The solemn look that flashed across Clive’s face and stayed there was enough to tell him that something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked.
Clive walked to the bar in the foyer and poured them two very large shots of bourbon. “I think you will need to take a seat.”
“Tell me what it is!” he demanded ignoring the drink the man offered him but Clive would not be coerced into responding until he was ready.
“Drink your drink and let’s have a seat out front.”
John took the glass from the older man and waited until he exited the house to take a seat on the front steps. “What is it?” John asked him again and this time he dug for all the patience he had left in the deepest part of his soul and tried to wait on the response.
Clive’s grey eyes bore into the dark brown of his and he could feel the arrival of bad news before it even got to him. “She has taken up with someone else,” he said softly, looking away to the trees that swayed gently in the late summer winds.
“What?!”
“Emma, your betrothed. She has taken up with another man,” he repeated.
“Impossible! I wrote to her just three weeks ago saying I was coming home and we spoke for every single month that I was away.”
Clive looked at him in surprise. “But she has been married for two years and is now carrying his second child,” he said confused.
John lost all control of his fingers and the glass slipped from his hand breaking in echo to his heart in a million pieces. “Impossible...” he croaked around his throat that was tightening painfully.
“Do you wish to go see for yourself?” Clive asked and it took him a minute before he could nod. If it hurt this much hearing the news then he could only imagine how much more devastated he would be at seeing its reality.
“Take me,” he said calmly, knowing he would never be able to believe it until he saw it and even more was the fact that he would need closure. How could she? He had professed his love for her in each letter of every month that he had been away and she had echoed his every sentiment in her elegant hand writing that had been a solace to his aching soul. He had loved Emma for years and had been willing to defy the love of his other to be with her. Clive must be mistaken for there was no way she could have done him such a wrong.
They saddled their horses in silence and rode out at a gallop towards the town with Clive warning him to be calm and not create a scene when he found what he was being told to be true. Less than an hour later they hitched their horses to the post outside what was supposed to be her husband’s saloon and when he entered he would have fallen to his knees had Clive not stood shoulder to shoulder with him.
“Emma?” he questioned to the woman sporting a baby bum and a smile as gorgeous as he had remembered. Her long flowing hair that used to whip around when she walked was cut into a short bob and her eyes were now strangers to his soul.
“John?” she asked in shock, setting the tray she carried aside. Her smile disappeared and her eyes filled up with water. The whole diner went silent.
“Why?” he asked her around the tears in throat, forgetting to breathe as his heart broke yet again. “Why did you lie to me?”
She took a step towards him but he stepped away. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” she said sadly and a tear he did not believe in slipped down her face.
“So you lie to a man longing to come home to you, only to know I would return to this?”
“I am sorry,” she said and took another step towards him.
He held a hand up to stop her. “I have known that people could be cruel, but this...this tops them all,” he said and walked out of the diner.
Somewhere in the back of his head he heard her calling out to him but he could not make out the words she was saying and he was certain he did not want to hear them either. As fast as he had rode into town he made his way back home with Clive hot on his heels. When he got to the house he wasted no time grabbing his duffel bag and heading right back out.
“Where are you going?” Clive asked him saddened.
He hugged the man. “I cannot stay. Not now. You can give me a couple more months, can’t you?” he asked
Sadness filled the man’s eyes but he nodded. “Take all the time you need. Where will you go?”
“I think I will head to Texas. I have a friend there, Lenard Collard.”
“I don’t know of him,” Clive said.
John sighed. “We met in the war, he was a part of my platoon but he went home last year after a horrible accident. I think I will go see him and figure out if maybe Texas is as nice as they say it is.”
Clive hugged him again, but this time he didn’t hold on to him, “have fun and come home soon. I will miss you.”
“I will be back in two months,” he said and set off for a place where he hoped his heartache would be cured and maybe just maybe he would find himself a love of a lifetime.
***
Jemma sneezed for the third time in that day as she walked through the town. Her nose ached and she could feel a cold coming on yet again. This would be the second time in the two weeks since she had arrived in the cool hills of Minnesota that she would be sick.
"I will make you some soup as soon as we get home," her Auntie Jasmine said rubbing her back. Never before did she think she would have missed the dry acrid temperatures of the south. She was beginning to question her smarts as to why she had chosen to move a place so cold her first time. The town's doctor had made it clear that she wasn't in any ailing condition or suffering from some bug she might have picked up. She was simply adjusting to the thinner and colder air. She wished she would just adjust already.
She smiled in gratitude at her Aunt's suggestion and prayed it would be enough. She had drunk more soup in the last two weeks than she ever had in the last twenty odd years of her life. They turned into her small grocery store and Jemma immediately busied herself behind the store counter just as the rotund derriere of the town's gossip wheeled in with such flounder even the shelves could not help but be bothered.
"Josy! Josy!" The woman called for her Aunt. "Where is she?" She turned to Jemma and demanded.
