Into the Light (23 page)

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.” She couldn’t look at him, stayed just in side the door, studying the scuffed wood along the bottom edge of the counter.

“Did you write up a review of
Shenandoah
yet? We need it today.”

“I can’t,” she whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“I can’t. I don’t remember anything about it.” She dared a quick glance to see how he took her confession, but his head was turned.

He rose without looking at her. “That’s all right. I’ll do it then.” He paused in the doorway to the back room. “It’s only three days until you’re due to visit your family, and you must have shopping and packing to do. We can manage here without you. Take the time off.”

Her fear had been a knowing look, an attempt to talk about the exposed secret lying ugly between them. She shouldn’t have even worried. He had guessed before, suspected. Now that he knew, he didn’t want anything to do with her. Hadn’t he even said something at the doctor’s about her problem?

She left as quietly as she’d come, eyes wet, throat tight.

T
HE STORM HADN’T
left enough snow to change out buggy wheels for sleigh runners. Deborah squeezed into the back seat next to Miriam and Joseph with no more than a nod and polite greeting. Bundled in hats and scarves, coats and shawls, gloves and muffs, boots over layers of wool stockings, they all pulled buffalo robes across their laps and high under their arms for extra protection.

In the driver’s seat, William waited until everyone had settled in before sending the horses forward. Bright sun sparkled on ice crystals in the snow, iron-shod hooves rang on frozen ground, and the leather hood overhead whooshed softly as the wind filled it.

Beside William, Judith held Billy in her lap. Emmy snuggled in between her mother and father. As the miles passed, Judith sang to the children, told them stories, and occasionally exchanged a long look with her husband that brought heat to Deborah’s cheeks and made her stare sideways at the flat, snow covered land passing by.

No one sang in the back seat. Miriam and Joseph sat silent, their faces blank. Deborah had spoken only a few polite words to her youngest sister since coming to town to work at the paper, but she sensed emotions swirling around the young couple that had nothing to do with her. Burrowing deeper in the layers of protection against the cold, she turned to her own unhappy thoughts.

Where would Trey spend Christmas? With Jamie Lenahan? Lenahan had family in Hubbell. Would they invite an outsider, someone of a different religion, to spend a holy day with them? Would Lenahan’s family be full of matchmakers like her own? They wouldn’t invite some unmarried Irish girl to meet Trey when he wasn’t Catholic, would they? Her cold hands turned colder at the thought.

He didn’t want her at the paper any more, and she didn’t want to be there, but she had to go back. She had an agreement with the men watching Trey, and even if he no longer wanted even friendship, how could she hide at the farm when Alice would hire more men to arrange accidents and make attacks?

No matter how he felt, she still.... Her mind shied away from the admission, then she faced it. Loved him. Fool that she was, she loved him.

The trip dragged on forever. The children fussed, cried, slept, woke, and did it all again. Deborah never wailed along with them, but it was a close run thing.

F
EWER SUTTONS HAD
crowded around the table for the Christmas dinners of Deborah’s childhood, but the happy chatter, chink of forks on Aunt Em’s best china, and scent of roasted goose was the same.

Deborah savored her food, listening to conversations at both ends of the table. Thoughts of Trey Van Cleve were not going to spoil this rare time with the whole family home. The subjects were familiar, births and deaths, marriages and children. Only the names changed as the years passed.

When Judith mentioned the return trip home, Deborah lost interest in the other talk and paid attention.

“We do need to be back in town before the New Year,” Judith said. “After all, William’s family likes to see the children too, and if predictions of the end of the world at midnight on the thirty-first are true, it will be their last chance.”

“Oh, bosh,” Aunt Em said as everyone laughed. “Someone probably predicted the end of the world every century since they started counting. I understand how the Daltons feel, but I almost hope we get a storm, and you have to stay with us longer.”

No almost to it, Deborah thought. Aunt Em would keep them all forever if she could.

“I want to stay,” four-year-old Emmy piped up. “I don’t want to go in the buggy ever again.”

Judith tugged on one of her daughter’s braids. “It’s the only way home, and you want to go home and see your Grandma Dalton, don’t you?”

