Stay a Little Longer (18 page)

“A… a man you met… in the army?” Rachel asked, suddenly unsure.

“That’s right.”

“And… you’re just now coming here?”

The man’s smile was suddenly gone, replaced by a grim frown. “I was… in a hospital for a great while… because of my injuries…”

Rachel scarcely heard a word that the stranger spoke; she was so momentarily shocked that she wouldn’t have been bothered
by the boardinghouse’s roof caving in. Worry filled her heart that she had somehow been wrong, that as certain as she had
been that he was Mason Tucker, she had been mistaken. Still, there was something about the man’s story that nagged at her.
Even now, his eyes refused to alight on her for longer than an instant, and she found that she couldn’t help but entertain
the idea that he was lying.

I can’t have been wrong… I just can’t be!

“I don’t believe you,” she declared, hoping that she sounded surer of herself than she felt.

“I’m not lying to you,” he answered, but she felt his voice waver.

“What’s your name?” Rachel pressed.

“William… William Martin…”

“You’re telling me that you’re not Mason Tucker.”

“No… I’m not,” the man hesitantly denied, but even as he spoke, he turned his face away from her, contenting himself with
staring at the wall. Even after finishing speaking, he refused to look back.

Confidence that she was still right in her assumption began to swell in Rachel’s heart. Clearly, the man was hiding something
from her.
Is it shame at the lies he’s telling me?
No matter what it took, she vowed that she would get to the bottom of it.

“That’s really too bad,” she began, trying her best to sound disappointed with what he had claimed. “Because if you really
were Mason Tucker, long removed from Carlson and finally returned to town, to his grieving family, I would have been able
to tell you about everything that has happened, for better or worse, since you were gone.”

“For… better or worse… ?” the man repeated.

“That’s right,” Rachel agreed. “If you were Mason, I would tell you what has befallen your father, about all of the horrible
things your brother has gotten himself into, but most important, I’d be able to tell you about Alice and your… Well, that
last part wouldn’t be any of your business, would it, seeing as how you’re not who I thought you were.”

This time, the stranger remained silent, although his jaw tightened.

“I’m glad that you’re feeling better, Mr. Martin. I’ll leave you be so that you can get some rest.” She smiled as she took
a step toward the door. “I reckon that it will still be a couple of days before you’re able to be up and about, so I’ll bring
you some supper to help with your recovery.”

For a brief moment, Rachel thought that he might actually let her leave, but just as her hand found the doorknob, his voice
called out, “Wait… wait, Rachel…”

Turning, she asked, “What is it?”

“I just… just can’t…”

“You can’t what?” she prodded him.

Right before her eyes, it seemed to Rachel as if all of the uncertainty disappeared from the stranger. Sighing deeply, his
shoulders squared themselves and his eyes rose to meet hers unflinchingly. For the first time since she had followed Charlotte
into the woods and come upon him in the cabin, the man truly looked like Mason Tucker.

“You’re right, Rachel.” He nodded gravely. “I’m… Mason… Tucker.”

Mason’s words hung in the air as he stared at Rachel. Even the slight breeze that had been rippling the curtains appeared
to have quit in the face of his admission. For several long seconds, silence filled the room.

In the end, Mason knew that telling the truth was the only choice he had to make. Listening to Rachel talk about his father,
about Zachary, but most importantly about Alice, was more than he could bear. Besides, lying to her the way he had, inventing
a fictitious soldier’s story, made him sick to his stomach. He’d spent seven long years running from the past; this moment
was the time for him to face up to what he had done.

“What happened? You were reported killed in northern France,” Rachel asked, her eyes growing wet.

“Rachel, I—”

“Why didn’t you let Alice know you were alive?” she demanded furiously, her voice rising in a pitch of anger. “You’re dead—they
came and told us that you had died in the war—so how could you possibly be here?”

