Blue Moon (13 page)

Noah kept to the woods and spent his days hunting and his nights tossing and turning, thinking of Olivia, wondering if she still had nightmares. Since she had come home, she had done nothing but work from sunup to sundown.

Throughout the day he would see her hoeing the vegetable patch, cleaning, sewing, scrubbing clothes in a half-barrel behind the house and then hanging clothes out on a rope to dry. She played with the boys, took care of her stepmother, and cooked up the meals they all shared in the evenings. These occasions were as much a torture as they were the highlight of his day. Suppertime was the only time he really shared with her.

She was everywhere at once, helping everyone else, avoiding him. Olivia was so preoccupied that she wasn’t even aware that he watched her whenever he was working nearby. What he saw worried him. She still jumped at unexpected noises and every now and again he would see her scan the edge of the property as if she were watching, waiting for the man from New Orleans, the man who had used her and made her feel unworthy of love.

Noah would give anything to take her fear away.

Tossing his shirt at his feet, Noah sat down, took off his moccasins, and stripped off his pants. He set them aside before he waded into the stream buck naked.

Olivia stepped outside the cabin door, careful not to spill me cup of hot sassafras tea in her hands. Pasting a smile on her face, she centered the cup on its saucer and walked over to the patch of morning sunlight where she had set up the rocker for Susanna. Now instead of being closeted inside, her stepmother could stare out across the fields, but at least the grieving young woman had lost some of her pallor. She would actually speak every now and again.

“I brought you some tea, Susanna.” When Susanna was not in a talking mood, Olivia would still carry on a one-way conversation. “It’s your favorite this time, not as strong as what I gave you yesterday. You brought quite a selection from home.” There were plenty of teas in the wooden tea cabinet, but the lovely silver tea service, one of the few fine things that Susanna had brought from Virginia, had been stolen during the river raid.

Olivia set the cup and saucer on Susanna’s lap, forcing her to hold it or have it spill all over, men stood beside the rocker and lifted a hand to her hair. She had taken to wearing it pulled back, tied with a ribbon to keep it out of the way while she worked.

“Daddy’s ague seems a bit better today. Yesterday he shook so hard with chills that I thought the bed was going to walk across the room.”

Trying to make light of her father’s recurring condition was the only way Olivia could cope with this additional burden. He had told her that the strange malady was common among the Illinois settlers. It came on without warning at certain times of the year as a fever, violent shakes, and chills, and then disappeared just as quickly only to return with a vengeance again in a few days or months.

Beyond the yard in front of the cabin, the corn was coming up, thanks to the sun and an occasional shower. Trying to picture the dappled light through cypress, with lush emerald duckweed floating on water, the serenity of Noah’s retreat on Heron Pond, Olivia took a deep breath of the fresh morning air and braced herself for another hard day. She wished she were stronger, that there were more hours in the day, that things were better. Then she sighed and reminded herself that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. The only bright spot in this day would be suppertime, if and when Noah decided to join them for the evening meal.

“Susanna, did you see which way the boys went when they left the house?” She wanted to tell Freddie not to wander too far off before she had a chance to cut down a pair of Little Pay’s trousers for him and turn up the hems.

“
Susanna
?”

“What?” Susanna turned listless eyes her way. Olivia reminded herself that patience was supposed to be a virtue.

“The boys. Which way did they go?”

“Why, I didn’t really notice.”

“That’s the trouble,” Olivia said more harshly than she had intended.

Her stepmother had never lost her little-girl tone or the soft, honeyed Virginia drawl that so reminded Olivia of the Morrison plantation where they had all lived for a time and where Susanna had been born.

Olivia went down on one knee beside the rocker and laid her hand on the armrest to stop the rocking. She waited until Susanna finally looked over at her.

“What is it, Livvie?”

“I think Little Pay is hurting himself on purpose, Susanna, and I’m worried about him.”

“Whyever would he want to do something crazy as that?”

Olivia took a deep breath and sighed. Something had to be done to shake Susanna out of her stupor, and Olivia had decided she was the one who would have to do it. Her father claimed that Susanna was most likely suffering female maladies, that they had to comfort her and nurture her else she might lose her mind altogether and go insane.

Olivia had gone along with his wishes for four weeks now, and had taken over all the household chores, including raising the boys and trying to deal with Susanna while everyone tiptoed around her stepmother. Susanna seemed slightly better, but not much, and while she rocked her life away, the boys and Payson were suffering as much as if she had already died and left them.

“He’s hurting himself to get you to notice him,” Olivia told her.

