Then Came the Thunder

by Rachael Huszar

  Jessalyn laughed, a small sound of self-disgust.

  “Something wrong?” asked Samuel.

  “I just realized. I think I can count the things I know about you on one hand. Some hostess I turned out to be.”

  Samuel turned his mug slowly. “Well. What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  “Now, that’s just greedy.”

  “Where were you born?” Jessalyn said, resigned.

  “Virginia,” said Samuel, leaning back and propping his elbow on the chair’s arm. “My family has lived there for a long time. Land rich.”

  Another surprise. The sun-soaked wanderer came from money. “A plantation?”

  “Yep.”

  “That must have made for quite the upbringing.”

  “It was a life, that’s for sure. I was a pretty dumb kid. Got into lots of trouble around the city, especially as a teenager. But, my father was a big shot, so there weren’t a lot of consequences, if you catch my meaning.”

  Jessalyn did. “Is your family still in Virginia?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you’re not, because . . .?”

  After another long pause, Samuel spoke. “I was nineteen. I had a group of friends I roamed the city with, making trouble. But things got to a point where . . . nothing we did felt satisfying? If that makes sense? Couldn’t get my head into the family business, couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do with my life. It was like I was afraid of picking something and getting stuck.”

  “I see.”

  “So, my friends and I decided to rob a bank.”

  Jessalyn nearly choked on her tea. “What?”

  “Hold your applause, it gets worse,” Samuel said. “We weren’t going to target just anyone. We planned to rob my father’s vault. I thought we’d never get caught and that he wouldn’t even miss the money. And even if they did catch us, I was his son. What could anyone do to me? I was invincible in that city.” He stared into the fire again, the light of the flames illuminating his stubble and the contours of his face. “But like I said, I was also very stupid. During our playtime stick-up, one of my buddies who was keeping lookout got nervous. Something spooked him, and he fired his gun. Shot a woman in the shoulder.”

  “Oh, Lord . . .”

  “My father did pull some strings to keep me out of jail, but then he put me on a train. With the explicit instruction of ‘never come back here again’. I rode until the end of the line, somewhere in the Kansas territory. Podunk of a town, not too different from this one. I had nothing and nobody.”

  “What did you do?” Jessalyn asked.

  “I tried to find some way to earn my keep. Ended up strapped with lots of odd jobs. Learned a bit about carpentry, bit about farming, how to hunt, read a lot.” He winked at her. Discomfort washed over her as she remembered her earlier accusations and assumptions. “Eventually, I earned enough to buy Sinbad from a farmer who couldn’t feed him. After that, we were off. I went from town to town like that for a long while. Never spent more than a year in any one place, sometimes even less.”

  “You were a vagrant,” said Jessalyn.

  “I prefer ‘outlaw’,” Samuel said. “Got a bit more flash to it.”

  Jessalyn pursed her lips, refusing to be amused.

  As he began speaking again, the smile gradually slipped off his face. “It was 1860. I was much further north than here, in a town where work had been hard to come by. One night, I got very drunk and picked a fight with someone at the bar. Whole place broke out into a brawl. I was arrested, and actually jailed this time.”

  No rich daddy to bail him out, Jessalyn thought, regretting the malice almost instantly.

  “That’s when the United States Army started looking for men to fill their ranks. When it came to light that I was, as you so kindly stated, a vagrant, with no roots and no one to miss me, well, what other choice did I have? I had a healthy body and my own horse. I was the perfect candidate.”

  “You were conscripted?”

  “When your only other option is staring at prison walls, you’re pretty quick to give your consent.”

  Jessalyn tried very hard to picture Samuel dressed in Union blue, standing at attention, following orders, but the image wouldn’t come. He was just so slouchy and smart-mouthed. He wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t Amos. “And, did it . . . help?” she said.

  “Help with what?”

  “You know, your life. Your lot in life at that time.”

