This Is How I'd Love You (33 page)

A
sign above the corner ring advertises
THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD
.

A young woman smiles at the crowd, curtsies, and accepts the strong man’s lips on her hand as he introduces her. “The very accommodating Miss Hensley . . .” He leans his ear to her mouth for a brief consultation. “. . . Dench.”

Charles is sure he must be hallucinating. Or simply mistaken. There is no way. He’s heard what he wanted to. But at that moment it doesn’t matter. He cannot take his eyes off her. He watches as the strong man kneels beneath the stack. Slowly he straightens first his legs, then his arms, so that she is nearly fourteen feet above the sawdust of the circus floor. His cheeks turn a bright red and Charles backs away, trying to keep his eyes on Hensley, on that face he’s imagined for so many nights. He grips his cane as though his hands are hers and his fierce hold will keep her safe.

She sits primly on the stool, high above everything. Her lips are a warm shade of red, her hair is tucked behind her ears so that the slope of her jaw and the elegance of its intersection with her neck is exposed. She is right there, still towering on top of the stack of chairs she described months ago. As though he’s actually stepped into her letter and is inhabiting her very words. She looks just as brave and thoughtful as she said she felt.

He doesn’t know how she could know him, but before he realizes what has happened, their eyes are locked on one another. All of it is there. Between them, in that single gaze, there is an entire history. All of those words, all of her life and his, the way it has been written and read.

Even as she floats above the circus, the noise of horns and cheers and tambourines filling the tent, she keeps her eyes on him. In an act of utter foolishness, she lifts one hand from the edge of the chair. Raising it gently above her head, she waves at him.

Charles removes one hand from his cane and waves it above his head. In that moment, nothing else matters. Not his body or hers, only that they have actually found one another. Like in so many of his dreams, he has found her and she is beaming at him, her face an expression of all that he’s doubted, her outstretched arm extended toward him. Soon the crowd follows suit. They are all waving at her and she smiles even more broadly, her cheeks glistening with tears. She keeps waving the whole way down. When she descends the stepstool, she clutches the strong man’s arm and curtsies.

T
he tears are unstoppable now and Hensley smiles through them. The crowd cheers with enthusiasm. Arty beams at her and then realizes she’s crying. He pulls her close. “Everything okay?” he says, squeezing her hand. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She nods but does not speak.

Charles has moved forward in the crowd, just a few paces away.

Hensley drops Arty’s hand and makes her way toward him. He stands with both hands on his cane in front of him. Hensley, unabashedly eager to speak to him, places one of her hands on top of his. “Mr. Reid? Is that you?”

He looks down at her hand. She pulls it away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so . . . perhaps I’m mistaken.” Her tears feel foolish. Her face is a mess. She fidgets for her handkerchief, but he produces one first.

It is embroidered.
CWR.
“Please, call me Charles.” He cannot believe it. His throat is suddenly tight and dry.

“You are? Really?” She takes the handkerchief and dabs at her eyes. Her makeup has left its indelible black on his fine white linen. “Really?” She folds the handkerchief, trying to keep her hands from holding his face close to hers. Trying to stay subdued. She moves her foot toward his cane. “What has happened? You’re hurt.”

He nods. “Yes, permanently.” He uses his fist to knock against the wood under his pant leg. The sound sends a shiver up her spine. She covers her mouth with the folded kerchief.

“How awful. I’m so sorry. When did it happen? How long have you been home?”

“I went to Hillsboro. You weren’t there. I went to the address you left Teresa. Your fiancé’s address. She found them, the goblets. She sent me with one. I left it for you.”

Hensley nods. The lump in her throat seems to be expanding and preventing any air from getting to her lungs.

“You are expecting,” he says, gesturing to a vague place beneath her chest.

She cannot say a word. Barely breathing, she is feeling light-headed.

“I have something,” he says. He reaches into his coat pocket. It is a small gray stone. “Here.” He places it in her sweaty palm. “I didn’t know I’d find you here tonight. But it’s not too much to carry.”

It is one of the stones from beside the gate in Hillsboro. Her counting stones. It has a date written on one side in her own hand:
7/7/17
. On the other side, in his hand, is written,
dear hensley
, with a small red heart beside her name. It is what he’d told her that he would give to her if he ever had the chance. A small, warm stone from the wall, folded into her hand. This is how he’d said he would love her.

“You are even prettier than I’d imagined,” he says, leaning close to her face, his breath hot on her cheek. “And that’s saying something. Because I did nothing but imagine your face over there.”

He turns away from her, limping away in wide, awkward steps. Hensley stands there watching him. She is paralyzed.

“Hensley,” Arty says, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Remember, hold tight. Don’t let go so easy.”

She can barely see. The whole tent has gone fuzzy. She wraps her hand around the stone, trying to hold on. But she collapses into the strong man’s arms.

T
he strong man grabs Charles’s arm as he rushes past, carrying Hensley. Charles follows him to a trailer, where the man lays her on the small cot in the corner. Charles places his fingers against her pale neck and feels for her pulse. She flinches. Her eyes open wide just as he finds her artery.

Charles removes his fingers. She blinks.

“Well, hallelujah,” Arty says. “Welcome back to the circus.”

