He noted the tear in the sleeve of her dress. “Can I look at that?”
She raised her elbow.
He went back for the lamp, turned it up and set it beside the bed. His sure, gentle touch only saddened her. She’d barely acknowledged her feelings for him; if only there could have been more time, if only he’d never had to know. He was treating her as kindly as he did everyone. He was looking at her as a doctor. “You have a cut that needs cleaning,” he said.
Ellie glanced at her dirty bare feet. “My feet, too.”
“I’ll be right back.” He left and returned with his bag and a pitcher of water. “I just came from cleaning up Ben.”
“Is he hurt?”
“A few scrapes and bruises. He’ll be fine. How he managed to get himself out of that chair is a marvel. He’s your hero.”
“He’s just a boy.”
“He’s a very brave young man who loves you.”
She nodded, aggrieved to the marrow of her bones.
“Why don’t you take your clothes off and put your nightgown on. Then I can treat that elbow.” He stepped out into the hall and waited until she called him back.
Ellie looked so small and so pitifully young. Her hair was a wild tangle and her eyes were red and puffy. Caleb cleaned her elbow and applied salve and a bandage. She avoided his eyes the entire time.
He placed the bowl of water on the floor beside the bed. “Might as well stick ’em in here.”
She placed one foot at a time in the water and he washed the soles of her feet and dried them. Finding a pair of tweezers, he removed a piece of gravel from her heel and she winced, then he applied the salve and wrapped her feet in gauze. “Get under the covers now.”
She obeyed like the lost little girl she’d once been, and he pulled the sheet up over her.
He turned the lamp wick down low because he knew it made her more comfortable and seated himself on the edge of the bed. They had to talk about it. Now that he knew, she had nothing left to hide. “It all makes sense to me now,” he said.
She turned her face away. “You don’t even know it all.”
“Can you tell me?”
A minute passed while he wondered if she would, but then she spoke, her voice soft and faraway-sounding. “My name is Foster. Everyone in Florence knows the name.”
“You made up the name Parrish to get a job?”
“No one would have hired me.”
“People can be so narrow-minded,” he said with a sad shake of his head.
“We lived in a shack outside of town,” she went on. “One room. There was a stove, but we never had anything to burn in it except the wood I stole from people’s woodpiles. Once I burned an old wagon that had been deserted in a field. Every night I went and broke off a few more pieces until all that was left was the metal parts. I used to hunt for newspapers in the trash.”
Caleb had difficulty picturing the life she’d begun to describe, but he focused on doing so. He wanted to understand.
“We didn’t have food most of the time. Sometimes she was sober for a day and bought some. Usually she just bought whiskey. I stole from gardens and yards at night. When I was bigger I planted a tobacco patch as well as some vegetables. I learned to roll cigars and I sold them outside the saloons and the billiard halls in the evenings.”
“You took care of the boys all by yourself?” he asked incredulously.
“Somebody had to. They were such good babies. Bright and beautiful. Not filled out like Nate. I never had enough to feed them.”
As the picture became clearer, Caleb ached for her and her brothers. He almost felt guilty for his abundant childhood.
“We had a sister once,” she said. “Between the boys. She died. She was never very strong. She threw up most of what I was able to get in her. We didn’t have beds or covers, so we slept on the pads I made from newspapers and rags, and it was usually pretty cold.
“She slept by the stove. And when men came that’s where they were—together—so we kept as far to the other side as we could.”
Caleb wondered what kind of men visited a place like that—a place where children were starving and cold and their mother took money for whiskey. Men like Winston Parker, he realized with another shock.
“First time I ever slept in a bed was when I started working at the hotel and got to stay in the dormitory.” She paused a moment. “We didn’t go to school much. I went a few years—the years that the teachers weren’t cruel. The kids were bad enough, but when the teachers were cruel, too, I couldn’t bear it, and I wouldn’t put the boys through it. I stole books and taught them to read and figure.
“What clothes we had people gave to us. Castoffs. I wore boys’ underwear most of my life. I never had anything new until a teacher named Mrs. Conner came to the school.”
Ellie had relaxed and now spoke more comfortably, though she still faced away from him.
“I thought that woman was the most wonderful person in the world,” she said. “She was. She was the kindest person I’d ever met. She took time after school to help me with my lessons. She came to where we lived once, someone, one of the other kids maybe, must have told her where it was. My mother just told her to leave her the hell alone. I thought I wouldn’t be allowed to go back after that, but Mrs. Conner never mentioned it.
“She treated me just the same as always. And one day she invited me to her house. I had to take the boys, of course, but she fed us and then she measured me. It was the strangest thing.
“The next week she had a box for me. In the box was the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen.”
Her voice cracked and she swallowed a few times. “I’ve never told anyone about the dress. I’ve never told anyone any of this.”
“It’s okay,” Caleb assured her. Wanting to hold her, he merely placed his hand on her arm. She didn’t object, so he gave her bare skin a comforting rub. “Go on.”
