He made each delivery as quickly as usual, but was markedly less talkative, and noticeably distracted. He couldn’t stop thinking about Beth, and it occurred to him that he might already be madly in love with her. Could that be possible? Do I even know what that feels like?
But it had to be love; what else could make him feel so dizzy, like he was being pulled down a vortex of cool, healing water toward an undersea paradise? He was giddy even when he was away from her, and his body tingled with joy whenever he saw her. As the weeks went on and they settled into a routine together, he noticed the leaps and flips his stomach and heart did never seemed to get any weaker; every day, he woke up thinking of her, and every night, he had to tear himself away from her door after it was closed. Happily, he saw his passion reflected in her—the rush of color that never failed to darken her cheeks when he said her name or took her hands in his; the joyful little skip she sometimes did when she walked toward him after a day of trimming thorns and leaves; and the lingering kisses she grew more and more open with—his favorite thing of all.
“Why do you taste so sweet?” he would ask as he pulled away from her lips, both of them dazed and breathless as they sat together on his sofa. She let her locks free in the evening, and his hands always played in the strands, which were somehow even softer and more fragrant than they looked.
She would smile and place her hand on his chest, and it always shocked his heart into doing a little a jig.
He never tired of her quips and poetic phrasing, nor the quick little drawings she would make for him on bits of parchment or wrapping paper. They were often snatches of nature—a bundle of wheat, some roses, a round bird gripping a slim twig with its pointed beak—but sometimes they were of him, or the two of them together, always in front of a vivid depiction of the sun she would always color with paints she brought herself. They were rough, but incredibly beautiful, and she drew in such detail that he felt like he was seeing all of these things again for the first time—his fields, his apple trees, even his own face. He kept them all pressed between the pages of a book of poems she’d given him when she first arrived—sonnets by Shakespeare, some of which he’d seen performed on stage over the years, but never with anyone beside him. He wanted to take her to a play and see them together; he had a feeling that Beth would make the old plays new again.
Though he never found her sleeping late again, he overheard one of the farmhands talking a low voice about her consistent tardiness, worrying that she was abusing her position as the boss’s intended.
“Is it every day?” asked Harry, who came in during the early afternoon.
Paul shrugged, rubbing a hand through his curly brown hair. “Mostly every day. Sometimes it’s five minutes, sometimes it’s an hour and a half. Think he’s letting her… because they’re….?” his voice trailed off, but Lewis knew what he was getting at.
“No,” said Harry immediately. Harry had been working for Lewis for nearly ten years. “Not without letting us know. He’d never inconvenience us, ever. But maybe she’s counting on you not saying anything.”
“Well, it doesn’t really bother me,” Paul said quickly. “It doesn’t affect my work—she does seem to get hers done okay, or someone helps her. I’m just saying…maybe she ain’t cut out for field work. And maybe she knows it.”
Lewis fought over whether to bring it up, but he made it clear to the workers that they were free to come to him with any qualms or quandaries—and when, by the end of the first month, none of them came forward, he decided that it had just been idle chatter, or even a result of lashing out in frustration over something else. Sometimes people talk, he thought; maybe she just needed time to settle in.
During their second month together, Lewis took her on a picnic in the grasses just beyond their crops—under an apple tree that had been planted decades before. Beth wore a brilliant green dress and sat with her legs folded beneath her, sipping the wine he’d brought while her skin grew more and more flush.
“This is delicious,” she said as he set out their food on the thick woolen blanket. “Oh, and everything looks so good. Lewis, I hope you didn’t go to any trouble for this.”
“Are you pulling my leg?” he asked, cupping her chin with one hand. “I’d rope the moon for you. This was no problem.”
She smiled and wrapped his hand in hers, pulling him toward her for a brief kiss. “Lewis… I love you.”
