Chapter Twenty-Two
The conversation with Jennifer had not gone well.
Adam knew that to be the case even though he and Rachel hadn’t discussed it.
He had known from the moment she had come back from her trip into town to speak with Jennifer.
Rachel had been silent, her gaze far away.
She hadn’t hummed to herself as she had prepared dinner last night or breakfast this morning, and if she spoke at all, it was only to provide the direct answer to a question Adam or Mason had asked her.
Mason could tell something was wrong. He had been sticking close to Adam all morning.
Now he was off at school, which Adam felt was a good thing.
With Rachel in the mood she was so clearly in, it was better for Mason to have some space.
Adam didn’t want him to get the idea that Rachel was upset with him.
He was on his knees beside the chicken coop, fixing a board that had come loose. The gap wasn’t big enough for any of the hens to break loose through, but it was enough to let the weather in, and there were storm clouds gathering overhead. He’d be surprised if it didn’t rain tonight.
The sound of hammering filled his ears, rhythmic and ringing.
It was enough to drown out the worries that plagued him, at least for the moment.
Physical work was always a good way to lose oneself.
It was impossible to be too concerned about anything when you were uncomfortable, and that was a fact Adam liked to use to his advantage.
At first, the voices seemed like nothing more than his own thoughts.
They were so faint, and the ringing of the hammer so loud, that he truly believed he was just imagining the sound of a man speaking harshly.
It was Ted Levine’s voice, in his head, and of course it was there.
Levine was taking up far too much of his attention these days.
He put the hammer down for a moment, straightened his legs and brushed the dirt from his knees, and stretched his arms overhead, meaning to shake away the phantom in his mind.
But the voice grew louder.
It was too high-pitched to be Levine. Definitely the voice of a man, though. He thought he had heard it before, and he frowned, trying to place it.
And then he was running. Because he did know that voice.
Nathan Foster.
He remembered speaking to him the day he had first met Rachel. Hearing him bark out reprimands at her. If Foster was here, there could only be one reason. He had come to confront Rachel. He must have. And she would be all alone at the house, with Mason at school and Ruth working with the cattle…
As he drew nearer to the house, the voices grew louder, drifting through the open door. He could hear Rachel now too. She sounded agitated, her voice pitched up and her words tripping over each other.
“That’s not what happened,” she was saying, and she sounded more frantic than he had ever heard her. Adam sped up. “That wasn’t why I came there.”
“I don’t even want to hear from you about it,” Foster snapped. “I’ll talk. You listen.”
“You’re hurting me!”
The rage that exploded within Adam at those words drowned everything else out. It roared in his ears like an angry beast, and before he knew what had happened, he was up the porch steps, flinging open the door and storming into the kitchen.
The scene before him froze, as both Foster and Rachel looked over in shock at his sudden entrance.
They were standing beside the sink. The breakfast dishes, which had been washed and dried, were half put away, and two cupboards stood open—Foster must have interrupted Rachel in the middle of the task. He was standing with his back to the door, though now he was looking over his shoulder.
He had his hands on Rachel’s upper arms, and what Adam noticed at once was that his grip on her was so tight it was leaving white marks on her flesh.
He balled his fists and willed himself not to hit Foster, breathing out slowly to center himself. “Let her go and step back.” His voice was a snarl, and a detached part of him marveled at how animalistic he sounded.
Foster must have heard it too. He released Rachel and took a quick step backward, though he didn’t stand down from his aggressive posture. His hands, too, were in fists. “You,” he said, turning to face Adam. “You had better get your house under control, Summers.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Adam did his best to sound cool and aloof, though it didn’t come out the way he had hoped it would. He was still far too angry. How dare Foster come into his home and put his hands on Rachel like that? The urge to strike him had not abated.
“Bad enough that you stole my maid out from under me,” Foster hissed.
“Bad enough that you disrespected my household. But now you can’t even keep the girl from bothering my daughter—and at a time in her life when Jennifer ought to be able to focus on her own happiness!
” He looked back at Rachel. “You’ve left, so you should leave altogether.
You should leave us alone. I don’t understand why you can’t do that. ”
“I only wanted to talk to her,” Rachel said. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but Adam was glad to see that she didn’t hang her head. “Jennifer is my sister.”
“Jennifer is my daughter. You’re not my daughter,” Foster scoffed.
“You really think of her as your sister? She’s not a sister to you.
She’s not a maid’s sister, and a maid is all you will ever be.
You might think you’re something more now because you found this job…
” The word job was a sneer. “But this is the same work you did when you were in my house. Look at you, wiping tables, putting away dishes…Summers there would be able to replace you in a heartbeat if he had to. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you matter to anybody, girl. ”
Rachel’s face was white. She said nothing.
Energy surged through Adam’s muscles. “Foster, you’d better leave my house before I throw you out,” he growled.
“And don’t think I won’t do it.” He stepped forward, and his hand twitched involuntarily.
It would be so easy. So easy to reach out, grab Foster by the collar, drag him to the door, and throw him down the porch steps.
The only thing stopping him was the fact that he didn’t know how Rachel would react, whether she would appreciate it or be horrified by it.
If she had given any indication of wanting him to get aggressive with Foster, it would have been done in a heartbeat.
Foster did move toward the door in response to Adam’s threat, but he paused there and looked back at Rachel.
“Don’t let me catch you around my house again,” he warned, pointing a finger at her.
“Don’t you even talk to Jennifer. She’s engaged to be married.
