New Beginnings Spring 20 Book Box Set

by Hope Sinclair

  First there had been shock, and that had been the hardest to deal with. Her body reacted physically with the urge to be ill, to cry, to succumb to the sudden weakness in her joints and collapse onto the floor. She felt a sudden understanding for women who suffered from hysteria and emotional distress.

  After the shock, revulsion and anger settled in. She knew it wasn’t moral of her, but she felt a sense of hatred for the man she married. She resented what he had done; she resented that he was masquerading as a man of God, that he had asked for her hand in marriage and entered into a holy covenant with her, all while his heart belonged to another woman.

  And not just any woman, but his brother’s wife!

  What sort of man -- what sort of good, moral, Christian man! -- would live such a life?

  And these thoughts were what pushed Haley over the edge, and again she felt the numbing shock and emotion come in another fierce wave, this time accompanied by the sorrow and hopelessness of her situation. What could she do? What could she possibly do?

  By the time dinner came, she had made up her mind: she was going to confront her husband.

  She wasn’t sure what the results would be; how he would take the news, or what he would say. Would he make excuses? Would he beg her to stay? Would he ask for a divorce? Her heart dropped at the thought, but she knew it was possible. They had barely been married anytime at all, and they hadn’t yet consummated their union. That meant there was some justification, if they were to… no, she couldn’t even bring herself to think of the word ‘divorce.’

  Even the thought of admitting such a personal and private fact made her face flush. It would be a necessary admission, though, if they were to ask the Church to grant an annulment. She would need to prove that she was still pure; that Mr. Oakley hadn’t touched her.

  Haley had never believed in divorce, and she had certainly never expected to find herself involved in one. She believed the union of marriage was holy; a sacrament, something not just between Man and Wife, but between them and God. Even though their problems were of Hunter’s making, Haley felt as though she had failed.

  When she had married Hunter Oakley, she had entered a covenant with the Lord, and it was one she had planned on honoring. She had trusted that her husband viewed their marriage the same way, but she realized now that perhaps she had been foolish to trust his intentions so easily.

  If they were to divorce, well what then? Would he send her home to Maryland? She shuddered to think about the dire nature of her situation: she had nowhere to turn; no home to return to. There was no doubt in her mind that her Aunt Margie would turn her away; she would never be able to convince her aunt to take her back in, or give her a job at the bakery again after the way she had left.

  She had no money, no means of supporting herself, nowhere to turn… and it was out of that sense of dire desperation and reality that her plan began to hatch.

  She wasn’t sure if it was a means to an end, or a way to make her lot in life entirely more manageable. A bit of both, perhaps. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that it was the only way; the only chance she had of happiness, of independence, of making the best out of her life.

  And so after dinner that evening, when Mr. and Mrs. Hunter Oakley were preparing to retire to their respective bedrooms, the young bride approached her husband.

  “Hunter, could I have a word?” she asked as he headed for the staircase that lead to the bedrooms. She realized it was the first time she had addressed her husband in such a way.

  Ethel and Thomas had already retired, and Haley was confident that they wouldn’t overhear any conversation from upstairs. Still, she asked Hunter to follow her to the parlor before she spoke.

  They took their seats beside the hearth, though the fire had long been extinguished for the night.

  “What is it?” Hunter asked after a few moments of silence.

  Haley bit the inside of her lip, and for a moment she felt a sense of doubt and fear that nearly silenced her. She was intimidated by Hunter’s fierce eyes; by his handsome face and by the expression that she couldn’t quite decipher

  “I saw you today,” she forced herself to say, before the doubt could take over or force her to reconsider her plan. “With Ethel.”

  She watched Hunter’s face carefully, forcing herself to keep her eyes locked on his; forcing herself to resist looking away, though she could feel the heat of blush burning in her cheeks. She was embarrassed, humiliated, scared, uncertain… but she was also strong. She had to be.

  Hunter’s eyes softened and his brows bent down slightly, both puzzled and understanding all at once.

  “I see,” he said, his voice little more than gentle whisper.

  Haley had spent the better part of the afternoon preparing for this dialogue. She had tried to imagine the many ways her husband could react. She imagined that, perhaps, he would deny it all, that he would try to suggest that she was imagining things, or perhaps had made up the entire exchange entirely and that is was all merely a figment of her imagination.

  The other reaction that she planned for was anger. She imagined him going livid at the revelation that she had watched him; that she had invaded his privacy and stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. She imagined that he would turn the conversation around, lodging accusations of his own: What sort of wife didn’t trust her husband? What sort of wife accused her husband of such a wild and outrageous deed, like pining after his own brother’s wife? What sort of man did she think he was?

  The one reaction that Haley hadn’t anticipated or planned for was that Hunter would agree with her account of events; that he would acknowledge them, unchallenged, as truth.

  “You don’t… you don’t deny it?” she asked finally, after it was clear that he had no rebuttal to offer.

