69. Jacob
Jacob
“It’s so tall,” Viola said. She stood with one hand braced on the windmill’s frame, her head tipped back, her hair lifting in the breeze as she grinned.
Relief brought a smile to my lips and warmed me through.
George clapped my shoulder as he beamed at Viola. “I think that’s the point, dear sister. It is a windmill, after all.”
She looked up to where Erik sat with his feet dangling high above us. But I didn’t look up—couldn’t look away from her.
The farmyard bustled with activity as wagons arrived from town and men unloaded and shifted items to the barn or the house. Hammers rang, and voices carried across the yard.
Mark, the foreman, waved as he stepped out the front door and strode toward us.
“Come have a look inside. Plenty of progress. The team’s been pushing hard to beat the snow.” He brushed his palms on his work pants and turned west, shading his eyes with a hand. “Clear skies should hold.”
Viola fell into step between George and me as we headed for the house. We paused on the front porch to take in the view. My gaze drifted to the hay shed roof, and I didn’t fight my grin.
George had arrived after breakfast, and as a group, we strolled over to the work site, taking the shortcut from our property.
When we made our way past the hay shed, the sight of our first kiss, Viola glanced back at me from where she walked next to George.
Her eyes flashed with mischief, and a memory tugged at my heart.
Viola had jumped the creek with a small shriek, but without any assistance, and had given a curtsy after landing on the other side in response to the enthusiastic clapping and cheers we sent across to her. There she was—my Viola.
Mark led us through the house. Viola stopped at the base of the stairs and turned in a slow circle, a light glowing inside her that filled me as well.
Mark estimated they would finish the house in four or five weeks.
It would be a fine house, easily the finest in Harmony Lake, perhaps in the whole county.
Outside, I offered Viola my arm, and we meandered along the ridge above her fallow fields. Our coats flapped in the breeze, but the sun shone warm on our faces. I waited for her to speak. I didn’t want to break the mood. A train whistle carried to us over the hill.
She said, “Tell me of your travels.”
I gave her a sheepish look. “They were terrible.”
Her mouth dropped open as she turned to me.
“Terrible,” I repeated. “I spent the entire time scowling and moping about because I had behaved like the tail end of a donkey.”
She gave a light laugh. “So, I was the tail of what exactly? A horse?”
I considered the question. “Oh no, you would be a pheasant or a turkey. A peacock. Yes. A peacock.” I grinned. “Beautiful, even in your jackassery.”
She let out a laugh, a deep, rich rumble that made my heart leap.
I repeated, “Beautiful,” and lightly touched her cheek.
She leaned into my touch.
“You would’ve liked it, I think. The ocean, mountains, and forests were indescribably vast, wild, and awe-inspiring. All my life, I’ve longed to see them.”
I dropped my hand from her face and turned toward the activity in the yard below. “The waves pulled sand out to sea from under my toes. The water was even colder than the lake.”
She stepped beside me. Slipped her hand into mine.
Warmth spread up my arm, straight to my heart.
“The train rose over valleys, trees, and streams, high as an eagle, as it climbed the impossibly steep side of a mountain so much taller than our hill. And much more. A few days traveling was only a tiny taste.” I squeezed her hand lightly. “But I’m glad to be here now.”
We looked out over her farmyard, with the hay shed visible on the other side of the creek, and stood for long minutes, observing the bustle below.
She said, “Walking past the shed earlier made me think of Mrs. Newman.”
“Not who I was thinking of.”
A faint flush rose on her cheeks.
Viola said, “That last day she said, ‘Enjoy it.’ I think she meant life, but she said, ‘Love and friendship and music and kissing.’”
I turned until I stood squarely before her and said, “She was the wisest woman in Chicago.”
Viola stared at the buttons on my coat.
I wouldn’t push her. But I could hope.
She laid a hand lightly on my chest. “I’ve been hiding. Trying to control the uncontrollable. Trying to give up on love, give up on kissing…” She shook her head.
