Lorraine Heath (16 page)

“You can blink,” he said.

“Oh.” She released a light laugh. “I don’t even think I was breathing. I don’t know why I’m so nervous.”

“Maybe because I have to watch you so hard.” He tapped the silhouette of Kirk’s head. “Just look at this and ignore me.”

“Ignoring you is what I do best.”

She tilted her chin and focused her gaze on the stone. Clay took his own sweet time in
not
ignoring her. He allowed his gaze to travel freely from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. He studied every curve and line, and he wondered how he was going to concentrate on creating Meg’s silhouette when he couldn’t keep his mind focused on the task. It kept drifting away from her image cut in hard stone, and imagining her soft body against his palms instead.

If God had given him a hunk of flesh and told him to carve it into any shape he wanted, he would have carved it so it looked exactly like Meg—with her tiny waist and her narrow hips and those small … ears.

He wiped his sweating palms on his trousers.

“Are you going to chip the stone away?” she asked as she leveled her gaze on him.

He nodded. “I’m just adjusting my thinking since I don’t have to rely on my memory.”

“Your thinking seems to be a mite slower than your memory.”

“I’ll see if I can remedy that.” He set the chisel against the stone and brought the hammer back.

“Oh my God!” Meg cried.

He jerked his attention from the stone and stared at her. She skittered to the other side of the stool and pressed her back against the stone. “It’s Tom Graham.”

Clay glanced through the open door and saw a man walking toward the shed.

“I can’t let him find me here,” she whispered harshly.

He hopped off the stool and set his tools aside. “I’ll see that he doesn’t come inside.” He strode past her, resisting the urge to shake her and ask what difference it would make if people discovered that she talked with him. Hell, she did more than talk with him. Sometimes, he suspected that she actually enjoyed his company. He was a damn fool.

He stepped outside and squinted against the sunlight. “Afternoon.”

Tom Graham merely nodded. Slightly older than Lucian, he had a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed as he avoided Clay’s gaze. The peach fuzz covering his chin looked as though it hadn’t been shaved in a while. Holding a large piece of wood pressed against his side, he ran his finger over the raggedly curved edge that extended past his arm.

“Lucian is out in the fields,” Clay informed him.

“Didn’t come to see Lucian.”

Clay shifted his stance. “Well, the twins aren’t about.”

“Didn’t come to see them neither.”

Clay was about to tell Tom the mule was in the field, but he narrowed his eyes and studied the wood more closely. Tom had cut it into the shape Clay disliked most. “What can I do for you then?” he asked quietly.

Tom wiped his eyes. “Our baby girl died. Dr. Martin said she was just born too soon. Weren’t nothing he could do for her. Sally ain’t stopped crying since. She wants a proper marker, but her pa says if I get one from you, he’ll break it up. Hell of a thing when a man’s hatred for another is greater than his love for his grandchild.” He wiped his eyes again. “Anyway, I been trying to make a marker, but Sally wants special words on it, and I keep running out of room. Thought maybe you might show me how to cut the words in this here piece so I don’t run out of room.”

“What words were you wanting?” Clay asked.

With a shaking hand, Tom reached into his pocket and brought out a crumpled piece of paper. “She wants ‘Here lies the sweetest bud of hope that ever to us was given.’ “ The young man’s face reddened as he met Clay’s gaze. “I don’t know where Sally got that, but it’s what she wants.”

Clay nodded solemnly. “My pa carved some headstones before he died. I think there’s one with those words on it.”

Disbelief washed over Tom’s face. “He did?” Then another somber truth hit him. “But it won’t have our little girl’s name on it. Sally named her, wants her name on the marker.”

“I can have Lucian carve the name and dates.”

“Didn’t know Lucian did any carving.”

“He can carve lettering.”

Tom rubbed his scraggly chin. “Sally’s father couldn’t object to that, could he?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Clay said.

“How much would I owe you?”

“My pa didn’t take money for headstones he made for children. We won’t either. When is she to be buried?”

“Tomorrow morning. In that little cemetery beside the church.”

“I’ll place the headstone on the church doorstep at dawn.”

