by Merry Farmer
She clutched her boots to her chest and slipped out of Rupert’s bedroom, into his main room. Still careful to be silent, she sat in a chair at his table and slipped her boots on, lacing and tying them. She needed to leave him a note, some sort of explanation for the horrible thing she was doing. He had plenty of paper and pencils on a desk to the side of the room, but by the time she stood and crossed to the desk, not a word came to her mind. She picked up a pencil, but froze with it hovering over the paper for several long seconds.
At last, she wrote the only words she could think of as tears dripped onto the page. “I’m so sorry.” Again, she let the pencil hover over the page as her heart battled with her head. She wanted to write that she loved him, that she always had and always would love him, but cold duty won out. In the end, she signed her name, set the pencil down, and fled.
Her silent tears burst into full sobs as she hurried back along the road from the outlying houses of Everland to its main street. Dawn cast a hazy light over everything, lending it a mystical feel. It was almost as if the fog that rose up around her was trying to hold her, push her back, but she fought against it. Her foot was throbbing by the time she climbed the steps of the Van Winkle Inn to her room, but even that didn’t stop her from what she knew she had to do.
She fetched her carpetbag from the wardrobe where she’d stored it the day before and started packing her things, weeping as she did. She tried not to cry too loudly in case there were patrons sleeping in other rooms adjacent to hers, but it became harder and harder. Her tears reached a pitch when she swept up the divorce paper to shove into the carpetbag.
She stared at it with bleary eyes. Her mission to Everland was a complete failure in every way. Rupert hadn’t signed the decree, and she had no doubt in her mind that he never would. She would be bound to him forever. And while she wanted that to fill her heart with joy, it only broke it further. Without the divorce, she wouldn’t be able to marry Rex. She’d have to confess to him that she was already married, and therefore couldn’t wed him and give him a son. Rex would be furious. After her foolish moment of desperation years ago, he would be able to do much more than simply cut her off financially. He could make her life a living hell, make the lives of her girls a living hell. She’d have to struggle just to keep her head above water, let alone improve the lives of those who sought her help. Unless she worked hard and stumbled across a streak of luck, more than just her life would be ruined.
It was too much to think about. She shoved the divorce decree into her carpetbag and fastened the clasps. That was it. Everything was packed and she was ready to run. She hurried downstairs to settle her hotel bill, then rushed on through the sleepy morning streets of Everland to the train station.
“When is the next train to Haskell?” she asked the stationmaster, the large, dark-skinned John Henry.
Mr. Henry stared at her with a mixture of alarm and compassion. “You all right, ma’am?”
Bonnie nodded, knowing it was a lie and that her tear-streaked, red, puffy face gave her away.
Mr. Henry seemed to understand. “You’re in luck. It’s coming through early today. Should be here in half an hour.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, throat squeezing tight. Coward though she was, at least she would be home soon. Everything would be better once she was home in Haskell.
The morning sunlight streamed through Rupert’s window, filling his world with light, as he awoke. His muscles had that perfect sensation of loose soreness from using them in ways he hadn’t for years. It had been glorious, everything he’d been dreaming of. Bonnie wasn’t just eager and pliable, she was responsive and fiery. She was just as hungry as he was.
They belonged together. They were made for each other. Not even time could change that.
In the distance, a train whistle sounded. He hummed with contentment and flipped to his side, stretching his arm out for Bonnie. She wasn’t there, but she always had been an early-riser. It was a bit disconcerting to find the sheets on her side cold, but not all that unusual. During those precious months at the beginning of their marriage, she’d always gotten up first to cook breakfast. In fact, he could smell…
No, actually, he couldn’t smell bacon. He couldn’t smell biscuits or toast either. He held perfectly still, listening for the sound of movement from the rest of the house, listening for the soft crackle of a fire. His house was silent.
