Vows (31 page)

 
He kept his tone intentionally humoring. "It's too late now, I already caught you at it. So you might as well talk."

 
She shook her head stubbornly, but dropped her mouth against a handkerchief while her shoulders shook. He stared at her dress, buttoned up the back, drawn tight across her shoulder blades, at the prim white collar and the disheveled black hairs on her nape. He fought the inclination to spin the chair around and pull her into his arms, hold her fast, and let her cry against him. Instead he asked, "Do you want me to go get Charles?"

 
She shook her head vehemently but continued sobbing into the hanky, her elbows splayed on the desktop.

 
He stood, disarmed, wondering what to do while she doubled forward, burying her face in an arm, sobbing so hard her ribs lifted. He felt his own chest tighten and a lump form in his throat. What should he do? Mercy, what should he do? He watched until he felt like bawling himself, then dropped to a squat, swinging her chair to face him. "Hey," he urged gently, "turn around here." Her skirt brushed his knees but she refused to lift her face from the hanky, abashed at breaking down before him. "You can talk to me, you know."

 
She shook her head fervidly, releasing a series of muffled sobs. "Just g—go away. I don't w—want you to see me like this."

 
"Emily, what is it? Something with Charles?"

 
She shook her head till a hairpin fell, bouncing off his knee to the floor.

 
He picked it up and folded it tightly into his palm while studying the part in her hair, only inches from his nose. "Me? Did I do something again?"

 
Another passionate shake.

 
"Your little brother? Tarsy? Your father? What?"

 
"It's my mother." The words, distorted by the handkerchief and her plugged nose, sounded like
by buther
. Her devastated eyes appeared above the limp white cotton, which she pressed against her nose. "Oh Tom"—
Tob
, he heard—"it's so hard to watch her die."

 
A bolt of emotion slammed through him at her pitiful plea and her unconscious and distorted use of his name. It took a superhuman effort to hunker before her and not reach, not touch.

 
"She's worse?"

 
Emily nodded, dropping her gaze while gustily blowing her nose. When she finally rested her hands in her lap, her nose was red and raw. "I took care of her today while Fannie went off b—by herself for a wh—while," she explained choppily, the words broken by residual sobs. "Poor F—Fannie, she's with her all day long. I guess I never r—realized before what a terrible task we gave her, seeing after Mother during these last weeks. But today Fannie asked me if I could—could—" Emily paused, battling a fresh onslaught of emotion. "Could find something to help her bedsores, and I—" Trying her utmost to complete her recital without another breakdown, Emily lifted brimming eyes to the top of the doorway. "I saw … them."

 
She blinked: her eyes remained shut while she pulled in an immense breath, then opened them once more and struggled on. "Fannie gives Mother her baths and changes her clothes and her bedding. I hadn't realized how b—bad her bedsores were till today. And she's so … s—skinny … there's n—nothing left of her. She c—can't even turn over by herself. P—Papa has to do it for her. But wherever he touches her it leaves a bl—black-and-blue mark." Her tears built again, in spite of her valiant effort to contain them.

 
On his knees before her, Tom watched helplessly as she again wept brokenly into her hands, her entire frame shaking.
Damn you, Charles, where are you? She needs you!
His heart swelled while he watched, torn and miserable.
Aw, tomboy, don’t cry … don't cry.

 
But she did, torturously, trying to hold the sound within, only to have it escape her throat as a faint, pitiful mewling. He felt the pressure in his own throat and knew he must either touch her or shatter.

 
"Emily, hush, now … here…" Still kneeling, he drew her to him, and she came limply, sliding off the chair without resistance. He folded her tenderly in his arms and held her, kneeling on the bumpy concrete floor of the cluttered little office. She wept on jerkily, limp against him, her arms resting loosely up his back while her sobs beat against his chest.

 
"Oh, Toooom…" she wailed dismally.

 
He cupped her head and drew her face hard against his throat, while her tears seeped through his shirtfront and wet his skin. She wept to near-exhaustion, then rested weakly against him.

 
He dropped his cheek against her hair, wishing he were wise and clever with words and could voice the consolation he felt in his heart. Instead he could only cradle her and offer silence.

 
In time her breathing evened and she managed to offer chokily, "I'm sorry."

 
"Don't be sorry," he chided gently. "If you didn't love her you wouldn't feel so grieved."

 
He felt her breasts heave in a great shaky sigh as she dried the last of her tears, still lying with her cheek on his chest, showing little inclination to leave. He fixed his gaze on a yellowed calendar hanging above the desk and lightly stroked the back of her neck.

 
Minutes passed with each of them dwelling upon private thoughts. At last Emily asked tiredly, "Why can't she just die, Tom?"

 
He heard both guilt and sincerity in her question and understood how painful it must have been for her to ask it. He rubbed her back and kissed her hair. "I don't know, Emily."

 
For long moments they abided so, pressed close together, joined by her grief and his distress at being unable to deliver her from it. In a voice soft with understanding he gave her the only ease he knew. "But you mustn't feel guilty for wishing she would," he said.

 
He knew by her stillness that the words had been what she'd needed: an absolution.

 
Her weeping had ended minutes ago, but they stole more precious time until—as one—they realized they had remained in each other's arms too long. At some point while she rested against him they had crossed the fine line between desolation and yearning.

 
He drew back, pressing her away by both arms, letting his hands linger, then dropping them reluctantly to his sides. He watched her cheeks heat and read in her blush the thousand shamefaced wishes she, too, had allowed to flee through her mind. But Charles materialized in spirit, and Emily stared at a button on Tom's flannel jacket while he studied her averted face and sat back on his heels to put more distance between them.

