Louise hoped her disappointment didn’t show, but as the days passed without seeing Jesse again, she feared she had chased him away. He had revealed his dream to her, and she had thought only of herself. How wrong! After all, he had already told her that he thought of her only as a friend. Friends ought to encourage and prompt one another to share what troubled them. She had thought only of herself.
Ten children!
That was a lofty goal for any woman but an impossible one for her. Even without knowledge of her infertility, he must have realized that. The freshness of youth no longer graced her cheeks. Simple calculation made it clear a woman her age was incapable of having that large a family. No, she was a widow and likely to remain that way the rest of her life.
Shame on her. Just the other day she had cherished her independence. Now, a single man’s rejection had left her as despondent as a schoolgirl. She needed to return Jesse’s cleaned and pressed handkerchief, and each day she took it out of her dresser drawer and contemplated walking up to the lighthouse. At the thought of the cold rejection she would see in his eyes, she put the handkerchief back in the drawer. Perhaps he would come to the school to fetch it.
Her charges handled disappointment much better than she had. When she informed them that Mr. Hammond would not be giving the lectures on the lighthouse, their dismay didn’t last long. Her announcement that those lectures would be replaced by more botanical trips onto the dunes, however, elicited a lot of groans and Priscilla’s outright refusal to participate in such an unladylike venture.
Louise had learned not to react at once to Priscilla’s outbursts, but she also didn’t know what to do to make them better. It was one thing to ask the girl to help in the classroom. Louise could not force her to leave the building against her will. Though she suspected Priscilla’s refusal was tied to Jesse’s absence—if he had suggested they climb the dune, every girl would have followed—she had no idea how to combat the problem.
Later, when approaching the dining room for the midday meal she overheard Priscilla’s thoughts on the subject.
“She chased him away with her forwardness,” the girl said none too quietly to her entourage. “The whole town can see that she’s sweet on him. Can you imagine someone like Mr. Hammond being interested in a withered old widow like her? He’s tall and strong and incredibly handsome.”
The three girls giggled and their comments hushed to whispers, but the blade had been thrust deep into Louise’s heart.
She had been a fool. Even worse, she’d made a fool of herself in front of the students. Perhaps the Benningtons had been right, and she should have been terminated.
Then she felt movement at her elbow.
It was Dinah.
“Don’t listen to ’em,” Dinah whispered. “They’re jess plain mean.”
Louise offered the girl a smile of appreciation, though she could not deny the truth beneath their cruel words. She had overstepped her role and her position. From now on, she would stick to teaching and leave romance to the pages of novels.
“Thank you, Dinah, but I’m all right.”
The girl didn’t look like she believed Louise, but, like all young ladies, got distracted the moment her friend appeared. She dashed off to join Linore, and they entered the dining room arm in arm.
Louise ate alone, as usual, so she could oversee the students and maintain order. As she sipped the chicken soup, the truth became clear. This must be her family. She could never have one of her own. That meant finding a solution to the division Priscilla was causing. She would visit Pearl Decker over the weekend. No doubt the fellow schoolteacher could give her pointers on handling students who subtly opposed her at every turn.
* * *
Jesse awoke with a start, his nightshirt and the bedclothes soaked with perspiration. The room wasn’t overly hot. No, yet another nightmare had visited.
That made the third night in a row, every night since crushing Louise’s hopes.
He lay on his back, exhausted and panting. The ceiling of the small room offered no answers. The white plaster reflected the light of the waning moon that filtered in through the window.
Yes, the nightmares had begun in earnest the night after he informed Louise that he wanted a large family. She had been crushed. Any fool could see it, for she didn’t hide her emotions well. She was developing hopes, and he thought he was smart, perhaps even kind, to break off those hopes before they grew too strong.
He must have caught it early enough. After all, she didn’t weep and carry on like other ladies. No, she had kept her composure, and he could admire that.
Then why the nightmares? The images crowded into his mind night after night. The cold water, the dark, the sudden explosion, being thrown into the water, the screams and then finally the silence. He had been among the hundreds who survived, but upwards of 1700 had perished. And he’d done nothing to prevent the disaster.
In his dream, he walked aboard, just as he had in real life, handing his ticket to the crewman assigned to that task. Then he wandered through strange corridors and up a staircase, always pressed on every side by the tide of soldiers. The men laughed and joked. None of them seemed to notice him.