  Samuel scoffed. “You mean my bad attitude. You sound like my commanding officers.” He sat up, stretching. “Did the army change me? Straighten me out? No. If anything, it opened my eyes to the fact that this world is full of stupid men. I met so many fools who were ready to play hero in a fight that wasn’t theirs. It’s bizarre. To see men dreaming of their death with smiles on their faces.”

  Of course, he would think like that. Samuel Brooks didn’t have a shred of honor. Jessalyn gripped her mug tighter.

  “Did you fight?”

  “Nope. I never saw combat. And when my term was up, I had no interest in re-enlisting. Couldn’t get away from that place fast enough.”

  “Which is how you ended up here?”

  “Just about. Upon arrival and subsequent welcoming parade, I was dumped on the doorstep of a very proper schoolteacher named Jessalyn Joy. And you probably know the rest from here.”

  She had wanted to know more about him, and he’d certainly told her an awful lot. Jessalyn’s mind stewed over the new feelings Samuel’s tale had added to the already mixed bundle of emotions she had towards him. Samuel was no villain, but he wasn’t a hero either. Jessalyn wasn’t sure how to reconcile that.

  “Thank you,” she finally said, “for telling me all this.”

  Samuel reached out and set his now empty mug on the table between them. The low flames reflected off his eyes as he looked over at her, a grin back on his face. “Since this seems a good evening for swapping deep, dark secrets, how about you tell me one of yours?”

  All Jessalyn really wanted to do right now was go back to bed. “It’s late.” Even in the warm room, her voice sounded icy.

  “Oh, don’t be like that.”

  “Samuel, I really don’t think—”

  “Come on, now. You’ve got my whole life story! I’d like a fair trade.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t lived nearly as adventurous a life as you.”

  “You’re telling me you always wanted to be a teacher in a small town?”

  “Maybe not that specific,” Jessalyn said. “But teaching, yes. I feel like it’s what I’m made for.”

  Samuel nodded. “Where did you start?”

  “My first real job out of school was in St. Charles, in Missouri.”

  “Ah. There’s one place I haven’t been.”

  Jessalyn paused. She hadn’t thought about that town and that job in years. The memories of the sturdy brick buildings and the scent of the river in the air came flooding back. “I was the private tutor to a young boy, Nathaniel Herrington Junior. His father was a manufacturer of women’s fashions. He was quite well known. Rather wealthy, as well.”

  “One kid had you all to himself?” said Samuel.

  “Yes, I suppose,” Jessalyn said. “I arrived at their estate each morning and spent my days with Nathaniel Junior. He, well, he wasn’t a shining example.”

  “You’re being polite.”

  She was. Nathaniel had been an unruly boy with an incredibly poor attention span and no head at all for reading or figures. Half her time at the Herrington estate was spent just getting him to settle down enough to sit and pay her some attention. It had become clear to her early in her assignment that she was much more nanny than tutor. But she couldn’t walk away from her first position on principle.

  “I was employed by the Herringtons for nearly a year.”

  The change in her tone didn’t escape Samuel. “Something happened?”


  He’d trusted her with his great mistake and shame. Jessalyn was willing to take a chance. “One day, I was called into Nathaniel Herrington Senior’s office. He told me he hadn’t seen any improvement in his son’s aptitude. That he didn’t think my instructional methods were a good fit. That perhaps I needed more training.”

  Samuel looked offended. “It’s not your fault his son was a little idiot.”

  Jessalyn couldn’t help but smile weakly. “I told him as much.”

  “You did?”

  “I was much more impetuous back then, barely twenty-three. I knew I had only been the next in a long line of educators for the boy. I said surely he didn’t think the entire force of Missouri’s finest teachers were outclassed by his brainless son, and that maybe if he took his head out of his bank vault every so often, he’d be able to see that.”

  Samuel burst out laughing. “Jessalyn Joy, you are a marvel.”

