Chapter Four #2
But what could she do about it?
She looked up from her sewing and out the front window. Life was not perfect, but she did have a lovely view. A view that, at the moment, was revealing a small cloud of dust, distant on the road. She rose and stepped closer to the glass.
Was someone coming? In the two weeks she’d been in Greenborough, she’d not had a single visitor. Gerald had told her that the residents were few and scattered, and they didn’t often see one another.
She set aside her mending and hurried from the house and across the yard to the barn. The dim interior was lit enough for her to see Gerald’s broad frame hard at work dropping hay into the animal stalls.
“Gerald?”
He turned at the sound of her voice. She thought she saw a flicker of pleasure when he looked at her, but she couldn’t be at all sure. Perhaps she was only seeing what she hoped to see.
“Someone is coming,” she said. “I can see the dust they’re kicking up down the road.”
He leaned against his pitchfork. “I wonder who that’ll be.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.” She hadn’t met anyone after all.
“I’ll come have a look.” He set his pitchfork against the wall of the loft and climbed down the ladder.
She likely should have gone back to the house—he probably expected her to—but she waited and watched his approach.
How little had changed since they were younger.
She still hoped and silently pleaded for him to notice her there, to put a reassuring arm around her.
Her reasons during those years had been a bit different than they were now, but they were every bit as strong and heartrending.
He’d come to the place where she stood. His gaze slid over her face. “Are you unwell, Mary?”
She shook her head. “I’m a little weary, I suppose.”
“Are you working too hard? I’ll not have you wearing yourself to the bone and growing ill. This is meant to be a good life for you, not a burdensome one.” He said things like that often, thoughts just tender enough to make her hope there was more beneath them than a tentative friendship.
“My thoughts were too full last night for sleeping well is all. I’m not working too hard, I assure you.”
He didn’t seem satisfied with that answer. “Do you need to lie down?”
“No.”
His gaze flicked to the barn door. “Are you nervous about the visitors?”
He was attentive, just not in the way she needed.
How would she ever receive the things she needed, or at the very least know that those things were out of her reach, if she never spoke of them? She simply had to find the courage to do so.
“Gerald?” Her voice emerged quieter than she’d expected and far less certain. She swallowed and pressed forward. “Would you—?”
He didn’t look away, didn’t seem the least put out by her bumbling attempt at a request.
“Would you hold my hand?”
His brows pulled low immediately. “Hold your—? You said you weren’t afraid of the visitors.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why do you need me to hold your hand?”
Because I need a moment’s affection. Because the young girl who once adored you would like to know you don’t resent her now. Because I can’t live the rest of my life entirely unloved.
She couldn’t find words she was willing to speak out loud to explain this aching need in her. She wasn’t asking for him to fall desperately in love with her or to suddenly be all tender affection. She simply needed something from him. Anything. The tiniest reason to hope things would get better.
“Never mind,” she said, stepping back toward the door. “It was silly.”
His longer strides caught up with her quickly. She didn’t turn back or stop walking.
“Mary, please.” His hand, gentle on her arm, stopped her at last. “Do you want me to hold your hand?”
She wanted to say no, that it didn’t matter. But she couldn’t lie, so she simply nodded.
“May I ask again why?”
She took a deep breath. “Because I always imagined that someday, when I was married, my husband would hold my hand. My father held my mother’s hand.
Though he died when I was little, I remember that about him.
It was how I knew they were happy and that she was cared for.
I know ours is not the ideal marriage they had, but I’d like to have at least that small piece of it. ”
It was a far more vulnerable explanation than she’d intended to offer, but it was the truth.
His warm, calloused hand slid down her arm, and his fingers wrapped gently around hers.
“Mary Smith, I promise you here and now that I will hold your hand anytime you wish for it. Only, please don’t run away from me when you’re needing something.
I can be prickly and rough and difficult, I know that. But I don’t want you to be unhappy.”
“I don’t want you to be unhappy either.” She dropped her gaze to his hand, engulfing her own. “And I know you didn’t want to marry me, of all people.”
His thumb rubbed a slow circle along the back of her hand. “There is one advantage to marrying a childhood playmate as opposed to a stranger.”
“What’s that?”
“Well,” he said, “for one thing, you’ve seen me at my worst, so you aren’t likely to be shocked when my charm starts to wear thin.”
There was just enough cheek in his words to add a bit of welcome humor. She found she could even smile. “Oh, have you been trying to be charming all this time?”
“I’ve been at my most charming. Hadn’t you noticed?”
“Oh, dear,” she said dryly. “You may have to work on that.”
“And that’s another good thing about being previously acquainted,” he said. “You’re already comfortable enough to tease. A sense of humor’s an important thing out here where life can be hard.”
She held fast to his hand, reveling in the warmth and reassurance he exuded. “Life can be hard no matter where a person is. I’ve found it usually is, in fact.”
His gaze turned to the horizon and the cloud of dust growing closer. “I’d wager you are about to meet our nearest neighbors. Brace yourself, Mary. The Attleys are exhausting.”
She leaned her head against his arm. “You may have to hold my hand through the entire ordeal.” Though she made the comment in jest, the idea appealed to her more than she’d expected it to.
He squeezed her fingers. “Come on, then, Mary. Let’s introduce you to your neighbors.”
He didn’t release her hand as he walked with her to the new arrivals’ wagon, or as they invited the Attleys inside, or as they sat on the sofa, visiting. She knew he kept her hand in his only because she’d asked him to, but it was a kindness she very much needed, and in that moment it was enough.