Chapter Twenty-Four
When the camp woke at dawn, Grace rubbed sleep from her eyes and stifled a yawn.
Heavy lethargy pulled at her limbs as she sluggishly made the preparations for them to leave.
Her father lay in the wagon, propped up on all the linens and pillows they had.
Amos had come by earlier with some medicine that was supposed to help with pain, but Grace knew it wasn’t sufficient.
Even though her father tried to conceal his pain beneath a stoic fa?ade, Grace could see the man was hurting.
His breath came in haggard, shallow gasps, and he looked quite pale.
Ethan walked over, his hands stuck casually in his pockets. His posture was calm and unruffled, and Grace found that a wave of relief washed over her at the familiarity of the sight. Even if her heart and mind were awash with fear and worry, Ethan was still there, and that was enough to steady her.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” she echoed. “I harnessed the oxen, so we should be ready to go.”
Ethan grunted and went over to inspect the animals. Once, Grace might have been frustrated by his checking her work, but not anymore. She had seen firsthand what happened when one wasn’t careful, and she was still a little intimidated by the animals.
“This is good work,” Ethan said at last. He smiled at her, so brightly that her heart gave a little anxious flutter.
‘You do not have to be nice to me because you pity me,’ thought Grace.
But she wasn’t sure he did pity her. When she thought about it, she remembered that Ethan’s behavior towards her had become kinder long before the accident with the wagon.
“Thank you,” she said, her face warming at his praise. “Hannah taught me well.”
Ethan’s lips twitched into a small smile. “She did say that you were a quick study.”
Grace blinked, a little taken aback to realize that Ethan and Hannah talked about her when she wasn’t around. There was no reason for her surprise, though. She spent a lot of time with Hannah and Ethan, after all; of course they would occasionally discuss her.
Ethan pulled himself into the driver’s seat, then extended a hand down for her.
“Good morning, Ethan!” called Emily from inside the wagon.
He grinned at her. “Morning.”
Grace let him pull her into the driver’s seat and sent a quick glance to her father. The low sound of snoring reached her ears, and Grace let herself relax a little against the seat. At least her father was resting.
“I wonder if I might also teach you something,” Ethan said suddenly.
Grace blinked. “Hm?”
Ethan offered her the reins, and Grace inhaled sharply. The image of her family’s wagon plunging perilously close to the roaring river loomed before her.
“Y-you want me to drive?”’
“I scouted this area ahead,” Ethan said. “It’s fairly safe for the next few miles. Smooth and straight—no water, no winding curves, and no cliffsides. It’s the best place to practice managing a wagon.”
“I thought you were going to be manning the wagon,” said Emily, her face crumbling in disappointment.
Ethan cast a look over his shoulder and winked at her. “I will be,” he said, “but I know your sister is an independent woman. I’m sure she’d like to keep learning to do it herself.”
He was doing this for her, because he knew her well and respected her desire to be independent.
Grace couldn’t decipher her own feelings when he said that.
She looked away, as if embarrassed, but she felt so much more than that.
Ethan respected her independence. She had never heard that from a man before, and having Ethan say it made joy well up inside her.
The wagons around them had begun to slowly inch forward, horses and oxen pawing impatiently at the ground. Grace silently counted to ten before nodding.
“I’d like to learn how to drive on my own,” she agreed.
As Grace reached for the reins, her fingertips brushed against Ethan’s own, and a tingling sensation spread through her fingers.
Her heart hammered madly against her ribs.
Grace tried to will herself to be calm, but it was a futile endeavor.
Her body had come alive just from that brief touch, much like the last time they had driven Ethan and Hannah’s wagon together.
Grace’s mind did not wander to Charles for once, although she remembered well their light and innocent touches during Sunday evening rides.
Instead, her thoughts were all of Ethan.
“Eager, aren’t you?” Ethan asked, amused.
She was, but not in the way he meant. Grace was instead imagining once more what it might be like for Ethan to take her on one of those evening rides.
“I just—I know the animals can sense nervousness,” Grace said, stammering as she tried to come up with an excuse. “That’s all. I want them to think I’m in control.”
“Relax.”
Ethan curled his right hand over hers, making that impossible.
He gently guided her to snap the reins like last time.
The oxen lumbered into motion, and her pulse lurched with them.
Slowly, the wagon wheels inched forward, accompanied by a predictable creaking.
Grace tried not to think about those same wheels rolling over her father’s ribs and the awful scream they had ripped from his throat.
Ethan’s knee brushed against hers, and Grace gasped, brought sharply back to the present moment. “Steady,” Ethan told her.
