Hearts Awakening (16 page)

Several days later, anxious to prove he was grateful to Ellie that she had decided to stay in their marriage, Jackson snatched one last piece of bread from the platter before she carried it back to the kitchen after dinner. “The bread’s really good,” he praised.

She laughed. “You mean it’s not burnt, like the pudding I wanted to serve for dessert.”

“That, too, although I must admit I have a weakness for honeyed bread,” he countered and slathered the bread with a generous dollop of honey and reached for another while the boys played on the far side of the room with blocks their grandfather had cut out of different kinds of apple wood for them.

“You have a weakness for anything sweet,” she teased, waiting for the jug of honey.

He shrugged. “You know, winter’s not all that far off. We had three feet of snow dropped on us last winter, more than once,” he said before taking a bite of the honeyed bread.

“I don’t mind snowstorms,” she murmured, picking up the jug of honey and starting for the kitchen again.

“Only thunderstorms,” he ventured, regretting his words when he saw her flinch. “Even so,” he continued, hoping to ease the frown forming on her lips, “I should think you’d be of a mind to figure out how to use the oven in the cookstove so you don’t have to tunnel through a dozen yards of snow to get to that old bake oven outside.”

She paused and turned around. “I’m trying,” she managed as a blush stole across her freckled cheeks.

“I know you are, but I was wondering if maybe it’s not your fault that you’ve been burning things. Maybe there’s something wrong with the cookstove.”

Her eyes widened with hope. “Really? Do you think that’s possible?”

He shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, but Caden James would. He sold me that cookstove and the rest of the stoves in the house we use to keep warm. We usually see him on Sunday at services, and I thought maybe I would ask him to stop by and look it over. Maybe all he needs to do is give the inside as good a cleaning as you gave the outside.”

“What if it’s not the cookstove? What if he travels all the way out here and the stove is fine and the only thing wrong is that it’s . . . it’s just me?”

He shrugged again. “I’m sure he can show you how to use it. He showed Rebecca. He even has women come to his shop to practice, or so I’ve been told.”

“Well, I can hardly do that,” she murmured and started chewing on her lower lip, as if anxious to avoid having the man travel all the way here and take back tales of her ineptness in the kitchen.

Jackson picked up his plate and stacked it on top of his sons’. “If I’m not mistaken, James also left some written instructions for her, but I haven’t seen them.”

“Neither have I,” she admitted.

Grinning, he walked toward her. “Then it’s settled. I’ll talk to him the day after tomorrow at services.”

“Assuming it doesn’t rain again and we can ferry across the river safely.”

He chuckled. “I’ve never seen it rain four straight Sundays in a row, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

“If I didn’t know better, I might suspect you were praying for rain just to avoid going to services. It really is important to go to church, and I’m not just thinking of the boys.”

“I know,” he said, but he brushed her comment aside. “Daniel and I only have a few hours of work to finish in the orchards this afternoon.”

She nodded, took the plate and jug of honey into the kitchen, and returned seconds later.

“Do you want me to take Ethan with us?” he asked, hoping to give her a bit of time to herself.

When she hesitated and looked over to the boys, he followed her gaze. He saw that the ends of the ribbons Ethan insisted on keeping were hanging out of his pockets as he sat fiddling with a few blocks, and frowned.

Daniel, however, walked over to them, apparently anxious his father would leave without him.

“Ethan really needs a good nap,” Ellie replied. “Maybe I can convince him to take one in the kitchen with me again so he won’t put up as much of a fuss. He likes to sit on the window ledge in the kitchen to watch you leave and then wait for you to come home again, you know.”

“Ethan’s not looking for Pappy when he sits at the window,” Daniel interjected. “He’s looking for Mama and waiting for her to come home again.”

“You don’t know that,” Jackson murmured, concerned at how often Daniel reminded Ellie that her place here was temporary and how often he used his brother to reflect his own feelings.

“Yes I do,” Daniel insisted.

“You couldn’t,” Jackson countered.

“But I do.”