“It was blue. With a sash at the waist and a scalloped white collar and cuffs. It was a beautiful dress. She meant well by it. She was a kind, kind lady.
“I only wore it to school once. The others laughed. One of them said they’d never seen trash covered in fancy wrappings before. Mrs. Conner made him sit on a stool all afternoon, but when I ran home after school, they laughed and shouted and called me fancy trash. That was what they called us—the trash family.”
“Oh, Ellie.” His heart ached for her.
“I never wore it to school again.” She had warmed to telling him this story and she no longer hesitated. The words poured from her like floodwaters that had been dammed too long. “I hid the box and I wore the dress to town a few times when I sold my cigars. That’s where he saw me wearing it.”
“Winston?”
She nodded.
“Mrs. Conner got shot by a stray bullet when some robbers held up the bank. When I heard she died, I cried and cried and I wouldn’t go back to school after that.”
“I remember hearing about that bank robbery and the schoolteacher’s death.” Caleb’s mother had written him all the latest news while he’d been away at the university.
“I was too sad to wear the dress anymore.”
“What did you mean about Winston seeing you wearing it?”
“I’m getting to that. He came out to our place with that fancy carriage, and he paid my mother. Like he always did.” She turned, finally, and looked at Caleb’s face. Haunted distress filled her violet eyes. “This time she took the money for me.”
Caleb absorbed her words and the incomprehensible meaning behind them. In horror, his mind grappled with the understanding.
“He tricked me into going outdoors with him. He had the black carriage waiting and once I was inside…he took his money’s worth. He said I’d worn the dress to attract him—that I’d asked for it.”
The facts all filtered together. Her mother had been as much the perpetrator as Winston, maybe more. She had accepted money in payment for Winston to rape her daughter. It was inconceivable. But it ha
d happened. And Ellie had been the victim and had lived with the consequences.
“And the baby?” Caleb asked around the constricting lump in his throat.
Her eyes widened in surprise. “How—?”
“When you were sick I saw your body,” he said. “I figured out that much then.”
Tears filled her eyes. She attempted to turn away, but he wouldn’t allow it. He cupped her face and gazed into her brimming eyes. “The shame is not yours, Ellie. You were a child. He forced you. You didn’t have anyone to protect you.”
The tears flowed from between her lashes and down her temple. Caleb released her face and eased himself down alongside her, fitting his body against the back of hers, with the sheet separating them. Holding her close, he stroked her hair, wanting to comfort her.
“I didn’t realize at first,” she said finally. “I thought I was sick. But then the baby started to grow inside me. My mother saw it and she cursed it and me. I did my best to stay away from her. She hated the boys and me, and I was afraid for what would happen to all of us. I hated her. I hated myself and my life. I had nightmares all the time.”
Caleb listened and stroked her shoulder, her arm.
“I was never sure what Ben knew. He was so young, and Flynn was just a toddler then. Ben knew more than I thought. He tried to help me that night, but I didn’t know it until just a little while ago. He must have figured out about the baby, too.”
“How in the world did you have that baby, Ellie?”
“When the pains came I went into the woods and hid for a day and a night,” she said. “I was afraid I might die, and if I did, I didn’t want Ben to see it. I was more afraid of what she would do to the baby. She’d made threats.”
“So you had it alone?”
“I had helped with the last two babies my mother had, so I knew what happened and about cutting the cord and all. I didn’t know it was going to hurt so much.”
Caleb thought of his wife dying even with his assistance and medical techniques. Ellie’s accomplishment was extraordinary. If something had gone wrong, she’d have bled to death in the woods…alone.
“It was a girl.”
He pictured her as a mere child, frightened and innocent, with no one to help or care. What must she have thought and felt when she brought that tiny creature into the world? He fought the urge to envelop her in his arms and hold her close. “What did you do?”
She swallowed. “I knew there was a couple in Florence—the Mastersons—who’d lost a baby to influenza not long before. I thought maybe they’d be willing to take my baby. Maybe it would even help them get over losing theirs. So I took her into town at night and I laid her on their back porch. I threw a rock at the window. They found her.”
“Did they keep her?”
A tremor went through her body. “I went back a few weeks later and saw flannels hanging on the clothesline.”
“And you never saw her after that?”
“No,” she whispered.
“I’m so sorry,” he said against her hair. “How you suffered for so long and stayed as loving and warmhearted as you are, I’ll never know.”
“No,” she said again. She raised her clenched fists to her chest. “I have so much hate inside me, it eats up all the good parts.”
“You hate her? Your mother?”
“Yes!”
“And you hate Winston?”
She didn’t reply.
“They hurt you. Your mother should have protected you, provided for you. She didn’t and that was wrong. He hurt you, too, in a way he had no right to do. But you don’t have to carry the hurt and the secret all alone anymore.”
She brought her fist to her lips and curled, bringing her knees up to her chest.
Caleb stayed wrapped around her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t wear that dress to encourage him. You were fourteen years old and trying to make money to feed your brothers. He was a sick excuse for a human being. Thank God I wasn’t faced with the decision to save his life. I don’t know if I could have done it.”
