by Alice White
She was starting to see that she could really have a life in this place and as she washed the dirt off of her blistering hands she thought to herself that it might be a really good life, too.
“Well look at you all covered in the earth. I don’t believe I’ve seen you this way before.”
“Oh! Oh dear, I’m sorry, I’ve taken over your kitchen without any thought to the mess I’d be making.”
“No!” Bradan laughed, leaning casually in the kitchen’s door frame with a warm smile in his eyes, “Please, no, don’t feel sorry. I’m glad to see you looking like this might be your home. I’d begun to wonder if it might not happen at all.”
“I’m sorry about that as well. Perhaps, well, perhaps I owe you an explanation about that.”
She wanted to tell him at least some of what had happened to bring her here, despite the fact that the very notion of doing so was terrifying to her. She thought she might just do it, too, but before she had time to she saw that Bradan was walking towards her with that smile still lighting up his eyes. She felt her heart stop beating in her chest and, for a moment, she wondered if she might be coming down with some kind of illness. It took her a few seconds to realize that it was not illness. It was her body’s response to this man. In all of these weeks she had been so consumed with herself and her thoughts that she hadn’t stopped to really take notice of who and what Bradan was.
After listening to Mrs. Patterson all afternoon, however, she felt as if her eyes were open for the first time. He was a strangely beautiful man, his lanky body and Irish coloring, but it was more than that. There was a kindness to him. She felt that. She supposed it had been there all along, that goodness, she just hadn’t been able to see it. She had come dangerously close to letting her past rob her of her future and she knew that was not a mistake she was willing to make. As he came closer and closer to her she found herself wondering for the first time since her arrival when their actual wedding would take place. After being left at the altar it seemed that part of her had lost interest in being wed without even realizing it. But now that she had begun to reanimate she knew that she wanted this life. Yes, she was afraid, but she wanted this life with Mr. Bradan Shaw and when he reached his thumb out to brush a wayward bit of dirt off of her face she inhaled quickly, forcing herself to look him in the eyes.
“No, miss, you don’t owe me anything of the sort. I’m glad to see your spirits lifting, though. I am mighty glad to see that.”
“They are lifting,” she said quickly, wanting him to see the potential for happiness that she was suddenly seeing, “believe me, they are.”
“Good. That’s good. I did come in here for a reason though. Not just to interrupt you. I needed to tell you that I’ve got to go away for a little while. Just a quick trip, only a few weeks. I was wondering if maybe when I return, maybe you might want to start talking about a wedding. If you’re agreeable to the notion.”
“I am. Yes, I believe that I truly am.”
Chapter Five
Alice had never been so restless in the whole of her life as she was in those almost three weeks between Bradan’s leaving and his return to the Shaw ranch. Life had its way of taking funny turns and Alice was beginning to learn that it had a tendency to go down before it went up. Still, the waiting felt like a torment to her. The last thing she had expected was to come to the realization that she really wanted a marriage with Bradan but once she did realize it she wanted to move forward as quickly as possible. So naturally, the way that life did, things took their unexpected turn and Bradan disappeared. She knew that wasn’t truly what he was doing, business was business, but her impatience made it feel that way. She developed a habit of haunting the front yards of the ranch, walking along the fence line like an animal waiting for its humans to return. Mrs. Patterson would distract her with their gardening and with teaching her to cook (according to her, every wife should know how to cook at least a few things, a belief that was very different from the way Alice had been raised but was nevertheless appealing), chuckling all the while.
“What is it that you find so funny now, Mrs. Patterson?” Alice would ask with the petulance of a child.
“Why, you, my dear. You’re what I find so funny.”
“I don’t see why.” Alice would mutter, only causing Mrs. Patterson to laugh all the more.
“Because I’ve never seen a girl change so completely. From the most lethargic thing I ever laid eyes on to the most impatient. It’s good. It’s a good change and I’m mighty glad to see it. But calm yourself dear, he’ll be home soon enough. He’ll not ever leave you in the lurch, that one. He’s got a good heart and he’s as strong as oak. If you love him well, he’ll love you right back with everything in him. You’ll see. He’ll be home again before you know it.”
And she was right. He was home again, after being away for just shy of three weeks. His return wasn’t anything like she had expected it to be, however, not at all. In her mind’s eye, when Bradan returned she would be out in the garden, or maybe just finishing preparing a nice hearty meal. He would pull up in that same wagon he had delivered her to the ranch in on that first shell-shocked day and he would hop down off of it with that limber ease she had come to know him by; the ease of a natural outdoorsman completely in his element. She would wave and give him her widest smile and he would grin in return before taking her in his arms in a warm embrace. They would plan their wedding on the spot and then they would begin their lives in earnest.
