A Dream to Call My Own (8 page)

CHAPTER NINE

“I’m glad you could stay and talk with me a bit while Dave helps his dad,” Patience told Lacy. She poured more tea into Lacy’s cup and smiled. “Tell me all about the wedding plans.” She sat opposite Lacy and looked at her in expectation.

Lacy feigned interest in the tea and sampled it. “This is very good. Thank you.” She tasted the steaming liquid again and added, “Gwen will expect me to get back before four with the milk and eggs. The stage is due in at six.”

“I completely understand.” Patience poured cream into her tea and beamed at Lacy. “I can hardly believe you’re to become my daughter. What a blessing that will be. A mother always worries about the wife her son will take, but in your case, I haven’t a single concern.”

“Maybe you should have,” Lacy replied. She frowned and reached for a cookie.

“Why do you say that?” Patience asked softly.

“I suppose because I’ve never been good at anything in my life, and I certainly have no reason to believe marriage will be any different. I fail at most everything, and . . . and I think that’s something you should know.”

Patience laughed. “Oh, my dear, we all feel that we fail at one time or another.”

Lacy shook her head vehemently. “I fail all the time. I didn’t even do well in school. Any success has been nothing more than pure luck.”

“I don’t believe in luck, Lacy.”

“To be honest, neither do I.” She shrugged. “If I did, I’d have to confess that I possess absolutely none.”

Patience put down her cup and eyed Lacy with a compassionate yet firm look. “You might as well continue your confession. I have a feeling there is a great deal more to be said that you are keeping hidden inside.”

“What good is confession? It won’t change anything.”

“Maybe not, but on the other hand, it might.” Patience smiled. “Lacy, I’ve come to care for you as a daughter even before you agreed to marry Dave. I want us to be close—to feel free to discuss anything that is on our hearts.”

Lacy swallowed the cookie without even tasting it, then chased it down with a liberal gulp of the tea. What could she possibly say to Patience Shepard that would make sense? She couldn’t even sort through the matter herself. How could she hope that others could reason through the mire?

Lacy put down the cup and saucer and squared her shoulders. “I’m a misfit.”

Patience’s eyes lit up in delight. “Aren’t we all?”

“No, you don’t understand. All of my life, I’ve been the outcast. I’ve tried to do the right thing—be the perfect young lady as my sisters were—but I can’t be that person. I’m not like them.”

“But that doesn’t mean you aren’t acceptable and lovely in your own way.”

Lacy thought back on all the reprimands from teachers and relatives to sit up straight, walk like a lady instead of a horse, speak softly, and hold her temper in check. When other girls wanted to play with their dolls, Lacy had wanted to ride horses, and when those same young ladies delighted in getting their first grown-up gown, Lacy shamed her sisters by wearing boys’ trousers.

But not only had she been a misfit, she often made the wrong choices. If she didn’t fail outright at a task, she often made such a mess of it that someone else had to help straighten out the situation.

“When I was a young girl,” Lacy began, “I remember my mother saying that I was the son my father had always wanted. I was such a tomboy and didn’t like the same things my sisters enjoyed.”

Patience nodded. “I can well imagine.”

“The reason I was such a good rider was that I was always pestering my father to teach me about the horses. He would take me riding with him and show me all sorts of things—how to track, how to shoot, how to clean game. My mother and sisters were mortified when I’d come home bloody and caked in dirt, but I loved it. I didn’t even care that the other children made fun of me.”

“You certainly wouldn’t have been made fun of here,” Patience assured her. “Out here, you have to be able to fend for yourself whether you are a girl or a boy. Jerry taught our girls how to work right alongside their brother. He said it was important that they be able to defend their home or provide for it, should the need arise.”

“That’s how it was when we finally moved to Texas,” Lacy admitted. “I thought I would finally be able to live the life I enjoyed. We were so isolated that no one cared that I dressed like a boy. My mother was greatly relieved that she could send her five-year-old daughter out to kill a chicken for supper. It was a job no one else wanted.”

“But then she died,” Patience offered, as if knowing the subject would be hard for Lacy to bring up.

