Hearts Awakening (33 page)

Jackson, however, remained at the gravesite a bit longer with his family. Awash with his own memories of the aged woman who had befriended him for so many years, he looked at his wife with awe. Ellie appeared every bit as tired as Jackson felt. But her devotion to him and his sons, as well as her stamina, continued to amaze him.

Day by day, she also challenged him and inspired him to strengthen his own relationship with a loving and forgiving God, but he was far from being the faithful follower of the Word he wanted to be, in spite of the fact he and Ellie had begun reading the Bible together each night after the boys had gone to bed.

To distance himself from the absurd thoughts that there could ever be anything more than friendship between the two of them, he glanced at his boys and smiled. They had definitely gotten their second wind, and their disappointment that Poor Thing had not been allowed to come to the cemetery was long gone. Under Ellie’s direction, they were busy adding more river stones to the pile they had started where Gram’s headstone would one day be placed. He hoped that their newfound energy would last just long enough to pick a few of the Russet apples tonight so Ellie could make fritters with them in the morning, since this was the last full moon for this year’s harvest.

He studied the boys as they raced back and forth between the stones along the perimeter, where Ellie was standing, and the pile of stones at the head of Gram’s grave. They obviously did not understand the somber significance of burial or the finality of Gram’s death, any more than they understood their mother’s.

They had apparently made some connection, because it had been their idea, not his or Ellie’s, to decorate Gram’s grave with river stones. Actually, it had been Daniel’s idea. Ethan merely nodded his agreement, remaining as mute as he had been before saying the dog’s name, but Jackson still had hope that the boy would start speaking again soon.

Ellie caught Jackson’s gaze and lifted her brows, a new habit of hers that acknowledged his place as the head of their family.

When he nodded in response to her unspoken question, she smiled. “Each of you boys can pick out one more stone for Gram. Then we have to leave, or it’ll be too late to pick any apples.”

“Can we take Poor Thing with us?” Daniel asked as he walked along the perimeter looking for his last stone.

“No. No dog,” Jackson said sternly.

Neither Daniel nor Ethan bothered to argue with him, although he suspected it was less out of respect for him as their father and more because they were too close to the end of their punishment to want another.

When Ellie stepped alongside Jackson, he shook his head. “If I had my way, I’d have taken that dog to the city and left it back at the parsonage house before attending services this morning,” he whispered.

She cocked her head. “Even though that dog’s sweet natured and gentle with everyone, especially the boys? Poor Thing’s even lured Ethan away from his seat at the window in the kitchen to play, and it’s kept Daniel so preoccupied, he hasn’t followed every step I take to criticize me.”

“Granted,” he said. “I daresay I’m surprised you’d defend the animal. If it hasn’t been snatching some of your aprons or clothes you’ve hung out to dry, it’s scratching at the floor you’ve just scrubbed clean. And wasn’t it Poor Thing that stole supper off the table last night?”

She chuckled. “You know it was.”

“Which is why the dog’s been banned from the great room at mealtimes, although I’m still not convinced I was right to give the creature one last reprieve,” he quipped.

“You know you’ll have two very unhappy boys if they have to bid farewell to that dog.”

“Maybe Poor Thing will learn how to behave better,” he suggested.

She chuckled again. “You might have to pray very hard for that to happen,” she teased as Ethan laid his last river stone on the pile.

Daniel added his own, looked down at the mound of fresh earth atop Gram’s grave, and put his arm around his little brother. “Gram’s in heaven with Mama. What’s heaven like, Pappy?”

Jackson walked over to stand alongside them, and Ellie joined them by standing opposite from them at the foot of the grave. “What do you think it’s like?” he asked, hoping to get a glimpse of what his son thought instead of simply telling him, which was what Ellie often encouraged him to do.

“I think there are lots and lots of griddle cakes in heaven,” Daniel said.

His little face was so serious Jackson had to stifle a laugh. “In six more days, you’ll have griddle cakes, too,” he reminded him gently. “What else do you think is in heaven with your mama and Gram?”

Daniel opened his arms wide. “A big, big, big ladder. Right, Ethan?”

“For picking apples?” Jackson asked as Ethan grinned.

“Not for that. For the angels,” Daniel replied.

Nodding, Ethan pulled the Jacob’s Ladder out of his pocket and nimbly let the blocks tumble over on one another.

Jackson rubbed the top of Ethan’s head. “Very good! You’ve got the knack of it now,” he said, grateful that Ellie had talked him into letting the boy take Rebecca’s ribbons home in the first place, but moved more that she had found a use for them by repairing the toy.

“Do you still love Gram, even though she’s in heaven now and you can’t see her?” he prompted, hoping to draw some parallel between Gram and their mother that might help them to accept her death.

When both boys nodded, Jackson continued by asking yet another question, something Ellie had done often with him these past few weeks after he had invited her to sit with him to read and study the Bible after the boys were in bed for the night. “What about Gram? Do you think she still loves you back?”

“My mama loves me back and she loves Ethan back, even though she’s in heaven,” Daniel replied as Ethan struggled to fold up the blocks so he could shove the toy back into his pocket.

“Then Gram will, too,” Jackson assured him as he reached down to help Ethan.

Daniel looked at him, his expression still serious. “How old will me and Ethan be when you die and go to heaven to be with Mama?”

Jackson straightened up and swallowed hard. “I don’t know, but I think it will be a long, long time before I get to go to heaven. You and Ethan will be grown men by then, with families of your own to love you.”

Daniel mulled over Jackson’s response for a moment before he pulled Ethan closer. “We’ll still love you, so you can love us back from heaven, won’t we, Ethan?” he said.