She unfolded her body enough to turn and reply. “You would have.”
“I don’t know, Ellie.”
“You would have. I know you. You’re the kindest man I’ve ever known.”
He didn’t think that was saying much, considering the caliber of people she’d known.
“Caleb, you’re not just touching me like a doctor touches his patient.”
“I’m touching you like a man touches his wife.”
She placed her hand on his arm then. “I will understand if you don’t want to be married to me anymore.”
Caleb took her shoulder and urged her to turn toward him. They lay face-to-face, and he strained to take in her lovely features as well as the fear and regret in her eyes. “We had a deal, Mrs. Chaney. You are Nate’s mother. I am Ben and Flynn’s father. We are going through with the adoptions. Nothing has changed regarding those things. Unless you’ve changed your mind.”
“But now that you know—”
“I know why you’re so sad. I know why making a home is so important to you. I know why you can’t bear the thought of a man hurting you like that again. And I know you wonder about the little girl you gave away. Those are the things I know. And they’ve made me understand. But they haven’t made me love you any less.”
Those words hung between them.
Chapter Seventeen
“You can’t love me,” she said finally.
“I can. And I do.”
“But I can’t ever love you back—not like you’d want me to.”
“We can take that a little at a time.” He brushed her hair away from her temple and pressed a kiss there, careful to keep his touches light and unrestrictive, while wanting nothing less than to crush her to him and absorb all her suffering and disillusionment.
She lowered her face and pressed her forehead against his chest. “How can you love me when you know all the ugliness?”
“Because you’re the same person you were before I knew. I know you. I’ve watched your nurturing instincts toward the boys—Nate as well—and I’ve seen you take pleasure in simple things, like cooking and walking and the changing leaves. You think of others before yourself, always. Your smile lights up my world and gives me a strange but good feeling.” He took her hand and pressed it over his heart. “Right here.”
Ellie wept tears from a bottomless well inside her. Saying the words, revealing the truth, had purged her heart of years and years of grief and resentment, and the tears seemed to cleanse her soul. She was so empty and so tired she could barely move.
Caleb gently stroked her back and shoulders, smoothed her hair, restored her sanity and her peace of mind. He loved her. This wonderful, kind, generous man loved her. Like everything else involving Caleb, it was too good to be true.
Encircled in his arms, she drifted off to sleep.
She slept late into the morning, and when she woke, the house was still and silent. Caleb had propped a note on the kitchen table. Flynn had gone to school and Caleb had taken Benjamin to the sheriff’s office so he could give his version of the shooting. He’d taken Nate to the Swensens’.
The Swensens’? Ellie dressed, drank a glass of milk and nibbled on a slice of bread. Her lip hurt where Winston had hit her, but she wasn’t very hungry anyway.
Caleb returned before noon and found her taking fresh loaves of bread from the oven.
She placed them on the table and covered them with towels, then turned, seeing him in the doorway. “Caleb!”
He crossed the distance between them. His warm brown eyes darkened at the sight of her lip. She brought a finger up to the place, remembering the bruise she’d seen in the mirror.
He stood staring at her as though he wasn’t sure what to do or say. She put aside the towels she’d used to take the hot pans from the oven, and faced him. She’d come out of a groggy sleep once during the night, and his arms had been around her. She wanted him to hold her within their streng
th and safety always.
He wasn’t sure of her acceptance, she realized, and he waited for a signal. He’d said he loved her. How could she be so fortunate? She gave him a hesitant smile. “Everything all right?”
He nodded. “Benjamin answered questions for the sheriff and then I took him to school. Sheriff Fox wants to talk with you as soon as you’re up to it.”
She lowered her gaze to the floor where a dusting of flour had spilled. “Does he know everything?”
“Only about yesterday and last night. Ben knew you had received a note. We gave it to the sheriff. I believe Winston snuck up on me out by the Arnolds’ and gave me this knot on the head.”
“Is it better?”
“Hurts like the devil, but I’ll be fine. Ellie, last night the sheriff told me that Winston had been accused of attacking at least four other young women. None of them could prove their stories and Winston was an important banker, so their claims got swept under the rug.”
“Oh, those poor girls.” Ellie immediately sympathized with them. “Sheriff Fox owes it to each one to go and tell them what has happened.”
“I believe he will as soon as he’s talked with you and the shooting is settled.”
She removed her apron.
Their eyes met. “Nate is at the Swensens’?” she asked.
“They kept asking what they could do to repay me.” He grinned. “I took them up on it and asked Mrs. Swensen to keep Nate this morning.”
An awkward silence fell between them. Ellie remembered him holding her through the night. Throwing caution aside, she stepped forward. If he was going to reject her, she might as well know it now.
His eyes widened.
She moved right before him and looked up. He smelled like soap and outdoors. “Please hold me, Caleb.”
He obliged her willingly, taking her against his chest and pressing his face into her hair. His chest was hard against the crush of her breasts, his thighs touching hers through her skirts. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face to the front of his shirt without restraint.
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