Charles steps away and stands just by the door. “Left side is best for blood flow,” he says quietly and Arty helps her shift to her side. Then he hands her a glass of water.

Looking around the small trailer, Charles notices a letter with his name on it resting on the table.

He wants to reach for it, to remember what it feels like to read a new letter from her. Instead, he looks at her again. She is propped up, the glass drained, her eyes on him. “Are you really here? Is this all true?”

Arty smiles. “Ah, the deep questions. I will let you two sort that out. Hensley, I will go fetch some supper for us. Oh, and the post was closed this afternoon. Your letter is here.” He holds the envelope up, its thin rectangular existence an object of pain and beauty, both. Then he sets it down again and descends the steps of the trailer.

When they are left alone, the small space becomes even smaller. The evidence of her beating heart is visible to Charles in her pale neck. That place where he so recently had his hand.

“I’ve resisted for so long. But I wrote that this afternoon,” she says, gesturing to the letter just beyond his reach. “How odd that you’re here now.”

“And how odd that you’re engaged.” Charles can’t help himself. “And with child.” The anger in his voice is surprising, even to him.

Her eyes widen and then close. She shakes her head but says nothing. Swinging her legs to the floor, she sits on the edge of the bed. “I’ve done absolutely nothing right,” she says, opening her eyes and gripping him with their ferocity. “Nothing. But one thing is clear. I’ve only myself to answer to.”

She stands up and walks past him, the scent of her hair soap a piece of new and treasured information. “I’m sorry,” Charles says immediately. “Of course that’s true. I’ve no right. I never asked you to wait.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she says and kneels in front of the cabinet. “Though if I’d thought it were fair, I would have. I would have waited forever.” She pulls a jar of pickles from it. Removing a long, slender carrot with her fingers, she extends the jar toward him.

“No, thank you,” he says. He is confused. Some of her words thrill him. Others are newly devastating.

“Do you want to read the letter?” she asks between delicate bites, studying his face. “Or do you want to just say something polite and back out of this trailer, thanking your lucky stars that my troubles are not yours.”

She hands him the envelope. But he does not take it right away. He does not want anything to change. He does not want to know the details of her unhappiness, her shame. In fact, he’d like to pretend that she is still the perfect girl who’s lived in his head all these months. Instead, he speaks. “You were right about the licorice in the air. In Hillsboro. I’ve never breathed so deeply in my life.”

Her lips curve ever so slightly. But she places the envelope back on the counter and turns away from him. “Mr. Reid. Charles,” she says, her voice quivering slightly as she speaks his given name for the first time. “You must face facts. I am not the girl you thought I was.” She places one hand over her belly. “I’m not.”

He marvels at her spirit. She stands before him unadorned. Unlike anyone he’s ever known, she is uninterested in feigning the truth. Is she really turning him away because she thinks he wouldn’t want her? Doesn’t she understand that it is precisely because he does want her that he is devastated? Can she not see in his eyes that he never wants to leave? That he would gladly spend forever right there in that trailer, watching her eat pickled carrots? He has found his place; that is perfectly clear. As inexplicable as it may be, he doesn’t care that she is engaged or pregnant. She is still the girl whose words have brought him more comfort and joy than he’s ever known. Deep in his gut, he is terrified of the heartbreak that he knows is waiting for him when the door of this unorthodox trailer closes behind him.

“Just read it,” she says, extending it to him again.

He thinks of her words written on his wooden leg, hidden only by his thin wool pants. He takes the envelope from her. “Okay,” he says.

It is entirely strange that he can be standing there, so close to her, and actually hold a letter she’s written to him. How he’s longed for such a day and yet he never imagined it this way. He never thought he would find her too late. He wants to reach out and count the freckles that march across her nose. He wants to close his eyes and just sit beside her, letting himself smell her perfume, her soap, her sweat.

He unfolds the thin paper and lingers on the salutation.
Dear Mr. Reid
.

He smiles at her, then keeps reading.

Immediately, he understands her reticence. She vividly describes the treacherous combination of her naïveté and Mr. Lowell Teagan’s trickery that preceded her pregnancy. Charles struggles to eradicate the image from his mind. The anger makes it difficult to stand still. He shifts his weight, leaning against the wall. He closes his eyes and tries to see nothing. He urges it all away, but it lingers and for this he momentarily hates her. But he continues to read.

“You’ve left him?” he finally asks, reading the sentence over and over. He is shocked by this revelation.

She nods. “I will raise the baby somehow. Maybe in the circus.”

He looks to see her smiling slightly.

“I told you I was a deviant.”

Charles rubs his eyes. He sets the letter back on the table.

“Please don’t feel obliged to say or do anything,” she says, her voice a welcome distraction. “You have absolutely no duty here. You are home and you are healthy. You will have a wonderful life.”

He takes a deep breath. “Dear Hensley,” he says, “were you really going to continue to write to me? If I hadn’t found you, you would have sent me letters my whole life long?”

She shrugs. “That is how I’d love you.”

The words enter the small trailer so simply, without any fanfare. Without warning.

“But I did find you.”

Her voice becomes sharp, pragmatic in an effort to resist emotion. “You were not looking for me. You were looking for the girl you thought I was.”