“This morning I saw him walk off with Freddie. I just … I just don’t recall which way they went.” Susanna’s voice trailed away. “Maybe they went around back …”

“He wants you to
really
see him, Susanna. He wants you to hold him and talk to him the way you used to. He and Freddie both need you, and I believe Little Pay thinks the only way he can shake you out of this sadness is by hurting himself to get your attention.”

Susanna fell silent again, turned and stared off across the field of sprouting corn.

The rocker shook when she tried to move it again, but Olivia held firm, refusing to let Susanna slip away so easily. Her stepmother was not the only one suffering here. They all were. If Susanna was going to lose her mind, Olivia decided maybe she should just get on with it. Her father might not be willing to force his wife out of the black mood in which she was trapped, but something had to be done, so Olivia did not mince words.

“The boys need you. Daddy needs you, too. You can’t mourn forever. Staring off into the sky won’t get you home to Virginia, and it won’t bring back your baby girl, either, no matter how much you wish it.”

When Susanna made no response at all, Olivia’s temper boiled over.

“Damn it, Susanna, come back to them. The living need you, not that baby you put into the ground.”

She knew firsthand that mourning got one nowhere. Hadn’t
she
mourned during those first weeks after she had been ripped from her family? Hadn’t
she
cried over her fate, been utterly despondent because her father had not fought to keep her? Hadn’t
she
grieved over what she thought was Susanna’s betrayal? Over her stolen virginity? And on top of it all, she had even lived with the shame of hating them because they had given her up so easily.

It was not until she had finally stopped crying mat she was able to start planning a way to escape Darcy.

Susanna had not yet responded. Thinking she might as well be talking to the moon, Olivia gave up. She was about to stand up and go inside when a choked, mournful sound erupted from her stepmother. Susanna slowly turned, her lips trembling, her arms locked tight around her middle.

“It hurts, Livvie. It hurts so bad. I can’t make it stop,” she whispered through her tears.

Forgotten, the cup and saucer in Susanna’s lap tipped over. The tepid tea stained Susanna’s skirt, but she did not even react to the spill. The china pieces slipped off her lap and hit the dirt. Olivia let them go, reached out, wrapped her arms around Susanna, hugged her close.

“I know. I know it hurts, but you aren’t alone, Susanna.”

Olivia closed her eyes against her own pain as she held the sobbing woman in her arms and let Susanna pour out all the grief she had buried inside for so long.

“Cry it out, Susanna. Cry it all out,” Olivia whispered softly as she held the young woman who had been stepmother, sister, and friend, and begged God to forgive her for ever, ever blaming Susanna for her own fate.

When she felt a firm hand gripping her shoulder, Olivia started. She looked up. Her father was standing there beside her. Barefoot, in his undershirt and pants, he was clutching the quilt around his shoulders. Lines creased his skin. His blue eyes were red-rimmed with tears of his own. His receding, light brown hair stood on end. He was so thin, his clothes so worn and mended, that he looked like a poorly stuffed scarecrow.

“Let me, Livvie,” he said, reaching for Susanna. The quilt fell from his shoulders and slid to the ground.

Olivia waited until he went down on his knees beside the rocker, then released Susanna into his arms. When she pulled away from them, a sorrowful loneliness swept through her, one so very powerful that she ached to her bones with it.

Looking down on her father and Susanna, seeing them wrapped in each other’s arms as they shared their grief over a lost child and broken dreams, Olivia felt more trapped in her own loneliness and isolation than ever before. Her unguarded thoughts immediately flew to Noah. Even though she hated herself for being so selfish and so unfair to him, she was thankful that he had not gone back to Heron Pond.

She needed to see him, now, this minute. She needed the solace his calm presence always gave her, needed to see the warmth of his crooked smile, to hear the cadence of his voice, to look at him and relive the memory of the night they had shared. She needed the safe, secure feeling that he gave her.

It was nothing short of selfish, depending on his concern and caring, wanting him near and yet remaining unwilling to share in the kind of relationship she knew he wanted. Until today she had kept her distance. She never sought him out for selfish reasons. Oh, she would give him messages from her father or go to him when she was looking for the boys. When he was working near the cabin she would take him his meals, but she made it a point not to linger, not to tempt him or be tempted.

She was almost to his campsite before she even realized she had come this far. She paused beneath the trees and looked around, but there was no sign of him.

All of her determination to see him quickly ebbed away leaving her frustrated and even more alone. She wandered over to a stump not far from the fire ring of stones and sat down heavily. She wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, shoved her hair back off her hairline, and looked up at the canopy of trees.

