Chapter Twelve
He had to admit that he hadn’t been prepared to field her questions about how he had come to embark on a law career in Bakersfield.
But he was happy to answer the questions all the same.
He supposed she would have been asking these questions eventually anyway.
He did concede too that he had started the ball rolling on this particular trajectory by asking to hear all about how she had grown up in Washington, D.C.
If he wanted her to answer his questions, the best thing to do now was to answer hers.
She looked shocked that he would need to have a wife before he could find a job in New York City.
To be honest, he had been shocked by it too.
There had been hints that it would be required, but most found a wife by the time they graduated.
He was one of the few men in his class who had graduated without a wife or even a fiancée.
That would have been all right, too, provided they were actively planning a wedding, he supposed.
“This fixation on every man having a good wife is a little odd,” Susannah said as they arrived at the restaurant that he had planned to take her to, no matter what time she had woken up from her post-travel nap. “Did you come to California mainly to escape that?”
“That, and I wanted to feel that I could find a wife on my own terms, instead of trying to stick to a schedule dictated by society,” he said.
“I wasn’t even sure I would ever marry, even with the freedom to do so as I saw fit.
But with my wish to get higher up the rungs of life, I have found that I have also grown lonely.
I graduated in half the time of my colleagues in New York City, something I had done because I was solely focused on the end goal and better positioned to handle the workload at the time. ”
“Well, you’re in luck. I’ve always wanted a family,” she said. “Growing up an orphan will do that to you. I want to have what I never got to have in my own childhood. To give my children the childhood I never had.”
“That’s a great thing to want for your future, Susannah,” Wesley said.
They were soon seated, and he took a moment to have a closer look at the woman he was now courting.
She had deep bags under her eyes, despite her rest earlier.
He wondered whether it was thanks to her erstwhile job at the orphanage or if she had always had dark bags under her eyes. He hadn’t noticed them earlier.
Perhaps he had been too excited to finally meet her to notice.
Not that it appeared to bother her in any way.
Whatever the case, the bags underneath her eyes were only the first of the new attributes that came to his attention now.
Her cheeks were a little sunken, and her frame seemed too light for her age.
She should have been a healthy weight, ready to do anything.
Instead, she was almost sickly. Almost.
“Did you have a good childhood at the orphanage?”
Wesley didn’t know what possessed him to ask this, but he had to know what she thought of her life growing up.
There was a good chance she would have some information important to her that she wouldn’t share otherwise.
Or, until they had children of their own.
And that was something that he wanted to avoid if at all possible.
“Well, it was a decent childhood,” she started, but there was a note of hesitation in her voice.
He nodded for her to continue, taking her hand softly.
“I was treated well, and I’m still friends with one of the staff members from the orphanage who was working there while I grew up.
We worked together until I moved out here, actually,” she continued quietly.
“But… we were overcrowded. I don’t know that I ever got quality time with anyone until I was older, and then it was only in spurts so that I could still handle my chores. ”
“I see. I’m sorry to hear that it wasn’t as great as it could have been,” Wesley said.
“It’s not your fault,” Susannah immediately replied. “You’ve given me a chance to rise above my situation in life. You have no idea how much I appreciate that, Wesley.”
He smiled.
At least something good could come from all of this, even if the marriage didn’t work out as they had intended.
He hoped that she would be willing to take the chance to find out what this life could truly offer both of them.
If she didn’t want to, he would understand. He’d hurt, but he would understand.
“I think what’s been most difficult for me is knowing that other girls at the orphanage were adopted, and I never was,” she said, looking down at her lap.
“I wanted a family. So badly. But no one was ever happy to see me. They all thought I was too plain, too… too normal. No one wanted a normal girl in their family. Even if I can cook and clean well enough.”
“Normal’s overrated in most cases, but I find that I like normal more than the alternatives,” Wesley said.
“And that’s the truth, Susannah Peterson.
I wouldn’t have continued to write to you if I didn’t think you were worth the effort.
To me, you’re worth all the effort I’ve put in so far. A hundred times over.”
He didn’t know if that would help any, but he was speaking the truth. The more he got to know her, the more his heart hurt for her. She deserved the world.