Mason knew that he had no choice but to tell Rachel the whole truth, even if that truth would likely hurt them both. After
all the many long years he had dreaded this moment, refusing to come back to Carlson, to show his scarred and ugly face, to
see the revulsion on the face of his wife. He had avoided this very thing, he knew that there would be no more running, and
that realization calmed him.

Alice and her family deserve better than what I have given them…

“We were in France,” he began simply, his voice hushed, his chest starting to tighten as he remembered the day that changed
his life. “We’d only been there a matter of weeks, a month or so, fighting along trench after trench, town after nameless
town. All around us… there was nothing but death, destruction, and mud. Then one day, just like so many others before, we
were given the order that we were expected to take a German position, to go up over the trench and take it, so when our officer
blew his whistle, we went…”

Mason paused, the weight of his tale pressing down on him. Holding Rachel’s eyes, he noticed that while she still hung intently
on his every word, she seemed to have softened, if only a bit.

“We hadn’t gone fifty feet when the German machine guns opened up,” he continued. “Right next to me, a man was nearly cut
in half. In that sea of mud mixed with barbed wire, I fell to the ground and tried to crawl to safety, but before I could
move, artillery shells began to fall. The sound was deafening. Each successive crash made me feel as if my very organs were
being shaken. Closer and closer they came, the heat from the explosions rolling across my face. But then I had the sudden
sensation of being thrown, tossed as if I was little more than a doll, and then there was only blackness.”

“They told me that you died,” Rachel explained as the first tear broke loose and rolled down her cheek. “They said that a
solider saw it happen. Your father told Alice that all that was found of you was a bloody piece of uniform.”

Mason nodded solemnly in answer.

“But you lived?” she asked.

“Somehow… by some miracle, yes,” Mason answered. “I woke up in a hospital filled with row after row of beds, all containing
men who screamed through the night, my face wrapped in gauze and bandages. I drifted in and out of consciousness, my vision
filled with a haze of nurses, doctors, and pain. Once, I woke to find a nun sitting beside me, reading from the Bible… I was
convinced she was giving me my last rites. I don’t know how long I lay there, only that it seemed like forever.”

“But then they should have known that you were alive,” Rachel argued. “As soon as you were able, you would have told them
who you were and they would’ve told your family.”

“That was exactly what I intended to do, Rachel.” Mason sighed heavily. “I promise you that I’m telling the truth, but then
they took my bandages off, handed me a mirror, and…”

“And what?” she prodded him tearfully.

Mason stared into the eyes of his wife’s younger sister and knew that this was the moment from which he could never return.
This is the moment I have been frightened by for all these years!
It was the decision he made that day that had kept him away.

But at the same time, Mason had already come so far, had told so much that by falling silent now, he knew that he would have
failed. As painful as these memories were to recount, he vowed not to stop until they were finished.

“Lying there in my bed, getting stronger with every day,” he explained, “all that I could think about was Alice, about how
I had been spared so that I could return to her, so that we could be together again and resume the life we’d planned for all
our lives.

“But the explosion that had put me in the hospital had done more than just knock me unconscious, it had also badly burned
the side of my face.” Gently, Mason’s hand rose to touch his beard covering his right cheek. “None of the doctors could ever
be certain if it had been caused by a burning piece of metal or some phosphorous agent the Germans had added to the shell,
but it smoldered on my skin long enough to blister, scalding until my face was raw. What I saw when I looked in the mirror
was an abomination, a festering, ugly mess of pus and blood. Right then and there, I decided that I could never return to
Carlson, that I could never allow Alice to see what I had become.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why could you never return?”

“Because I was no longer the person I was when I left. If Alice were to have looked at me, she wouldn’t have seen the man
that she loved, the man she married.”

“But… you have a beard…” Rachel said.

“It’s taken me more than five years to grow this,” Mason explained, running his hand through the coarse but still spotty hair.
“The doctors said that with the extensive scarring, they wouldn’t expect much, if anything, to grow. Patiently, I’ve somehow
managed to grow this much. When I first came back to the States, I wrapped my face out of shame.”

