Chapter Nineteen
Lottie met Delly and Jeb at the meeting hall after church.
“I brought you a picnic basket for today,” Delly said. “There is enough in there for you and Mr. Peterson.”
Lottie looked at the basket as if it might contain either lunch or heartbreak. “I don’t think he is going to want to picnic with me.”
“Nonsense. No man can resist fried chicken.” Delly handed her the basket, then picked up a second one and passed it to her husband. “This one is for us.”
Jeb lifted the basket, tested its weight, and set it back down with interest. “What’s in it?”
“Lemonade,” Delly said.
Jeb gave her a doubtful look.
Delly’s mouth curved. “And the sweetest apple pie you have ever tasted.”
Jeb laughed, caught her hand, and drew her toward the door. “Then I suggest we reach the beach before your sister commandeers both baskets, Mrs. Simms.”
Lottie watched them go, Delly’s hand tucked safely in Jeb’s, and her laughter trailing behind them like sunlight.
For a moment, the ache in Lottie’s own heart eased.
Whatever had happened between her and Cecil, whatever still waited unresolved by the water, Delly had found someone who saw her clearly and loved her completely.
After five years of watching her sister carry every burden alone, Lottie could not begrudge her that joy.
She only hoped, with a longing that pressed hard beneath her ribs, there might still be room in the world for hers. Clutching the picnic basket in both hands, Lottie stepped out of the meeting hall and started toward the lakeside.
That was when she saw Cecil standing near the dock with Preacher Sutton. Her heart gave one hard, foolish beat and then turned cold.
Not again.
Were they making another decision before she was invited to hear it? Had he decided on another careful, noble arrangement that involved her whole heart and none of her consent? Lottie’s throat tightened.
Cornelia sauntered by on her husband’s arm. She spied Lottie and walked over. “You may join us if you wish,” Cornelia offered.
“Thank you, no. I may just go back to the hotel.” Lottie’s eyes didn’t leave the two men under the tree. “What is he doing with Preacher Sutton?”
Cornelia followed her gaze.
Cecil must have felt their attention, because he turned then. His eyes found Lottie’s across the grass.
He left the preacher immediately and strode straight to her with long steps.
“I better join my husband.” Cornelia squeezed Lottie’s arm. “If you change your mind, the offer stands.”
When Cecil stopped before her, he took off his hat and glanced at the basket in her hand, before looking back to her face.
“Miss Bellamy,” he said.
“Mr. Peterson.”
Lottie held the basket with both hands because otherwise she might do something regrettable, such as strike Cecil with it or drop it at his feet and cry into the potato salad.
“You spoke with Preacher Sutton,” she said. It sounded like an accusation.
“I did.”
Her fingers tightened around the handle. “Without me?”
Pain crossed his face. “No.” The answer stopped her. “That was the first thing I told him. Not without you. Never again without you.”
The cold around Lottie’s heart cracked, so did her voice.
“What did you speak with him about?”
His throat worked once. “Marrying us.”
Her world changed quietly as the lake continued to move. The fiddle continued playing. Mrs. Hanford told a small child that cake before chicken was evidence of moral decline.
Lottie heard all of it from very far away.
“Marrying us,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“You refused me in a parsonage three days ago.”
“I know.”
“You nearly kissed me beside the lake and then informed me you did not know how to stop walking away.”
“I remember.”
“This morning you were about to kiss me under the maple tree and then decided you had not earned the right to do so.”
His ears darkened. “I remember that too.”
“Good. I would hate to be the only one keeping records.”
A faint, rough breath left him, almost laughter and pain.
“I have not earned everything,” he said. “I am here to ask. In daylight. Before I speak another word to the preacher about it, I need to ask you.”
Lottie looked down at the basket, then back up at him. “Ask what?”
Cecil stepped closer, not enough to crowd her, but enough to stop pretending distance was safer.
“Whether you still want me.”
Her eyes burned at once.
“Cecil.”
The name changed him. She saw it each time. A small opening. A surrender no other word could manage.
“I need to tell you the rest first,” he said.
“All right.”
“My hand will not mend back to what it was.”
“I know.”
“No. You know the shape of it.” His gaze dropped to the deformed fingers.
“You do not know the whole of it. The winter took two fingers, and the cold damaged more than the skin. Some days the grip is poor. Some days the pain runs clear up the arm. My shoulder never settled right after the shed came down, and if I turn too fast, my balance reminds me of it.”
“I can still work,” he said. “But not the way I did. Not always. Not the heaviest loads. Not every climb. Not every haul. I kept thinking if I could not do the work I did before, I had become less of a man.”
“You are not less.”
“I am beginning to believe that.” He drew a breath. “Tucker Montgomery offered to keep me on. Most men would have just let me go. What use is a cripple who can’t hold a saw?”
“Tucker?”
“Aye. Counting logs. Marking loads. Keeping tallies for shipments. Supply ledgers for the camp. Measurements. The sort of work I used to notice while pretending not to notice.”
Lottie stared at him.
His mouth pulled slightly. “I know numbers better than most men think.”
“I am not surprised.”
“You are not?”
“You designed three windows for a library that did not yet have walls.”
That almost brought a smile.
“Mr. Montgomery says the camps lose more money to poor counting than to bad weather.”
“He sounds correct.”
“He is.” Cecil looked toward the lake. “It would be steadier. Less dangerous. I would still be at the camp for a few days here and there. Still near timber. I won’t break myself to prove I can still do what I did before.”
Lottie could barely breathe around the hope rising in her. “Do you want that?”
“I want to stop hating the work that keeps me alive because it is not the work that nearly killed me.”
That was so honest, it hurt. She set the basket carefully at her feet.
“There is something else,” she said.
His eyes returned to hers.
“The letters.”
His face closed halfway, then opened again by effort.
