Chapter Twenty-Seven
Maeve hardly spoke to him for the next few days.
Not that Jed could blame her, given how quickly he’d broken his promise.
That night still played back with such clarity in his head.
He’d barely gotten Ash stabled when he’d heard Lila’s first fussy cry.
He’d expected to see a frustrated Maeve glaring at him from across the yard.
He had not expected to find her frantically yanking cut bits of barbed wire out from the fence.
Their conversation had gone from an explosive fight to a stunned silence as Lila spoke her first word: Dada. Jed still couldn’t believe he’d heard right. But the moment was forever associated with the bleeding arm of his wife now, which was a scene he’d hoped to forget one day.
Jed straightened himself up, wiping the sweat from his brow as the mid-July sun beat down against him.
It had taken some time, but the pasture fence was finally repaired.
He missed having tools on the property-buying new ones kept slipping his mind-but he was lucky to have neighbors so readily available and willing to help.
“Wish Sadie weren’t so busy at Samuel’s place,” Jed lamented aloud to himself.
Maeve could’ve really used her friend right now, but Samuel was just as deserving of help, and relying on Sadie to fix his problems wasn’t a permanent solution. That, he’d had to discover on his own.
Mossy came trotting up from the middle of the pasture, her tail flicking at buzzing flies while she let out a displeased moo.
“I know I ain’t Maeve,” Jed apologized. “But she’s gotta rest her arm, Mossy.” He offered his hand to the cow, and after a moment, Mossy approached and headbutted his palm. Jed gave her a few pats against the side of her face, letting out a long, tired sigh.
“I ain’t glad that she got hurt,” he prefaced to Mossy, “but–and this here makes me sound awful–I’m glad she ain’t out here with me. I really ticked her off, Mossy.”
Mossy snorted, as if suggesting she could easily believe that.
“But I needed some time to myself,” Jed insisted. “And–and she had no problems giving it to me before! But now, suddenly…” His sentence trailed off, knowing full-well his argument was weak. Maeve didn’t have time to give him space anymore; time was a luxury they no longer had.
Mossy gave another snort, pulling Jed’s attention back to her. He gave her another firm pat, then gently shoved her head back toward the pasture proper. She immediately trotted away, and Jed watched her begin one of her many laps around the fence’s interior.
He’d been wrong to try and keep things from Maeve again.
“She were wrong fer shoving her hand in that there fence,” Jed muttered.
Only the wind replied with a gentle breeze through his hair.
He let out a frustrated groan, heading toward storage stall in order to take a tally of their supplies. “If I got her mad enough, I reckon she’d have no problem throwing me out to the wolves.”
Jed slowed his pace considerably. He’d meant it only as angry grumbling, but his heart ached far too much at even the thought of upsetting Maeve any more.
It’d hurt his heart bandaging her arm, and that pain had only led him further into self-deprecation.
At least to himself, Jed could fully admit his plan to put a degree of distance between him and Maeve was a foolish one.
‘When’s hiding things from Maeve ever helped me anyway?’ Jed asked himself.
This time, his reply came as a sharp crack of gunfire that rang out from the end of the pasture fence.
Jed sprinted across the lawn and into the barn in a split-second, whistling frantically while reaching for the barn’s bell. The cattle were already beginning to bellow in panic, but he managed to get the herd indoors with some help from Mossy.
He then immediately vaulted over the lower half of the Dutch door, ripping the borrowed pistol out of his waist holster and aiming it down wind.
A flash of a shirt collar vanished between the tall pine trees, and Jed fired off a warning shot of his own, sending a clear message back to his attackers.
Within minutes, a trio of riders raced into the forest in pursuit of the shooter.
Two were dressed in lawmen’s gear, while their leader could have been either Samuel himself, or another furious rancher hoping to finally catch one of the bandits in the act.
Jed squinted farther down the way, catching a brief glimpse of a solo rider breaking free from the forest’s border farther south.
Every fiber of his being wanted to saddle Ash and join in the chase.
Instead, Jed waited in the cattle’s pasture, gun raised and ready in case his attacker had brought friends.
***
Supper came and went with very little fanfare. Even Lila was surprisingly quiet, scooping out bits of cut potatoes from her stew before dropping them mindlessly onto the floor. Each time she did, Jed would get up to clean the mess, not wanting Maeve to injure her arm further.
Maeve, meanwhile, simply continued on with her meal without so much as a glance at him.