A flare of anger crossed Rachel’s face. “How long ago was that?”

Bracing for the furious response he was certain would follow, Mason said, “I was discharged from the hospital in France several
months after the war ended… and returned home early the next year.”

“You… you came back… over seven years ago?” Rachel asked, her hands gripping across her chest and her body shaking uncontrollably.
“Seven years… may God damn you for this, Mason Tucker!”

“What was—”

“You selfish son of a bitch!” she shouted, refusing to allow him to offer any word in his own defense. “You had to have known
how much grief your death would cause back home! But even knowing that, you still ran away and allowed all of us to believe
that we had lost you forever! How could you possibly have done such a thing?!”

“What did you expect me to do?” Mason demanded, his own temper rising, even if he understood Rachel’s accusation. “Every single
day that I was recovering in the hospital, days that stretched into months, I looked around me and all I could see were men
who would be a burden to their loved ones, to their families. There were men who were missing legs or arms, had been blinded
by German artillery or gas or, like me, burned by explosions. The last thing I wanted was to be looked at differently, to
be seen as having changed. Just the thought of Alice looking at me with pity in her eyes was horrifying!”

“She would have understood! She would have loved you!”

Mason shook his head. “Before I left Carlson, I promised her that I would return to her just as I left. What would she have
thought if I didn’t keep my promised word? What if she no longer recognized me or no longer loved me because of what had happened?
Because that was something I could not bear to witness, I stayed away.”

“But because you ran away, you’ve lost everything!”

Rachel’s words struck Mason momentarily mute. Though he couldn’t begin to understand what she meant, the implication was enough
to cause his heart to thunder and his stomach to roil. He could only stare at her as tears cascaded down her cheeks.

“You’ve lost everything,” she repeated as sobs racked her.

Fear gnawed at Mason. Somehow, he managed to croak, “I want to see Alice. I went… to our house but… she wasn’t there, so get…
her for me, Rachel.”

“Oh, Mason,” she answered. “It’s too late for that.”

“What… what are you talking about?”

“You can’t talk to her! No one can!” Rachel cried. “Alice is dead!”

H
ER FATEFUL WORDS
had no sooner been spoken than Rachel could clearly see the painful hurt spreading across Mason’s face. His still brilliant
blue eyes widened as they searched her face for some sign, some explanation for what she had said.

“Alice is… dead?” he managed in a strangled whisper.

Rachel walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. Gingerly, she took his callused hands in her own. She had felt so much
anger toward him, resentment for his having left them to fight a war when his draft number had not even come up. She had condemned
him for refusing to come home as soon as he was released from the hospital, but the wounded way that he looked at her softened
her heart, if only a bit. Telling someone such news as she needed to report to Mason was no easy task. She felt tension growing
in her own chest; she knew that nothing she would say to him this day would make him hurt any less.

“Mason, there is something that you need to hear, something that is going to be very difficult for you to bear,” she began,
carefully choosing her words as she tried to prepare herself for the emotional battering that was to come. “Alice… Alice died
in childbirth,” Rachel explained as gently as she could. “Alice died… giving birth to your baby.”

Immediately, Mason’s hands clenched hers tightly.

“What… what are you saying?” he asked, his already confused face growing incredulous. “Baby… but… Alice and I weren’t expecting
a child…”

“Alice only found out about her pregnancy after you had already left,” Rachel explained. “By her own count of months, she
determined that she must have conceived just before you set out, but it was only after you had arrived in France that she
knew for certain.”

Even as she recounted the story, Rachel could not help but remember just how excited Alice had been. For her, the very idea
that she and Mason would create a life, that she would be a mother, was as great a gift as she could ever have been given.
When she had finally confided in her sister, tears of joy sliding down her soft cheeks, her smile had been brighter than the
summer sun.

If only it had managed to stay that way
.