In truth, his homecoming was nothing like that. Nothing at all, not even close. Bradan did not return on the afternoon of some sunny day full of smiles and stories of his business successes. She was not in the kitchen or out in the gardens when he finally returned. In truth, when Bradan arrived home it was not daylight at all and Alice was in the room that was hers until their wedding night fast asleep. She would never be able to say what it was that caused her to wake. Although she had suffered terrible bouts of insomnia for her first several weeks of living on the ranch, since she had taken up gardening and found her true heart again she had slept with the ease of a child. But not on the night of Bradan’s return. On that night, the air outside was full of a sharp chill and a wild rain that beat down upon the roof of the house. Alice woke in her bed with a start, for a moment confused about where she was. Had she somehow been transported back to that long night before the wedding that was never to be?
But no, nothing as awful as all of that. It was just a storm railing against the house the way a child in the midst of a full on tantrum was apt to rail against his parent. Still, she felt a restless kind of a presence and found that it was something she could not shake. She got herself out of bed and bundled herself in a blanket before opening her door and padding down the home’s seemingly never-ending hallway. Something she had learned to love about being up in the small hours when everything was quiet and most of the people around her slumbered was how much easier it seemed to trust and follow her instincts. There was far less questioning, far less talking herself out of things and attempting to adhere to some kind of logic. When a little voice in the back of her head told her to make her way to the great room with the massive fireplace she had come to love, she listened to it. There was no reason for her not to. She simply did as it told and that room was where she came upon Bradan. Bradan, the man she had been waiting for these three weeks and all of her life before that. He was home again, a fact that filled her with joy, but he was not at all as she remembered him. She could not see his face with the way he knelt beside the fire, but looking at his bent back she got the impression of a man who was badly broken. Not in body, but certainly in spirit. His head was bowed and his body shaking and after a few disoriented moments Alice realized that he was crying. This man who had always seemed so full of joy was crying alone in the middle of the night. She didn’t want to startle him but she could not stand to see him that way and so she hurried to his side, placing one tentative and questioning hand on his shoulder. At her touch, he turned to look at her
over his shoulder and she could see that his eyes were full of sorrow. What could possibly have happened to him to make him look so defeated?
“Bradan? Bradan, what is it? What’s happened?”
“It’s nothing, nothing to worry yourself about.”
I don’t think so,” she replied softly, sinking to the floor at his feet and forcing him to hold eye contact with her. “I don’t think that’s true at all. It doesn’t look like nothing.”
“I don’t want to make my burdens yours, to cause you any more trouble than I may have already.”
“How do you mean? I can’t think of any trouble you’ve caused me at all.”
“Not that you know of, not yet, but I’m sure you’ll think it’s trouble when I tell you that I can’t marry you after all.”
Alice felt as though her spirit had left her body. This had to be some kind of a cruel joke. This couldn’t possibly be happening to her again. There was no way life would deal her such a terrible hand. But from what she knew of Bradan, he was not a spiteful man and would not wish to cause her any pain without reason. So then he meant it? He was going to call off their wedding just as Travis had? Alice wasn’t sure she could survive it. She did not know how she could begin to pick herself up again after this final blow and she spoke without knowing if there was any real point in doing so.
“You don’t want me, then. I see. You don’t want me here.”
“No! Oh Alice, no, it’s nothing like that. How could you possibly think a thing like that? How could you think that any man wouldn’t want you?”
“Because,” she said simply, her new heartbreak driving her to an honesty the two of them had not previously had. “This won’t be the first time a man has made that decision. Before I came here I was to be wed but on the day of my wedding my betrothed left for another. I suppose I should have known then that there was something about me that did not inspire a man to take me on for a lifetime.”
“No,” Bradan’s voice was hoarse and his tears had begun anew. “It’s nothing at all like that. I do want to marry you. I want you here badly, more than I feel capable of letting you know.”
“Well then why are you sending me away?”
“Because. Very soon there will not be a here to live on and I can’t ask you to be my wife when I’ve nothing to provide.”
“I don’t understand.”
Bradan ran one tormented hand through his still wet hair, his eyes staring into the fireplace and his body actually shaking with fear or grief or any number of unknown feelings Alice could only begin to guess at. She hated to see him like that and it was without a second thought that she took his hand firmly in both of hers. She wanted him to know that she was there with him, in both body and spirit. She wanted to give him whatever strength she was able.
“My parents. This ranch belonged to them before it belonged to me. They loved this land every bit as well as I do but they weren’t the best at managing their money. When they died it was sudden and they left me not only this land but also a significant amount of debt. I’ve spent more than a decade trying to dig us out from under it but now I see that I have failed. I visited the bank, you see, and the last little bit of grace and leniency I had from them has been exhausted. They mean to take the ranch unless I can pay the remainder of my parents’ debt in full by month’s end and there is no way I can accomplish that. So you see, I can’t take you as my wife. I don’t know what made me think I could build that dream of a life to begin with.”
“Is that all?”
Bradan finally tore his gaze away from the fire, but only to look at Alice as though she were crazy. The combination of the look and the pure joy that had consumed Alice caused her to laugh giddily, which only confused Bradan further. He must have thought that she had lost her mind and she supposed that she would have believed the same thing if their positions had been reversed. It was just that she felt such a profound relief upon hearing the story that she could not keep it to herself.