His breath froze in his lungs for a moment, and his heart felt strangely heavy. “I love you, too,” he said, his voice rough with the depth of his feeling. He realized then that it was the first time either of them had said the words aloud. He looked into her eyes, his heart pounding in his chest as the smile on her lovely face widened in response to his. Beth’s blue eyes were deep enough to sink into, and for a moment, he felt utterly lost within her gaze. This is like a fairy tale.
She gasped suddenly. “I have another drawing for you, I nearly forgot.” She reached into the small satchel she’d brought along and pulled out another portrait—this time, a stretch of gently rolling crystal blue waters beneath a vivid yellow sun.
He stared at it while Beth gazed at him anxiously; it was beautiful, and he was trying to find the words to tell her exactly how it made him feel. He looked up and found her still and unblinking, her hands clasped together in front of her bosom. She’d taken extra care with this, and he wanted to make sure she knew he appreciated this—and all of her work, really; everything she brought into his life.
He cleared his throat. “Beth, this is so wonderful. Everything you’ve made for me—your drawings, the little poems, the painting—it’s like a whole new world to me. Looking at this—” he held up the seascape—“makes me feel like I’m seeing that ocean for the first time, even though I’ve been taking trips to that beach for years. Being with you is like coming home, but it’s also like starting over. You make everything so wonderfully different…every morning I wake up, it’s like seeing the sun for the first time in my life. And it’s all in your eyes, and your smile, and the way you laugh…it’s you, Beth.” Lewis laughed, his voice as shocked as Beth’s features. “I’m in love with you.”
Beth laughed, and tears were swimming in her eyes. “I’m in love with you, too.” She paused. “And…I think I’m ready to start moving forward with our wedding plans.”
As an answer, he pulled her to him and kissed her deeply; she shivered in his embrace, and he felt her heart beating wildly against his. “I’m ready, Beth.”
Lewis and Beth told the farmhands the next morning, and they all cheered without hesitation; he invited them in for dinner that night, and all of them sat together like a big family, eleven to the table, with Ernest now gone. None of them seemed to hold an ounce of bitterness toward Beth, and Lewis was relieved. He’d told everyone on his delivery route that day, and they’d all reacted with nearly equal enthusiasm—all except Maxine, whose cheer was most deafening of all.
“I can’t wait to dance at your wedding!” she said as she hugged him tightly. “And she’s a good one, sounds like; I suppose you’ll be working on children soon enough?” The old woman wiggled her eyebrows at him suggestively.
Lewis laughed and blushed. “Maxine!”
“You’re old enough to know the facts of life, boy!” she said, chuckling. “Now get on, you’ve got other deliveries to make.”
They both wasted no time in writing to friends and family to ask if they’d attend a small ceremony; Beth only had a sister in America, but Lewis knew his aunt and uncle would want to come. Other than that, he knew a handful of people would love to attend, but many were so busy he wasn’t sure if they could possibly make time. Lewis was ashamed to admit he didn’t particularly care who came—he was just so eager to marry Beth and start their new lives together.
A few weeks after they decided on a date for the wedding, Lewis asked her about something that had been on his mind. He waited for Beth to finish dinner, then stood next to her nervously as she started to scrub the dishes.
“Beth,” he said. “Did you want to talk about…children?”
If he hadn’t been looking at her, he would have missed the hitch in her breathing and the sudden rush of color to her cheeks. When she spoke, he thought he detected a note of panic, though it could have just been nerves.
“Children?” she asked as he continued to scrub a pan. “I’m not sure. What do you think about it?”
He placed a hand on her lower back, gazing at her intently. “I don’t mean to upset you. I don’t want you to rush; there’s plenty of time to have them. But I do want some eventually…perhaps in the next few years.” He brushed a strand of hair away from her forehead and tried to meet her shining eyes with his. She wasn’t making it easy.
“Beth?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her words coming out jagged and heavy, like chunks of mineral ripped from the Earth. He could almost taste the bitter tone on his own tongue as she spoke. “I… I don’t know about children, Lewis.”
Lewis gaped at her. “What do you mean?”