She’s going to have everything a girl like her deserves, and you had better not mess it up for her. ”
He threw a scowl at Adam—Adam stared back and his jaw twitched—and then Foster was gone, out the door, pulling it closed behind him with a slam.
Rachel’s whole body deflated. She braced herself against the back of a chair with one hand, and for a moment Adam worried she was going to pass out.
He hurried to her side and put both arms around her, partly to support her, partly to reassure himself that she was all right and that nothing had happened.
She leaned into the embrace, her head resting against his shoulder.
They stayed like that for just a moment, their breathing falling into a rhythm, and Adam decided he would hold her as long as she would let him. Of course she would need comfort. After what had just happened, how could she not?
But she recovered herself more quickly than he had expected and pulled out of his arms. He let her go easily, but for just a moment there was a feeling of loss. It had been warm and comforting having her pressed against him like that, and it was unlikely ever to happen again. Why would it?
She wrapped her arms around herself and took a seat at the table. Adam sat down next to her, pulling his chair out a bit so that he could face her directly. His gaze moved to her arms, to where Foster had been holding her. “We should get you some ice,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “I’m all right. He might have left a few bruises—it wouldn’t be the first time.”
Adam gripped the seat of his chair next to his thigh so hard it hurt. “He’s done that to you before?”
“Only when he was really angry. Adam, don’t be worried about that,” she said, and to his surprise she reached out and took his other hand in hers. “I’m all right. He didn’t do any lasting harm.”
“You’re shaking.” She was. Her arm was trembling, her hand giving short shocks against his.
She closed her eyes and breathed out slowly. “He frightens me,” she admitted, her voice soft. It, too, was shaking. “He didn’t do me any serious harm, but I think he has trouble controlling himself. When he loses his temper like that, I do feel afraid of what he might do to me.”
So Adam had been right not to lash out at Foster. It would not have helped for Rachel to see him become aggressive in a fit of temper. “Has he ever struck you?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice calm.
“No,” she murmured. “But…my mother. I don’t know what he does to her. I know that something happened to her. Something changed her, made her timid and afraid. She is not the woman she was before they married. And Jennifer…”
She opened her eyes. He was struck anew by how bright hers were—the green was like emeralds.
“He’s wrong,” she said, new strength finding its way into her voice.
“What he said about me and Jennifer—it isn’t true.
She is my sister. It took a long time for me to finally start thinking of her in those terms, but I do now, and there’s no going back.
And I’m not going to stop caring for her, or stop trying to protect her from Levine. ”
“She didn’t listen when you warned her about him?”
Rachel shook her head. “She said I was making it all up out of jealousy, to try to ruin a good thing for her. I’m not, of course.” There was a note of defensiveness there.
“I know you’re not,” he assured her. “I mean, I know you didn’t make any of it up. I was the one who told you about Levine. About how terrible he is.”
She nodded and got to her feet, moving to resume putting away the dishes.
Adam got up and began to help her, and she allowed his help without resistance or complaint.
“I meant that I’m not jealous of her,” she said.
“It would be forgivable to think that I was. That’s something I’ve struggled with before.
It was hard to live in that house and to know that she was—would always be—more loved than me.
That she’d always have opportunities I would never have.
But what Nathan said…” She paused, a plate in her hand, not yet reaching up to put it away.
“I don’t feel as if her life is better than mine,” she said, meeting Adam’s eyes. “Not anymore.”
Adam swallowed. “He was wrong about most of what he said,” he told her sincerely.
“That you’re nothing more than a maid—it isn’t true.
The difference you’ve made in Mason’s life means everything to both of us.
And he was wrong to say that you don’t matter to anybody…
you do. You matter to both of us. A great deal. ”
He spoke gruffly, and about halfway through the declaration he lost the ability to maintain eye contact with her. His gaze returned to the dishes, and he was glad for the distraction of putting them away.
But Rachel didn’t move, not yet. “Thank you, Adam,” she said quietly.
“It’s meant a lot to me to be a part of your life, and Mason’s life.
I feel much more myself now than I ever did before.
I might have felt jealous once, but God has brought so many blessings into my life that I don’t need to think in those ways. ”
Then she let out a long sigh and returned to the task of putting away dishes.
“I just wish I knew what to do for Jennifer,” she said quietly.
“I tried to tell her the truth about Levine, but she so obviously didn’t want to hear it.
I don’t think she’ll ever hear it from me.
She just threw me right out of the house.
And now Nathan says they’re engaged…” Her voice broke and she pressed a hand to her mouth, just for a moment, before looking back at Adam. “Do you think that’s true?”
“I can’t think why he would have said it if it wasn’t true.
” His voice was heavy, his heart weighed down with what was happening.
Even he did not want to see Jennifer Foster trapped in a marriage to Ted Levine, and he hardly knew her and still wasn’t sure how much he liked her, if at all.
It would be much more painful for Rachel, for whom—for better or worse—Jennifer was family.
“We’ll figure it out,” he told Rachel. “There’s bound to be something we can do here, some way we can put a stop to it all. I don’t know what your stepfather wants exactly, but it can’t possibly be his wish to see his daughter in a harmful marriage. Maybe he can be made to understand.”
“Nathan has never been made to understand anything in his life.” She leaned with both hands against the counter, as if it was holding her up.
“I don’t think he would accept an idea that came from anyone else.
He’ll never believe anything is true unless it’s his own thought.
” She sighed. “I wish this seemed realistic to me. But right now, there doesn’t seem to be any hope at all of persuading them that Ted Levine is bad news. ”