“Is that all? Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Well then we’ll be married just as we planned.”
“Do you really want to take on the role of a pauper’s life? It will be very hard. I will give you everything I have, I’ll do it for the rest of my life, but it will still be hard.”
“So you would want to marry me regardless of your situation?”
“Yes,” he said with that same loving kindness radiating from him, “I don’t want to think of a world where I have to lose you as well as everything else.”
“Then you shall lose nothing at all. There is something about myself that I have not told you, something I intended to keep to myself until after we were wed. I see that it may have been wrong and I hope you aren’t angry, but after the way I was left before I felt that I couldn’t do anything else.”
“I’m afraid that now it is I who does not understand.”
“When we are wed, it is not only me you will receive. There is a dowry as well. It is quite substantial, and I believe it will pay your debts with plenty to spare afterwards.”
“But that belongs to you!”
“No,” Alice said happily, knowing that when she spoke the words they were true. “It belongs to us. To our future.”
THE END
Return to TOC
The Girl Who Went West
Return to TOC
Chapter 1
“What do you think it would be like, Polly? If it were to really happen to us one day? Who could really say when that day might be, what do you suppose it might be like?”
“Oh Meg, who's to say? Is this really the kind of game you want to play? Don’t you find it a little bit, I don’t know-”
“Come on, I don’t believe that for one second. I’ve known you for practically my entire life, and I’ve never known you not to know yourself well enough to speak what you mean. Go on, you can say it. Whatever ‘it’ may be.”
“It’s just that it seems like a depressing kind of game to play. That’s all. I guess I just don’t see where the enjoyment comes in.”
Meg rolled over onto her bed, looking up at the ceiling of her small bedroom but seeing something else instead. How many times had the two of them sat on this bed and had this same conversation? A hundred times? A thousand? They had been having this same conversation since they were small and, for Meg, it hadn’t become any less enthralling. She loved this game, the one where they planned out what their lives might look like in the future. Because it could be anything, couldn’t it? It could be anything at all. That was the thing about the future: it hadn’t happened yet and so it was full of possibilities that the present kept hidden. She could find a rich stranger, or a prince masquerading as a pauper like in the fairytales. Or maybe she would make some great discovery, scientific or otherwise, something that could change the world. Why not? She was every bit as capable of changing the world as anyone else, and why did her thoughts on the matter need to be practical? Being practical was all well and good, but dreaming big was how one propelled herself forward, and she was a girl who intended to move forward.
“Is everything alright, Meg? I feel like you’ve gone off somewhere far away.”
“Yes, I’m here. I was just thinking.”
“About?”
“About what you said. Why is it that you think it’s depressing? I guess I don’t see that.”
“Well, look at us. We aren’t overrun with possibilities, now are we? Playing make believe is nice and all, but when you look at reality you and me are just poor girls with poor families. We work hard and, chances are, we’ll be working hard for a long, long time. Men don’t marry women like us, not if they can help it. They marry girls with wealthy families, girls who can bring something to the table.”
“Is that really what you believe? That we bring nothing to the table?”
Polly leapt up off of Meg’s creaky bed and began pacing around her tiny, musty room with her frustration written all over her face. She was a relatively plain looking girl but sweet, with a b
ig heart and an astounding capacity for empathy. These were qualities that Meg believed to be essential if you were going to build a life-long relationship, but Polly’s father had told her many times how little she had to offer that a man would want and, heartbreakingly, she seemed to have believed him. Just thinking that a parent could do that to his own daughter made Meg fuming mad, and she sat up like a shot, wanting her friend to realize how special she was, wanting to hear her say that she knew she was better than the rude comments her father had made.
“Well, I don’t know, Meg. I’m honestly just trying to be realistic here. Maybe things are different for you.”
“Different? Why would they be different?”
“Because,” Polly said with a pained, soft voice that made Meg’s heart hurt, “things are different for beautiful girls. Being beautiful, well, that’s almost like its own form of currency. It gets you things that nothing else can get you. You have that, which means you have something I don’t have.”
Meg’s stomach clenched and she looked down at the old wooden floor. What was one supposed to say to something like that? Could she disagree, tell Polly how wrong she was even though what she was saying was true? Whether it was fair or not, the way a girl looked made a difference with how she got by in the world, and beauty was always something Meg Dylan had had in spades. She was naturally athletic, her body moving with a confidence that very few people came by naturally. She had thick black curls that hung in ringlets down her back and creamy white skin that always seemed to be ever so slightly flushed, which left her with a pretty pink glow. Her big blue eyes were perpetually shining with curiosity and yes, perhaps a little bit of mischief, and all in all she was striking to behold. True, she was already twenty one, which was almost a little old for a girl to be unmarried, but she still got looks of admiration just while walking down the street for her to believe that finding a good match would be possible for her.