"Good evening Mrs Hall," she pointed out politely that the woman had forgotten her manners. There was no return of a salutation and Jemma frowned at her in dismay. "She is in the back."
"What is all the raucous about Jane?" Her Aunt rushed out addressing the woman. Jemma rolled her eyes. She had come to find her Aunt was quite a likable woman but the need to gossip as much as Jane did was an annoying tiny bit and every now and then she found herself missing the humming of the pots and pans at the ranch as she would give them a washing for cooking. She missed Jenny's soft voice chattering away about nothing in general and Lenard's insistence on bothering her in the kitchen. But even then she liked Minnesota, the difference in culture and the people she found there. She paid the women no mind as they started chattering about a war veteran who had come home today to find his fiancé had off and married another man. Apparently they had all thought he was dead.
How cold and callous it must have been to find him in such a fix but yet these older women were amused by what must have been his heartbreak. She sighed and tuned them out as she went about restocking the empty shelves.
"Excuse me," a soft voice interrupted her musings and she turned to look at the freckled face of Megan Jones, a bit of an outcast in town having moved there for some unknown reason.
"Yes," Jemma said smiling at her. "How can I help you?"
"I am looking for honey but I can't seem to find a bottle on your shelf," the woman who must have been her own age looked away from her. Jemma had heard mean things being said about her too but this was the second time she had been around her and she found the girl quite nice to be around.
"We ran out this morning but I am due to go collect a few bottles from the farm down the road in an hour if you don't mind coming back."
Megan sighed and looked around at Ms. Hall who fixed her with a disdainful eye. "No, I a
m okay. Thank you."
Jemma watched her hurry from the store and then suffered a talk from the nosy woman. "Don't you be getting friendly with that girl. She is no good."
"And how do you know that?"
"People talk," Ms. Hall said with so much absolution Jemma was sure she thought that was explanation enough.
"I am not much of a fan of gossip, so I don't really care," she responded and grabbed her coat to head out after Megan.
"Hi, there!" She called to the woman who was walking with sagging shoulders through the town. "Take a walk with me to pick them up?"
Megan smiled and tried to decline but Jemma would not take no for an answer and so they walked in silence for fifteen minutes.
"You should boil some cerise tea for the cold you have coming on and put some lavender oil on your pillow. By morning it would be gone."
Jemma looked at her suspiciously. "That tea is as bitter as they come. I think I will pass."
Megan laughed. "Try it you won’t regret it."
They spoke about how she learnt of the powers of herbs and how she came to know so much. Jemma learned that the woman had worked with a botanist for most of her life. As they spoke she could feel a friendship blossoming and by the time they had collected the jars of honey and made their way back to the store they planned for lunch the next day. After two weeks she had finally made a friend and she wrote home to Jenny about her that night.
"Have you thought about marriage, Jemma?" Her aunt rudely interrupted their dinner hours later with her prying comments. "You aren't getting any younger, you know."
She was well aware of that fact and wanted to tell the woman that much but decided against being rude. It was not in her nature.
"I have," she responded trying to keep her calm, "but I want to find the perfect man."
"There is no such thing," her Aunt responded without missing a beat. "Soon you will find you have ended up like me- a barren spinster."
Jemma laughed at the nonchalance with which the woman stated her hopeless situation.
"Find a man soon Jemma and make sure you have many tiny children to fill your home with laughter."
Jemma had been thinking about it for a while but considering she had just been in town, adjusting had not yet been completed and so she had not yet met any man she liked about these parts. When she was further settled she would think about it some more and if needs be she would try Jenny's way- mail order bride.
It seemed to have worked out for Jenny; maybe she would have the same luck. If all didn't go well then she would just go back to Texas.
***
For the first month that Martin was with his war friend Lenard and his wife Jenny, he was happy. He played with their son Jake who was not yet a year old and the joy in the toddler’s eyes mended his own joy bit by bit. He spent the next month responding to letters that came in response to his mail order bride ad but found nothing interesting. Jenny had been a mail order bride and was generous enough to help him find an alternative for his lonely soul. The options he got were never to his liking. Reading the last one he threw it in frustration on the floor. To little Jake's delight it was another piece of paper to play with.
"I will be an old man with a couple cats who will dote on you for the rest of your life, little Jake," he said sitting on the floor so the child could crawl all over him drooling as he went.
"He will grow up and be off someday," Lenard said from the doorway, walking in to drop a stack of letters on his chest. "New suitors."
John groaned and tossed them aside. So far he had found all the women lacking in one thing or the other. He was tired of being disappointed. He excused himself for a walk in the late evening sun, and took with him his letters.