She hadn’t once asked him about the gunshots from earlier that day, and for one terrible moment, Jed wondered if his plan had worked.
If he’d truly severed whatever connection the two had begun to create over the last month and a half for good.
The pair couldn’t stay quiet forever, though, as they needed to communicate with each other during Lila’s bedtime routine.
One held her still in the wooden tub as the other rinsed the soap off her body, each offering soothing words of reassurance to the toddler as she sputtered out water.
Then, with her hair brushed and a nightgown pulled over her head, both Jed and Maeve sat with Lila as she squirmed in her crib.
Jed took to humming a song under his breath while Maeve stroked her hair.
Eventually, the toddler fell asleep, and the uneasy atmosphere in the cabin intensified,
Lila was no longer there to act as a buffer between the couple.
Maeve moved to stand, smoothing her clothes as she spoke quietly. “Do you want to stay here with her, or should I?”
She sounded entirely depleted. Jed wondered if she was still inwardly fuming and didn’t want to wake Lila, or if he’d somehow managed to break her combative spirit completely.
He realized he’d been quiet for too long, and Maeve had made the choice to move to the living room. Jed in turn laid himself out across the bed, his arms tucked under his head as he stared up at the ceiling.
Time stretched on endlessly. Beams of moonlight slowly appeared through the window and moved across the ceiling.
Jed suddenly sat upright and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He couldn’t take it any more, couldn’t sit and sink into the ever-growing pit of dread he’d made for himself. He walked with purpose, crossing the room and firmly pulling the bedroom door open before striding down the hall.
“J-Jed Mercer–!” Maeve let out a sharp gasp as he suddenly appeared around the corner. He hadn’t meant to startle her, though it did give him the chance to catch sight of his unfinished blanket before his wife unceremoniously stuffed it beneath the couch cushions.
Wife. Did he still want to call her his wife?
‘No,’ Jed corrected himself. ‘Do I still got the right to call her that?’
Jed watched a pained grimace cross Maeve’s face, and he quickly closed the distance between them, dropping to one knee to speak face-to-face. “Is it yer arm? Should I rewrap it?”
“It’s fine,” Maeve snapped, shifting her body away from him to obscure her injured arm. “I thought you were watching Lila?”
There was such a bitter edge to her voice. And…a tinge of fear. Of uncertainty. Realization hit Jed all at once, and he sat on the opposite end of the couch, trying to give her the space she clearly needed.
“Maeve, ye’re not a bad mother.”
Maeve’s shoulders stiffened. He’d hit the nail on the head.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Jed insisted, almost desperate to get her to believe him. To believe in herself. “I reckon ye’re the best thing that’s ever happened to that li’l girl.”
Her shoulders trembled, and a soft sob escaped her lips. “She said yer name. Not mine.”
Jed’s stomach twisted. “Maeve-”
“It’s stupid,” Maeve interrupted, hastily wiping her face as she tried to catch her breath. “It shouldn’t matter, but…but I was so mad at you. And–and it felt like she were choosing you in that moment, and-”
Another hiccupping sob escaped.
“I’m scared, Jed. I’ve always been scared, since the day those bandits darkened my doorstep. And when Pa died– I was scared before, but this were a different sort of fear. The kind that made me realize I were alone in the world.”
Jed felt his tongue go numb. As badly as he wanted to speak, to apologize and fix every little thing between them, he knew it was his time to listen.
“But I got over it. I had to, because I was the only one who could take care of myself.” Again, Maeve moved to wipe her face, but her uninjured hand was trembling far too much.
“I didn’t wanna feel that hurt again. That awful sense of loneliness, Jed.
I did everything I could to keep Sadie at bay, to have Sam stay fer the shortest time possible on the ranch every time he came over. ”
Another sob. Another desperate attempt to catch the tears now freely running down her cheeks.
“And then you came along, Jed.”
Jed’s heart skipped a beat entirely.
“You, and Lila. I reckoned I’d keep our marriage as a simple bargain between practical folks, but you made it so hard.
” Maeve choked out a heart-wrenching chuckle, her good hand loosely grasping at her injured arm.
“Because, as much as you tried to hide it, there was a warmth inside you I couldn’t ignore.
And I wanted so badly to pretend I couldn’t see it, but it were like trying to ignore the start of a summertime bonfire. ”
Jed forgot how to breathe for a moment. Him? A fire? The comparison seemed ridiculous, yet Maeve said it with such confidence.