Chapter Eight
Gerald usually found the rhythmic thwank of milk hitting the sides of the metal bucket soothing.
He began every morning in the barn, sitting on the milking stool, letting that sound set his day to rights.
It wasn’t working that morning. Of course, most mornings he made his way to the barn having slept decently well.
His thoughts had been too filled with her all night for resting.
She’d been living in such misery back in Ohio, and he’d not seen it.
The signs had been there; he could recognize them now, looking back.
But he’d missed it. He’d not been as kind as he ought to have been.
And, had he opened his eyes to see her true situation, he could have done something about it.
What exactly, he didn’t know. But something.
He stood and took hold of his milk bucket. He absentmindedly patted the cow in his daily show of gratitude.
It wasn’t merely Mary’s past that sat heavy on his mind, though.
It was their present and their future. He wanted her to know and trust that she was wanted.
He needed her to know that she was loved.
But he wasn’t a man of flowery words or grand gestures.
So how was he to show her what she meant to him?
He tied a piece of heavy canvas over the milk bucket and tied it firmly in place. He then buttoned his coat up to his neck and set his hat firmly on his head. The drizzle of rain wasn’t quite the downpour of the day before, but he suspected it would grow heavier before long.
Mary would have a fire in the stove. Her kitchen would be warm. It was not, though, the promise of warmth nor the need to put the milk in the cooling cupboard that brought him directly there. He wanted to see her. He wanted to be near her.
But she wasn’t in the kitchen.
Gerald listened for the sound of her elsewhere in the house, but he didn’t hear anything. Had she not woken up yet? That wasn’t like her. Perhaps she was ill.
Concern brought him directly to her bedroom, the one that had once been his.
The door was open, and he peered inside.
She wasn’t in there either. The question of where she might be was tucked aside as his gaze took in the quiet space that she had claimed as her own.
It was tidy but also a little empty. She didn’t have any of the little baubles that he’d seen at the Attleys’ home.
She didn’t have a bottle of perfume or a fine hairbrush or any of the other very feminine things his mother had always had on her dressing table.
And Gerald didn’t have the money to get her any of those things.
“I’m sorry I don’t have your breakfast ready yet, Gerald.”
He turned at the sound of Mary’s voice. She stepped inside, damp from hair to shoes.
“Have you been out in the rain?”
She nodded. “I took a basket of food to the sod house. I don’t want Tommy to go hungry, but I also don’t want him to come back here.” A shiver rippled over her.
“You need to change out of your wet clothes.”
“I do.” She gave him a quick smile.
Gerald slipped out of her room. He set his back against the wall next to her door. “This morning was twice in two days I’ve returned to the house and you weren’t here.”
“Did I have you worried?” she answered from inside the room and out of sight.
“Yesterday, I thought you might have left me,” he admitted.
“I’m not leaving, Gerald.”
“I’m not worried that you are. It isn’t worry I’m feeling at all; it’s a longing that I hadn’t expected to ever feel.
I don’t want to wake up in the morning and wonder if you’re awake yet, if you slept well, if you’re happy.
I want to wake up and see you there beside me.
” He wasn’t certain where the confession was coming from, but he found himself anxious to make it.
“I want to fall asleep next to you. I want to hold you in my arms. I want to have some hope that you might someday learn to love me the way I’ve come to love you. ”
Mary stepped through the door, her damp hair hanging in waves around her shoulders, leaving a spot of water on the dry dress she’d changed into. “You hope I’ll ‘learn to love you’?”
He turned toward her. “I know your vows were ‘for better or worse’ and this is something more than that. But it doesn’t feel impossible, does it?”
She popped her fists on her hips. “I’ve loved you since I was fifteen years old, Gerald Smith.”
“I’m longing for something more than calf love.”
She shook her head at him. “I didn’t say my love for you hasn’t changed or grown since then.” She stepped closer to him, her eyes never leaving his face. “And I’ve been wanting you to hold me for weeks now, hoping that you wanted that too.”
He reached out and ran a hand down her arm. “I love you, Mary. That train bringing you here was a miracle I didn’t even know I needed.”
Her eyes dropped to his hand on her arm. “This doesn’t count as holding me, Gerald.” There was both teasing and insistence in her tone.
He didn’t need more invitation than that. He slid his arms around her and pulled her close to him, the air around filling with the faint smell of lavender soap. For the first time in years, he felt whole. “I do love you, my Mary.”
“And I love you.”
There, in their home, with rain pelting the windows, and love wrapping around them like a warm blanket, they began their future together, truly began building their life together, and marked the start of that journey with a kiss.