Good, she thought. Stay.
“You read beautifully,” she said. “You know poems by heart and you understand books. Your letters—”
“Were badly spelled.”
“Yes.”
His gaze dropped. “My mother taught me to read from what she had. Scripture, poems, old schoolbooks, whatever she could keep dry while we followed Pa through the camps. I learned words by sight and sound. I could read them long before I could spell them.”
“That is not shameful.”
“It was in camp.” His jaw tightened. “Men can forgive a man for not reading. They know what to do with that. A man who reads Tennyson and still spells like a boy invites a particular kind of laughter.”
Lottie’s heart twisted.
“So, you made your letters shorter.”
“Rougher, too. Safer. I thought if I wrote plain enough, no one would expect much from me.”
“I expected you.” His eyes lifted. “I read those misspelled letters and expected the man inside them,” she said. “Not because the spelling was fine, but because the heart was.”
His mouth trembled once before he mastered it.
“Never doubt me like that again, Cecil Peterson,” she whispered.
“Never.”
“I mean it. Never decide what I can carry before I have touched the weight myself.”
“I won’t.”
“Never make your fear sound like kindness.”
“No.”
“Finally, never ask Preacher Sutton to release me from anything unless I am standing close enough to object.”
A real smile touched his mouth then, small and broken and beautiful. “I will remember that.”
“You had better.”
He looked down at her hand. “Charlotte Bellamy, I love you. I love your books, your temper, your hope, your dreadful habit of being right when I most wish you weren’t, and the way you looked at my hand as if it still belonged in the world.
” His voice roughened. “If you still want the whole of me, I am asking you to marry me.”
Lottie’s tears slipped free; she did not bother wiping them away.
“Yes, my darling Cecil. Yes. I still want you. I love you. I have loved you since before it was sensible, and I expect I shall continue long after it becomes inconvenient.”
He took one step toward her. She put a hand against his chest. “You may not kiss me yet.”
His eyes darkened. “No?”
“No. You asked the preacher a question, and I have been waiting a long time to be kissed by my husband.”
The look he gave her nearly melted every bone she owned.
“Then let us not keep you waiting.”
The wedding took place at the edge of the dock.
It was unconventional enough to distress Mrs. Hanford and romantic enough to delight Mrs. Beck beyond speech, which Lottie considered a balanced civic outcome.
Preacher Sutton stood with his Bible open while the lake shone behind him and the boards beneath their feet creaked softly in the water’s movement.
Delly stood at Lottie’s side, trying not to cry.
Jeb stood beside Cecil, broad and solemn and looking very much as though any man who objected to the arrangement would answer to him personally.
Cecil faced Lottie in the place where their story had begun.
The dock. The water. The memory of fallen books, hidden hands, and a man who had stepped back from a woman and forward for a ruined page.
Preacher Sutton smiled. “Are you ready?”
Cecil looked at Lottie.
“With all the fear I still have,” he said quietly. “Yes.”
That was the bravest answer he could have given.
When the vows came, he spoke his full name.
“Cecil Peterson.”
No flinch. No shame. Lottie felt Delly’s hand tighten around hers before letting go. Cecil reached for Lottie with his right hand.
The wrapped fingers were awkward. Stiff. Careful.
She placed her hand in his as if it were the finest place in all Washington Territory for a bride’s hand to rest.
His eyes shone.
Preacher Sutton’s voice carried over the water, over the watching town, over the little sounds of weeping from the Busy Bees. He spoke of covenant, of mercy, of two lives joined before God not because either life was unmarked, but because grace had room enough for every scar.
Then he pronounced them husband and wife.
For one breath, Cecil only looked at her.
“Now,” Lottie whispered.
He did not need to be told twice. Cecil drew her to him with his right hand still holding hers and his left arm coming firm around her waist. His mouth came down on hers in the full bright daylight, before God, the lake, the town, and every meddling woman who had helped bring them to this dock.
There was nothing careful about the first moment.
It was the ache of every almost-kiss, every stopped breath, every time he had looked at her mouth and chosen fear instead, finally given somewhere holy to go. It was a promise of forever.
Lottie rose into him, her free hand sliding up his chest to his shoulder, then into the dark hair at the nape of his neck because she had waited far too long to be polite about it.
A cheer went up from the beach. Cecil laughed against her mouth, and then kissed her again, softer this time, but not shyly. Never shyly again.
When he lifted his head, his forehead rested against hers.
“Mrs. Peterson,” he whispered.
Lottie smiled through tears. “Mr. Peterson.”
Behind them, Mrs. Beck sobbed into Mrs. Schulte’s shoulder while Mrs. Hanford declared dock weddings were irregular but not without biblical precedent if one considered fishermen.
Delly hugged Lottie so fiercely the bonnet nearly fell off her head. Jeb shook Cecil’s hand, then pulled him into a rough embrace, slapping him on the back.
At last, Cecil picked up the basket Delly made with his left hand.
“Is there pie?” he asked.
Lottie laughed, and the sound felt like sunlight returning to a room.
“No pie, I think Delly saves that for her husband. There is fried chicken, potato salad, biscuits, two wounded star cakes, and a worn copy of Tennyson.”
Cecil’s brows drew together. He touched his coat pocket with his right hand. “The library copy is here.”
“I brought more than one book west, Mr. Peterson.”
His smile came then, slow and unguarded.
Lottie reached for the basket.
“I can carry it,” he said.
“I know.” She took his right hand instead, lacing her fingers gently where they fit. “That is why I am carrying this.”
He looked down at their joined hands.
Then out toward the grass above the water, where a patch of shade waited beneath a fir and the lake moved bright beyond it.
“Mrs. Peterson,” he said softly, “let’s go read by the water.”
Together, hand in hand, they did.
Thank you for reading Charlotte.