Someone Like You (20 page)

“Oh, no. Oh, Reed. She chose her father.”

She saw the tears in his eyes. How difficult that would be for anyone to understand, to accept. That a wife would turn against her husband, against the man she married, the man who fathered her child.

“She…” His voice broke. He paused and breathed deeply, gaining control. “What it all boiled down to was the simple fact that she trusted her father more than she trusted me. She begged me to let her father deliver the baby.”

“And you stepped aside?”

“Not at first, but after Philippa became hysterical, I relented. I was hurt by her rejection, so I complied with her wishes. I foolishly gave my place over to her father.”

“You had no choice. Did her father deliver the baby then?”

“Adam tried, but after hours of hard labor, the baby still had not come. It was apparent to me after the first few hours that we needed to do a cesarean procedure…” He glanced at Susannah. “That is where you have to cut the mother’s stomach to get to the baby.”

Susannah nodded.

“When I mentioned this to Adam, he refused to consider what he called ‘another of your farfetched ideas’.”

“You had to stand there and watch your wife and baby die?”

“No, I couldn’t. I had to do what I could to save them. At last, fearing for Philippa’s safety and believing in the cesarean procedure, I shoved Adam out of the way and took over. And it enraged him. He accused me of using savagery.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“So am I. I should have realized it was too late when I took over, that Philippa had been in labor too long. Our son was stillborn, and Adam’s rage went one step further. He accused me of killing my own child.”

Susannah put her hand over Reed’s, unable to find any words of comfort.

“I was devastated over the death of our child, but I hid my grief in order to console Philippa. But a few days later Philippa developed childbed fever and died.”

“Her father blamed you for her death as well.”

“He more than blamed me. He said I caused her death by using witches’ brew, which was what killed her. He called me a murderer at Philippa’s funeral.”

The tears were running down his cheeks faster now. He could not go on.

Susannah rubbed his hand, as if that one gesture could impart all the empathy she had for him.

“And,” she murmured, “you became a loner, drifting around the country, working at this job and that, never staying in one place too long, never giving the painful memories of the past a chance to catch up with you.”

He wiped his eyes and pulled himself together.

“Now I understand,” she said, “what you meant that day, when you told me you could never love anyone again.”

He turned and kissed her softly on the mouth. “No, you don’t understand. It isn’t as you think. It isn’t because I’m still in love with Philippa. I got over her death a long time ago. But I’m empty inside. I have nothing to offer a woman.”

Suddenly Reed added, “I see your aunts returning from their walk. I’d best be running along.” He stood, still holding her hand.

She looked up, and their gazes locked. Pretense seemed to fall away, and she felt she could see clearly now. She allowed him to draw her to her feet.

“You will remember your promise? Say nothing to your aunts, to anyone.”

“Your secret is as safe with me as mine is with you.”

“We are partners in grief, then.”

“Partners in grief.” She squeezed his hand.

“What’s this?” Violette called out. “A handshake on the front porch?”

“Reed was showing me how they shake hands in Boston.”

“Better make sure that’s all he shows you,” Dahlia said in a sour tone.

Susannah held her breath, trying not to laugh. She made the mistake of glancing at Reed, whose face was full of soundless mirth. And they lost their composure and they did laugh.

“A loud laugh, a vacant mind,” Dahlia said.

Violette laughed, but Reed was thinking he and Susannah were beginning their friendship with laughter. A fine start.

Tate Trahern was still brooding over what had happened at church when Reed Garrett had made a laughingstock out of him. It didn’t help matters that he hadn’t received a reply to his telegram to the
Boston Herald
. Tate was angry, seething. He was not accustomed to being ignored or not getting his way.

Then, when he least expected it, some three weeks after he’d sent the telegram, Tate received a reply. Reading the message, he smiled. He folded the piece of paper neatly and tucked it away in his pocket. He had just been given the ammunition he needed to rid himself of a varmint. All he had to do was wait for the right time to use it.

He mounted his horse and rode out of Bluebonnet. He would have been a happy, happy man, save for the fierce pounding in his head and the humiliation he felt whenever anyone in town looked at him. Both of which he blamed on Reed Garrett.

September came, ushering in the first day of fall, but nobody remembered to tell the heavens, so the weather remained as it had all summer, hot, dry, dusty, and near to unbearable. Not even an occasional breeze that stirred the dry leaves in the cornfields could offer much relief. As Violette said, “It’s too hot to talk.”

Reed stood at the gate of the pigsty. Miss Lavender had given birth to fourteen piglets during the night. Susannah had four of them in her arms—pink, wiggling, squealing, and, to his surprise, rather cute. He shook his head. Life took strange turns. He would have never believed ten years ago, when he was the toast of Boston society, that he would be standing in a dried-up town in West Texas contemplating a farrow of piglets.

Susannah looked at him, joy reflected in her face, and he felt as if the sun had come out from behind a cloud. For a moment they both stood still, like two hastily caught forms captured on a canvas, frozen in time. The atmosphere was charged with luminosity.

One of the piglets began to kick its hind legs furiously. Susannah laughed and gave it a kiss. “I shall call you Rowdy,” she said, and Reed had the sound of a soft, Texas drawl to add to his jumbled senses. She kissed the piglet again, and Reed was overwhelmed with desire. He wanted to give her a child.

For a moment Reed was taken aback. The idea of giving her a child surprised him. He had not thought about that before. But it was true—and he hadn’t felt that way since Philippa died.

“This one I shall call Runt,” she said, holding up the smallest of the farrow. “This one is Chubby. And this one,” she held up the most docile of the quartet, “I shall call Pansy, because she is so shy.”

“That leaves only ten more to name, and then you must worry about remembering which name goes to which piglet.”