“It won’t be many years before there are quicker ways,” William said. “Motor cars are going to replace horses before Emmy’s grown.”

Sounds of disagreement and disbelief came from all around the table.

“William is right,” Deborah said. “I read about an electric automobile that won a race by going fifty miles in two hours last year. Can you imagine? We’re going to see them on the streets in town soon. Tr- Mr. Van Cleve’s friend Mr. Lenahan is going to sell them.”

“Oh, do tell us about your
employer’s
friend,
Mr
. Lenahan, Deborah. I’m sure we’d all love to spend Christmas dinner hearing about the doings of some Eye-riish laborer who’s gotten above himself.”

A sneer distorted Miriam’s usually lovely face. Deborah regarded her sister as much with sorrow as anger, aware of the hush that had fallen over the table. Setting her napkin beside her plate, she got to her feet.

“I know the fact that you have grown into a vain, selfish shrew is as much my fault as anyone at this table. We spoiled you. I spoiled you. But I am telling you right now, if you ever sneer at me like that again, if you ever say the word Irish like that again in my presence, I am going to haul off and slap you silly. I’m sure you think I’m going to run out of here now, but you’re wrong. I’m walking.”

Outside in the yard, Deborah drew in great breaths of clean, cold air, noting the way the sky had darkened and the wind picked up. An occasional fat snowflake drifted by. She crossed her arms over her chest and shivered.

“Here. Put this on.”

Judith had brought a coat and scarf. Deborah thrust her arms in the coat sleeves and buttoned up gratefully.

“After your dignified departure, our little sister tried for sympathy, and when she didn’t get it, ran upstairs, crying prettily every step of the way. Don’t you dare apologize to her. Every one of us wanted to say what you did.”

“I’m not going to apologize. Joseph will make her feel better.”

“Joseph is still at the table eating. Red-faced and grinding more than chewing, but at the table.”

“But he’s her husband. He should go to her.”

Judith made a sound of disagreement. “That’s not how it works. Being pronounced man and wife doesn’t mean pretending your beloved is always right. Too much of this behavior, and our sister may find in spite of all the poetry about love everlasting, love isn’t forever if you don’t nurture it. He shouldn’t have married her. She was too young.”

“You were younger when you married William.”

Judith gave her a knowing look. “You and I were always older than our years. We felt sorry for Miriam because she never knew Mama and was orphaned so young, but you and I are the ones who lived through bad times, aren’t we?”

Deborah pulled up her coat collar and wrapped the scarf tighter. “I never knew you felt like that. You were always so happy.”

“I am happy, but I remember being afraid. I remember crying and hearing you cry. We’re lucky we had Aunt Em and Uncle Jason, but that doesn’t mean it was easy.”

“No,” Deborah whispered. “It wasn’t easy.”

“I don’t know what you and Trey quarreled about, but you need to fix it. You’ve been happy these last months, and now you’re like you used to be. Don’t be as foolish as Miriam and throw it away, fix it.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Kiss him a few times, tell him you’re sorry, and promise not to do it again.”

“Judith!”

“I mean it. You do what I say, or I’ll slap you silly.”

Judith mimed a slap to Deborah’s face. Deborah made a fist and swung at air. Giggling like girls over their own nonsense, they walked back to the house arm in arm.

W
IND ROARING AROUND
the eaves woke Deborah in the dark of early morning the third day after Christmas. Lying there listening, she picked out the sound of thousands of icy pellets bouncing off the glass of the bedroom window. She snuggled deeper under her covers. Judith would be disappointed they couldn’t travel back to town today. Aunt Em wouldn’t even try to hide her delight.

Deborah’s own feelings were mixed. Hiding here at the farm for the rest of her life was no longer a possibility. She wanted — more. What that meant wasn’t clear in her mind, but she knew she would have to face Trey and find out.

Dawn never came that morning or the next or the next. The world didn’t end at midnight on the thirty-first, but the blizzard finally did.

“I don’t suppose they had fireworks and a band in town at midnight,” Aunt Em said, hanging more wet woolen clothes in front of the stove to dry. “It’s too bad because I wanted to read how you’d describe it all in the paper.”