Tom extended the crumpled paper toward Clay. “Here’s all the information Lucian will need.”

Clay took the paper and turned to walk back into the shed.

“I’m obliged to you,” Tom said. “You didn’t have to tell me about them headstones your pa made.”

Clay looked over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t make me much of a neighbor if I hadn’t, now would it?” Stepping into the shed, he stuffed the paper into his pocket.

“Your father made some headstones before he died?” Meg asked.

He gave her an unappreciative stare as she cowered behind the door. “What were you doing? Listening?”

Meeting his gaze, she straightened her stance and angled her chin defiantly. “Well, I had to make certain he wasn’t going to come in here.”

“I told you I’d see to it he didn’t come in here.”

“And you’re a man of your word.”

“I’d die before I went back on my word.”

Turning away from her, he walked to his table and fingered the smaller instruments. “I won’t be working on the memorial anymore today so you can go on home.”

“Where are the headstones? I don’t recall seeing any.”

“I’ve seen them and I’ll find them,” he said as he stared out the window.

“Everything is such a mess in here. Do you want me to help you find them?”

He spun around. “I want you to go home.”

She tilted her nose. “Maybe I don’t want to go home.”

“You’ve got no choice. Your condition was that you’d look over my shoulder while I worked on the memorial. Now, I’m not working on it, and I’m not inviting you to stay.”

“I didn’t realize my company offended you.”

His eyes captured hers and shackled them to the truth. “I’m not the one who was afraid Tom might see me here.”

Her cheeks flamed red as she lowered her gaze. “You have to understand that the hatred people feel toward you goes beyond your shadow to touch those around you.”

“I do understand that—only too well, as a matter of fact.”

“Then you can’t blame me for not wanting to be seen in your company.”

He turned his attention back to the fields beyond the window. “No, I don’t blame you.”

“Do you want me to let Lucian know you need him?”

“No, I’ll take care of it.”

“They’ll need me to play the organ at the memorial service. You can work on the monument tomorrow without me. I’ll try to stop by in the evening to check on your progress.”

“You do that, Mrs. Warner.”

His father never took money for children’s markers. Meg shook her head. Little wonder they still lived in a house made of rough hewn logs while other folks had bought lumber and rebuilt their homes once the sawmill had opened.

She stared past the wooden buffalo grass to the darkening sky. “A storm’s rolling in,” she said quietly. “He said it always rains when someone dies. I never noticed. He notices everything.”

“We really need to give Clayton a name,” Mama Warner said as she rocked slowly in her chair. “It takes this old brain of mine too dadgum long to figure out who you’re talking about sometimes.”

Sighing, Meg turned away from the window. “Sally Graham’s baby died.”

Mama Warner ceased her rocking. “A sad thing to lose a child. Lost four myself. You’d think it wouldn’t hurt losing a little one but the pain is as great as if they’d been with you all your life. You can’t remember what it was like before they touched your heart, and you can never forget them.”

Meg walked across the room, knelt, and took the aged hands into her own. “Do you want to hear something amazingly wonderful?” She smiled. “Before he died, his father carved a headstone for a child and inscribed the exact words on it that Sally wanted for her daughter. Can you believe that?”

Mama Warner worked her hand free of Meg’s grasp and cradled Meg’s chin within her palm. “Do you believe it, child?”

“Of course.”

The older woman smiled. “Then that’s all that matters.”

The knowledge reflected in Mama Warner’s eyes drove Meg to ride through the moonless night with the rain pelting her back. She drew her mare to a halt near the Holland homestead.

Darkness encased the house. She’d expected it to look that way, as though everyone inside were sleeping.

Markers weren’t made in the house.

She guided her mare toward the shed. Someone had lowered the shutters against the force of the wind and rain. The door was partially open, spilling pale light into the night.

Meg dismounted beneath a tree to give her horse some protection from the rain. She sloshed through the growing puddles until she reached the shed. Standing in the doorway with the rain dripping off the brim of Kirk’s hat, she learned what Mama Warner had already surmised.

Clay’s father hadn’t made any headstones before he died.

