Unto These Hills (18 page)

“That’s it.” He arose, pulled me up and hoisted me into his strong arms. He carried me to his car and gently laid me out on the back seat.

Then he drove like a bat out of hell to Dr. Worley’s office.

~~~~~

“Nervous exhaustion,” decreed the village physician. “Young lady, you’re gonna have to get some rest. I’m prescribing some pills to help you relax and sleep. And you’re not eating enough for one. Much less two. That’s gotta change. Now I know you’re strung out over Daniel’s poor behavior.” He slowly shook his white head. “Wouldn’t ‘a figured him one to shirk responsibility. As I promised, all that shall remain between just the two of us. So don’t worry about that. You get on with your life. Your stress is understandable. But you’ve got this child to think about now. Think you can manage that?” He was scribbling on his pad.

“Yes,” I muttered, shamed and a bit annoyed that the doctor blamed Daniel for my pregnancy but relieved that he remembered his promise and would abide by it.

On the short ride back to the Stone’s house, Walter’s vigilance began to get on my nerves. “I’m okay, for goodness sake,” I managed to say around a tongue too thick for my mouth.

“You need to take one of those pills for your nerves,” Walter said.

“I said I’m
okay,”
I snapped and immediately felt guilty. “Anyway, they’re to make me sleep. I’m sorry, Walter. You’ve been so good to me and here I —”

“You don’t need to apologize. I know I’m sorta hovering but it’s hard not to, Sunny. I really do care about you.”

I cut my eyes at him, trying and failing to make a comical face.

“As a friend,” he added and shot me that quick grin. “’Course, with things the way they are, I could be more than that if you’d let me.”

My breath hitched, scattering for a moment the fog, and my mouth dropped open. I’d never thought of Walter in that way. “Walter, you know how grateful I am for you being here so much for me lately.” I shrugged listlessly. “Don’t know what I’d ‘ve done without you, in fact. It’s just — I love Daniel. That’s not changed.” I gazed at him as my tears made his image go all fuzzy. “Probably won’t ever. I miss him so….” I began to quietly cry. I couldn’t help it. Just saying Daniel’s name wrung powerful emotions from my soul.

Walter braked on the curb in front of his house. He slid over and put his arm around my shoulder. “I know, Sunny. I just — wish I could wipe out your pain. I would if you’d let me.”

I took his offered handkerchief and blew my nose. “Yeh. Like…what can
anybody
do?”

“I could marry you,” he stated simply.

Stunned, I turned to stare at him. “
What
?”

His quick grin flashed, then, “Hey. Am I
that
bad?” His expression sobered. “It
would
solve your problem. The longer you go, the less chance you’ll have to make everybody think the baby is legit.”

“Legit?” I blinked back more tears, fighting a conflux of distressful images and feelings.
Bastard.
That dreaded word emblazoned itself across a drive-in movie screen, flashing for the world to see.

Walter gazed into my eyes, as somber as I’d ever seen him. “I know what a nice girl you are, Sunny, and I know how you’d hate to lose such a good reputation. I think you and I could learn to love each other.” He shrugged. “Heck, it’s the best solution I can come up with. You got a better one?”

The question loomed in his blue, blue eyes. I’d never looked at him like this before, opening myself to attraction. His blonde handsomeness smote me in a pleasant way. Yet —

“I’m not attracted to you like that, Walter. I have to be absolutely honest with you. You’ve been too good to me for anything less. I still love Daniel so much it hurts and —”

“Where
is
Daniel?” he asked quietly, yet a subtle steel edged his words. “Is he concerned about you? Have you heard
anything
from him?”

I shook my head and closed my eyes, weary beyond words. “No. Not a word. And apparently, he’s not concerned.” Oh, that hurt. To say the words out loud was like putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger. Only I didn’t die. I was still alive with my bleeding heart stubbornly chugging away.

“Look, Sunny,” Walter gently took me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. “If Daniel had come back, I’d ‘a been the first to welcome ‘im with a big ol’ bear hug. But he didn’t. And now, you’ve gotta face the music.”

“But this baby isn’t his,” I moaned, aggravated that tears were cropping again, but feeling compelled to defend Daniel.

“You’re entirely too understanding with Daniel, Sunny. If he’d ‘a loved you like he shoulda, he’d ‘a waded through the fires o’ hell to protect you during all this. As it is, you got no way out ‘cept to be stared at and low-rated to trash over somethin’ you couldn’t help.”

His eyes misted, surprising me. When he spoke again, it was impassioned. “I want to help you, Sunny. Hell, so what if you don’t love me? Main thing now is to get through having this kid and givin’ it a name. See, I know how sorry you feel for Ruth Bond and her little girl. I do, too. And I hate to see you go through what she’s had to.” He gently shook my shoulders. “We could make it work, Sunny. I know we could.”

I gazed at him through shimmery tears, feeling tossed about like a wildcat’s trinket. Love cried
nooooo!
Fear shrieked
grab the buoy labeled ‘respectability.’

“What about it, Sunny?” Walter gazed deeply into my eyes and I felt something, like a shaft of dim light, connect us. That it did not shine brilliantly like the one between Daniel and me gave me a sense of unrest. At the same time, I deserted all hope that Daniel would rescue me. In the past three weeks I hadn’t heard a word from him, had I? After all, the US Mail still ran and there were phones.

Plain and simple, he’d stopped loving me.

Our dream…gone. Dead. Only I hadn’t yet buried it.

I took a deep, shuddering breath and exhaled. “Let me go to my room and think it over for a spell,” I whispered.

“Decide now,” Walter said gently. “I won’t bother you again if you decide today not to marry me.”

I crossed the street, climbed my stairs and spent the next hour in travail as I gazed across the rooftops to the river glistening under late afternoon sun. In the end, I had no choice.

An hour later, I returned to the Stone residence. Walter met me at the door, his expression guarded. I didn’t say a word. Couldn’t. I simply nodded.

Walter took me in his arms, almost reverently. “You won’t be sorry, Sunny. I promise.”

