Chapter 28
Chapter
Noreen hung her head. The moment James had stepped through that cell door, she’d known what she had to do. For his sake.
A sudden chill beset her, and a tremor worked its way through her limbs. James, collected her blanket and draped it around her shoulders, then drew it forward like an overlarge shawl that surrounded her arms and pooled in her lap. So solicitous. So tender. So . . . loving.
Merciful heaven. He loved her. He’d said so, but more than that, he’d shown her in a hundred different ways.
And how had she repaid him? By keeping secrets.
Letting him believe her to be an honorable woman when she was anything but.
How she wished she could accept his love and never look back, but he deserved better.
He deserved honesty. Love built on selfishness and lies was no love at all.
“Would it be easier to talk if I lit the lamp?” There he went again, extending thoughtfulness and patience. He’d probably sit at her side all night whether she found the nerve to tell him the truth or not.
“No.” She’d rather confess in the dark. Protect herself from seeing his disappointment.
Grasping the edges of her blanket, she pulled it tight, as if it could insulate her from the jagged memories tumbling from the box of sharp-edged shards she’d hidden away after the night her soul shattered.
“My father . . . he was not an easy man to live with, even when he wasn’t drinking.
” His face rose in her mind. Handsome. Strong.
Eyes that matched hers. The broken glass of regret slashed her conscience.
“He was quick to find fault and slow to offer affirmation. He criticized Mama despite her constant efforts to please him. I hid whenever he came home from the saloon, afraid I’d accidentally stir his anger. And his fists.”
She shrank within her blanket. “I grew to hate him.” Her voice cracked.
Strange to both love and hate someone at the same time, yet she had. Though as her hatred piled higher, the love became harder to find. Until it was too late.
“There were times when he rode off to the saloon that I wished he wouldn’t come back.” Saying the words out loud tore a piece of her heart open. She’d never admitted her darkest thoughts to anyone.
James sat quietly, offering no judgment. At least no verbal condemnation. She had no idea what he might be thinking. His arm still pressed up against hers. He hadn’t pulled away. But then, his kindhearted nature probably rooted him in place. Either that or shock.
She closed her eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled.
“Some nights he stumbled home well after dark, but that night he was later than usual. I made my final visit to the outhouse and noticed the barn door was open. Worried that our cow might have gotten out of her stall again, I went to check on the animals. I found Papa’s horse, saddle still on, standing in the tacking area.
Then I found Papa. Passed out on the barn floor.
Too drunk to tend his mount. Or himself.
Particularly ironic since he had backhanded me earlier that afternoon for sloshing milk out of the pail onto the fresh straw he’d spread in the cow’s stall.
Accused me of carelessness and said a girl who couldn’t properly care for her family’s stock didn’t deserve to eat her family’s food. The hypocrite.
“I despised him in that moment. I can still remember standing over his unconscious form and feeling my heart turn to stone. I felt no compassion. No honor for my father. Only disdain and disgust.”
“You were a child, Noreen.”
She shook her head, unwilling to accept youth as an excuse.
“I wasn’t an infant, James. I was twelve, closer to being grown than not.
Old enough to know right from wrong. Even in that moment, I knew that I should return to the house and tell Mama what I’d found.
But I didn’t. Instead, I unsaddled Papa’s horse, brushed the animal down, and settled him in his stall, feeling quite superior all the while.
After finishing that task, I strode back to Papa’s crumpled form.
His clothing askew, his face flat against the same dirty floorboards where manure fell.
He deserved to pass a night with the rest of the animals.
Maybe Mama would finally get a good night’s sleep without having to tend to her drunken husband and clean up his messes.
The mud he dragged in, the things he knocked over in his inebriated state, the vomit that invariably came when his body tried to rid itself of the liquor’s poison.
Let him sleep off his drunk in the barn for once.
Maybe waking in a pool of his own vomit would teach him a lesson. ”
Noreen adjusted her grip on her blanket shawl, knowing what came next, yet wishing she could fend off the truth.
But one couldn’t escape truth. It could be denied, ignored, or even buried for a time, but it never perished.
It stood ready to testify at a moment’s notice, to exonerate or condemn without preference.
Noreen had carried the weight of its condemnation in her soul for fifteen years, made all the heavier by her choice to wrap it in secrets.
The weight pressed in on her with crushing force.
She had to get out from under it before she collapsed.
“He never had a chance to learn from his mistake because . . . he never woke up.” Her voice cracked along with her heart as the truth tore free of the coils of secrets that had held it prisoner.
“I killed him, James. My malice and derision killed him.” Her body folded forward as the confession clawed its way out of her throat in a raw rasp.
“The doctor said Papa choked on his own vomit. He declared it an accidental death, but I knew the truth. It hadn’t been an accident.
It had been murder. I could have saved him, but I left my father to die. ”
A warm arm encircled her exposed upper back, and tender fingers stroked her right shoulder. How could he stand to touch her after what she’d confessed? She didn’t deserve his kindness, his understanding. She deserved outrage and scorn.
“You didn’t know he would die, Noreen.” His gentle words rained down on her like a shower of needles, pricking and poking and drawing tiny beads of blood all over her body. “There has to be intent for a person to be charged with murder, and you didn’t intend—”
“But I did!” She pulled away from his comfort with a jerk and scooted forward on the mattress.
Pressing up onto her knees, she turned to face him.
“I wanted him gone. Out of our lives. I didn’t have Luella’s pure heart.
I didn’t pray for my father’s healing, for him to break free of liquor’s hold.
Maybe I had once upon a time, but I gave up on those petitions when they went unanswered.
I prayed selfish prayers instead. That God would protect me and Mama.
That he would take Papa away. I even prayed for God’s wrath to strike him down. What is that, if not intent?”
