfect,” she admitted. “You did a great job on the first try.”

“It comes with lots of practice.”

She laughed. “And here I thought you worked on nothing but furniture.”

“I do most of the time, but once in awhile, Ma will call me or Pa in to help her around the house. Is there anything else you need for the house?”

She scanned the bedroom and then did a quick walk through the other rooms. When she came to the empty room which would one day be a child’s room, she quickly turned away from it. She hadn’t done anything for that room, nor did she plan to until she had to. Trying to make it comfortable wasn’t something she could tolerate at the moment. Maybe it would take her a full nine months and hearing the baby cry before she could accept the child, if there was one already growing inside her. But she couldn’t do it now.

Facing the parlor, she said, “A couch. This room has no couch, and I used to enjoy curling up on a couch with a quilt in the afternoon.”

“You came to the right family if you want furniture,” Brian replied from where he stood in the kitchen.

“No one can argue that.” She studied the parlor again and nodded. “Yes. Once there’s a couch and a quilt, this room will be done.”

“I think we need a fourth chair.” He tapped the kitchen chair where three chairs surrounded it. “We’ve been working on one, and we’ll have one for the porch too.”

“I forgot about those. Yes, extra chairs would be nice as well.” She returned to the kitchen. “You came home early, so I don’t have anything ready for you to eat.”

“That’s fine. I don’t mind waiting.” He pulled out a chair but hesitated. “Do you need me to help with anything?”

“No. I can do it myself. You should rest.”

He sat down. “If you change your mind, let me know and I’ll help.”

“Alright.” She pulled out her apron. “It’ll be nice to have someone to talk to while I cook. I enjoy the peace and quiet out here, but once in awhile, I like the company.”

“Then I’ll do what I can to entertain you.”

She chuckled and got ready to make the meal.

***

Brian woke up to find Lucy in his arms. It was the second time since they married that it happened, so he didn’t expect it. On all the other days, he woke up to the delightful aroma of food that made him eager to get out of bed. Lucy was a better cook than his ma. His ma said the same, but he’d never voice the observation. His ma had a good heart, so no one could fault her.

Turning his attention to Lucy, he pulled her closer to him. It was a bittersweet experience to hold her this way every night. On one hand, she was wonderfully soft. He didn’t touch her anywhere but the parts granted him—her arms, her back, her face, and her hair. But his body was often painfully aware that there was more to her than what he could feel with his hands. Much more. Her soft breasts and stomach pressed into his side. One of her legs was draped over his. He took in what he could with the limits given him.

As smart as it might have been to sleep somewhere other than the bed with her, he didn’t dare, and he was relieved when she never brought it up. There was a certain degree of closeness afforded him in the intimate quarters they shared. He stroked her back, careful to not cross any boundaries.

His body notified him that it wanted to do more than lie next to her, but once again, he shoved the urge aside. She shifted in her sleep, and he felt her roll onto her back. He sighed in disappointment. He didn’t like how empty his arms felt whenever she wasn’t in them. If he had his way, she’d stay in them for the rest of his life.

As reluctant as he was to leave the bed, he did and quietly got dressed so he wouldn’t wake her. From the sound of it, she still slept. He left the house to relieve his bladder. After he washed his hands, he gathered a fresh pail of water from the well and used the rope to lead him back to the house. The air was still a bit cool in the mornings, but the days would soon be warm enough to open the windows. He inhaled and noted the lingering scent of the previous night’s rainfall in the air. No doubt his shoes would be damp upon his return, so when he got up on the porch, he removed them and set them outside the door.

He softly closed the door behind him and set the pail on the table. Pausing, he waited and didn’t hear any movement from the bedroom. Good. Lucy was still asleep. He wanted to surprise her by making coffee for her for a change. As he did, he thought over the possibility of having a child in the house. Whether the child would be his or Adam’s, it made little difference. He, after all, had once been abandoned by his real father, and this would be similar to that. He recalled the day of his real mother’s funeral. As sad as he was, he was more frightened than anything else.

His father was a hard man. Nothing like John who displayed great tenderness to Eliza and Brian. His mother often told him that before his father took to drinking, he was a good man. “It’s the moonshine,” she’d say. “It turns people into monsters.” At the time, he didn’t fully grasp what she meant, but as he grew older and remembered his childhood, he understood everything.

It was his fault she died when he was eight. He might not have meant to kill her, but the end result was the same. He was there the day the priest said the words that were to usher her into Heaven.

Brian tried not to cry. His father kept jabbing him in the arm every time a tear slipped down his cheek. Most of the small community had shown up for the funeral, but his parents had lived so far out of town that he didn’t really know any of them. As the priest read from the Book of Common Prayer, Brian hardly heard anything he said. All he kept wondering was what he was supposed to do now that his mother wasn’t there.

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground.”

The priest paused and for a moment Brian was distracted from his fears and sorrows to listen to what the priest was doing. The sound of dirt hitting the wooden box in the ground echoed through the still air. Despite the August heat, Brian shivered.

“Earth to earth,” the priest continued. “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.”

Then his father grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the hole in the ground. Startled, Brian dug his heels into the ground, not knowing what his father was doing or why the other people would watch and say nothing to stop him.

“Do as you’re led, boy,” his father gruffly said and then forced Brian’s shaking hand into something cool and lumpy. “Throw the dirt into the hole.”

It took a moment for Brian to understand what his father meant. Relieved his father hadn’t shoved him into the hole, he hastened to obey. His hand clamped around the dirt and he felt for the opening of the grave before he tossed his handful into it, waiting until he heard the resounding thud of the dirt, followed by other thuds as others threw their handfuls into the hole.