~~~~~

Preacher Wayne married us in the parsonage the next week. Walter had managed to rent the empty village house on whose screened-in back porch, ironically, Daniel and I had made love. I didn’t tell Walter because I could see no sense in adding him to my list of casualties.

Nana, who’d remained strangely silent through it all, and Aunt Tina, who’d clung to the event as a life-line rescuing her from her stupor, together rallied to collect the newly-weds furniture from their own cache as well as relatives’ and friends’ castoffs.

I didn’t feel free to use funds from Daniel’s and my bank account. He had, after all, contributed the larger portion. Too, it was simply too painful to even think about things in terms of
ours.

After the ceremony, I felt like a raw piece of liver. Actually, more like a zombie. Walter was exceedingly considerate, even offering to sleep on the old sofa of Mama’s, that had been replaced in Nana’s house — I’d begun calling my former home that: Nana’s house — by Aunt Tina’s newer, bolder patterned chintz settee. But I’d told him it wasn’t right, him sleeping on the couch, that he was now my husband.

Husband.
My insides recoiled at the very word, but I’d never, ever, let on to Walter. And when he turned to me and tentatively kissed me, I hid the fact that I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. And as he explored my erogenous points, I tried to blank out Daniel’s features and his touch, failing miserably. I ended up closing my eyes and pretending it was Daniel whose feathery, sensitive strokes aroused me to blazing heights of passion.

Later, in the following long, sleepless hours, I realized that it was
that,
plus raging hormones pitted to trigger a turbulent climax that had Walter hoarsely muttering an ebullient, “I knew it. I just
knew
we’d be good together.”

So, my marriage to Walter started out in deception. And guilt.