  “Haley,” he said slowly, this time with a sadness in his voice. “I fear that I’ve failed you as a husband. I’ve agreed to marry you when, in truth, my heart belongs to another. The fault is entirely my own.”

  SEVEN

  Haley hadn’t expected him to admit it so easily, and she felt the sudden urge to cry. She suppressed it by biting the inside of her lip again, but she could no longer bear to look her husband in the eye. Instead, she found herself staring into the depths of the extinguished fire, studying the charred embers and realizing that the ashes of firewood weren’t unlike her marriage: ruined and beyond repair.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice quiet but somehow strong. Inside, she was shaking.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a complicated matter, Ethel and I. We’ve known each other for a very long time, and I would have asked for her hand… if my brother hadn’t done so first.”

  “How can you live like this?” she asked, shaking her head at the mess of it all. She realized she was challenging her husband, but she felt the situation was far beyond that now.

  “I couldn’t,” Hunter said. “That’s why I thought marriage would solve things. I thought finding a wife of my own would…” his voice trailed off, and Haley made the mistake of glancing at him. His eyes were dark and vacant, desperate for something… but for what?

  “What am I supposed to do now?” she asked. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she was quite aware of how bold she was being, though she had no idea where this newfound confidence had come from. She certainly never would have spoken to someone like this before -- not her aunt, not a friend, and certainly not a man.

  “If you want to leave me and return home, I understand,” Hunter said. “I’ve failed you, and for that I apologize.”

  Despite the circumstances, Haley was surprised -- touched, even -- at how calm her husband was being about the whole thing.

  “No,” Haley said, remembering her plan. She took a deep breath and swallowed. This had to work… it was the only way.

  Hunter looked surprised and he frowned again, his face curious and contemplative.

  “No?” he repeated.

  “No,” she said, realizing th
e gravity of her words… the gravity of the conversation. She had never expected to speak to a man with this much authority and defiance, and he seemed just as astonished as she felt.

  “That would embarrass you and tarnish the Oakley name,” she reminded him. “Everyone would know…”

  “That’s a problem of my own making,” he said. “And it’s my responsibility to carry that burden.”

  “What if there’s another way?” she suggested. “A way that spares us both the unhappiness and pain of…” she couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘divorce,’ so instead she let her voice trail off, implying it instead.

  “How could there possibly be another way?” he asked. “When I’ve done you a great wrong, and proven myself to be dishonorable?”

  Haley was tempted to reveal her cards; to let Hunter know her own predicament, and to appeal to his sympathetic side. But not yet, she decided. That would be a last resort.

  “I want to teach,” she said instead. “I mentioned it to you before that I wanted to take a job at the school in town--”

  “And I said no,” Hunter told her, his voice regaining a stubborn firmness… the same authoritative tone that he had assumed the first time she broached the topic of her taking up work in town.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why can’t I find work, or pursue goals and interests of my own?”

  “I’d be humiliated,” he said. “I know what the people in town would think. They’d assume that I couldn’t support you; that I had failed my family, and that you were forced to work to compensate for my ineptitude.”

  “Nobody would think that!” Haley balked, surprised by how old-fashioned the man was, considering he was the one pining for a married woman.

  “Of course they would,” he countered. “You don’t understand this town, and you don’t know our history.”

  Haley’s eyes wandered up, but her husband wouldn’t look her in the eye.

  “When we were just boys,” he went on, “Our father abandoned us. He just walked away, leaving us with this farm and a failed harvest. We were so poor that we had to burn books in the stove to cook dinner. That first winter, I learned what the words ‘hungry’ and ‘cold’ meant. I had never understood the terms before then, and when spring came, I was determined that I would never know those feelings again.”

  Haley studied her husband’s face, feeling her resolve soften. He was revealing a softer side of himself -- one that she hadn’t seen before. His eyes fell to the floor, and an emotion washed over his face that she couldn’t quite read -- shame, perhaps? Vulnerability?

  “My mother suffered the worst of it. She was humiliated -- everyone in town knew what had happened, and I think their pity and charity only hurt her more. That winter, she found work in town at the bank. Every day brought a new wave of humiliation and pain for our mother… every day that she was forced to go into town and be met by sympathetic eyes and the murmurs of gossip.”

  “The money helped for awhile, but it wasn’t enough. Finally, she told us that we would sell the farm… that it was our only chance to survive. Well, Thomas and I couldn’t allow that. We were the eldest, and it was our duty to protect our mother. We couldn’t fail her the same way our father had.”

  “When spring finally came, my brother and I worked tirelessly to compensate for my father’s shortcomings and turnover a new leaf at the ranch. My mother was able to leave her job, and we were able to care for her… to finally provide her the life she deserved. But it was too late. The stress of it all had taken too great a toll on her, and she was too weak to fight anymore.”

  Hunter was silent for a long moment, and Haley decided that it wasn’t right to stare when he was so vulnerable… so weak in front of her. She diverted her eyes, allowing him to regain his composure.