Jackson let out a deep breath and tried to be patient, as much for his sake as for Ellie, who was watching and listening to the entire conversation. “No you don’t, Daniel, because Ethan hasn’t spoken to anyone. Not for months, and it isn’t fair of you to—”

“He talks to me. He does. He talks to me,” Daniel blurted, stomping one foot.

Jackson froze and had to remind himself to breathe. “Ethan talks to you?”

Daniel nodded.

Swallowing hard, Jackson looked at Ellie and saw his own shock mirrored in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked his son firmly. “You know how worried I’ve been. Or why didn’t you tell Dr. Willows?”

When Daniel merely shrugged, Jackson suspected the boy had no answers to his questions because there were none. Ethan couldn’t have been talking to Daniel without Jackson having some inkling it was happening—the only time the boys were all alone for any length of time was at night. Since their bedroom was just across the hall from his, he would have heard them talking together at least once in the past six months.

Troubled that Daniel would lie to him, he did not want to put his son in a situation where he had to defend his lie, which would make it harder to admit to the truth. “Can you tell me why he won’t talk to anyone other than you?” he asked, deliberately making his voice as gentle as he could.

“ ’Cause he’s not mad at me,” Daniel said with conviction.

“But he’s mad at me?”

“Y-yes.”

“Why?”

“He thinks you sent Mama away,” Daniel whispered.

Jackson gulped hard. The anguish he saw in Daniel’s gaze and the pain he heard in his son’s voice was too real to be denied. The only way to lead Ethan to the truth was to get him to understand the very concept of death, as well as the loss of his mother. Repeating words he had used with his sons for months now, words he had heard Ellie say to them, as well, seemed pointless, yet he still was not prepared to tell them the true circumstances around their mother’s death because they were far too young to understand them.

“Why is he angry with
me
?” Ellie ventured. Her voice was soft and gentle, and Jackson saw no hint in her expression that she did not believe the tale Daniel had been spinning.

“You know,” Daniel replied and dropped his gaze.

“I think I know, but I can’t be sure I’m right unless Ethan tells me or you tell me.”

He held silent and studied the floor as if it were the most interesting thing he had ever seen.

“If you know why Ethan is mad at Miss Ellie, please tell her,” Jackson prompted, wondering if his son would be more comfortable explaining himself to someone he did not know well, which would give Jackson an opening to get the boy to admit to his lie.

“ ’Cause when Mama does come back and sees you here, she’ll think we don’t want her anymore, and she’ll leave for good. That’s why.”

Ellie paled.

Jackson drew in a long breath. His patience gone, he sent Daniel back to play with his brother.

“You don’t believe him,” Ellie whispered, her voice laced with disappointment.

“I believe he’s hurt and confused enough to fabricate a lie because he has no other way to face his grief. Ethan is too young to keep up a ruse for this long, and I would know if he had spoken to anyone in the past six months. They would have told me, or I would have heard him,” he replied in self-defense, keeping his voice low, too, so the boys would not hear their conversation.

“Just because you or anyone else, for that matter, hasn’t overheard him doesn’t mean Ethan hasn’t been talking to his brother,” she argued. “Think about what Daniel said. If he’s right, if Ethan has been talking to him and has told him he’s afraid their mother won’t come back to stay if I’m here, wouldn’t that also explain why he hasn’t spoken to any of the other women who’ve come to help out, either?”

“What about the Grants, especially Grizel? Why wouldn’t Ethan talk to any of them? And why hasn’t anyone who’s been around the boys heard Ethan talking to his brother?” Jackson charged, unwilling to accept Daniel’s words as truth or her arguments as valid.

“I don’t know,” she admitted and glanced over to the boys for a moment. “Ethan’s only three, like you just said. He’s still trying to make sense of a world that’s been terribly cruel to him, and so is Daniel, really. I don’t presume to understand why God allowed Rebecca to die, but He did and . . . and while you and I might have our faith to help guide us to trust in His wisdom, Daniel and Ethan are still trying to understand who and what God might be to them.”