I owed Walter. Big time.

~~~~~

A week later, we had supper at Nana’s house. I’d begun to migrate there more and more in my off-work hours. I suspect it was more to escape memories of that back porch interlude with Daniel than to draw closer to Nana. Actually, Nana had been exceptionally warm and caring since my marriage. Tonight, I caught her watching me closely as we did dishes.

Walter had gone back to our place to watch
Death Valley Days
on our new black and white seventeen-inch television. Aunt Tina had recently bought a set but she occupied her screen watching
I Love Lucy
summer reruns.

“You okay?” Nana asked.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be, Nana?”

“Walter good to you?”

“Yeh. Very.” And though I meant it to sound enthusiastic, it fell flat.

“You sure?” Nana did something uncharacteristic. She took me by the shoulders and turned me to face her. I saw worry in her eyes and something I couldn’t quite define.

“I’m certain.” I forced a smile.

“When’s the baby due?”

The floor nearly swept from beneath me. I had to grab hold of her arm to steady myself. “How did you know?” I whispered.

“Didn’t birth two and deliver God only knows how many without knowing all the signs. I’ve knowed all along. That’s why I can’t understand Daniel —”

“It’s not his fault, Nana.”

Her faded blue gaze narrowed. “Don’t know how you can defend him, Sunny, after he —”

“Please, Nana. I don’t want to talk about it,” I whispered, tears pooling. “I-I just can’t.” I knew Nana hated crying but I couldn’t a’helped it if my next breath had depended on it.

The back screen slammed. Timmy came to a halt when he saw my face. “What’s wrong, Sunny?” He immediately rushed to wrap his long arms around me, burying my face against his broad chest. “Is — are you and Walter — ?”

“No,” I quickly squeezed him back and disentangled my arms to wipe my nose and cheeks. “Everything’s okay.”

“She’s just havin’ to get used to bein’ married, is all,” Nana said in her staid way, swiping the kitchen table with a damp dishrag. Timmy seemed to accept that. I was glad he’d lumbered in at that precise moment. I didn’t want to lie to Nana.

After Timmy’s departure, only thing she said was, “You’re beholden to Walter, Sunny. Not many a’men would do what he done to spare you shame.”

“I know, Nana,” I said. “I know.”

“Who knows?”

“Only Doretha and Walter.”

“Nobody else don’t have to know,” she muttered, wringing out the dishrag before attacking the white cabinet leaf. “Ain’t nobody’s business.”

In other words, don’t tell a soul.

Didn’t need Nana to tell me that. I’d already figured it out. But I was suddenly glad Nana knew. I opened my mouth to tell her the whole story, rape and all, but the words congealed inside my throat, lodging, unable to pass over my vocal chords and exit my lips. It was so enormous. Nana couldn’t handle it. Somehow, I just knew.

Nana went into the bathroom, and I joined Aunt Tina in the den. She was engrossed watching Lucy getting splashed with water while trying to win a thousand dollars on a game show. When the phone rang, she was laughing and didn’t make any move to answer it.

I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

A long silence, then, “Sunny?”

My heart skipped three beats, no joke. “Daniel?”

“My god, I can’t believe I caught you there. I’ve been calling for the past two weeks and —”

“You’ve been calling for two weeks?” I whispered as the world began to spin and topple.

“Your Nana wouldn’t tell me how to contact you.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t blame her for being mad at me. I was a jerk. I even wrote. Did you get the letter?”

I swallowed a huge lump. “N-no. I didn’t.”

“Well, I want you to know how sorry I am that I ran out on you like I did. I’ve done a lot of thinking and realize I can’t live without you, Sunny.” Every word he spoke was a sword through my heart.

“Daniel —”

“No. Let me finish. My head was all messed up at first. Took me awhile before I realized that you’re not Mona. You’re good, honey. Nothing or nobody can’t take that from you. Please — I want to take care of you…and the baby. I’ll love it because it’s part of you, Sunny,” he said hoarsely. “All I know is I love you with everything that’s in me.” By now I was crying my heart out.

“Sunny?” Daniel’s gentle voice ripped into my guts. “Could you — do you think you can forgive me?”

I snuffled. “I forgive you, Daniel,” I said hoarsely, “I just hope you can forgive me.”

“Thank God,” he murmured, then chuckled with relief. “There’s nothing to forgive you for, sweetheart.”

“Y-yes there is, Daniel.” I gulped and took a deep breath, then spoke the most difficult words of my life. “You see — I’m married.”

The ensuing silence stretched out, groaned, then screamed at me. Aunt Tina, now caught up in my drama, had silenced the television. Nana hovered nearby, ashen-faced. But Daniel was my focus. I keened to hear him say how we could fix it.

“Who?” Daniel’s voice was almost non-existent. “Who are you married to?”

“Walter,” I whispered.

Another stretch of silence, then a moan, “Oh…my…God.”

The line went dead. I dropped the receiver, buried my face in my hands, and bawled like a lost child.

I
was
a lost child.

I didn’t care that Nana witnessed my terrible emotional abandonment. She’d turned Daniel away and sabotaged his letters to me. She’d destroyed my last hope.

In that moment, I hated her almost as much as I hated me. But I knew I would eventually forgive her because she’d acted out of love for me.