Grace thought, quite irrationally, that he was making her unsteady on purpose, but the idea was gone as quickly as it came. Ethan was a good man. He would never do something like that. No, it was her own traitorous mind that was responsible for her unease.
Something about Ethan’s kindness and dependability had turned her into a silly schoolgirl again. She had become the sort of woman who fantasized about—
About love, although she was embarrassed to think of it like that.
This was just a fleeting fondness, an infatuation.
It could not possibly be more than that.
Sure, she had come to know Ethan fairly well over the recent weeks, but there was still a lot he didn’t know about her.
He didn’t even know that Emily was her daughter!
They couldn’t be anything if she wasn’t honest with him, and Grace couldn’t do that.
How would she even begin to approach that conversation?
Ethan, I am very sorry, but I have lied to you for weeks. Will you forgive me?
His fingers were suddenly under her wrist, and sudden heat rushed through her. “Keep your hands steady,” Ethan instructed her.
“Right,” Grace said.
“Try to relax. You’re doing great.”
An anxious laugh bubbled out of Grace. She didn’t feel like she was doing great. Maybe with the oxen, but certainly nothing else.
“We are very different people,” she said. “Do you know that?” Grace meant it as a joke, just a conversational moment to try and soothe her anxiety.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ethan tense. Grace sensed at once that he hadn’t taken her statement as a joke, but she didn’t know what he had taken it as. She had only made a statement of fact. What was so objectionable about that?
“Is it because I can’t read?” he asked.
The question was said abruptly, as if Ethan hadn’t really thought about saying it, and the question had sprung forth against his will.
Grace froze, unsure what to say. Had he assumed she would care so deeply that he couldn’t?
“Oh.” The word was scarcely more than a breath of air. “Of course not, Ethan. Many people can’t read. That doesn’t mean they’re lacking.”
She meant that with all her heart. Still, there was a regret in her heart for who Ethan might have been. He was a good man—courageous, kind, clever, and gentle—but he might have been so much more if his life hadn’t been so hard, if he hadn’t been asked to sacrifice so much.
Next, there was a smoldering anger that the world had been so cruel to Ethan, leaving a child to take on the mantle of both father and brother.
“I’m so sorry,” Grace said.
“Because I can’t read?” he asked defensively.
“No,” she said, glancing away from the road ahead for just a moment. Ethan curled his fingers around hers, keeping her grip on the reins steady. “I am sorry because everything has been so hard for you. You deserved better, Ethan.”
His nostrils flared. Ethan stared so intently at her that Grace could have sworn he was staring right into her soul.
“I became stronger for it all,” he said eventually. “I wouldn’t be the man I am today if I hadn’t gone through all that.” He paused, then said, “You need to loosen the reins a little more.”
Grace did as he said and turned her attention back to the oxen. “I suppose you’re right,” she said.
‘I happen to like the man that you’ve become,’ she thought.
Of course, she couldn’t say that, even if the words were there at the tip of her tongue. Grace suddenly wished she hadn’t agreed to learning to drive the wagon. Ethan’s instruction brought them too close together, and it sent her thoughts scattering in a hundred different directions.
“Hannah is lucky to have you,” Grace said.
It was the closest she could come to saying I’m lucky to have you.
“And I am lucky to have her,” Ethan replied. “She is everything I’m not, and if it hadn’t been for her, I don’t know that I’d have become a decent man.”
“No?”
“No. I was very bitter after my father left us. I was angry at the world and even…questioned God’s will.
I doubted His love. How could a kind and loving God let my father leave?
I’m not proud of that, Grace.” Ethan’s voice was worn, like a cloth that had been used so much that the fibers had begun to fray.
“Hannah gave my life meaning. I knew that I had to be strong for her. Good for her. Sometimes, I resented what I had to do, but I kept our family together. I kept us safe.”
Grace’s heart ached. She imagined a much younger and more vulnerable Ethan, a child who’d been thrust into adulthood too quickly.
Her own childhood had been blissful and pleasant.
The only tragedy in Grace’s life had been the early death of her mother, but Grace had never known the suffering that Ethan had.
She had never struggled or wanted for anything, because her father had taken care of her and given her everything he was able to.
“You’ll be a great father,” Grace said, hoping with all her heart that he might sense the weight of her feelings behind the words. “You know well what mistakes not to make.”
His shoulder brushed hers, and Grace barely resisted the urge to bump her shoulder against his in a silent gesture of support, and perhaps a bid to stay close.
“I suppose,” said Ethan. “I just hope that’s enough.”
“It will be.”
The oxen plodded onward.