A kernel of worry formed in his chest as he rolled out of bed and searched for clean clothes to put on. Bonnie’s clothes were gone. He tried to tell himself that she’d probably wanted to get dressed because of the autumn chill in the air. Those words comforted him right up until he stepped out of his bedroom.
The house was abandoned. Everything was hushed and still. No fires had been lit, no food taken out to be prepared.
“Bonnie?” Frowning, Rupert crossed the main room into the kitchen. She wasn’t there. Nothing was so much as an inch out of place from where he’d left it after supper the night before.
“Bonnie?” he called again, stepping back out into the main room. He crossed to the water-closet door and knocked. “You in there, sweet pea?” He opened the door, only to find the tiny room empty.
He wouldn’t panic. Everything was all right. She probably just wanted to head back to the hotel to get her things so that she could stay with him for…how long was she planning to stay, anyhow? The whole reason she’d come to town was to get him to sign that ridiculous paper. She must know he wasn’t going to sign it.
She must know.
“Bonnie?” He had nowhere to go but back to the bedroom, as if she’d been hiding under the bed. When that didn’t satisfy him, he darted to the main room once more.
Then he saw it. A single piece of paper out of place on his desk. He raced to the desk and snatched it up.
I’m so sorry. Bonnie.
That was it.
Rage curled up through his gut. It was quickly eclipsed by grief. He sank into the chair at his desk, staring at the note. She was sorry. She was sorry?
He snorted, crumpled the note into a ball, and threw it across the room, but that didn’t help. What had he expected? That they would fall into bed together and she would give up everything to come be his happy little wife? She had a life somewhere else now. Who was he to think she would just give that all up for him?
He was her husband, that’s what he was.
The thought spurred him into action. He shot out of his house and up the road into town, toward the Van Winkle Inn. If she thought she could just walk out on him a second time, then she would have to think again. Last night had reminded him of the wealth of feelings he’d kept in his heart for her. He wasn’t just going to let her go.
But when he reached the inn, bad news was waiting for him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cole,” Rip yawned from behind the inn’s desk. “Miss Horner checked out hours ago.” He yawned again before adding, “She was headed home on the early train.”
Without a reply, Rupert pushed away from the desk, left the inn, and practically sprinted across town to the station.
“Yes, sir. Miss Horner left on the train about forty minutes ago,” John told him, face pinched with regret. “She looked mighty upset too, like she’d been crying.”
Those words struck Rupert with all the pain of a bullet wound. He pushed his concern for Bonnie aside in favor of his own anger. “How could she?” he muttered, walking away from John without another word. “How could she do it again?”
Lost in his agony as he was, he nearly barreled into a gray-haired woman. The same small, gray-haired woman with a pencil through her bun that had made such strange comments to him and Bonnie the night before.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“No, I’m sorry,” the woman sighed. “I’ve got a wedding on my hands today and another story about to unfold. I just wish I had time. There’s never enough time.”
“Excuse me?” He shouldn’t be so rude to the poor woman. She was obviously touched in the he
ad, but his life had just fallen apart for the second time, so he wasn’t in a generous mood.
The woman took a breath and squared her shoulders. “All right. There isn’t enough time. But take this.” She tugged the pencil out of her bun and handed it to him. Somehow, her bun remained perfectly tight and in place.
Rupert gingerly took the pencil. “Uh, ma’am, I have plenty of pencils.”
“Don’t lose that one,” she admonished him, frowning. “Keep it with you at all times. And if you find yourself signing any documents, writing any letters, use it.”
He scowled. “What do you know about me signing documents?”
She sighed and shook her head. “More than you do, son. More than you do.”
Before he could ask more questions, she hurried on, muttering to herself. Rupert watched her go, then stared at the pencil in his hand. It was an ordinary pencil, short from use, and whittled at the end to make the lead sharp. He shook his head and thought about throwing it away, but something stopped him. Instead, he shoved it into his pocket and marched off of the station platform. There was nothing he could do about the situation now. Bonnie was gone. She’d abandoned him again. And dagnabbit, he had a wedding to go to.
