Chapter Seven
“Italked all night, and he wouldn’t budge.
” Tommy stood beside Mary as she hung the wash on the line.
He hadn’t given her a moment’s peace since Gerald had left to tend the herd.
“And though he said he wasn’t interested, I know him better than that.
Though he acts the part of staid and prudent husband, he has the Smith blood in his veins.
He’s itching for an adventure; I know he is. ”
Mary refused to believe it. Gerald had promised her he wouldn’t walk out, that he wouldn’t abandon her as he’d done four years earlier. He had promised.
“But he would listen to you,” Tommy said. “If you told him it was a good idea—”
“I won’t lie to my husband, Thomas Smith.”
“It’s not a lie.” His voice snapped behind his usual jovial tone. “This is his opportunity. He left home for this. He’s been working toward this for years.”
She pinned a long bedsheet to the clothesline. “It seems to me he has invested in his land the past two years. Perhaps that is why he isn’t taking you up on this grand opportunity.”
“He’d leave this place in a heartbeat if he were free to do so,” Tommy said.
She glanced at him. “What are you implying?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” He shrugged a little. “I think it’s odd, though, how hard-nosed he’s being about this. Even when I left for Dakota, he spent some time thinking about coming with me. He won’t even hear me out this time.”
“He’s put down roots,” she said, grabbing her empty laundry basket and moving back toward the house.
“The Smiths don’t put down roots. We’ve been wanderers for as long as anyone can remember.” He followed her into the house. “Keep us trapped in one place, and we go mad.”
We go mad. She had been a plague in Gerald’s life once. She hated the thought of being that again. “Gerald may decide to go with you, but he’ll do so because he wants to, not because I pressure him into it.”
“Come now.” He leaned against the table, his arms folded across his chest. “You can’t convince me you didn’t ‘pressure him into’ marrying you. The way he celebrated being free of you four years ago, I can’t believe he jumped at the chance to have you back.”
“He wasn’t exactly overjoyed.” She set her basket down and crossed to the sink. “But things have worked out well. He hasn’t complained.”
“Saint Gerald wouldn’t complain. Not out loud.”
She looked back at him. Her heart lodged firmly in her throat. She forced her voice past it. “He seems happy.”
Tommy shrugged a single shoulder. “Maybe he has been. But he’s trapped here, working land he didn’t want and supporting a wife he didn’t choose. I’d hate for him to come to resent either one.”
He wouldn’t resent her. Would he?
“Your uncle felt trapped. I saw it in his face all the time. I don’t have to tell you what that resentment did.”
Uncle Bill had hated living with them but had refused to leave.
He’d insisted mother needed him, Mary needed him, everyone needed him.
He’d stayed because he had to; that’s the way he’d explained it.
And the “having to” made him hate them. That hatred had quickly turned to unbearable bouts of anger.
“Gerald isn’t like Bill,” she insisted.
“I doubt Bill was always like Bill.” Tommy’s look was a pitying one. “I don’t want to see you hurt again like you were before. Think this through. I don’t want either of you to regret any of this.”
With one backward glance, Tommy left the kitchen. I don’t have to tell you what that resentment did. Again and again she heard those words. Uncle Bill had stayed because he’d had to, or at least felt he did, and she had paid the price for that for years.
She wrapped her arms around her middle in an attempt to comfort and reassure herself. Tommy’s declaration was replaced by one from Gerald the night before. I’m not going to abandon you. You can trust me on that.
But wasn’t refusing to abandon her exactly the problem Tommy was pointing out? He would stay because he felt obligated, but he would feel trapped and stuck and resentful. He had also promised on the day they were married that he wouldn’t hit her. He had promised.
“You can trust me,” Gerald had said.
She wanted to. She truly did.
***
Gerald hated leaving Mary with Tommy, but heavy rains like they’d had the night before had been known to wash out the fences at the upper pasture. He had no choice but to check on them. He saw to the barest, most essential chores around the place, then returned to the house.
Tommy was on the sofa. “You’ve been gone for a while.”
“I was working.” He didn’t see Mary. Maybe that meant Tommy hadn’t been bothering her. “What’ve you been doing?”
“Mostly waiting for you. I did watch Mary hang up the wash. That was as dull as expected.”
Gerald peered out the small side window. The wash was still hanging on the line, and Mary was nowhere to be seen. “Did you at least offer to help her?”
“I was too busy helping you.”
That sounded ominous. He turned back, bracing himself.
“I don’t want you to be trapped here, and I don’t think she wants you to be, either.”
“What did you say to her?”
Tommy assumed his most innocent expression. “Nothing, really. We just chatted about life and opportunities. We spoke a little of her uncle and what being tied down to his female relations had done to him.”
“Her uncle?” The very man Mary refused to talk about. “What about him?”
“I got to know him a little back in Ohio. He was a lowlife. All he ever talked about was how much he hated being stuck there. He needed the money he hoped her mother would leave him when she died, so he didn’t leave.”
Which was exactly what had happened in the end.
“He was why she followed you around everywhere,” Tommy said. “Bill Carlton was short-tempered and violent, but he was a little afraid of you.”
“What do you mean ‘violent’?”
“He didn’t beat on her when you were around, so she stayed close by.
” Tommy spoke so casually about this, as if he wasn’t undoing every assumption Gerald had made about Mary, as if he wasn’t revealing information Gerald ought to have been told four years ago.
“It’s why she begged me not to take you away. With you gone for good—”
“—she would never be safe.” Good heavens. It was little wonder she’d clung to him so much. Her uncle had been beating her.
She’d asked him the day they were married if he would promise not to hit her. He’d thought it a reflection on him, but it was a plea from her past.