He pushed through the crowd, looking for someplace to stand alone and catch his breath. The hurricane deck sagged perilously, but no one seemed to care. As the miles chugged by, some sought sleep. He crouched on the promenade, unable to doze as towns passed by. The stop in Memphis passed in the blink of an eye. The chugging of the steam engines resumed, and the paddleboat headed upstream. His eyelids drifted downward. Then the explosion.
It rocked him from slumber and sent him flying.
A woman’s horrified face then appeared before him, her mouth forming the words, “Don’t leave me a widow.”
Jesse sat bolt upright.
That had never been part of the dream before. He rubbed his face. Was it memory or a fancy of his sleeping imagination?
All he recalled after the explosion was hitting the cold water, listening to the cries and wondering if he was truly alive.
After six and a half years, he wasn’t certain what was memory and what was dream.
The woman hadn’t been there. The huge number of soldiers dwarfed the regular passengers. No, the woman must be in his dreams because of Louise. Even though the dream was fading, he recalled a resemblance to her in the woman’s face.
What did it mean?
Was guilt over crushing her hopes driving this dream, or was it fear that he would be drawn into a relationship with her? She had come to Singapore to marry. Moreover, she did seem to find reasons to involve him in projects that included her. She also had a lot of help in that respect. Maybe the dream was a warning to stay clear of her. But they had intensified since he began doing just that.
He groaned and then dressed, unable to sleep any longer. He could escape to the tower and polish brass, or he could consult the Bible for answers.
He opted for lighting a candle and reading his Bible. It opened to the fifth chapter of Ephesians and the passage about how a husband is to love his wife.
“That’s not helping,” he muttered, for it made him think of Louise and how unsuitable that match would be. Just like his parents.
Had Pa loved Ma? Somehow Wilson Hammond had caught the fancy of Etta Webber. She had softened the rough man. Before her death, Jesse’s father had laughed and loved to go to the park for a picnic or to toss a ball. Afterward, drink and despair hardened him. Whenever Jesse failed, Pa threatened to leave him at the nearest orphanage. That fear clouded every day. Jesse would never inflict such pain on his children. Ever.
Or would he? Would adherence to some rule or convention unwittingly bring pain to those he loved? Back in Vicksburg, he’d followed protocol and his own selfish desire to get home instead of listening to intuition.
Then again, he couldn’t see the future. If he’d known the overcrowded steamboat would explode, he might have risked reprimand or court-martial and warned the soldiers not to board the Sultana. But he hadn’t. He’d stood idly by and even boarded himself, just as eager as the rest to get home.
Jesse buried his face in his hands. Why, Lord?
* * *
Saturday morning proved so busy with the students, that Louise didn’t have a chance to talk to Pearl Decker until that afternoon.
She entered the store to the ringing of the door’s bell. To her dismay, Roland was at the counter, not Pearl.
“May I help you, Mrs. Smythe?” he asked with his usual beaming smile.
“Is Pearl available?”
“I’m sorry.” Roland truly looked dismayed. “She was feeling poorly, so I insisted she rest.”
That threw her plans out the window. No one else could give her advice on how to handle Priscilla and her cohorts.
Louise sighed. “Then I will have to speak to her tomorrow, provided she is feeling better.”
“I’m sure she will be. She doesn’t miss a sermon.”
“Unless confined to bed,” Louise pointed out. Last November wounds from the fire had kept Pearl bedridden.
“We certainly don’t want that again,” Roland agreed. “She is not a good patient.”
Louise then recalled how Pearl had blamed Roland for the fire and refused to speak to him until she learned he wasn’t at fault. Once again Louise had said the wrong thing at the wrong time. “No, of course not.”
The relationship between Roland and Pearl had worked out in the end. Louise wasn’t as certain about Jesse. Every time they grew closer, he slammed the door in her face. Ten children. She still couldn’t believe he’d said that.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Roland was peering at her in such a way that Louise must have missed something else he’d said.
“No, no. I don’t need anything.” Neither should she spend frivolously, not with Priscilla ready to threaten her job at a moment’s notice.
“Would you mind taking the school’s mail?”
“The school’s?”
Roland turned to the cubbyholes where he sorted out the incoming mail. “Mrs. Evans didn’t pick it up.”
“Oh.” How daft could she be? She’d been thinking of the primary school, not the place she was currently employed. That was ridiculous, for Pearl was that school’s sole teacher. She would already have any mail directed there. “Of course, I’ll take it.”