 
"So…" he managed shakily, the word trembling between them like a shot bird waiting to plummet. "Are you feeling better now?"

 
She nodded and glanced up cautiously. "Yes."

 
He studied her, shaken and uncertain. If she were to move—the subtlest shift—she would be in his embrace again, and this time he'd give her far more than consolation. For a moment he watched temptation dull her eyes, but he produced a tight laugh and a dubious grin. "Well, at least we got you to stop crying."

 
She covered her cheeks and gingerly touched her lower eyelids. "I probably look awful."

 
"Yeah, pretty awful," he offered with a false chuckle, watching her test her upper eyelids, which looked bruised and swollen.

 
"Oh, my eyes hurt," she admitted, dropping her hands and letting him see.

 
They were indeed swollen and red, and her hair was rubbed from its knot, her cheeks blotchy, and her lips swollen; but he wanted to kiss them and her poor red-rimmed eyes, and her throat and her breast, and say, forget Charles, forget Tarsy, forget your mother and let me make you happy.

 
Instead he got a grip on his inclinations and took her hands, drawing her to her feet, then stepping back. "So … can I walk you home?"

 
Her eyes said yes, but her voice said, "No, I came down here to get some lanolin for Mother's bedsores." She gestured toward the muddle of papers and the open book on the desk where both of them knew perfectly well she kept no lanolin. "I … I have to look for it, so you go on."

 
He glanced from the desk to her. "You're sure you'll be all right?"

 
"Yes, thank you. I'll be fine."

 
The room seemed combustible with suppressed emotions while neither of them moved.

 
"Well, good night, then."

 
"Good night."

 
I should have kissed you when I had the chance.

 
As he backed toward the door her words stopped him again. "Tom … thank you. I needed somebody very badly tonight."

 
He nodded, gulped, and stalked out before he could dishonor himself and her and Charles.

Chapter 11

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O
ctober passed and Tom took up residence in his house. It was livable, but bare. The walls were clean and white but begged for wallpaper and pictures, the things a woman was so much more adept at choosing than a man. The windows, with the exception of those in the one bedroom Tom used, remained unadorned. Since he spent most of his time in other places, the livability of his home, for the moment, mattered little. He had an iron bed, a heater stove for the parlor, a cookstove for the kitchen, and one overstuffed chair. Besides these few purchased furnishings he made do with a few empty nail kegs, a crude homemade table, two long benches, and a woodbox. From Loucks he had bought necessities only: bedding, lanterns, wash basin, a water pail, dipper, teakettle, frying pan, and coffeepot. He stored his few groceries—eggs, coffee, and lard—on the kitchen floor in an empty wooden crate from rifle shells.

 
The first time Tarsy came in, she glanced around and her face flattened in disappointment. "You mean this is
all
you're going to put in here?"

 
"For now. I'll get more when the oxcarts start moving again in the spring."

 
"But this kitchen. It's … it's bare and awful."

 
"It needs a woman's touch, I'll grant you that. But it serves my needs. I'm at the livery barn most of the time anyway."

 
"But you don't even have dishes! What do you eat on?"

 
"I eat most of my meals at the hotel. Sometimes I fry an egg here for breakfast, but eggs aren't much good without bread. Do you know anybody I could buy bread from?" Tarsy, he could see, was dismayed by his Spartan furnishings.

 
On a Saturday night in late November he was sitting in his only chair with his stocking feet resting on a nail keg, feeling somewhat dismayed himself. The place felt dismal. He had closed the parlor and stairwell doors, so the kitchen was warm, but too silent and stark with the curtainless windows black as slates and the ghostly white walls broken only by the stovepipe in one corner. If he were at the stable he'd be polishing tack. If he were at home in Springfield, in his mother's kitchen, he'd be prowling for food. If he were with his friends he'd be at a house party, but he'd begged off again, because Emily would be there with Charles. Tarsy had badgered and begged him to change his mind, then stormed off declaring, "All right, then, stay home! But don't expect me to!" So here he sat, staring at the red toes of his gray socks, listening to the silence and wondering how to fill his evening, thinking about Emily Walcott and how the two of them had been avoiding each other for weeks.

 
Charles had questioned him about why he never came to the parties anymore and he'd concocted the excuse that Tarsy was becoming too possessive and he wasn't sure what he wanted to do about her, which wasn't far from the truth. She was displaying a sudden, alarming nesting instinct. She'd even started baking him bread (heavy and coarse as horse feed, though he thanked and praised her first attempts at domesticity) and showing up at his door uninvited in the evenings; and dropping hints about how she'd love to live anywhere but with her parents; and asking Tom conversationally if he ever wanted to have a family.

 
He let his head fall back against the overstuffed chair and closed his eyes, wishing he loved Tarsy. But not once had he felt for her the swell of protectiveness and yearning that had overcome him the day Emily Walcott had cried and confided in him. He wondered how Emily was holding up. He knew from Charles that Mrs. Walcott was worse than ever, clinging to life though Dr. Steele had declared weeks ago there was nothing more he could do for her.

 
In his silent house Tom rolled his face toward the window, wishing he were with Emily and the others. It was a skating party tonight, the first of the year down on Little Goose Creek, and afterwards the group would move to Mary Ess's house for hot punch and cookies … and undoubtedly those damned parlor games. No, best he'd stayed away, after all.