She continued scrubbing the pan with the wooden brush, her breath coming strangely fast and shallow now. Lewis felt dread filling up his veins, and it made his heart beat painfully slow and hard. He smoothed her hair down with one hand, trying to calm her as much as he was trying to reassure himself. Why are you panicking so much? He wasn’t sure who the thought was addressing, and he grew less certain by the moment.
Lewis couldn’t take her frantic movement anymore. “Beth!” he shouted, and held both of his hands on her forearms. Finally, she stilled, and her eyes turned toward him in shock. Her gaze was cold and unfamiliar, and again, the anxiety there seemed wildly out of proportion.
She bit her lip and closed her eyes, pulling her hands from the water and drying them on the towel next to the sink. His eyes drifted to her palms, and he frowned; a thought floated to the front of his mind, and it came tumbling out as she turned and finally met his gaze head on. Her eyes were dark and troubled, and it scared him badly.
“Your hands are just as soft as they were when they got here,” he said slowly. The anxiety in her expression grew more pronounced. “I heard Harry and Paul saying that you’d been late a lot, and that you hadn’t been completing your work. Beth…is that true? Have you been having someone else do your work for you?”
Beth was silent. A single tear slid down her cheek, and Lewis’s heartbeat sped up erratically. What in the devil is going on?
She took a deep, shaky breath. “Lewis…there’s something you need to know.”
Beth took his hand and led him over to the table, where she sat opposite him in one of their plush chairs. She stared at her folded hands for a moment, and Lewis nearly choked on the anxiety in the air between them. Then she met his eyes, and the rawness there struck him like a lightning bolt.
“Before I met you,” she said softly, “I was married to man who I’d known since I was a teenager. For nearly a year. We lived together…and we lay together.”
Lewis felt his tongue dry up in his mouth, and he parted his lips, but nothing came out. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut, but he could see that she wasn’t done speaking yet. What else could there be?
“But…he left me, because he’d always wanted a big family…and when I lost our first child, the doctor found out that I had a heart condition and…I can’t carry to term. I can never have children.” Beth sobbed, and her shoulders shook with the effort it was taking her to speak through her tears.
Lewis felt confusion muddy his thoughts. “And the work?”
Beth’s whole body started to tremble. “I get dizzy spells and fall down. One of the farmhands saw me, and I made him swear not to tell you—I’m afraid I scared him rather badly,” she said, nervous laughter creeping into her tone for a moment. “He split work with me, to cover my tracks. I thought it would work. I forgot about my hands. My stupid, useless hands.”
Lewis was silent, and it seemed to push her deeper into panic. “I’m sorry, Lewis, I’m so sorry! But that man…he left me feeling so broken, and I thought if I could get away, I could try something new—and then you came along.” She seized his hands, and her voice grew urgent and pleading. “You made me fall in love again. You made feel like I’d never felt before, not even with John. You made feel like I was the center of the universe—even before I laid eyes on you. Lewis, please—I never meant to hurt you. I never wanted to mislead you like this—I just didn’t know how to tell you.”
Lewis was listening to her speak, but he felt like she was talking to him from across a great distance; he was so numb with shock that he felt certain, for a moment, that this was a dream. But her warm hands were gripping his stiff fingers tightly enough to cause a twinge of pain, so knew this was real. He shook his head slowly and pulled back from her, and Beth let out another shaky sob.
“Oh, God! You must hate me.”
Misery burned in his heart like a white-hot poker against flesh, and he groaned. “No, Beth. I don’t hate you. I can’t hate you. I just…” he shook his head again, rising from his chair with some difficulty. “I need to think. I need to go and lie down for a moment.”
Lewis staggered away from Beth on legs that felt more like logs than limbs, her breathy sobs bursting through his body like gunshots, her grief sharp and vivid even as he closed the door on her cries.
