The Forever Tree

by Rosanne Bittner

  Please don’t go, Aggie! “Of course I understand.” Santana turned to face her. “I have always understood. I told you before that if my family were someplace else and something happened to Will, I, too, would want to be with them. You have never been truly happy here.”

  “What about James? Do you mind taking him in?”

  Santana smiled. “Of course not. James is a wonderful boy, and with Gerald gone, Will will need his help. Besides, he is at the mill most of the time, or off wooing that young girl who has captured his eye. It is not as though he is a little boy who will need a lot of watching after.”

  “He still needs a mother.”

  Santana walked closer, kneeling in front of Agatha. “I fully understand your feelings as a mother, Aggie. I know what I would want for my own children in such a situation. I love all your children like my own, and I love you like a sister. I will do my best to be a mother to him however he needs me, and I will miss you so, Aggie.”

  She leaned up so that Agatha could embrace her. The two women hugged for several seconds, and Will felt more stabbing pains of guilt. Finally Santana pulled away and rose.

  “I don’t suppose we need anything in writing,” Agatha said to Will, “but if you think it’s necessary—anything legal, I mean…”

  “Not on my part,” Will answered. “But if you want some kind of papers drawn up about what is legally yours as far as the business—”

  “No. I know how much you loved Gerald, how close you were. I’ve known you for many years, Will. I see no reason for legalities. Gerald’s own will specified what should go to the children. All I need to know is that you have a will and legal papers filed that show that half the mill will always belong to Gerald’s children.”

  “That was done as soon as Gerald arrived and joined in on the business.”

  “Fine.” Agatha dabbed at her eyes once more. “I will miss you both so much, but I have to do this.” She took a deep breath and stood. “I have a lot of packing to do. I’d like to leave in three days, if you’ll take me to San Francisco and help me arrange the trip.”

  “Of course I will. We can all go, Santana, the children. We’ll spend a couple of days at the house in San Francisco before you leave.”

  “Yes, I’d like that. Santana and I made a few trips there ourselves, just to get away.”

  Santana thought about Hugo, their exchanged words at the opera. She hadn’t told Will about that encounter, and she never would. She hoped Agatha would say nothing, and decided she had better warn her when they were alone. She breathed a sigh of relief when Will changed the subject by telling Agatha to send James down when she got back to the house so he could have a talk with him.

  “Yes, I think that’s a good idea. He needs someone to talk to anyway,” Agatha said. “It will be good for him to have you, and to work up at the mill, stay busy.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I can keep him busy,” Will answered. “I’ve got to get busy up there myself.”

  Agatha turned to the door. “Thank you both, for your love and kindness and attention, for all your help, for agreeing so readily to keeping James.”

  “You and Gerald would have done the same thing if the tables were turned,” Will said. “I have no doubt about it.”

  Agatha nodded. “Thank you again,” she said before leaving.

  Santana decided she would leave also, but Will stopped her before she could reach the door. “Santana, wait.”

  She turned, meeting his discerning blue eyes. Did he already know? Was it written all over her face? Did he sense it when he made love to her?

  “What’s wrong, Santana?” he asked bluntly. “Have you lost some of your love for me? Do you hate me for going away? For having Juan all alone? For not being here when you lost your father?”

  She frowned. “Whatever do you mean?”

  Will rubbed at his eyes, sighing deeply as he leaned forward over his desk. “I’m not even sure. I only know that something is different, and I don’t want it to be. Something is eating at you. Did something happen while I was gone that you aren’t telling me about?” He studied her intently. “You know you can tell me anything, Santana. Anything.”

  Not this, she agonized. Never this! “There is nothing to tell,” she answered. “Nothing in particular happened. It is just…all of it…the lost years and all. I can’t help resenting you a little for it, and I am sorry. I…I need time, Will. It will take a while to get back what we had before you left.”

  “And you will never quite forgive me for that, will you?”

  She tried to hide the truth, but she knew he saw it in her eyes. No, she would never quite forgive him, but not for the reasons he thought. If he knew the truth, he would understand, but she could not tell him, and so there would always be this wall of misunderstanding between them. “I have much faith, Will. It has seen me through much heartache, and God brought you home to me. Above all the resentment, I still love you as always. I will find a way to forgive, in time.”

  “And in the meantime you don’t want me to make love to you. I can feel it when we’re intimate, Santana. You would rather I didn’t touch you.”

  She closed her eyes, not knowing what to say. How could she explain it? She wanted so much to enjoy her husband with all the passion and joy she’d once felt when she was with him. “I did not say that.”

  “You don’t have to.” Will rose, walking over to her and grasping her shoulders. “Santana, I’m trying to understand. You need time. You’ll get plenty of that for a while, because as soon as we get Agatha sent off, I’ll be spending a lot of time up at the mill and with James. That will give you more healing time, more time to think, to get used to me being back. Like you said, the love is still there, for both of us. We’ll get it all back someday, Santana.”