“I understand that,” Jackson insisted, reluctant to admit to her or anyone else that he had yet to accept God’s plan for him and his sons. “But if Daniel is telling the truth, that Ethan is so upset with me that he won’t talk to me, why isn’t Ethan angry with me all the time?”

Her gaze softened. “I’m not sure, but nobody, especially a little child, can be angry every minute of every day,” she argued. “If Ethan truly needs and wants to talk to someone, maybe he turns to his brother because he’s the only one who doesn’t pose a threat to him. Daniel’s his lifeline, at least for right now, and he’s fortunate to have him.”

Jackson heard the pain in her voice and suspected she had not had someone close to her when she had needed a lifeline of her own. Then again, he hadn’t, either, until he had come to this island and met James Gladson.

She sighed, as if arguing the matter was pointless. “The longer Ethan remains angry and confused, the more likely it is that he’ll never speak again to anyone other than Daniel. And the less likely it is that we’ll be able to help both Daniel and Ethan become the happy children I suspect they once were. My mother used to say that we’re the angriest when we’re afraid. If she was right, and I believe she was, it means that unless we discover what has scared Ethan so much that he won’t talk, we’ll never be able to help him.”

Jackson blinked hard. The idea that this woman could presume to know his sons better than he did, even if she had been well-intentioned, was so preposterous he stiffened. “I know a lie from a truth, and I know what Daniel and Ethan need right now. They’re my sons,” he argued, not bothering to hide his annoyance with her.

She dropped her gaze. “I’m not denying that, but—”

“Maybe it will be better all around if Ethan spends more time with me and less time at the house. From now on, I want him to come with me and Daniel in the afternoons to work in the orchard, like he used to do when I didn’t have anyone helping out after Rebecca died,” he said, reluctant to remind her that one of her duties was to obey his wishes, not question them.

“But what about his afternoon nap?” she argued.

“Ethan’s slept under a tree before. It won’t be anything new to him,” he countered. Anxious to reassert his authority over her, as well as his sons, he turned his attention to the other end of the room. “Daniel? Ethan? I want you to start picking up those blocks and storing them away. Ethan, come over here.”

When Ethan complied, Jackson pointed to the boy’s pocket. “I thought you were going to keep those ribbons in your room.”

Ethan looked down and poked the ribbons deeper into his pocket.

“Hand them over, son.”

Ethan’s eyes filled with tears, but he tugged the ribbons out and gave them to him.

Jackson held the soiled ribbons by the ends, wondering how they could have gotten so dirty in a matter of days. He was about to tell Ellie the ribbons were bound for the trash pit when he saw the tears trickling down his son’s cheeks.

Moved, he bent down to wipe the tears away. “I want you to let Miss Ellie wash these ribbons for you. Once they’re clean again, we’ll have to think of a special place for you to keep them,” he said and handed them to Ellie. “Now hurry back and help Daniel with the blocks so you can come with us to work together in the orchards this afternoon.”

Ethan managed a smile, but Daniel whooped and hollered and ran over to his brother. “Come on, Ethan! Pappy just said you could come today. You can help me pick up all the apples that dropped on the ground, just like you did before,” he gushed and tugged his brother back to the pile of blocks.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d launder those ribbons as best you can. Maybe by the time they dry, Ethan will forget all about them.”

“I doubt he will,” she noted.

“You may be right, so when you’re making those new overalls for him, don’t bother to add any pockets.”

After she disappeared back into the kitchen without argument this time, he watched his sons fill the canvas bag with blocks. His heart swelled with love for his boys, even as his mind wrapped around the remote possibility that Ellie was right and Daniel had been telling the truth about Ethan.

What that meant for Jackson as a father was just as telling as what that meant for him as a husband. Then again, he reminded himself as he walked over to help his sons, he was not a real husband. He was just a man. He loved his sons. He loved his work. He loved this island. And in his own fumbling way, he supposed, he loved his God.

There was no room in his life and no need for him to love anything or anyone more.

Fifteen