Overhead, magpies chattered to one another, and in the woods behind her, two wild turkeys called to each other as they foraged between the trees. Olivia sighed. The tears she had shed on the way to the woods had dried on her cheeks. She wished the wistful loneliness would pass as easily. A huge flock of pigeons flew overhead, so many that they looked like a dark gray cloud.

She didn’t know whether to be relieved or unhappy that Noah was not here. At least now she would not have to suffer the guilt of using him again in order to make herself feel better. Olivia took a deep breath, thought of all the chores waiting for her back at the cabin, and gathered her courage to go back and face it all. She put a smile on her face and told herself to expect the best. Perhaps a good cry had lightened Susanna’s soul. Perhaps now her father and his wife could rediscover the love they had once shared, one that Olivia had so envied and had hoped to find one day.

She shook out the cotton skirt of one of the gowns she had worn a lifetime ago, stood up and lifted her face to the sun. Stretching her arms high over her head, she took a deep breath of summer air alive with the scent of wildflowers.

Then she opened her eyes, turned around, and screamed.

Chapter 11

Noah’s sudden appearance behind her, half-naked, nearly frightened Olivia witless. Her scream still echoed in her ears. Her heart pounded.

“I’m sorry,” Noah apologized, but a slight lift at the corner of his mouth gave her the impression he was not sorry in the least. “You need to be careful. Sometimes Indians still walk these woods.”

She was hard-pressed to concentrate on what he was saying, what with him standing there bare-chested, a turkey-red cotton shirt slung over his shoulder, watching her with a glint of appreciation and no little suspicion in his eye. Glistening with water, his hair was slicked back, dark as pitch. The long lashes over his eye were spiked. His eye patch was in place, the leather ties darkened by water stains.

“Why are you here, Olivia?”

“You don’t waste words, do you?”

“Did Payson send you?”

She shook her head, wishing she had never come. There was no way she could admit her tremendous need to see him. She did not fully understand it herself.

“No, Daddy didn’t send me.”

“Then why did you come?”

Because I needed to see you
.

Because you were the first one I thought of when I felt lost
.

“I wondered if you had seen the boys.”

He turned away and shrugged on his shirt. “They’re at the stream.”

Instead of going after the children, she lingered while he went about his business as if she were not there at all. Leaving her standing there in awkward silence, he ducked low and stepped into the lean-to. From where she stood Olivia could see his bedroll and, unfortunately, she found it easy to imagine lying there in the dark beside him. She wondered what it would be like to look up at the stars, listen to the call of the hoot owls in the trees with him. Did he think of her as often as she thought of him, she wondered, or had he really been able to dismiss her almost entirely?

Right now he did not particularly act as if he wanted her there at all. On the verge of complete humiliation, Olivia looked off in the direction of the stream.

“I just did something I shouldn’t have,” she admitted softly, feeling better already for having voiced her concern aloud. It didn’t really matter whether he listened or not, she decided; she just needed to talk.

“I was sharp with Susanna. I told her that she has mourned long enough and that she needs to take care of the living.” She shuddered. She had only meant to help, not hurt.

Noah had buttoned up his shirt by now, so she no longer had to avoid looking at his distracting muscles. He was on his haunches, stirring the embers of the fire, and gave no indication that he had even heard her until he straightened.

“I know nothing of families, Olivia.”

With heavy sadness in her heart, she took a few steps toward a nearby bush, plucked a stem covered with leaves and fanned it back and forth. She had asked for this. She had wanted him to give up caring about her, but she had not expected it to hurt when he did. With the stem in her hand, she turned and caught Noah watching her from across the campfire.

Quickly, he looked away. She crossed the clearing to stand over him.

“Are you having supper with us tonight?”

Mentally she tallied what supplies they had. Thanks to Noah, the new smokehouse was well stocked. He had taught her father how to smoke meats and instructed him to butcher a couple of wild hogs in the fall so they would have an abundant supply of ham.

Noah stood up and appeared to be concentrating on her mouth. Then he met her eyes. His expression was so set, so determined, that she thought he was about to decline.

“I’ll come, as long as I don’t have to sit beside Freddie.”

Her heart lightened, Olivia laughed.

“I really have to be getting back.”

There was corn bread to bake, beans to boil, breakfast to clear away, clothes to wash and hang. In between she would find a little time to hoe a row or two in the vegetable patch.