  She met his eyes, the blue eyes that part of her still loved so much. He was already gaining weight, returning to the Will she loved, so strong and virile…so gentle and understanding. Yes, he could accept and understand many things, but not the one thing she needed to share more than anything.

  “I am sorry, Will. I do not understand these feelings myself. I am so thankful to God that you have come home to me and did not end up like Gerald. You are my strength, my life. It’s just…all these changes…adjusting to you being home again. You yourself have not adjusted. It must be hard for you, too, after all you suffered. When I think of you at that prison, the horrible things you experienced there…” She embraced him, resting her head against his broad chest. “It will be all right,” she told him, “just as you said.”

  Will wrapped his arms around her, hoping she was right. He did not believe she was telling him everything, but he also knew that whatever she was leaving out, she was not about to spill it right now. Maybe in time he would discover the whole truth behind this wall that had developed between them. “Why don’t you go help Agatha pack?” he said. “It will give the two of you time to visit and be together these last few days.”

  “Si, I will go and help Agatha,” she said, pulling away. “But I will miss her so. These are such trying times.”

  “Yes, they are, but it will all get better Santana.”

  She forced a smile and nodded. “I love you, Will.”

  “And I love you.”

  Santana saw the aching loneliness in his own eyes, the almost little-boy fear that he had lost her. “I will help Estella finish the children’s lessons, then go up to Agatha’s.”

  She turned and left, and Will stared after her at the empty doorway. “What is it, Santana?” he muttered. “What is it you aren’t telling me?” He clenched his fists, needing to hit something, feeling a terrible frustration that he could not even name.

  May 1866…

  Will sat in a chair beside the bed watching Santana, who finally was resting normally. The baby had come quickly, so quickly that Santana had lain for two days in shivering shock, while Will lived with the desperate fear that she would die. They had fed the baby goat’s milk, but not just because Santana was to
o sick to breast-feed. Dr. Enders had told Will that, unlike with her other children, Santana just was not producing the milk that she should be for this one. Her breasts were already beginning to dry, and later that day a Mexican woman from the main ranch, who had given birth three weeks earlier and was producing more milk than her baby needed, would arrive to see if the new Lassater son might take his feedings from her.

  Yes, it was another son, but many things were different about this birth. Santana had never been as excited and happy about the baby as she had been about the others. The birth had been difficult and dangerous, whereas the others had all been relatively easy. Now the problem with no milk. And there was one other problem—a big one—one Santana did not know about yet. Dr. Enders had said the boy would be mentally retarded.

  Santana stirred, and Will sighed with the agony of having to tell her the news. The baby slept quietly in a bassinet beside the bed. He was a pretty little boy, dark like their other children, but his eyes were slanted, his nose too flat. Odd little flaws that, combined with the boy being unusually quiet and lifeless, Enders said were signs of retardation. He seemed healthy enough otherwise. All his parts were there, and he seemed to respond to being held. Will had held him several times already, held him and wept over feeling guilty for his condition. The only thing he could figure was that it had something to do with his own condition when he first arrived home. He had been malnourished, and for most of the previous year he’d either been sick or fighting off sickness. Had some illness lingered in his body that he’d passed on to the baby?

  Santana opened her eyes and saw Will sitting there. It took her a moment to gather her thoughts and focus on him. “Will,” she said weakly. She touched her stomach. “The baby…”

  “He’s lying right here beside you. You’ve been only half-conscious for a couple of days now.” Will rose and leaned over her, kissing her cheek. All these months they had not made love nearly as often as they once would have, and for the last three months they had stopped altogether. For the first time in their marriage Santana had used the pregnancy as an excuse, but Will knew it was something more. She already blamed him for leaving her. Now he had to tell her that her baby was retarded and that it was probably his fault. The wall that had been growing between them would just get even higher. He loved her so, but he had lost her.

  “He was born too fast and you went into shock,” he explained, stroking her hair back from her face. “You also aren’t producing milk like you should. We’re bringing a woman here from the ranch to act as nursemaid, if the boy will take her milk.”

  Santana frowned, touching her breast, then looking at the bassinet. “The boy? It’s a boy?”

  Will wondered at the lack of excitement in her voice. “Yes. I haven’t named him. I figured I’d let you do it. I have to tell you something, Santana, about the baby. It isn’t good news.”

  Her eyes widened and quickly teared, and they seemed to show a strange guilt. “What? What is wrong with him?”

  Will closed his own eyes for a moment, searching for the courage to say the words. “He’s retarded, Santana. The doctor says we should put him away somewhere, if they have places like that in San Francisco, but that isn’t my decision.”

  Santana covered her eyes. “Dear God! Dear God!” Was this God’s justice, His punishment for Hugo’s sin? But how cruel for the baby! He should not be punished for such a thing. Worse, maybe it was her fault, for hating the fetus all the while she carried it, wishing it would be born dead and she would not have to look at it and care for it the rest of her life. Oh, dear God in heaven, that was it! Her baby was suffering because of her! Maybe it was God punishing her for allowing the rape. But she hadn’t. She hadn’t been able to move, hadn’t been able to stop him.