Jackson caught his breath, hoping this would be the time when Ethan would speak again. When he simply bobbed his head up and down again, Jackson tried not to be too disappointed.

Daniel dropped his gaze and looked over at Ellie before he turned back to his father. “Will you still share Miss Ellie with us when you’re in heaven?”

Jackson saw Ellie’s expression light with joy and smiled down at his sons. “Yes, I will. Why?”

“ ’Cause I think we might need her sometimes, like we do now. Me and Ethan still have lots to learn. Do you think Mama gets mad at us when we let Miss Ellie help us learn our letters?” he asked, jumping back from the future to the present in a single breath.

“What do you think?” he asked. Although the boys were paying scant attention to Ellie’s presence, he hoped Daniel’s answer would not be too painful for her to hear. If it was, he hoped she would find some consolation that Daniel actually enjoyed the lessons she had begun with them after breakfast each day.

“Me and Ethan think Mama is happy. She isn’t mad anymore.”

“She isn’t?” Jackson replied. Surprised by his sons’ apparent change of heart and Daniel’s willingness to discuss it, he encouraged him to share more. “Why is that?”

“ ’Cause she loves us and she wants us to be happy.”

Jackson blinked hard to keep the tears welling in his eyes from dropping free. “Yes, she does.”

“And we really love Poor Thing. Miss Ellie loves Poor Thing, too,” Daniel added, as if trying to let his father know he was the only one in the household who wanted to get rid of the dog. “If me and Ethan went to heaven, we’d want somebody to take care of her for us so nothin’ bad happens to her. Do you think Miss Ellie would take care of Poor Thing?”

Jackson swallowed hard. “I think she would.”

“We do, too,” Daniel whispered.

That’s when Jackson knew that regardless of how many times that dog snatched something or how many times he would have to repair the scratches it made on the floor or how many meals it managed to steal off the table, Poor Thing was going to spend every single day of its life right here on this island with his boys.

When he glanced over at Ellie and back at his boys again, his heart began to pound. The dog might be staying for good, but he wondered if Ellie would agree to do the same once she discovered the final secret he had kept from her.

He had to tell her about Dorothea.

Thirty-Three

Several hours later, Jackson sat with Ellie in front of the fireplace in the great room, just as they had done each night for the past several weeks after the boys had been put to bed.

Fortunately, the boys had been too exhausted after leaving the cemetery and picking half a dozen Russets to complain that Poor Thing had stubbornly refused to follow them upstairs to sleep by their bedroom door tonight. Instead, the dog had chosen to lie by the cookstove in the kitchen, on top of two of Ellie’s aprons she had snatched while they had been at the cemetery.

As dread pulsed through his veins, Jackson opened his Bible to the verse he had selected to provide the context for their talk tonight. By the light of the fire burning low, he silently prayed for courage before reading Psalm 118, verse 8: “ ‘It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man,’ ” he said and then gently closed the Bible and laid it on his lap.

As always, Ellie kept her head bowed to let his words simmer within her spirit. Flames reflected on the pale gold gown she wore tonight and set her countenance aglow. And as always, she waited for him to express his thoughts about the verse to begin their discussion.

This time, however, he deliberately opened their time together with a question. “What do you think the verse means?”

She lifted her head.

“I decided that you should go first tonight.”

“You decided,” she repeated, clearly remembering they had mutually agreed to let him begin their discussion each night.

“I did.”

She pursed her lips. “Is that supposed to be a clue to understanding the verse?”

“In what way?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

She chuckled softly. “In every way. For a man who used to find our conversations awkward or difficult, you’re becoming quite clever.”

He urged her, “Tell me why you should go first, within the context of the verse, of course.”

“It’s rather simple to explain, now that I think about it. You changed the routine we’d established to show that while I can’t completely put confidence in you, I can always trust in God to keep His promises,” she said, a bit proudly.

“Do you?” he asked, anxious to know if she would be able to forgive him for deliberately misleading her.

“I try, although I’m not always successful at it,” she countered, her cheeks turning pink. “But I do know that when others I depend upon disappoint me, just as I’m bound to disappoint them, I must ask Him to help me to forgive them, just as I would expect them to forgive me.”

Jackson clasped his hands together. Over the past few weeks he had prayed hard, but he had yet to fully accept his Father’s forgiveness for all the mistakes he had made in his life or forgive those who had disappointed him or hurt him.

Ellie’s wooden wedding ring pressed against his chest. She had forgiven him not once, but twice, for misjudging her, but he was not certain she could forgive him again for not being absolutely honest with her. “You don’t ever disappoint me. Not anymore,” he added. “I know I haven’t always acted very kindly toward you since we’ve been married—”

“But you do now,” she murmured, her gaze misty. “I know I’m bound to disappoint you now and again, or that we’ll disagree about something, but I also know that you’ve learned to be honest with me, and you’re more likely to talk things over with me now than you are to erupt in anger.”

He dropped his gaze and stared at the Bible lying on his lap. Recognizing his own failures, instead of others’, as he had been forced to do ever since this woman had come into his life, was still hard. But nothing he had ever told her before was as difficult as what he needed to share with her now.

In part, because she had helped him to face the real truth about the difficulties in his marriage to Rebecca by encouraging him to start reading his Bible again. And in part, because he had never wanted anyone’s respect as much as he now wanted hers.

He looked up at her. “I haven’t been honest with you. Not completely.”

“You haven’t?” she prompted as she turned in her seat to face him.

“No, I haven’t,” he said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t entirely Rebecca’s fault that our marriage was a miserable failure. It was mine.”

Ellie narrowed her gaze. “Yours? How were you to blame?”

“Because I didn’t love her. I never loved her and I never could, because . . . because I was already in love with someone else when I married her.”