His lower lip quivered. He’d never hear or touch his mother again. She had passed from this life to the next much too soon, and he couldn’t do anything to bring her back. As the priest continued his prayer, Brian cried harder despite his father’s jab in the side to stop him.

The rest of the funeral passed, and then he and his father went to eat and visit with some of the people in the community. Brian spent a good deal of time sitting in a chair and listening to everything that went on around him. He didn’t talk to the other kids because he didn’t know them and they whispered about how different he was because he needed a stick to help him walk. He didn’t bother explaining that the stick was to guide him, not help him physically walk.

One conversation he overheard was a woman asking his father what he planned to do about him. Tuning out the other conversations going on around him, he listened with acute interest. He had assumed he would go back to live with his father in the cabin he grew up in, but his father said he had female relatives who offered to take care of Brian. That was the first Brian heard of such relatives.

His father took him home shortly after that. Brian wanted to ask about the people his father planned to send him to but didn’t have the nerve. Through the night, Brian hid in his secret place while his father got drunk. He wrapped himself in his mother’s quilt and spent the night softly crying and inhaling her scent from the fabric.

A week later, his father told him they were going on a trip. He wanted to ask if this was the trip he’d be taking to meet the relatives he never knew about but resisted the temptation. In many ways, he was looking forward to it. He wanted to get away from his father. Whatever his new home would be like, it couldn’t be worse than what he’d been through.

It was two days into the journey when his father told them they were stopping to take a break. Brian found a private spot to relieve his bladder as his father instructed. When he returned to the spot he knew his father had left the wagon, the wagon was gone. At the time, the realization his father had lied—that there were no relatives—devastated Brian. Of all things he believed about his father, he never believed his father would leave him alone to the elements to either struggle for survival or die.

Even the memory of all those years ago made Brian angry. He no longer cried over any of his past, but there were times when he felt anger over what happened because now he understood what his father had done to him and his mother and there was nothing he could do to change any of it. She was still buried in the cemetery in Wyoming, and his father had gotten rid of him without enough concern to even give him food or water.

Brian recalled there being three days of walking through tall grass, crying until he was dehydrated and weak. That was when John and Eliza found him in the fields. He was so grateful to find another human being that he didn’t wonder if it was safe or not. Fortunately, John and Eliza turned out to be the type of people an eight-year-old blind boy could trust.

Footsteps brought Brian’s attention back to the coffee pot in front of him. He lifted the lid and smelled it, assured it was ready and took out two cups from the shelf above the cook stove. Whatever got him thinking of the past? He rarely did it anymore. Then he recalled Lucy’s situation. It was the possibility of her having Adam’s child that brought the memories back. Another man treating a woman wrong and then running off to potentially abandon his child. Few things angered Brian more.

Pushing aside the unpleasant feelings, he called out a greeting to Lucy, hearing from her footsteps that she was still in the bedroom.

Grinning, he walked to the bedroom, and from the direction of the rustling skirt, he turned his head toward the dresser. “Good morning. This time I made you coffee.”

“Morning, Brian.”

He frowned when he detected the worried tone in her voice. “Is something wrong?”

She didn’t answer, and from the way all sounds stopped, he gathered she stood perfectly still.

“Lucy?” He reached out toward where he’d heard the rustling of her skirt.

“I’m still here,” she whispered and took his hand.

Caressing her cool hand in his warm one, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

He heard her bare feet scuffing across the floor before her arms went around his waist and she rested her head on his chest. Surprised, but pleased, he wrapped his arms around her and rested his head on the top of hers so he could better smell her lavender soap.

They stood there for a full minute, and he was beginning to wonder if she’d ever tell him what was on her mind when she softly said, “I’ll find out in a couple days if I’m expecting a child or not.”

“You have nothing to fear with me. I’ll love the child.”

“I know you will, but I’m afraid I won’t.”

“Sure you will. A mother can’t help but love her child,” he said, thinking of his real mother and how much she loved him. She loved him to the point of taking the brunt of his real father’s anger. He didn’t doubt for a minute that Lucy would lay down her life for her child, regardless of who the father was.

“I didn’t love Adam,” she confessed. “I was fond of him. I thought he’d make a good husband and father, but I never loved him.”

He wondered if it was wrong for him to be happy to hear her say those words. Obviously, she didn’t love him when she married him. Theirs was a marriage borne out of necessity. But at least he didn’t have to worry about her mourning the loss of someone she loved.

“I would have been faithful to him,” she continued. “I meant the vows when I spoke them. I would have done what I could to be a good wife for him.”

“I know.”

“I meant those vows with you too, Brian.”

“And I meant them with you. For better or worse, Lucy. We’ll get through this.”

He felt her body relax.

“You feel better?” he guessed.

“A little.”

“Good. We’ll take it one day at a time.”

She remained in his arms for another minute before she stepped back. “Are you hungry?”

“A bit, but I can wait until I get to Ma and Pa’s place if you don’t feel up to cooking.”

“No. I want to cook. I like to keep busy so I don’t worry.”

“Whatever you feel up to is fine, Lucy.”

“I’ll go out for a minute to take care of personal business and then I’ll be back.”

He listened to her leave the house before he returned to the kitchen to pour their cups of coffee. Maybe it was wrong, but he couldn’t stop smiling. Whether or not she had Adam’s child didn’t matter. Being a father was more than getting a woman pregnant. Any man could do that. He didn’t consider his real father his actual father. John was his father. That’s where his loyalty and heart were, and he knew that Lucy’s child, should there be one, would feel the same way.

What had him smiling in what was probably a most foolish manner was the fact that she never loved Adam. The reason she married Adam meant little to him. Whatever the circumstances were, they were hers to tell him or keep to herself as she saw fit. The only thing that mattered to him was that one day—sooner better than later—she’d tell him that she loved him. And deep in his heart, he thought the beginning of love was already there.