“Mr. Van Cleve is a good writer. He’ll describe whatever celebrations they managed to have so well you’ll think you were there.”

“Ha,” Judith said. “I wish we had that paper right now. We could use more newspaper to stuff around the window sills. The snow is leaking in around this one again already.”

“Just be glad you’re not out there struggling to feed horses like the men. I’d have frozen stiff in that drift out there this morning on the way to the hen house if Uncle Jason and William hadn’t pulled me out, and trousers under my skirt didn’t keep me warm. They just soaked through and weighed me down more.”

“You’re staying inside with the rest of us until the paths they shovel stay open. The wind will die down by the time night falls.”

Maybe so, but Deborah knew it would be at least another day before her uncles could haul out the prow-shaped wood plow, hitch up the draft horses, and break through to the road. In the meantime all she could do was help weather the aftermath of the storm and daydream about what it would be like to follow Judith’s orders and kiss Trey a few times.

D
EBORAH DID NOT
creep back to the
Herald
’s office this time, but walked in as if everything was as it used to be. Wishing did not make it so.

The desk sat empty, the typewriter covered. Trey appeared in the doorway from the back room. Even though the tan printer’s smock emphasized the fading yellow bruises around both eyes, no man had ever looked so handsome — or so stern.

“Why are you here?” he said.

“To start work again, of course. I couldn’t get back sooner, but here I am, and I have an idea....”

“You’re not working here any more. You need to leave.”

She had already removed her gloves. Her fingers trembled on the buttons of her coat, and she stopped unbuttoning. “You’re dismissing me because I couldn’t get back when I said I would?”

“No, that’s not....”

“Because I didn’t write a review of the play on time?”

“No, I don’t want....”

“Because I shouted at you at the doctor’s?”

“No, listen to me. You can’t....”

“Because of what you know about me now?”

“No! Because I don’t want you hurt the next time someone comes after me with a pipe.”

That was it? All the terrible things she’d imagined, and that was it? “You let me believe.... The way you behaved before I left.... Do you have any idea how much that hurt?”

“I’m sorry, but keeping you out of danger is all that matters. Don’t make me hurt you again. Don’t let me hurt you. Go home and stay there.”

Deborah undid the rest of the buttons, took off her coat, and hung it beside her heavy wool scarf. She walked around the counter and stood in front of him. “No one is trying to kill me. I will not go away. I will not stay away, and you had better promise me you won’t ever do anything like that to me again.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them looking more determined than ever. “Do you want me to go talk to your family and ask them to keep you away?”

“If you do, I’ll go talk to yours and ask them to....” The problem with her threat was she didn’t have the foggiest idea what she could request of anyone in his family.

“Stay away from my family! My father could be dangerous.”

“Stay away from mine. Caleb
is
dangerous.”

She met his eyes steadily, not giving an inch.

“Isn’t it time, you got upset and escaped?” he said finally.

“No.”

“Just like that? ‘No.’”

“No.”

The corner of his lip curled up, just a little, but he didn’t give in. “You’re wasting your time trying to threaten me with Caleb,” he said. “I have a lady friend who hired two ex-prizefighters to watch over me.”

“That rotten traitor. Mr. Lenahan told you!”

“No one told me. I had a feeling someone was following me, so I set a trap, doubled back through the hotel one morning, and cornered Maguire. He confessed.”

“And I suppose you made them stop.”

“I did. I paid them a bonus and sent them off with best wishes. I’ll reimburse you.”

“I don’t want reimbursement. I want you to, to....”

“Move to Alaska?”

“Yes.”

His expression sobered. “I’ve thought about it, you know. I could leave Hubbell again. But I can’t leave you.”

Silence stretched between them, and Deborah thought she could feel the image of his face as it looked at that moment etching into her memory forever.

“Marry me, and we’ll leave here together,” he said, his voice soft.

Her vision wavered, her knees threatened to buckle. Pressing both hands to her rib cage she made it to the desk and the chair without collapsing. So often she had been unable to meet his eyes. Now she could not look away. “You know I can’t.”