  “We made a vow after that,” he continued. “My brothers and I all promised that we would never do what my father did to a woman; that our family would never again feel that desperation, and that any Oakley wife would never want for anything, never lift a finger, never know the squalor and sorrow that our father had imparted on our mother.”

  “And I fear that I’ve broken that vow,” he added, his voice crumpling, little more than a whisper. “I should feel like the luckiest man on earth, to have such a beautiful wife, and yet still I’ve failed you.”

  Despite the circumstances, Haley felt her heart skip inside her chest when he called her ‘beautiful.’

  “You haven’t,” Haley promised him softly, now feeling her own wave of guilt for the obvious distress that she had caused her husband. “I just want to find an arrangement that works for both of us, and that means I need to leave this house and work. I need purpose.”

  Hunter looked up at her for a long while and she tried to read his face in the dim parlor light but couldn’t. Finally, just when she was wondering if he would ever speak again, he said:

  “Alright.”

  Haley already felt closer than she ever had to Hunter, but then something had happened. She was standing by the hearth, returning her Bible to its rightful place on the bookshelf, when she had felt her husband’s touch graze the small of her back.

  She turned to face him, and though the embers in the fireplace had long been extinguished, she felt a sudden rush of warmth as they fell into each other’s arms.

  That marked the first night Mr. and Mrs. Oakley shared a bed as man and wife, and after that night, Haley knew that divorce was no longer an option or possibility.

  EIGHT

  “For the Christmas recess, I’d like you to complete our reading on the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem,,” Haley announced, taking great care to glance over her classroom of pupils and make eye contact with each and every student as she spoke. “Please finish these passages before we return after the Christmas recess, in addition to completing the spelling lessons in your primer.”

  Her pupils were fidgeting in their seats, and she couldn’t blame them: it was the last day of school before the December recess, and she imagined the students were anxious for the holidays ahead; for Saint Nicholas to visit with gifts, for carefree days playing in the snow, for Christmas...

  It was only the first week of December, and already the winter winds were blowing with full force. She had made it a habit of dismissing her students early, to ensure that they’d have a safe walk home through the snow. And now it was the final day of class before the winter recess, and her young students were anxious to rush home through the snow and enjoy their bit of freedom before the sun went down.

  Winter days in Montana were so short; the sun barely rose before it retired again on the horizon, and each day felt more bitter and chilling than the last.

  “I’d like to wish you all a Happy Christmas,” she said. “And before you leave--” she paused, watching the students squirm anxiously -- “I’d like to share one last lesson.”

  The children in her class knew better than the groan, but the strained disappointment was obvious on their youthful red faces. She smiled to herself, knowing that they didn’t expect the surprise that she had in store for them.

  She walked over to her desk at the front of the classroom and pulled open a drawer, revealing the small paper sack she had brought in with her earlier that morning. She pulled it out and gave it a little shake, then glanced up at her pupils with a look of wonder on her face.

  “Saint Nicholas visited early,” she told them, “And he asked that I deliver something on his behalf.”

  There was an excited chatter amongst the students, and their faces lit up. They weren’t squirming anymore; rather, they were suddenly watching her attentively, their eyes wide and staring at the paper sack in excitement and anticipation.

  Haley reached into the bag and extracted a peppermint ribbon candy.

  “There’s one for each of you,” she said, showing the candy to the children, who murmured in excitement. She handed the bag to the student seated at the front of the classroom and watched as the students passed it around, their faces glowing pink as they
each claimed their gift.

  She had seen the candies in Mr. Jordan’s shop a week prior and knew at once that the candies would be the perfect gift for her pupils. Claire had tried to give them to her, but she had insisted on using a portion of her wages to pay for them.

  For the first time in her life, Haley had money of her own, and that filled her with a great sense of purpose and security. It also made her situation feel entirely less hopeless.

  She had been teaching for several months now at the one-room schoolhouse in town, and the job had proved to be even more rewarding than she had hoped. She began every lesson with a reading from her mother’s Bible, before moving on to lessons of spelling, reading and arithmetic. Her students ranged in age, some older and some younger, but they all seemed to regard her highly. The jubilant words of thanks that they gave as they exited the classroom, carefully holding the ribbon candies, was only further proof that they very much cared for their young teacher.

  Haley was content with life. Things had gotten better since Hunter had allowed her to take the teaching job; it had certainly helped to reduce the tension between the newlyweds. They were getting along better and learning about each other; ever since that night that Hunter confided his past to her, they were unified by a sort of understanding and mutual respect… by the seeds of friendship. With the exception of that fateful night, they still had yet to share a bedroom. It didn’t feel right to Haley, and she suspected that Hunter’s lack of insistence on the matter meant that it didn’t feel entirely right to him, either.

  Their marriage was unique, of course… but Haley was beginning to appreciate it for what it was. She admired her husband, despite his great fault of loving Ethel. She realized that his feelings were not a fault, but rather a testament to his strength of character; his great loyalty, his capacity to love. She wished only that the subject of those affections could be her, and not the other Mrs. Oakley.