Shadows hid most of his face from her, but she could feel him lean toward her. “Those sound like the desperate prayers of a young girl trying to survive. Even David prayed for the destruction of his enemies.”
Oh, she knew the psalms he spoke of. She’d used them for years to try to justify her actions, but her soul had never accepted them as an adequate excuse.
“‘Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.’” She quoted the verse that she’d never been able to rationalize away.
“‘And ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him,’ First John 3:15.”
“‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,’ Romans 8:1,” James countered. “Paul counted himself a murderer, too, yet once he accepted Christ’s redemptive grace, that sin was forgiven and washed away. Just as yours was.”
James reached for her hand again, and this time she didn’t pull away. She craved his acceptance too much. Even if only offered for a single night.
His thumb caressed the back of her hand.
“I’m not saying you don’t bear any responsibility for the choice you made.
We all have to heed the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit and admit our wrongs if we want to be forgiven.
Yet I heard deep remorse in your recounting.
You’ve already sought the Lord’s forgiveness, haven’t you? ”
Noreen bit her lip and nodded. “Yes, though it took several years for me to believe that he would actually grant such a favor.”
All those tearful nights kneeling by her bed, telling God how sorry she was and begging for forgiveness.
She’d prayed over and over again, her guilt and shame drowning out the sweet whisper of Jesus promising pardon.
Leaving the farm had made it easier. Not having to walk through the barn every day and see the place where her father’s body had lain allowed her to heal to some extent and finally accept the Lord’s forgiveness.
But trusting the Lord proved much easier than trusting people.
She’d never told her mother about that night because she feared her mother would cast her out, and she’d be left with no one.
She’d not told Martha or Jane for the same reason.
Friends had been exceptionally difficult to come by for a bristly girl with a chip on her shoulder and a crusade in her heart.
She couldn’t risk losing them. So she’d buried the truth deep inside and turned her attention to Jesus’s command to go and sin no more, pledging to make restitution for her sins by fighting the good fight of temperance.
Until today, when the good fight had been tarnished by anger, pride, and vengeance. The compulsion to bend others to her will and punish those she deemed in the wrong had driven mercy out of her soul, the very trap she’d sworn never to fall into again. Yet here she was, back in the pit.
“I thought I had put it behind me. But when I saw what Mr. Templeton had done to Luella, something dark seeped back into my soul. It offered a false sense of power and strength when I felt vulnerable and helpless, so I welcomed it. Fed it. Justified its existence. And when I realized that Luella’s father would not be brought to justice, I unleashed the rage, believing the lie that I could command my enemy’s surrender and regain some measure of control.
” Her posture slumped. “All I managed to do was forfeit what little control I possessed. Control over my actions, my thoughts, my words. I was the one who surrendered to the enemy, and now I’m paying the price.
” A moan vibrated in her throat. “I thought I was smarter than that!”
James gripped her hand more firmly and tugged her toward him.
She went willingly, if awkwardly, since her twisted skirt lay trapped beneath her legs.
He caught her and hugged her to him before settling her beside him within the crook of his arm.
Her face rested against his chest, so when he spoke, the words vibrated against her ear.
“We all have areas of weakness and woundedness that the enemy exploits. Heaven knows, I fall prey to his wiles when it comes to pride and plotting my own path. Paul had his thorn in the flesh, too, and the Lord’s answer to him applies to us as well.
His grace is sufficient. There is no limit to his forgiveness, sweetheart. ”
Sweetheart? How could he still think of her in endearing terms? Was there no limit to his forgiveness, either?
“Whatever comes tomorrow, Noreen, we’ll face it together. God will never leave you nor forsake you, and neither will I. You have my word.”
What could she say to that? It was the most beautiful promise she’d ever been given.
Which was precisely why she was afraid to trust it.
She’d been let down so many times by the very people who were supposed to love her.
Yet she wanted to believe that things would be different with James.
He was a man of honor. A man of principles.
A man of God. However, he was also a man of duty.
A man who might feel obligated to stay by her side because he had declared his feelings before she’d revealed her secrets.
She couldn’t allow him to be trapped by his sense of honor.
“You’re a good friend, James, and a man I respect above any other.
” She sat up a bit and looked into his face.
This close, she could see his eyes, and she forced herself to hold his gaze.
“I appreciate your steadfastness more than I can say, but I need you to know that I have no expectations of our relationship extending beyond friendship. I’m a spinster and plan to be one the rest of my days.
I’m married to the cause of temperance, and that is where my allegiance will always lie. ”
He said nothing for a long minute, just peered into her eyes as if trying to discern if a message existed behind her words.
None did. She meant what she’d said. She wasn’t good for him, and they both knew it.
Hadn’t he told her from the very beginning that allying himself with her would be bad for his career?
She’d pushed anyway, like she always did, valuing her own objectives above those of anyone else.
Well, no longer. Time to put his needs ahead of hers.
She cared about him too much to do otherwise.
“Allegiance is a funny thing,” he finally said. “It is not a finite commodity. It can be given to multiple recipients without ever diminishing the amount originally bestowed. It’s rather like love in that regard.”
Love? Her heart pounded with pleasure at his less-than-subtle message, but she still opened her mouth to protest.
“No more talking, Noreen,” he interrupted before she could form a cohesive argument. “We don’t have to solve every problem tonight. We can save some for tomorrow.” He cupped her head and drew her back down to his chest. “Close your eyes and get some rest. Dawn will be here soon enough.”
Perhaps she was giving in to weakness again, but she submitted to his direction, closed her eyes, and relaxed against him. It didn’t take long for sleep to claim her, and when it did, it brought dreams of a handsome deputy speaking words of love.