He fetched a stack of mail from one of the cubbyholes. Nothing for Louise, of course. Fiona had received several pieces of mail. Priscilla, Adeline and Esther all had letters. As usual, neither Linore nor Dinah received anything. Being orphans, they had no blood relations, but Dinah’s foster parents could have written at least once. Every child deserved love and parents who longed to hear about everything. To have no one?
She sighed. After her father died, Mama had let her preference for Rachel run unchecked. Louise had been Papa’s favorite, something that Mama had seen fit to counter by lavishing her love on her other daughter.
“Mrs. Smythe? Louise?”
The sound of her name pulled her from the sad past. “I’m sorry. I was caught up in my thoughts.”
Roland didn’t comment on her inattention. “Since you’re heading in that direction, would you mind bringing the mail up to the lighthouse? Usually Pearl brings it to school and sends it off with one of the Blackthorn children, but she forgot yesterday. I’m sure they’ll want to get it.”
“Of course. It’s not much farther, and I enjoy hiking the dunes anyway.”
She would just avoid Jesse. If she went straight to the keeper’s quarters and gave the mail to Jane Blackthorn, she could miss Jesse entirely. It would also give her the perfect opportunity to return his handkerchief.
“Yes. I’ll do it.”
“Thanks.” Roland reached into another cubbyhole and pulled out a huge stack of envelopes.
“All that?” Louise struggled to grab hold of the stack and ended up tucking the smaller amount for the school into her bag before picking up the lighthouse’s mail. “There must be a lot of correspondence from the lighthouse service.”
“I wouldn’t know. Excuse me, I need to wait on Mrs. Calloway.” Roland hurried across the store, leaving Louise alone at the counter.
She looked down at the first letter. It was addressed in a flowing script that couldn’t be from the lighthouse service. A quick glance at the return address confirmed it. A Miss Miller had written. Then she noticed to whom the letter was addressed. Jesse!
He had never mentioned that he was courting. In fact, his behavior was quite inappropriate for a man who had a sweetheart elsewhere. She glanced again. Miss Miller was from Indiana.
Louise pressed a hand to her midsection. Why hadn’t he mentioned this? She had just begun to think him moral and upright. Now this. Unless... He had mentioned a sister. Maybe this was his sister, though she’d gotten the impression his sister was married. Maybe she’d misread, and Miss was actually Mrs. The letters were squeezed together and rather difficult to decipher.
She looked back. Roland was still with Mrs. Calloway in the white goods section.
Looking at just one more envelope wouldn’t hurt, and it might exonerate Jesse.
She tucked the first letter on the bottom of the pile only to discover the next and the next and the next were all from women who addressed themselves as Miss. Most were from Chicago, but some hailed from surrounding areas.
She felt sick.
Why, there must be two dozen letters addressed to Jesse, all from different women. What was going on?
* * *
Jane Blackthorn answered Louise’s knock on the lighthouse door.
Louise let out her breath. At least it wasn’t Jesse. Even so, her hands trembled, and she had to clutch the letters tighter so she didn’t drop them.
“Louise! What a pleasure to see you.” The keeper’s wife cheerfully waved her in.
Louise hesitated. She did want to know why all these women had written Jesse, but she didn’t dare reveal that she’d examined the address of each one. That was, well, wrong.
“Roland asked me to bring you the mail for the lighthouse.” She held out the thick bundle of letters.
Thankfully, Jane Blackthorn took them without noticing Louise’s shaking hand.
“My, there’s a lot,” the woman exclaimed. She looked through the envelopes. “Lighthouse Service. Letter from home. Another one from the Service. Oh, my.”
She had clearly reached the letters to Jesse, for she riffled through them just long enough to note the name on the return address.
“I should be going,” Louise said. “I need to get back to the students.”
Jane Blackthorn shook her head. “That man has no idea what he’s got himself into.”
Louise backed from the open doorway. “I must leave.”
Jane looked up, a look of determination setting in. “Now, don’t you fret. He’ll come to his senses.”
Louise managed a wan smile. “I’m sorry but I don’t know what or whom you mean.”
“Why, Jesse Hammond, of course.” Jane waved the stack of letters in her direction. “Men can get some fool ideas, but they usually find their way out of them.”
Louise’s face ached from holding the smile in place. “I hope there’s no trouble.”
“Oh, there will be trouble all right. A man’s bound to get a boatload full when he advertises for a wife.”