  “It’s my fault,” Will said, surprising her.

  She uncovered her eyes, looking at him in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “My condition, when I came home. I wasn’t healthy. Maybe I picked up something in that prison camp, something that affected my health and affected the baby.” He sat down in the chair again, putting his head in his hands. “It’s the only thing I can think of.”

  Santana wanted to scream at him that it was not his fault. The baby was not even his. She had tried so hard to think of it as Will’s, but it was impossible. Now, besides keeping the secret of the rape, she had to live with this awful guilt of having hated her own baby. She had hated it so much that her body would not even produce milk. Not wanting this baby had dried her up in so many ways, her passion, her joy, her love for Will. She had to make up for that somehow.

  “We cannot take him to a strange place where he will never be loved,” she said. “He is…our son. We will love him the same as our other children, and his sister and brothers will also love him. They will help him learn and play, and with the love of this family he will live as normal a life as possible. Give him to me. I want to see my baby.”

  Will looked at her, and the tears in his eyes tore at her heart. Oh, it hurt so to let him think it was his fault, but it was all she could do if she wanted to keep the truth hidden. For the baby’s sake, she must do that. The fact that he was retarded made him seem even more innocent and vulnerable. Now that he was born, she felt different about him. Perhaps if she just held him…

  Will rose and leaned over the bassinet, then picked the boy up and laid him beside her. “He has some strange features. Enders says that’s some of the signs. He’s also extremely quiet, hardly lets out a peep. Enders says he’ll probably never talk much when he’s older. He knew a family with a baby like this back east. If he does learn to talk, he’ll never speak well, and he’ll never grow mentally beyond three or four years old. That’s just his guess for now. You just have to take a day at a time and see how he progresses.”

  Santana turned the blanket back from the baby to see that all his parts were there. Physically, except for the slight flaws in his face, he looked normal, all his fingers and toes in place. “He is so small.”

  “He isn’t full term. Maybe retarded babies come sooner. I don’t know.”

  Yes, she thought, that was a good explanation. The baby opened his dark eyes and looked at her, and at first she struggled not to see Hugo Bolivar in those eyes, but that feeling quickly left her. This was her baby, her tiny son, who depended on his mother to care for him, love him. He would always be more helpless than other children, and this little piece of life was not to blame for his own existence.

  “We will never send him away,” she told Will as she wrapped the blanket around the baby again. “Never. He is our son, and we will love him and teach him that he is no different from other children.” She looked at Will. “It is not your fault. It is not your fault. These things happen.”

  A tear slipped down his cheek. “I’m so sorry for all of it, Santana. When are you going to forgive me? When are we going to be as close as we once were?”

  She pulled the baby to her breast. “Little Valioso will help us grow closer. He will need us, our love, and together we will make him know he is loved and accepted. You don’t want to send him away, do you?”

  Will smiled. “No. I want to keep him right here with us. Valioso?”

  “He is precious, very special, so he will be our Valioso. Angel, precious Angel.”

  The baby grabbed at her gown with a tiny fist. Santana looked down at him and kissed his soft cheek. How strange that all her hatred vanished at the sight of him, the touch of him, the feel of her baby against her breast. There was only one way to get over Hugo’s rape and the horror she had lived with all these months, and that was to shower this baby with all the love she could give him. To allow Will to love him as he would his own son, let him be a part of the Lassater family, a family she intended to hold together in love and not let Hugo Bolivar destroy. Yes, that would be the ultimate victory for Hugo, for this awful wall of misunderstanding between her and Will to build into something that would leave their marriage in shambles. She would not let him defeat her this way
. He had almost succeeded, until she set eyes on her little Valioso, so frail and helpless and so innocent of his heritage.

  “This is our baby,” she told Will. “Our baby.” She met Will’s eyes again. “Do not ever blame yourself for this. I do not blame you. Please believe that. God gives us what he gives us, and we must accept it. God will see us through this, as he has seen us through so many things. We will light a candle for our baby, and we will pray for him every day and ask God to help us know how to raise him to be as normal as possible.”

  Will moved onto the bed beside his wife and new son, putting his arms around both of them. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I only know that I love you, Santana, more than my own life. And I love this helpless little boy and feel responsible to raise him as best I can.” He leaned over and kissed Santana, still wondering deep inside if there was something she had never told him. But if pressing the issue kept her far away from him, then he would not mention it again. All that mattered was that this precious little boy was going to help them get closer. “We’ll be all right, Santana, won’t we?”

  She could hardly see him for the tears in her eyes. “Si, mi esposo, we will be all right. Do the other children know about the baby’s condition?”

  “They know, but I don’t think they fully understand. They’re just excited about having a new brother.”

  Santana smiled, and to her surprise she realized she wanted to smile. She was not forcing it for Will’s sake. “Our children have good hearts, like their father.”