Hunched over so he was almost parallel with the tablet of stone, Clay sat on a stool at his low worktable.

As though she were a wraith, Meg moved silently toward him. The thunder rumbled. Clay stilled momentarily, then continued with his task.

With the windows closed, the room was stifling hot. No breeze blew through to cool him. The sweat drenched the back of his shirt, and he wiped his brow. He worked by the flame of a solitary lantern.

Halting at the edge of the shadows, Meg watched as he used the small chisel and hammer to create an abundance of delicate detailing on the tiny headstone. With a gentle breath, he blew the dust of his labors away from each letter and design as he completed it.

An eternity seemed to pass before he set his tools aside, rolled his shoulders, and bowed his head.

“It’s beautiful,” Meg said quietly.

“Christ!” He leapt off the stool and stared at her. “How long have you been here?”

“Long enough to know Lucian doesn’t do lettering.” She trailed her trembling fingers over the perfectly carved script. “You created a beautiful headstone for a child, and you’re giving the credit to your father and brother.”

“Then why don’t you tell everyone tomorrow so they can crush it into dust, and Tom’s wife can have something else to grieve over?”

He stepped away from her. Without thinking, she grabbed his arm. He stopped, but didn’t look at her. “Do you truly believe they’d destroy a child’s headstone if they knew you made it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The uncompromising briskness in his voice caused her to release her hold on him. He walked across the room to a corner where he kept an assortment of odds and ends. He picked up a blanket and ripped it in two. He brought one piece back to the table and wrapped it around the headstone with the same gentleness that a person may have used to wrap a blanket around an infant.

Meg walked to the hunk of granite and placed her hand on the rough stone. She could almost see Kirk in the shadows, could hear the neigh of his horse, his promises, and his courageous yell. “Do you think they’ll destroy this monument?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

Over her shoulder, she watched him smooth out the wrinkles in the blanket as though it mattered how he delivered the marker to the church. “Why don’t you think they’ll destroy this monument?”

“Because we’re not going to tell them I made it.”

She stepped away from the granite. “What?”

He turned from his task and met her gaze. “I haven’t thought through the particulars yet, but we’ll find a way to get it to town without anybody knowing. You can tell folks you had some fellow back east make it.”

“You’re not going to put your name on the backside?”

“I thought we’d agreed this memorial would reflect the names of those who died fighting for their convictions.”

“We did.”

“Well, now I didn’t die, did I?”

“And you didn’t fight either,” she reminded him.

“You think the only battles fought are done so with rifles, and the only wounds that kill draw blood. You think courage is loud, boisterous, and proud. Mrs. Warner, I don’t think you have a clue as to what this memorial truly represents.”

S
ITTING ON THE PORCH SWING,
M
EG WATCHED CLOUDS DRIFT
across the moon as her thoughts slowly wandered to Clay.

With his gaze always riveted on the granite stone that was slowly materializing into three distinct shapes, he worked from dawn until dusk with the steady determination of a man who wanted to rid himself of a despised burden. His rare smiles and occasional teasing no longer surfaced. He seldom stopped chiseling to rest, and when he did, he walked out of the shed.

Meg suspected he dunked his head in a bucket of water drawn from the well because he always returned with water dripping from his hair and his shirt collar soaked as though it alone had stood in a storm.

Each day, he acknowledged her presence with a “Morning” when she walked into the shed. At the end of the day, he stepped off the stool, walked to his low table, set his tools down, stared out the window, and spoke to her once more. “I’m done for the day.”

Meg loathed the days that dragged by more than she hated the days when she’d waited in dread for news of Kirk. She felt as though she resided in a prison, a prison that she herself had built, using hatred for bricks and revenge for mortar. She had wanted to punish Clay, but she too ended up suffering.

She didn’t want to sit in that shed where silent voices loomed and the steady clinking of hammer to chisel echoed, but she couldn’t stay away.

Every day, his hands revealed more of the shadows. The muscles along his neck, back, and arms strained with his efforts. Then they gradually relaxed, and he touched the stone as though to apologize for his harsh treatment and to promise it would all be worth it.