Chapter Twenty-Four #2
I’d picked a new gown, a wig, and jewelry in which to greet him, but now I was in disarray with sand in my eyes and curls having escaped my sleeping bonnet.
My hands flew to my hair to straighten it, but John crossed the carpeted room with hurried steps and dropped at my bedside, bareheaded, dusty from his travels.
Our eyes both went teary as we beheld one another for the first time in so very many years. My first words were both a sob
and a sputter of relieved laughter. “Oh, John.”
“Yes, it is I,” he said, huskily. “But are you Abigail? Because I’ve never heard my wife express a wish to sleep in late. Are you sure that you are she?”
No, I wanted to say. No, I am very much changed.
So was he—at least in appearance. John was still stout and solid. But as my trembling hands caressed the thinning of what
hair he still had, I couldn’t help but feel renewed worry for his health. His eyelids sagged, his pallor was alarmingly ashen,
and his hands were swollen in mine.
I whispered, “Husband, husband, husband,” as if to convince myself he was the same man.
Pressing a kiss into my palm, he murmured, “My beloved wife, my dearest friend . . .”
I didn’t wish to break the spell, but my worries overcame loftier emotions, and I couldn’t hold them in. “How tired you look.”
“Only because I’ve been traveling all night, my dear. Rest assured, I’m twenty years younger than I was yesterday. By coming
to me, you’ve made me the happiest man upon earth.”
Despite everything, I smiled to hear it. In fact, I let out another unexpected laugh, a sputter of joy and relief merely to
be touched. My skin wanted to soak it in like a thirsty desert as he folded me into the conjugal tenderness of an embrace. So many years
I’d gone without a caress that my tears now flowed in a torrent. They wet his face and mine.
Though I turned away, pressing the base of my palms to my cheeks to hold them back, they poured silently down my wrists in
rivulets to my elbows.
If he’d asked why I was crying, I couldn’t have explained. Even if I understood all the reasons, I wouldn’t have dared. Because the years of yearning, disappointment, anger, and hurt—they might’ve all come pouring out with my tears. So, I was silent.
At length, John stroked my shoulder and said, “How terribly I have abused your love.” I shook my head to deny it, but he knew
me too well. “Abigail, let us not add dishonesty to the distance I’ve put between us. I know I’ve wronged you. I’ve cursed
myself a scoundrel even as I wronged you. And yet, still I wronged you. Probably in more ways than even I know.”
I could only stammer. “I have felt—I have been—so alone.”
Somberly, he nodded, lowering his head.
“That first year, John, when you didn’t write with any tenderness—”
“I could not, Abigail,” he started to argue. “I was surrounded by spies and didn’t wish for the British to use my tenderest vulnerabilities against
me.” He trailed off, then let out a sigh as his shoulders slumped. “The truth is I thought I had good reasons, but I was too
wrought up in my own vanity. I knew you were in distress, and I could’ve done better by you. I should have.”
At the sob that escaped me, I saw a new flash of pain in his expression. It wasn’t easy for John Adams to admit when he was
wrong. But he admitted it now. “If I made you doubt my love, it’s the greatest regret of my life. I am sorry, Abigail.”
I took a moment to becalm myself. Then I thought it best to bring levity. “You are very thorough in your pleadings, sir.”
With a quaver in his voice, he whispered, “A good lawyer knows when to throw himself upon the mercy of the court. I’ve been
a faithful husband, but not a good one. I mean to remedy that now. If you’ll still have me and if you’re still mine. I know
it will take time to forgive, but I will do everything I can to win back your love.”
“You never lost it,” I said, wiping the tears from his face and then my own. “Not even when I willed it so. I’ve told myself
many lies to survive, but in the end, I’m still most affectionately, most tenderly yours and only yours and wholly yours.”
It was not then and there all resolved between us, of course. How could it be after so many years of pain? Yet, I knew this
to be a new start between us.
When we were young, we used to jest we were akin to steel and the magnet—always pulled together. I’d always assumed my husband to be the steel, but now I thought him the magnet. Because even with so much still unsettled, I was drawn to kiss him.
Poets and painters wisely draw a veil over those scenes that surpass the pen of the one and the pencil of the other. And so
as for what happened next, I, too, shall draw a veil.
Later, propped on pillows, we spoke of our children.
“And how do you like our son?” my husband asked, his fingers tangled with mine.
I grinned. “How grown Johnny is! A real man of action. He’s rented a coach for our travel—made all the arrangements needing
no advice from me whatsoever.”
“Did I not speak truly when I said he was the greatest traveler of his age and without partiality as promising and manly a
youth as anywhere in the world?”
“You were truthful, indeed. Now, believe me when I say what a fine young lady our daughter has become.”
My husband sighed happily. “My princess. My jewel. I cannot wait to see her. Shall we wake her?”
Given the sunlight blazing in the window, I said, “She’s no doubt already gone out without realizing you’re here. She’s enjoying
the city with her brother—and deserves the enjoyment. She’s been a great comfort to me, you know, all these years.”
“As has her brother been a great comfort to me. Johnny is everything you could wish him. Miss Nabby’s special friend must rise in the legal profession quickly or he’ll be overtaken by her worthy brother.”
I hadn’t expected John to raise the specter of Mr. Tyler quite so soon. Now I readied myself to explain the perplexing matter.
“Speaking of Miss Nabby’s special friend . . .”
“Is she terribly glum without him?” John asked. “I’m surprised you didn’t marry her off and have them look after the house.”
My eyes popped open. “Marry her off? After you made such objections? Though I’ve become a bold woman, I’m not that bold.”
John tilted his head. “But I gave my assent back at the start of the year when I began to think the delay in your coming to me might be because of this entanglement. I realized how bullheaded I’d been.
How little cause I had to judge a situation from across the sea.
How my trust in you should be commensurate with the responsibility placed in your hands.
I sent a letter saying Nabby should listen to you, in whose wisdom I have the greatest confidence. ”
Oh, how time and distance and a disruption of the mail could change everything! “We never received that letter. It must have
miscarried.”
I imagined the precious missive dumped into the sea. Fluttering in the dirt on the roadside. Or perhaps it had been sent to
Mrs. Samuel Adams by mistake. It gave me a twitch at the temples to think of all the ways in which such an important letter
might go astray.
That twitch became a genuine ache in the head when John said, “Well, no matter. The young man in question wrote asking my
consent to a union with our daughter, and I gave it.”
Now my breath caught in distress. “I knew he’d written for consent to wed, but you gave it?”
“Yes, and quite graciously, too. I told him to make free use of my law library. I said I prayed God would bless the pair.”
My husband looked well-pleased with himself, and a small bit confused by my reaction. “Isn’t that what you wished?”
“Well.” I squinted in the morning light as it fell over my pillow. “It was what I wished, but then . . .”
Given the turn of events, did I dare confide in him the doubts Phoebe had planted? They were, perhaps, trivial complaints.
And I didn’t wish to poison my husband against the man who would become our son-in-law.
Having received my husband’s blessing, the betrothal could be considered akin to a signed contract. So Nabby’s options had
abruptly, and considerably, narrowed. Thus, I didn’t speak to John of misgivings. I only said, “I hoped to see whether distance
would weaken the bonds of affection. I suppose it should be enough to reassure us that having been kept from a union this
long, their affection remains unflagging.”
John, in a jovial and decidedly nostalgic mood, said, “It still vexes me to think how long your parents kept us from marrying. It was, of course, a seemingly prudent course of action from loving parents. But now, greedily, I wish to have back every moment they kept us apart.”
Kissing the corner of his mouth, I said, “Well, then, husband, before we leave for France, let us make up for lost time.”