“Oh, I never forget,” she said, her eyes growing round, amazed that he would even suggest such a thing.

“Doesn’t it make it difficult for you to give them names and to treat them as pets…later on, I mean, when it comes time to butcher them?”

“We only butcher one hog a year. The rest we keep to breed or to sell. But no, it doesn’t bother me overmuch. It’s a natural part of life, to live, to die. We all have our roles to play. We must be content to grow where we’re planted.”

She returned the piglets to their mother, then began the process of picking up the other ten and bestowing names on them, Clementine, Rosemary, Flora, Sweet Pea, Sassafras. She paused a moment, then came up with names for the others. Willow, Lily, Petunia, Willie—a nickname for Sweet William. She turned toward Reed, her brow creased by a frown as she looked down at the last piglet in her arms.

“Don’t tell me you forgot a name.”

“No…I can’t seem to think of the right name for this one. He’s a plain little fellow, don’t you think?” She turned the piglet so it was facing her, the flat little nose working back and forth, the small beady black eyes looking at her with an unfathomable expression. She sighed and released him with the others. “I’ll have to wait for him to distinguish himself in some way.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then I will have to think of something. He cannot go through life without a name.”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be right.”

Like her aunts, she had a preference for using flower names for animals, but unlike them she would occasionally, as now, throw in a few non-floral names spontaneously. He wondered what name she would give to herself. He thought of the lovely ice flowers he saw on the windowpanes during the cold Boston winters and wondered if the cold, frozen side of her would vanish if touched by the sun of love…his love.

Miss Lavender grunted and stood, then walked away, the piglets falling off the teats one by one—all except the piglet with no name, who clung to his mother for all he was worth. He was dragged halfway across the pigsty before he fell off. By the time he did, Susannah was laughing so hard, she could scarcely speak. It was only after she picked up the persistent piglet and turned to him that she found the breath to say, “Tenacity. I shall call him Tenacity.” The last piglet named, she put him down, dusted her hands on her apron, and walked toward Reed. He opened the gate as she approached, then closed it after her. She turned and stood beside him, looking back at Miss Lavender, who rubbed an apparent itch against one of the slats in the fence, then ambled over to the trough.

“You don’t know much about pigs, do you?”

“Until now, our only association was at the breakfast table.”

She smiled. “I don’t suppose there were many opportunities to come face-to-face with a pig in Boston.”

He thought about some of the fat-faced matrons in his mother’s study group, with their beefy jowls and small eyes. “Not the four-legged kind.”

She didn’t say anything, but when he looked at her, humor danced in her lovely eyes. After a few seconds of silence, she asked, “Did you like Boston?”

“When I was there, I liked it very much. Even now, there are many things I miss about it, and an equal number of things I don’t.”

“I would not like living that kind of a life, I think.”

“You prefer the country?”

“I know I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I have learned far more from observing life in its wildest forms than I ever could from living a civilized life.”

“Its wildest forms?”

“When I first came here this was all so unfamiliar. I was accustomed to a city and being surrounded by people. All of a sudden I found myself in the middle of nowhere, living with two old women I did not know. I felt lost and so terribly lonely. I became a wanderer, a nomadic child who preferred a grassy prairie, hollowed-out trees, and rain-washed ravines to hard, polished floors and creaking beds surrounded by four confining walls. I took long walks and spent hours lying on my back in the tall, wind-swept grass, watching the clouds move overhead, listening to the wind as it whispered in my ear. Rummaging along the creek, I unearthed arrowheads and bits of pottery, and I learned I was not alone, that there had been others wandering here before me. In the summer I would stand outside and watch violent thunderstorms move across the prairie, nurtured by thunder and lightning that taught me death can come unexpectedly and that life can pass all too quickly.”

“Nature was your schoolroom.”

“Yes, it was, and it was there that I learned from the animals I came in contact with. Not the house-broken pets, or the gentle and tamed farm stock, but the wild, misunderstood creatures that I identified with—deer, pronghorn, coyotes, prairie dogs, the gray wolf. Over and over I observed their traits, their character—the playful nature, the steadfast devotion, and the keen instinct. I saw how they could be themselves, independent and aloof, yet dependent upon one another for survival and protection, how they were inquisitive and cautious, curious yet wary. Rubbing a porcupine in the wrong direction and getting quills in my hand taught me there is a right way and a wrong way. Red ants taught me the virtue of hard work; honeybees, its reward. From prairie dogs I learned indulgence and the joy of lying in the sun. Birth taught me faith; death, that life should have a purpose. The wobbly-legged newborn who kept on trying to stand, in spite of repeated failure, taught me determination. I saw from their example how to rely on intuition, to be fiercely protective of the young, to be devoted to one’s mate and one’s community.”

“The kind of things you cannot get from the civilized world.”

She paused and stared beyond the pigsty. He saw that she was gazing at the fields where stacks of hay rose up like so many grassy pyramids, but he said nothing, not wanting to break her reverie.

“You can’t reproach a hayfield for partiality, or a pig for being conniving. You cannot challenge the beliefs of a sunflower, or the convictions of a summer storm. I am surrounded by Nature’s infinite patience, her impassioned fury, and I have learned to speak many of her languages, to find pleasure in pathless fields, to delight in isolation. The peace of nature and the innocence of creatures reaches out to me. There is a security here, a sense of belonging, a soothing salve for the troubled mind, a sanctity in knowing we dwell in God’s finest work of art.” She turned to look at him. “Does any of this make sense to you?”

“All of it makes sense. You have a rare gift of understanding, an even rarer gift of expression. You don’t just say words. You convey feelings. There is rhythm and motion in everything you say. It’s as if I can hear the voices of another level of being calling out. You don’t just love the country. You are part of it.”