“And you told her that I would treat her the same way her uncle did if I didn’t go with you to Texas?”
“No,” Tommy said with a shrug. “We simply talked about the importance of not being . . . trapped.”
“So help me, Tommy—”
Shock filled his brother’s expression. “I didn’t do anything. We talked.”
Gerald pulled open the door to the kitchen. She wasn’t in there. He moved down the hall and opened the door to her bedroom. Empty.
“Where is she?” Gerald asked his brother.
Tommy shrugged. “I don’t know. She left about a half hour ago.”
Left? “Did she say anything? Where she was going or when she would be back?”
Tommy shook his head. “I don’t think she’s going to stop you from going to Texas, so that’s good news.”
“I don’t want to go to Texas. I have never wanted to go to Texas.” He opened the front door. “And if you have driven Mary away, you had better pray you reach Texas before I reach you.”
“What has crawled under your skin, brother? She’s a mail-order bride.”
“She’s Mary.” He yanked open the front door. “She’s my wife, and I—”
“Good heavens, you love her.”
He buttoned his coat up once more. “Of course I do. And we have a chance at happiness. I am not going to let you take that away.”
Tommy sputtered a moment. “I didn’t know. I—”
“If you need a place to stay, you remember where the sod house is. You’re welcome to stay there as long as you need. But I am going to find my wife and bring her home, and it would be best if you weren’t here when I get back.”
Gerald stepped out onto the porch, the wind picking up. They were in for more weather, it seemed.
Mary, where are you? If only he could find her and reassure her that he was nothing like her uncle and apologize for not realizing her situation when they were younger.
He would promise to never let Tommy back in the house again, if need be.
He would settle for begging her to give him another chance.
He’d told Tommy the truth: he loved her. It was a new and fledgling sort of love, but it was real. She was the best part of his life. He wanted her back.
She’d been gone thirty minutes or more. Even on foot she could have covered a considerable distance in that amount of time. He would reach her faster if he took the horse. Chances were good she’d made for the train depot.
He rushed to the barn, then pushed the door open. If he hurried, he might catch her in time to convince her to come back before the clouds burst. He could—
She was there, feeding his horse a carrot and rubbing its neck.
“Mary?”
She looked up at him and smiled. “You’re back early. Did the rain wash out the fence like you feared?”
She hadn’t left.
The realization took a moment to fully settle on his still-worried mind.
Mary hadn’t left.
She rubbed the horse’s nose, then slipped from the stall. He stared—he couldn’t help it—he’d been so sure she’d left him.
“Tommy said you left.”
She snatched a basket from nearby and hung it over her arm. “I came out to fetch eggs, but your horse looked lonely. We visited for a while.”
He stepped closer to her. “I don’t want to go to Texas.”
“I told Tommy I didn’t think you did.” She shrugged a little. “He wouldn’t listen to me. He never did.”
Gerald took her hand. “I didn’t as often as I should’ve. I’m sorry for that.”
“You listened when I told you I wished you’d hold my hand.” She looked down at their entwined hands, then back up at him. “And you’ve been kind to me since you married me. I’m grateful to you for that.”
You’ve been kind to me. That declaration held more weight than it would have even earlier that day.
“Tommy just told me about your uncle,” Gerald said.
Her expression turned a little wary. “What about my uncle?”
Gerald took her egg basket and set it down before taking her other, now-empty hand in his. “When you asked me on the day we married to promise not to hit you, I didn’t realize it was because you’d lived with that misery before.”
Mary slipped her hands from his. “We worked very hard to keep all of that hidden.” She turned away, taking up her basket once more. “Mother thought it was best. She didn’t want— She didn’t want Uncle Bill to be upset.”
Mary walked toward the barn door, defeat in her posture that hadn’t been there since the day she’d arrived in Greenborough.
With his longer strides, Gerald reached her before she stepped outside. He set his hand gently on her arm. “I should have realized something was wrong in your home, Mary.”
She looked at him at last. The pain in her eyes tugged at him fiercely. “I was a plague to more than just you. My uncle saw me as a thorn in his side. My mother saw me as the reason my uncle was angry all the time.”
“Oh, Mary.”
“I’m sorry I pestered you so much, Gerald.”
“No, you—”
“I stole some of your peace to secure a few moments of my own.” A tear formed in the corner of one of her eyes. “I worry a little that I’ve done that again here: taken something from you in order to secure something for myself.”
“Taken something from me?” He lifted his hand to her face and tenderly brushed the tear away with the pad of his thumb. “Mary, you’ve made this corner of the world home to me. I’ve been happier since you returned to my life than I’ve been in four years.”
She leaned lightly into his touch. “So have I.”
He dropped his hand to hers and took hold of it once more. Thank the heavens she’d asked him all those weeks ago to hold her hand. It was a connection between them that he’d come to cherish.
“I’m not going to Texas, and not merely because Tommy is a muttonhead.”
A laughing smile tugged at her lips.
“I like the life we have here,” he said. “And I want to keep building it. With you.”
“You don’t secretly still call me The Plague?” There was a teasing glint in her eye that eased any guilt he might have felt at the question.
“You are never going to let me live that down, are you?”
Her sweet smile remained firmly in place as she shook her head.
“Let’s go back to the house before the rain starts again,” he said.
They stepped through the barn doors, her hand still in his.
He glanced at her as they walked toward the house, and a feeling of gratitude washed over him.
She had trusted him years ago to protect her, however unknowingly, from the misery she faced at home.
And she had trusted him again when faced with the possibility that he would abandon her for Tommy’s offered escape.
The girl who had seemed like such a nuisance all those years ago had become utterly crucial to him. Somehow, he would prove to her that she could trust him fully. And, in time, she might even come to love him.