Lacy met the woman’s eyes. “Yes. She died and we moved yet again, and my grandmother was appalled that I was such a wild creature. She immediately set to work trying to change me, and all the while, I lived with the growing guilt that I had failed my mother. And because of that, she died.”

Lacy got up and walked to the fireplace. She stared into the hearth as if a fire were blazing there. “When my grandmother would point out my flaws and faults, I felt that she really wanted to tell me that I’d killed my mother.”

“That would have been not only cruel but wrong,” Patience said with such tenderness in her voice that Lacy couldn’t help but turn. “You weren’t to blame, Lacy.”

“I can reason that now, but I don’t believe it. I failed to find our father, and our mother died because she didn’t have adequate help.”

“As I understand it, your mother bled to death while trying to give birth. When that happens, there is very little anyone can do. Even a doctor would tell you it would take a miracle to save a woman in such a situation.”

Lacy considered this a moment, believing in her heart that Patience wouldn’t knowingly lie to her. Then Lacy looked away again.

“I don’t think I can marry Dave.”

“But why?”

She didn’t bother to look at Patience. Lacy knew she’d see a grief-stricken expression that would pierce her heart and remind her again of failure. “He deserves someone better.”

Patience laughed, but it sounded forced. “Lacy, you silly goose. Do you love my son?”

Lacy pondered the question for a moment. “Oh, Patience, I don’t honestly know. I’ve asked myself that question over and over. I’m not sure what it really means to love someone that way.” She stepped back to where they’d been sitting and gripped the back of the chair she’d once occupied. “I do know that I care enough about him to not wish someone like me on him.”

Dave’s mother lowered her face and shook her head. “Lacy, I know that Dave loves you with all of his heart, and he’s never wished to marry anyone else.”

“Patience, he doesn’t really know me. No one does. I’m not like Beth or Gwen. I’m driven to do things my sisters would never consider. I want a life that is nothing like the one they’ve dreamed of.”

“And what would that life look like?” Patience asked.

Lacy shrugged. “It wouldn’t look like this,” she said, waving her arm across the room. “I hardly see myself having tea parties and crocheting doilies for the backs of my chairs. Do you know I actually envy the men out there, panning for gold in my backyard? I love the wilderness and animals—horses, in particular. I’m not at all conventional. I’d just as soon drive a stage as bake in the kitchen. I hate household chores and would much rather be mucking a stall.”

Patience laughed. “But a good farm or ranch wife needs to be able to do that, as well.”

“I suppose, but . . .” Lacy paused and felt her cheeks grow hot. “Dave wants a wife he can be . . . well, loved by. He’ll want children and a home. I just don’t know if I’m cut out to be that woman. If I’m not better at being a wife and mother than I’ve been as a daughter and sister, then we’ll be doomed before we even get started.”

Patience got to her feet and came to where Lacy stood. She took hold of Lacy’s shoulders. “Do you not want to be a wife and mother?”

Lacy sighed. “I want it, but at the same time I’m terrified of it.”

Patience nodded. “I think most everything you’ve said here today speaks of your deep fears of disappointing someone—of not being all that they need. But, Lacy, marriage can’t work that way. People put expectations on one another, and they are always disappointed. It’s best to go into a marriage not expecting anything but honesty and love. Build the rest together, and trust God to show you the way.”

“But I don’t even know if God hears me anymore. I think He was probably the first one I failed.”

“We all fail God,” Patience replied. “Remember, the Bible says we’ve all sinned and fallen short. There is no perfect person walking the earth, so stop trying to suggest that you need to be without fault. So you’ve failed at various things; so have I. I feel like I failed with my daughters. They would much rather live back East with their grandparents than endure another moment here. I can’t help but feel that it has as much to do with me as with Montana.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Lacy said. “You’ve always seemed like such a good mother to me.”

“And you seem like a good sister and a fine young woman. Yet you stand here telling me you are neither.” She reached up and brushed back some loose strands of hair. “Lacy, you are much too hard on yourself. Not even God judges you as harshly as you judge yourself. He certainly doesn’t expect the perfection you’ve come to expect of yourself. He only asks for you to seek and trust Him. He’s the only perfect one in this world.”

“I try to turn to Him, but I never seem to get things quite right. Gwen and Beth are both such admirable women of God. They never seem to question Him.”