  “I’m really not. It was so foolish. I was fired, of course, and Nathaniel Herrington told me he would make sure I was never hired again.” Even knowing how the story ended, Jessalyn still hated revisiting this part. “Without work, I wouldn’t be able to support myself. My father had passed the previous year, and I’d had to spend quite a lot to finish school. After I left the house, it all sort of came crashing down on me. I . . . had a small fit, there in the street.” She remembered how hard it had been to breathe, how her vision had spun, the rising terror at the thought of what would become of her.

  Samuel wasn’t laughing anymore. “What happened?”

  Amos. Amos had happened. “Someone helped me.” She remembered the strange, yet kind man who had gently taken her hand and pulled her into the shade of a tree. You’re going to be all right, miss. I promise. He’d placed her hand on his chest. Feel that? That’s my heartbeat, and it’s here for you. Try to match the rhythm of your breathing. In, out, in, out. Good, just like that.

  “Someone . . . important, I take it?”

  Jessalyn blinked. She’d nearly forgotten where she was. “Very.” It had been so long. So long since she’d said his name without gasping. So long since she’d talked about him to anyone.

  “Someone you married?”

  The question stunned her. For the briefest moment, Jessalyn feared that Samuel somehow had the ability to read her thoughts, but she shook that notion away. Still. “What?”

  Samuel pointed down at her hand. “You wear a wedding band. You spin it when you’re nervous. I’ve been living in your house for three days and you haven’t mentioned a husband. Call me curious.”

  The weight of resentment settled on Jessalyn’s shoulders. Had telling her his history simply been a means to back her into a corner? To feed his own curiosity? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure about anything when it came to Samuel, and she hated that so much.

  “Who is he?” Samuel pressed.

  Jessalyn stood, brushing away the wrinkles in her dressing gown. She didn’t want to talk anymore. “I apologize, again, for waking you, but I’d rather not—”

  “So tight-lipped! Fine then, I’ll guess.”

  Jessalyn felt something crackle underneath her skin. She didn’t want to yell. She didn’t want to get angry at her guest again.

  “Is he still in town? Did you leave him?”

  Jessalyn felt the pace of her breath quicken. Stop.

  Samuel clapped his hands together. “I’m right, aren’t I? He’s some fool who broke your heart, isn’t he?”

  STOP.

  “Well, heck. He’d have to be the stupidest man alive to lose a woman like—”

  “STOP!” Jessalyn threw her mug to the floor and it broke into thick shards of splintered porcelain. Samuel flinched away, mouth and eyes wide. “He’s dead!”

  The words seemed to echo throughout the house, just as they echoed endlessly inside Jessalyn’s head. “Amos . . . was my husband, and he died. He’s—he’s gone.”

  It was so hard to say. Pulling the sentences from her throat felt like wrenching a rusty nail from a floorboard. She hated saying it, she hated remembering it was true.

  Samuel had gone rigid. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “No, you didn’t! As smart as you think you are, there’s still plenty you don’t know.”

  Samuel looked unsure what to do or say next. He half-raised a hand, before putting it back down. Opened and closed his mouth a few times. Looked to the broken mug, then to Jessalyn, then back to the mug. “When? How?” was all he managed to say.

  Jessalyn hadn’t moved. Her arms were locked in place at her sides. “Three months. Twenty-seven days. He was a soldier.”

  Samuel’s eyes went even wider.

  “Call me a stubborn, pig-headed idealist all you like, Samuel Brooks, but I cannot share, or even consider your opinions that the army is full of death-seeking fools, or that there is no value in sacrifice. Because for three months and twenty-seven days, that’s all I’ve had. That’s all he left me with.”

  Jessalyn let her grief seep from her body like oil. There was no hiding it any more. She wanted someone to see it, Samuel to see it. She wanted him to taste her suffering and choke on it.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  She didn’t wait. “He was never supposed to be on the front lines. That was never his station. He should not have been there that night.” Jessalyn flung her hand out, pointing in the direction of her letter box. “I have a letter. A letter that came to me the day I learned that he’d died. He wrote it that night. A few men had deserted, he said. He was stepping up to take their place, he said. He would write to me the minute the fighting was over, he said.”