Chapter 3
Lewis didn’t sleep that night, but he heard Beth slip into the second bedroom after finding the room they normally shared locked against her. He ignored her soft cries of defeat and waited until dawn to rise, collecting and packaging what had been left to gather for his morning delivery himself. He made his deliveries in reverse order—surprising a great deal of his clients, but he was too stupefied to do more than register their stiff tones. Lewis’ whole world felt like it had been knocked on its head, and he had no idea how it was going to right itself.
He was mainly upset about her deception—there was an entire side of her that had been kept hidden, and it had never even occurred to Lewis to do the same to her. How could he nurture a love that was built on thin, dry soil? That is what lies do to life—suck it dry of all its fluid and marrow until it’s brittle and useless. Beth had drained him with a single blow— and who knew if she’d ever been planning on letting him in on her secret? Would she have just kept on letting him feed a garden of deceit?
Maxine noticed something was off as soon as he strolled in.
“You’re late,” she barked, but her hawkish features softened as he drew closer to her.
“My God, boy, what happened?”
And he told her—the whole story came tumbling out, and Maxine grew more and more sympathetic by the moment.
“I feel so betrayed, Maxine,” he finished tonelessly. “How can I ever get over something like that? How can we ever get past it?” He sighed wearily, and his heart felt weak and barely existent. “I know you’re probably going to say we can’t. Tell me to cut my losses and run.”
Maxine’s eyebrows shot up. “No, I’m not. You must not know me very well.”
It was Lewis’ turn to look surprised. “What? Really?”
“Really!” Maxine said sharply. “You just got done telling me this girl hung the moon—and you really want to turn tail? Of course she shouldn’t have lied, but did you think about why she lied in the first place?”
“She told me why,” Lewis answered, sounding bitter to his own ears. “She wanted to get out. I was her ticket.”
“But why lie?” Maxine pressed, shaking her wizened head. “Plenty of barren girls get married. Plenty of divorced girls get married. Now’s the time to be single; I’m sure here pickings weren’t slim. Nope; Miss Perkins lied because the world taught her she had to. Being honest isn’t a thing she’s been rewarded for in the past. You want to prove her right? Tell her this baggage is too much. But I don’t think you want to prove her right.” Her voice softened, and Lewis lowered his eyes. “I think you want to teach her what she’s taught you—how to love, pure and
deep, and to be loved like that in return. No matter what. Real love.”
Lewis heart swelled painfully in his chest, and blinked tears away. “You’re right, Maxine,” he said, his voice low. “You’re right.”
He raced to his carriage and barreled through the streets toward his farmhouse, his thoughts racing with everything he needed to say to Beth. He wondered if she’d slept the night before, and hoped she wouldn’t be too distraught; he was ashamed of the way he’d reacted, and especially ashamed of the way he’d locked the door against her, and refused to comfort her in her tears. It occurred to him that she might even be angry at him; he could accept that. He was angry at himself.
Lewis’ eyes fell upon his porch, and his heart stopped in his chest. All of his farmhands were gathered on the porch—all but Harry, in fact. He climbed from the carriage the anxiety in his chest growing stronger as he grew closer to their panicked, ashen faces.
“What’s going on, guys?”
Paul spoke first, and his eyes were red-rimmed. “It’s Beth Anne,” he said nervously. “She…she hurt herself. Pretty bad.”
“Cut herself with a blade,” Marcos supplied, his eyes wide with terror. “She didn’t stop bleeding.”
The earth shifted below his feet, and Lewis struggled to keep standing. “Where is she?” he heard himself say. “Where is she?”
And then they were crowding into his carriage and racing him to the hospital. He had to hitch another horse to the wagon to carry their weight, and his heart beat in his mouth the entire time. Please let her be alive. Please, God, don’t let me be too late.
Lewis didn’t wait for the carriage to stop rolling to burst out of the carriage and tear into the hospital, his stormy gray eyes wild as he looked around for the nearest doctor.
A bearded man with spectacles walked over to him, his olive skin dotted with freckles. “Can I help you?”
Brides of Grasshopper Creek Page 48