It was a unique kind of torture to drag himself back to his cottage. Even after just one night, it felt emptier without Bonnie. He struggled through the motions of dressing in his finest suit and grooming himself to look presentable. If anyone other than Dmitri and Zelle were getting married, he would have climbed back into bed, pulled the covers up, and ignored them. But Dmitri had become a good friend, and the Carpenters were almost like family. There was nothing he could do but put on a happy face—or at least not one that would frighten away small children and give old ladies apoplexy—and attend the dang wedding.
Thoughts of Bonnie plagued him throughout the entire service. Had he done something wrong? Was there anything he could have done differently? But no, he’d done the only things he could. For those few, scintillating hours, he thought he’d succeeded where he didn’t even know he was trying. They were magical in bed together. But she’d left, just up and gone. He didn’t know which was worse, the fact that she’d gone or that there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it.
His heart was sinking lower by the moment after the ceremony ended. Another blissfully happy couple, and where was he? Still alone. He did his best to at least pretend to be happy for his friends as he, Gordon, Max, and Skipper stood in a cluster by the refreshment table after the wedding. His mind was a thousand miles away. Or, not a thousand, but at least a hundred. How far was it to Haskell anyhow?
“…not going to get much of anywhere with these two.”
Max’s muttering to Skipper jerked Rupert out of this thoughts. “What?”
“Never mind,” Max chuckled. He nodded across the yard to where the bride and groom stood. “These two sad sacks are all yours, Skip.”
Without further explanation, Max marched off, shaking his head and chuckling. Rupert was thoroughly confused. “What’s gotten into him?”
Skipper was having a hard time containing his laughter. “Who, Max or Gordon?”
“Gordon?” Rupert turned to his other friend, only to find him gazing raptly out over the crowd of wedding guests. He didn’t seem to hear Rupert’s question. Talk about being a thousand miles away.
“Gordy? Ahoy, man!”
Gordon shook himself and turned back to Rupert and Skipper. “What?”
“You’ve been staring at something for so long that Max gave up on us and wandered off to poke fun at Dmitri,” Skipper told him. “Although, I’ve got to admit that Dmitri’s pretty easy to tease these days, walking around with that stupid grin on his face all the time.”
Gordon and Rupert both shifted to look across the yard to where Max had approached Dmitri. “Aye,” Gordon had to agree. “He’s been like a cat in the cream since his Zelle agreed t’ marry him, hasn’t he?”
Max and Dmitri were laughing heartily now. For some reason, that only made Rupert’s heart ache more acutely. It didn’t seem right that anyone else should be happy when he was so miserable. Still, he tried to look and sound upbeat.
“Frankly, I’m impressed he waited this long,” he said so quietly that the other two leaned in to hear him.
Gordon snorted. “Have ye met Doc Carpenter? The man can hold his own in a fight, despite bein’, what, near fifty, I figure?”
“Good point!” Skipper laughed. “I wouldn’t want him angry at me. Marrying an orphan suddenly sounds appealing!”
Rupert forced himself to laugh at the joke, but underneath, he felt as though he was either going to explode or simply poof into dust. Skipper was a lucky man to still be single. Marriage could be wonderful, but it was far and away the most painful thing a man could do if it didn’t work out right.
Skipper wasn’t done teasing. “How about it, Rupert? You’ve been looking distracted lately, ever since that pretty Miss Bonnie Horner from Haskell showed up.” He elbowed Rupert in the ribs. “Want me to ask around to see if she’s got a father as scary as Doc Carpenter?”
Scowling, Rupert took a step backward. “She doesn’t. Trust me.” He’d never met Bonnie’s father, and never wanted to. He didn’t think much of a man who would disown his daughter just because she ran off to be a mail-order bride.
The thought struck Rupert. Bonnie had a history of running when things got tough. Maybe she did that because she just wanted someone to run after her. Maybe she ran so that she could be caught.