Patience smiled. “I know for a fact they have both questioned God at various times. What’s important is that you fix your eyes on Him and not them. You have your own path and they have theirs.”

“But what if I’m not enough . . . for Dave?” Lacy felt tears well in her eyes. “I don’t want to make him miserable, and I certainly don’t want him to hate me.”

“I don’t think that’s even possible,” Patience declared, “but my advice to you is to be honest and talk to him. He’s a good man, Lacy. He won’t take advantage of your doubts.”

“It’s not merely doubt,” Lacy argued. “I have failed too many people to mark it off to doubt alone.”

“You may have convinced yourself that you’ve failed everyone, but that doesn’t mean you have.”

Lacy shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Saying a thing doesn’t make it so.” Patience smiled and added, “No matter how many times you say it. On the other hand, if you choose to believe something for long enough, it has a way of altering your life. Consider Gwen and how she believed herself cursed. Do you see what I’m saying?”

The room closed in around them. Lacy felt a sense of confusion that only seemed to complicate her long-felt beliefs. “I don’t know.”

Patience put her arm around Lacy and led her back to the chair. “Sit. You look as though you might faint.”

Lacy did as she was told. She closed her eyes and settled back into the chair. “I used to think that Gwen was silly for her beliefs. Beth and I told her that such things were nonsense.”

“And what did she say?”

Looking up, Lacy drew a deep breath. “She said we didn’t understand. She said she’d made bad choices and that she was punished because of that.”

“And after that did you believe her? Did you think she was cursed?”

“No, but I had to admit strange things did happen. A lot of folks did die around us.”

Patience knelt beside Lacy. “That’s not surprising. People die, you know.” She gently took hold of Lacy’s hands. “Lacy, do you blame Gwen for Harvey’s death?”

“Of course not.” Lacy straightened. “He had the measles.”

“I know, but for a long time Gwen blamed herself and believed Harvey had died because of her curse.”

“But it wasn’t true.”

“So was it true that she was to blame for your mother’s death?”

Lacy stiffened and shook her head. “No, that was my fault.”

“Your fault that your mother lost too much blood to live?”

“But if I’d been able to find Pa, he would have known what to do.”

“No, Lacy. He wouldn’t have. Sometimes these things happen. It’s just like with Gwen looking for people to die around her, because some foolish woman told her that death would be her constant companion. You’re looking to fail because you believe that’s all you’re capable of.”

“But even you said we all fail.”

A smile crossed Patience’s lips. “And so we do. But when that is all we can think of—all that we focus on—we see failure in everything we do.”

Lacy thought back through her life and all of the times she’d disappointed those around her. “But I’ve made so many mistakes. It wasn’t just that I didn’t find Pa in time to save my mother; I’ve never acted in the way folks wanted. I’ve never been a proper lady like my sisters. My grandmother used to rant at me all the time. She would berate my father for letting me wear britches and ride astride.”

She closed her eyes and could see her grandmother’s disapproving scowl as she waggled her finger at Lacy.
“Mark my
words, no man is going to want a hoyden for a wife,”
she’d told Lacy on more than one occasion.

“And it wasn’t just my grandmother. Every woman in my life disapproved. I disappointed them all.” She opened her eyes and met Patience’s observant gaze. “Dave doesn’t approve of me, either. He lets me know all the time that I need to act more ladylike.”

Patience laughed. “Dave realizes you are every inch a lady. That’s why sparks fly between you! He knows that the things you do—the work and manner in which you dress—are all part and parcel to being a woman living on the frontier.”

“I can’t be a wife. I know nothing of how to be one. I can only cook moderately. I can mend things pretty well, but my sewing is otherwise atrocious. I don’t dance very well at all, and I certainly can’t sing.”

Patience got to her feet and put her hands on her hips. “Lacy Gallatin, you have many talents that are far more useful to a man living in this territory. You ride and shoot, you can set up a camp and hunt down food if necessary. Your family will never go hungry, even if the meal is poorly prepared.” She smiled. “A woman on the frontier has to be able to work hard at her husband’s side. Dancing and singing are hardly important when there’s a blizzard blowing in and your best breeders decide to start dropping their calves early.”