They stood nearly toe to toe now. She watched the rise and fall of his chest. Knowing what it felt like to be held against his heart did not make going back any easier.

“I really do have to leave,” she said lamely.

“So you said.”

She needed to linger in his presence, if only for a moment longer. A few scant inches separated them. She heard him let out a long, heavy sigh. Her feet were rooted to the ground. She lifted her eyes to his face.

“Olivia,” he whispered, bringing his lips closer to hers, “you really should go now.”

“I know,” she whispered back.

His hands never left his sides, but his mouth was so close that she could almost taste him. She closed her eyes, wishing she had the power to deny her need for this man. She did not want to hurt him for anything in the world. Half expecting him to walk away and leave her standing there like a fool, she was surprised and captivated when his mouth touched hers. He traced the seam of her lips with his tongue, tentatively, searching and exploring, tasting.

She moaned low in her throat and dropped the leafy stem as she reached for his arms. Beneath his shirt, his forearms were corded with muscle. He had not moved, nor did she, even when she touched him. She ran her hands down his arms, and found his hands knotted into fists. He was holding himself back. She knew what it must be costing him, for it cost her, too. The temptress that Darcy had awakened in her smiled even as her conscience prodded her to stop. Her grip tightened on Noah’s wrists, and then she let go. When the kiss ended, she did not step back.

He was breathing heavily and looked pained.

Unfortunately, she dropped her gaze and immediately saw that he was aroused. Quickly, she looked back up.

“Does it amuse you, Olivia, to play with me the way Freddie plays with fireflies in the evening?” His voice was rough, gravelly, as if the words had to fight their way out of him.

Each evening the boys ran along the edge of the wood catching lightning bugs, trapping them in their sweaty hands, shoving them down inside empty bottles. The insects would beat themselves against the glass, their bright yellow-green glow sadly weakening, until by morning they lay burnt out on the bottom of the bottles.

She shook her head to deny it, but before she could utter a word, a high-pitched scream came from somewhere nearby. She immediately recognized Freddie’s voice.

“Noah? Noah!” The boy was coming down the trail toward the camp and although they could not see him through the trees yet, there was no denying the frantic sound in his voice.

“Over here, Freddie,” Olivia yelled back as she started to run toward the trail. Suddenly the little towhead shot into the clearing, panting like a scared rabbit, his eyes wide and frantic.

“You gotta come, Livvie. You too, Noah.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” She knelt down and grabbed his bony shoulders.

Freddie gulped until he finally squawked, “Little Pay’th drowned himthelf! I think he’th dead.”

•   •   •

The words were as effective as ice water. Noah’s hot blood cooled instantly. Here was trouble of a kind he could handle, not like the confusing, mysterious torment Olivia stirred in him whenever she was near.

He sidestepped both of them and ran down the trail toward the creek. The water had been running high and swift this morning, eddying in a gentle whirling motion near the rocks in the center of the stream. To him, the current was next to nothing. To a child, it would be deadly.

The path ended at the water’s edge. He heard Olivia and Freddie on the trail behind him, shouting back and forth as they ran. He scanned the pool, saw no sign of the other boy.

“He wath
there
.” Breathless, Freddie ran up beside him, stood against Noah’s thigh and pointed to the middle of the stream. “He wath
right there
!” Then he began to wail.

Noah did not hesitate. He stepped into the stream and made a skimming dive across the surface of the water toward the center of the pool. Then he dove. His eye patch tore away as he shot through the water and swept it with his hands. Feeling around for Little Pay, he hoped to come in contact with the child’s body before it was too late. He surfaced and gulped air, dove again.

Suddenly, a strange, gentle peace began to flow through him, one so calming that it was astounding. Then something most odd began to happen. In a voice not unlike the bubbling gurgle of the stream, the water itself seemed to guide him. If he had not been feeling so tranquil, he would have thought that he was going mad, but as clearly as if it could communicate in words, the water guided him ahead, then to the right. He soon felt the brush of cloth beneath his palm. His fingers closed over the fabric. He tugged Little Pay into his arms and surfaced.

Only seconds had passed, and yet it might have been hours. Once he surfaced, Noah could still hear the odd whispers, not unlike voices in the water, but upon seeing Little Pay lying so lifeless, his skin pale, his lips blue, the strange connection with the water was broken. Noah waded to the bank of the stream where Olivia stood with her fist shoved against her mouth. Above her hand, her eyes were stark with shock. Freddie was trembling, his face white as dogwood blossoms.

Little Pay dangled limp as a wet rag in Noah’s arms. He looked down at the boy and then into Olivia’s eyes.