There was Katarina of Mississippi who kept speaking of her qualities as if she were applying for a job. There was Cara of New York whose prose was so horribly written he could barely understand her. Martha of Georgia who spoke of her dead cat several times and the list went on and on. He was just about to throw the whole lot out when he saw the elegant penmanship from a woman named Jemma. She spoke of travel and longing for adventure. She spoke of the war and what losing people meant and how it fuelled her appreciation of those around her. He was enthralled in her letter that was two pages long and spoke very little of herself directly. But from what she wrote he learnt so much of the woman who had penned those words. She was a woman of deep thought and one who seemed to look at the world through coloured lenses. She was someone he could get to know. The letter was addressed from a town on the border of Minnesota and he smiled. So close to home. He would respond to this one, maybe there was something there.
"You are smiling,” Jenny said when he walked back into the house.
"I might have found one," he said smiling and twirling her to the silence around them for a moment. He kissed Jake's sleeping head before making his way to his room to respond. He would have this Jemma respond to his home because come the weekend he was going to stop wallowing in his own sorrows and go back to Minnesota to pick up where he left off. Emma had broken his heart, but life would go on.
***
Two weeks later Jemma read the letter three times and each time she smiled. She liked this man who made light if his broken heart and the fact that if she decided to meet him she would have to be prepared to help him mend.
I am not looking for a woman to fix me but one who understands that I am a broken instrument that can still play a good tune or two.
She found him to be a man who embraced the reality of what his life was and that was something she could appreciate.
"What are you smiling about?" Megan asked.
She held up the letter with a big grin. "I think he might be the one."
Megan took her time reading the letters before she smiled and turned back to Jemma. "He sure spins a good story. How do you know he is for real?"
"I don't but I am willing to find out," Jemma replied and that she was. The letter said he was from Minnesota and she was happy she would not have to travel far.
"When do you meet him?"
"In two weeks on the other side of the state," she replied joyfully. "I hope he is as sweet as his words are."
For the next two weeks Jemma envisioned her John in every kind of way. She thought of him as a man of honour, a drunk, a surly big bellied man and even as a mute. She tried to prepare herself for every possibility. She was so nervous Megan had to feed her cups of chamomile tea.
"What if he doesn't like me?" She constantly asked.
"Then he would be a bit thick in the head," Megan responded with a smile as she helped Jemma braid her hair and get ready for bed.
"What if he is an angry man?"
"Then you treat him sweetly and hope that a soft answer each time will help."
Jemma wasn't so sure about that one. She had seen angry men who took their rage out on the world and she was not interested in a man like that. She would most certainly go back to Texas if that was the case.
"Stop worrying," Megan demanded and tried to sooth her before bed. She crawled in and prayed that come the weekend her three hour trip to meet this John Whitter didn't spell ill for her.
The following Saturday her heart was beating faster than that of the horses she often saw galloping around town. She tried pacing to calm herself and that didn't work.
"Tell her if she doesn't calm down she is going to drop dead before she meets her husband to be," Auntie Jasmine said to Megan.
"I already did that," Megan said with a sigh.
"Tell her if she is so worried maybe she should just stay here and forget it," Auntie Jasmine said louder, dropping yet another hint that she wanted Jemma to get married but at no point did she suggest she do so and move clear across the country.
"I did that too," Megan said, "but I really want her to go."
Jemma sat in a huff and glared at the women in silence. They sipped their teas knowing better than to say anything to her. That was their symmetry for the next fifteen minutes
until a carriage pulled up outside Auntie Jasmine's house. A man about her age stepped out, fully decked out in tailored suit and a fur coat draped over his shoulders. She opened the door before he could knock.
"Ah, Ms. Jemma Fair?" He asked looking at her a bit surprised at how fast she had opened the door. She lost the ability to speak as she looked at him and Megan came to her rescue.
"Yes, she is."
The man extended an arm to her. "I am Clive, Mr. Whitter's caretaker. He sent me to fetch you for evening tea. If we leave now then we can make it before sunset."
Jemma stared at the hand, willing herself out of the stupor that gripped her but nothing happened and again Megan came to her rescue.
The man frowned at Jemma before addressing Megan. "I think maybe you should accompany her.”
Megan looked at her for confirmation and she managed to shake her head in agreement. The young girl took less than ten minutes to throw some things into a small suitcase and before long they were boarding the carriage and heading to the other side of the state.
"Breathe Jemma, breathe," Megan kept telling her and to be honest she felt so much better with her friend there. She found her nerve to hold a conversation with Clive who sat across from them with a perpetual frown.
"My apologies for my earlier state of catatonia," she said with a smile. "It is just that this is a big move and for a moment there I lost myself in all the possible fears that could become reality."
He smiled at her. "It happens to the best of us but I was honestly beginning to worry."
"That I was crazy?" She asked with a laugh.
"No," the man said, his face going serious. "That John had gotten his hopes up for no reason at all."
Jemma was shocked by his blatant honesty but not offended by it. She had grown to appreciate the callous truth and the clarity that comes with it.
"Is he a hopeful man, this John?"
Clive smiled and this time his eyes twinkled. She could see he had a kind of love and loyalty for the man she was asking about. "He is a man who dreams of magical things like love and unicorns."
[2016] A Wanting Bride Page 34
