Chapter Thirty-Three #2
Then, quietly, she slipped back downstairs and made her way to the kitchen. However, as she stepped through the doorway, Ruth stopped so abruptly her breath caught in her throat.
Beatrice sat at the kitchen table. Morning sunlight spilled through the windows behind her, painting soft bands of gold across the floorboards and touching the edges of her pale blue dress. Her gloves rested neatly on the table.
And, beside them, a revolver.
Ruth’s skin cooled as the blood drained from her face. “Beatrice,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice steady. “What are you doing here?”
Beatrice’s lips curved slightly upward. “I was waiting,” she said plainly.
Ruth’s eyes darted from Beatrice to the gun, then toward the doorway. “I should get Henry.” She took a step backward and started to turn, but the click of metal stopped her instantly.
“Don’t move.”
Fear flooded Ruth so quickly her knees weakened. “Beatrice …”
The woman stood slowly, and despite the gun in her hand, the movement was oddly calm. “You shouldn’t have come back,” she said, her eyes not leaving Ruth.
Ruth stared a as Beatrice took another step.
“This isn’t your place,” she continued. “It was supposed to be mine.”
Ruth’s heart hammered painfully. “Please, Beatrice … Put the gun down.”
Beatrice ignored her as she looked slowly around the kitchen. “I was so close to having this,” she said quietly. “To having this life.”
“Beatrice?—?”
Beatrice laughed softly, but there was no happiness in the sound. “You know, when Henry and I were engaged …” Her eyes moved toward the window. “I imagined waking up here every morning.” Her expression softened strangely. “Making breakfast. Children running through the house.”
She swallowed. “He would’ve built me a good life.”
Ruth stayed very still. Beneath her fear and panic, she heard the grief in Beatrice’s words, and she understood it. She had almost lost this life too.
Beatrice looked back at her. “I had nothing before Henry.” Her voice lowered slightly. “I expect I don’t need to explain to you what it’s like to be poor.”
Ruth hesitated, then slowly nodded.
Beatrice’s mouth tightened into a humorless smile for a moment before going slack. “When I was young,” she continued quietly, “my father drank away whatever money we had, and my mother worked herself sick trying to hold things together.”
She paused and looked down at her hands, then back up at Ruth.
“I spent years wearing mended dresses and pretending not to notice people looking down at us.” She smiled, but there was no warmth in it.
“I used to walk through town and stare into windows at fine dresses and jewelry. Watch families sitting down to meals where no one worried about tomorrow.”
Ruth saw her fingers tighten around the gun.
“Then I met Victor,” Beatrice continued. “He was handsome and charming. He knew exactly what to say. He spoke about opportunity and new beginnings out West.” She swallowed. “And, for the first time in my life, someone looked at me and seemed to see potential instead of another poor girl.”
She lowered her gaze. “He bought me dresses and introduced me to people. He taught me how to speak differently, walk differently.”
So, it had been Victor who had made Beatrice into this woman.
“He told me I could have more than survival,” Beatrice continued, “but I would have to work for it.” Her eyes darkened. “And then, he introduced me to Henry …”
Her voice trailed off, and silence stretched.
“I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him,” she said softly. “He was simply meant to be … a step toward a better life.” Tears slipped slowly down her face. “But then, he’d do these ridiculous little things like bringing me wildflowers because he passed a field and thought I’d like them.”
The hollow in Ruth’s gut deepened, because she knew exactly what Beatrice meant. Henry loved quietly and in small ways, ways that a woman didn’t even realize until she was already in love with him.
“He made me feel … safe.” She shook her head, looking out of the window again. “I thought, if I married him, everything would finally be all right. I’d have a husband who loved me and a real home, where we could have children and grow old together.”
Beatrice swallowed hard. “But then, he found out what I had done,” she said, regret dripping from her words. “He told me to go, and I did. I left, but I never stopped loving him.”
She turned her head to look at Ruth again. “I thought Henry would forgive me eventually,” she continued, “so I stayed away. I waited.”
She paused.
“Then, I received a letter from Victor telling me that Henry had married.”
Ruth’s throat went dry.
“He had married you.” All the softness in Beatrice’s face disappeared entirely as her fingers tightened around the gun again.
Ruth instinctively stepped back. “Beatrice?—?”
“No!” she said. “He was mine first! I was the one who was supposed to marry him—I was the one who was promised this life!”
Her hands shook as anger flashed through her eyes; the muscles in her neck protruded, and her shoulders were rigid.
“Please,” Ruth pleaded. “Just put the gun down.”
Beatrice stared at her and then laughed. “Oh Ruth,” she said. “You still don’t understand.” She raised the gun slightly. “You were supposed to stay gone.” Her voice shook. “Because, with you out of the way, he’d have to forgive me eventually.”
Ruth’s stomach dropped as Beatrice smiled again, tilting her head.
“He’d be lonely.” She took a step toward Ruth. “And I know Henry.” Her eyes suddenly brightened. “Despite what he tells people, he hates being alone,” she continued. “He has, ever since his parents passed.”
Fear crawled, ice-cold, through Ruth. Suddenly, she understood that Beatrice didn’t just want to believe this; she needed to believe it—needed it badly enough that her reality had warped, becoming tangled with hope and grief and desperation.
Ruth lifted her hands slowly. “Beatrice,” she said gently, “Henry made his choice.”
“No.” Beatrice raised the gun a little higher. “He loves me.”
“No,” Ruth repeated, shaking her head. “He’s married to me.”
“No!” The word cracked through the room as a tear rolled openly down Beatrice’s face. “He doesn’t know what he wants!”
Ruth’s heart pounded as Beatrice stared at her, her breathing uneven, the gun trembling in her hand.
Then, suddenly, boots sounded from the back door, and Ruth froze.