“Take him home,” she whispered.

The cabin was no more than a few hundred yards away from Noah’s shelter in the wood and though he was certain the boy was dead, something compelled him to run the distance. Why, he could not say, except perhaps because Little Pay’s body was the heaviest burden he had ever carried in his life and he wanted to be rid of it.

He wanted to lay the boy out in his home, turn tail and run. To leave the Bonds and all their heartache behind. He did not want to see Payson Bond’s face when the man looked upon his lifeless son. He did not want to hear Susanna’s cries or watch her go entirely insane.

And Olivia? Maybe now she would leave and go with him. Maybe now she would leave these people and all their misery and go with him back to Heron Pond.

As his legs pumped and his feet crushed the sprouting corn, the boy’s lithe body bounced up and down in his arms. As he neared the cabin, his thoughts crystalized. He had been better off raised without the knowledge of family ties, or of what it meant to love more than one person at a time, to care for more than one, to lose and bury not just one, but many.

In the face of the this new, sudden tragedy of the Bonds, he was shaken by the knowledge that if the child in his arms were his own son, he did not think he could go on.

When Payson heard Olivia shouting, he walked to the corner of the cabin and looked across the field. He was weak from this latest bout of ague. Dizziness still came and went, so at first when he saw Noah racing toward the cabin, carrying what looked like a rag doll with its arms and legs flopping, with Olivia running behind him and Freddie trying to keep up, Payson thought he was hallucinating. But then he heard Olivia cry out for Noah to wait. Freddie had tripped in a dirt trough and lay there spent, facedown in the cornfield.

When his mind cleared, Payson realized that it was no doll in Noah’s arms and he ran to meet them, ignoring the pebbles that cut his bare feet. His legs felt as if they might give out at any second. When he ran up to Noah and saw Little Pay’s bleached skin, the water dribbling out of the corner of his mouth and down the side of his cheek, he staggered, but he did not fall.

He tried to stop the big man, but Noah kept running and passed him by, headed for the cabin. Noah dwarfed the child so that from behind, all Payson saw were Little Pay’s bare feet and knobby ankles dangling over his arm.

Payson remembered Susanna, worn out from crying, still seated in the rocker in her spot of warm sunshine. In a few strides Noah would be there, tearing down the partially mended fabric of her fragile will to go on. Payson became frantic to reach her first, but there was no way in hell he could overtake the taller, stronger man.

When he came around the corner of the cabin, it was too late to do anything but watch. Noah stood there holding Little Pay, looking as if he had just awakened from a bad dream and wasn’t quite sure of where he was. Payson saw Susanna slowly turn around. He expected her to scream when she saw Noah holding Little Pay.

Instead, she carefully pushed herself up out of the rocker and slowly walked over to Noah. Payson hurried to join them.

“Give him to me,” Payson said to Noah. “Give me my boy.”

Noah did not let go.

“What happened?” As calm as death, Susanna reached out. Her hand was steady as she brushed Little Pay’s hair back off his forehead.

“He walked into the pool in the stream.” Noah’s breath was still uneven.

Susanna raised her arms. He gently lowered the boy into them. She seemed to droop under the load, even though the boy weighed next to nothing soaking wet. She did not falter as she walked back to the rocking chair. Holding her son against her breast, she sat back down and cradled him as she had not done since Little Pay had grown tall and lanky and considered himself a boy, not a baby.

With his sorely tried strength ebbed to nothing, Payson watched his wife and somehow summoned the courage to stand beside her, close to the rocker, so that his thigh rubbed against her shoulder. Words lodged in his throat.

Susanna whispered to their son. “I see you now, Little Pay. I love you, baby.” She bent and pressed a tender kiss to her older son’s soft, suntanned cheek. Then she started rocking him gently, patting him on the back as if he were no older than an infant.

Olivia and Freddie had reached the cabin. Payson heard them behind him, heard his daughter whisper frantically to Noah, listened to Freddie as the boy hiccuped down sobs. Payson looked down upon Susanna and Little Pay with no notion of how he could go on. He was trapped between purgatory and hell. He could not return Susanna to her father and tell the man that because he, Payson, had been too stubborn to live off charity, it had cost the wealthy Virginian, Richard Morrison, two of his grandchildren and Susanna’s sanity.

He squeezed his eyes closed, ran a hand over his face, and finally forced himself to move. “Let me take him.” He bent toward Susanna, then paused. He felt his stomach drop to his toes. Was his mind playing tricks on him?