I cupped her chin. “You are courageous and strong-willed. You don’t need to hide or give up on anything.”
The intensity of my feelings overflowed, but I held myself back. She didn’t shrink from me. She didn’t look away. We stood suspended, my hand cupping her jaw, her hands resting over my heart. I kept my lips from hers, but just barely. It required every bit of fortitude I possessed.
She sighed, inclined her head, and turned away.
I dropped my hand, let her go, and didn’t force her back to me. I would practice patience.
The day passed as days do, except that Viola was within the sphere of my world, exerting her pull on me.
Sitting next to me at dinner, she added her voice to the conversation, and watched me with her green eyes.
That night, she curled up on the couch and listened as Jo read by the fire.
The armor she had been hiding behind began to fall away.
She was coming back to us, back to me. When I helped Pa to bed, she stayed on the couch, staring into the fire.
In my haste to return, to prove she was still there, my fingers fumbled with Pa’s boot laces.
He beamed as I struggled and said, “Ten-a-city. You keep fighting your impossible fight, my boy.” He patted my shoulder. “Reckon you might win in the end.”
I strode back down the short hall and found Viola waiting in the dim light. She turned a faint smile toward me. The flash of a possible future hit me with a gut-wrenching pang of longing, and I steadied myself with a hand pressed against the wall.
Patience.
Tenacity.
Again, she patted the couch, and I settled beside her, close but not touching. She shifted to close the distance, pressed her shoulder to mine, smoothed the blanket over her legs, and laid her hands flat on her lap. When I didn’t move, she glanced at me.
She pulled at me with nothing more than a flick of her lashes.
My fingers flexed, but still I waited. I would let her choose the pace.
Viola shifted toward me, her elbow propped up on the back of the couch, her head resting on her hand, and her knees pressing against my thigh. She watched my face, but I fixed my gaze on the fading fire, not trusting myself to look in her eyes.
After a long moment, I said, “Your misery is easing.”
She sighed, and her warm breath stirred the fine hairs on my neck.
“It’s complicated,” she said. “There are so many reasons for my misery. There’s so much I can’t control. From the death of my dear friend to…” She dropped her forehead onto her forearm with a sigh. “To the slow demise of my ideology.”
I waited two breaths before I said, “Your ideology?”
“I’m a vain fool.” She lifted her head. “I have little control over anything, no matter the words I have spouted for years in my manifesto.”
I nodded. “For a long time, it felt like life simply happened to me and my only option was to stubbornly hold on while my boat was tossed about in the storm.”
“Yes,” she said, “riding it out.”
I said, “But the boat has a rudder. I can steer even when the storm of life pushes me off course.”
I mirrored her position on the couch, leaning my head onto my hand. “I think you’ve been trying to control the storm,” I said, “instead of taking hold of the rudder.”
Thoughts swirled behind her eyes, under the gold flecks that sparkled in a sea of green. An unruly lock of hair partially hid her face. I tucked it behind her ear with the lightest touch and discovered I couldn’t draw my hand away. It remained curved along her jaw.
She pressed her smooth skin into my palm. “I can steer toward what I want,” she whispered. “I need to figure that out.”
We sat like that for long minutes. And I ached with the effort of holding my lips back from hers.
Slowly, she raised a hand to cup my cheek. “I can choose what I want,” she said, her words skimming warm across my wrist.
Everything fell away except for her lovely face, inching toward me.
“Jacob…” her breath caught on my name.
I waited. Didn’t dare move.
She pressed a trembling hand against my chest and rose slightly onto her knees, bringing her lips even with mine.
My heart swelled under her touch, too full to bear for another second.
Then she kissed me with unhurried sweetness, slowly savoring and deepening our connection.
And I kissed her back, my hand sliding to cradle the back of her head.
There are some truths that whisper in the dark. Knowable only if you sit in the stillness and listen. Things like how she kissed me and I kissed her.
Like how the stars shone.
And how the moon sailed through the night.
And how my heart was lost to her forever.