  Her voice sounded strange and warbled. The backs of her eyes stung white hot.

  “Jessalyn . . .” said Samuel.

  “If I don’t think about the good he did, the lives he saved with his bravery . . . if I don’t focus on that . . . it’s like I can feel the hatred freezing my heart. I hate those cowards who ran away, I hate this country for waging a war with itself . . . and I hate myself.” She tried to breathe, tried to calm down, but it was too late. She wrapped her arms around her chest, as if she could somehow hold the pieces of herself together, even as they broke down and crumbled away. “I was judged,” Jessalyn choked out. “I was deemed unworthy of having him come back to me. And every single day, I have to carry on, go through the motions, because it’s all I can do to keep the darkness at bay. Amos was my light, and without him . . . there’s just nothing.”

  She hadn’t cried at Amos’s funeral. The sadness threatened to tear her apart from the inside, but she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t wanted the town to see that, to see her weak. She hadn’t wanted anyone’s pity. But underneath that, she hadn’t cried because she wasn’t worthy. Jessalyn had been married to Amos for nearly ten years. But what was ten years compared to a lifetime? Three Willows had raised Amos, loved Amos, stood by Amos for his whole life. She was saying goodbye to her husband, but they were saying goodbye to a son. Jessalyn wouldn’t intrude on a mother’s pain, so she kept her tears bottled.

  But she cried now. The anger drilled deep inside of her and cracked the glass. Cracked it enough that she’d told Samuel her darkest secret of all.

  Jessalyn stood there, tears streaking down her face and spattering against the floor. After a long moment, Samuel rose to his feet.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  The first time she’d rendered him speechless and she couldn’t even celebrate. She rubbed her hands roughly over her cheeks. “Even if you did, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “No, I—Jessalyn, I wouldn’t make light. Not about this.” He seemed genuinely concerned.

  She nodded, but kept her eyes averted from his. After a few more deep breaths, she said, “We should both be getting back to bed.”

  “. . . right.”

  “I’d like to visit the Templetons in the morning, see if there’s any good news about Charlie. You are free to come with me,
if you’d like.”

  Samuel shifted his weight. “Uh, yes. That’d be good.”

  “All right.” Jessalyn turned towards the stairs and started climbing as Samuel pushed through the door to his room.

  12

  AS SHE’D PROMISED, JESSALYN HAD waited for him the next morning.

  But she didn’t speak.

  And Sam didn’t try either.

  This was different than the first round of silent treatments she’d given him a few days ago. Even though both times it had been his fault, Sam really felt like he’d gone too far. He’d made horrible assumptions about her life and her husband and even he couldn’t pretend it had all been harmless teasing. He wasn’t even sure why he’d taken it that far. Yes, he liked surprising her. Yes, he’d wanted to know more. And yes, he’d found himself growing a little jealous of whoever held her wedding ring’s mate.

  So, he’d asked. In the worst way possible.

  Jessalyn seemed to know the way to the Templeton household by heart. They came up to a wide well-kept yard. Sam hurried to unlatch the gate and held it open as Jessalyn brushed past. She glanced at him. But that was all.

  He followed behind her and tried to put on a better face. They were here for Charlie, after all. Their terrible argument had come in the wake of a terrible accident.

  A tired looking man answered Jessalyn’s knock, squinting even in the early daylight. Sam recognized him as Charlie’s father, though they hadn’t exchanged words at the doctor’s office last night.

  “Oh, Jessalyn,” the man said. “And, uh . . .”

  Sam extended a hand. “I’m not sure if we met properly, sir. Sam Brooks.”

  “Giles Templeton,” he said, shaking Sam’s hand. “Good to meet you, Sam. We can’t thank you enough for what you did.” Giles gestured Sam and Jessalyn inside.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine.”

  “We wanted to come by and see how Charlie was,” Jessalyn said. “Is he awake yet?”