Chapter 27 Nancy
TWENTY-SEVEN
NANCY
“Would you be available tomorrow to go into town?” Elizabeth asks after passing me a basket of freshly baked dinner rolls.
“Um,” I peek over at Karl because I don’t know. I assume tomorrow he’ll be back to his regular schedule of doing cow-related things. I, on the other hand have no idea what I’m supposed to do anymore.
Karl smiles at me over the top of his water glass and shrugs. “You can do whatever you want to do tomorrow.”
I haven’t told him yet that in a few days I’d like to go home, or to my parents' place. They’ll be leaving for Europe tomorrow on their annual talent purchasing tour.
I don’t have any of my stuff beyond what I’d taken to the fair with me, and while I like the idea of a fresh start, there are things I want.
The jewelry box from my great-grandmother and the stuffed dog I’d grown too old for more than a decade ago, but I had always imagined passing it along to a future child.
I also want to say goodbye to a few of the horses.
“I’d love to,” I tell Elizabeth as I butter the roll with what I can only assume is homemade butter.
Everything on the table came from this property. Grown, raised, harvested, and prepared by the people sitting around me.
I couldn’t have told you where the food on the dinner table growing up had come from. I doubt my mother could have named the person who prepared it.
When I bite into a roasted carrot, I want to cry knowing that it was pulled from the ground by someone at the table.
I quietly eat my dinner while Matt and Karl give their parents a full rundown of the week. Not once do they trash a competitor. They talk about everyone else like friends, as if the entire week was a family reunion of sorts.
It’s so different from my experience. Not that those relationships didn’t exist, they just didn’t exist in my family or with our barn.
Celeste and I were only allowed to engage openly with people deemed worthy by our mother.
I’d hear other groups laughing and desperately want to know what was so funny.
I was stuck being an heir to the equestrian empire my mother had built while also being the help.
Paraded around one minute and hidden away the next.
I somehow manage to keep it together through dinner and then while we help clear the table and do the dishes. Karl and Matt argue over whose turn it is to wash while the other dries, and Elizabeth and William head off to have tea in the living room.
In the end, Karl washes, I dry, and Matt puts things away while I take note of where he puts every item. Acquainting myself with a place I’ll no doubt be spending a great deal of time.
“You’re quiet,” Karl observes as we walk hand in hand back down the lane to our little cottage.
And that’s when the dam finally breaks.
“It’s just hitting me that this is my life now and…” I laugh nervously as tears start to fall, and then I’m caught somewhere between maniacal laughter and sobbing. I’m positive my face is already blotchy, and I can hardly keep up with the way my nose has turned into a faucet.
Karl pulls out a handkerchief and gently wipes my cheeks and then holds it up to my nose.
“Blow,” he commands, and I obey, although my blow is interrupted by a fit of giggles that overwhelms the last bits of decorum.
“You would have a handkerchief,” I sniffle, wiping my nose on my sleeve like a child.
He looks down at the cloth in his hand and shrugs. “You never know when a beautiful woman is going to need one.” He slips it into his pocket and takes my face in his hands. “You were saying?”
“This whole place. Your life. It’s a polar opposite of mine.
Your family talks. They care about each other in a way I didn’t even realize was possible.
It’s overwhelming, but not in a bad way.
You, you’re overwhelming. This thing we did.
This monumental commitment we made is overwhelming, and it’s all hitting me now. ”
His hands are rough but gentle as he stands stock-still with them on my face. His eyes search mine as if he thinks there’s more to what I’m saying. He swallows, and concern pulls at the corners of his mouth.
“Are you regretting this? Do you want to contact that guy? Price was it?”
“Pearce,” I correct without thinking, and his hands fall from my face, a puff of air rising as he takes a step back, cluing me in to how having that name at the ready would seem to someone worried I’m having second thoughts.
I quickly step forward and wrap my arms around him. Holding him against me as hard as I can, feeling a little better when his arms reach around my shoulders.
“I’m fully in this, Karl Hore,” I mumble into his coat. “Wholly and completely. Till death do us part.”
He tightens his hold on me, and something inside my chest snaps into place as if whatever had been misaligned has righted itself.
An hour later, I’m smiling stupidly at Karl’s reflection as we brush our teeth side by side in the tiny bathroom. He is standing half behind me, one hand on his toothbrush, the other playing beneath the hem of my top.
When we finally crawl under the covers, the ones we had thoroughly messed up a few hours ago, all I want to do is curl up against him and go to sleep. But he has other ideas.
“Tell me what you need,” he pleads quietly in the dark.
“What I need?” I yawn, expecting to feel his hands slip under my pajamas.
“To feel less overwhelmed,” he clarifies, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear and then letting his hand trail down my side.
“Patience?” I wonder aloud. “Which feels like a weird thing to ask for because I’m overwhelmed by the way your family is. Oh, Karl, please have patience while I acclimate myself to a family that seems to genuinely love each other.” I laugh humorlessly.
“It’s not weird. The Hores are a lot.” He chuckles. “What else?”
“I need to go home at some point to get stuff. Not because things here aren’t good enough, it’s just…”
“Not your stuff. You don’t have to explain yourself, dearest. It makes total sense. What else?”
“We haven’t talked about certain things. For all I know, you believe the earth is flat,” I say nervously, genuinely concerned he’s about to tell me he does.
“I believe the earth is round. That we aren’t alone in the universe; it seems preposterous that we would be.
I think evolution is cool. My cousin lives with her partner, and I think it would be pretty great if they could get married.
I like the idea of milk alternatives, believe it or not.
I believe a healthy society needs healthy, well-educated people.
I’m scared to be a parent, but I dream of being a father.
I never believed in love at first sight,” he whispers, sliding my body closer, “until I saw you and something scrambled in my brain.” He runs his nose along mine.
“I’m terrified you’ll wake up one day and want to call Pearce. ”
I never believed in love at first sight.
The word “love” hasn’t passed between us. He has not said he loves me, and I haven’t said I love him. I’m stuck on that word. Wondering if I even know what it is. I have loved horses, I think. Loved the feeling of riding when I wasn’t being told I was doing something wrong. I love apple dumplings.
“I’m terrified I’ll wake up and want that too,” I admit and raise my fingers to his mouth when I see he’s about to respond because I’m not done yet.
“I’m more terrified that you’ll love me more than I can love you.
It’s not a feeling I have a lot of practice with.
I’m not even sure I’d recognize it. How do you know?
” I ask, already afraid of what his answer will be.
He doesn’t respond right away. He studies me for a beat, and I’m grateful for the silence and the dark.
“There was this grief that came over me after our first interaction. Like I’d lost something important to me.
It’s a bit of infatuation and an all-encompassing need to be near you.
To know you in every possible way. I don’t know how else to describe it.
It’s different from the love I have for my family.
Which is probably a good thing.” He laughs, his spearmint breath tickling my senses.
“I was sure about you. I wouldn’t play with your heart, wouldn’t marry you on a whim, and wouldn’t encourage you to uproot your entire life just for fun. ”
I know this. I may not know all the things that fill the nooks and crannies of his mind, but I know deep down that he wouldn’t have gone through with this endeavor as some kind of joke. I don’t need to spend years beside him to know that Karl Hore is a good man.