“Where is she anyhow, Rupert? Wasn’t she supposed to come to the wedding with you?” Skipper pushed on, evidently not sensing Rupert’s mood.
“She left,” Rupert grumbled.
“Uh-oh, trouble aloft?”
“Ye mean that ye let her get away?” Gordon added. “She was a bonny one, all right…what kind of man lets a woman like that slip out o’ his arms, an’ not chase after her?”
It would have been easier if his friend had slapped him. Rupert turned his scowl toward Gordon, and Skip made a noise suspiciously like laughter and answered, “A right scallywag, that’s who.”
“I think I get your point, gentlemen,” Rupert said through clenched teeth. His patience for the conversation, for everything in his life, was fast approaching its end.
“Do you?” Skip was either trying to provoke Rupert into doing something or provoke himself into a black eye. “I feel like I need to spell these things out for you. After all, I am the more intelligent, and better looking, one in this partnership, you know.”
“That’s enough,” Rupert growled.
Something in the crowd of wedding guests caught Gordon’s eyes, and he mentally left the conversation, even though he continued to stand right there. Skipper noticed and took advantage of their relative seclusion.
“Matey, I’ve known you too long to think that whatever that argument you had with Miss Bonnie Horner was casual.”
“Shut up, Skipper.”
Skip shook his head. “I don’t think you need me to shut up.”
“Really, I do.”
“Is that why the two of you disappeared from the party last night so early?”
Rupert’s face burned with…not shame, exactly. He’d been caught, though. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. “None of your business,” he grumbled.
“Rupert!” It was such a shock to hear Skipper call him by his name so forcefully that Rupert stood straighter. Skipper had his full attention, and he knew it. “I understand that whatever is going on here, you don’t want to tell me about it. That’s fine. I respect that.”
“It’s not that I—”
“But—” Skipper cut him off, raising a hand. “I’m not going to stand here and watch you make a mistake. And whatever you say, I have this feeling you are indeed about to make a mistake.”
Rupert’s mouth was open to reply, but he snapped it shut again. Beside them, as if coming out of a daze and falling into another one, Gordon nodded, thrust his hands into his pockets, and
wandered away in the direction of Briar Jorgenson, of all people. More than anything, Rupert wanted to make a comment about that to direct his and Skip’s conversation away from his problems, but Skipper wasn’t having it.
“Now.” Skipper shifted his weight to his other leg. “Where is Miss Bonnie this morning?”
As badly as Rupert wanted to lie and say he didn’t know and didn’t care, he couldn’t lie to Skipper. They’d gone through too much and come too far together. “She left.”
“Left?”
“She was gone this morning when I woke up.” Let Skip make of that what he would.
The understanding in his friend’s eyes said he grasped the basics of what had happened last night. “Without explanation?”
Rupert hesitated. “She left a note saying she was sorry.”
Skipper blinked. “That’s it?”
“She…” Rupert winced and rubbed a hand over his face. He wanted to take a long drink of the “special” lemonade he held, but he wasn’t sure his stomach could take it at that point. “She has a whole life back in Haskell. She owns a…business.” Skipper didn’t need to know what kind.
“Plenty of women own businesses.” Skipper shrugged. “I don’t see how that would stop the two of you from pursuing things. Especially since…” He looked instantly uncomfortable. “She spent the night at your place?”
And now his best friend probably thought he was a cad too. How could he explain that he and Bonnie should be celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary, that technically there was nothing sinful about the two of them tumbling through paradise.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to explain. Skipper shook his head. “Tell me truthfully. Did you know Miss Bonnie more than casually before she showed up at The Gingerbread Man the other day?”
“Yes.” He hoped Skipper wasn’t looking for a more elaborate answer than that.
“Do you love her?” Skip asked the question in an almost brotherly voice.
It took Rupert several seconds of swallowing down memories and fighting off emotions that ran as deep as the sea before he could say, “Yes.” He took a long swig of his lemonade as soon as he did.
